Logic would seem to say that a leader needs to find followers or else the leader really isn’t a leader.
Jason Rose sees it differently.
The general manager of Waste Management Inc.’s San Diego and Orange County operations believes that a leader needs to find other leaders and then leverage their talents and skills to help keep the company financially healthy and culturally focused.
Developing leaders is essential if you want to build and maintain a successful organization. If you’re overseeing a division of 1,000 employees as Rose does, it becomes exponentially more important. Armed with that knowledge, building leaders is something on which he has focused for his entire leadership tenure.
“When I first took over, it was really all about sitting back and learning about the organization,” Rose says. “It was about listening to our front-line employees and managers. It was ensuring that we really had the right leaders in the right positions, that the leaders we had really valued our employees and customers. In some cases, we really did have some wonderful leaders in place. In some cases, we didn’t, and we had to upgrade the talent, whether that was internally or externally.”
In Rose’s organization, being a leader isn’t confined to holding a leadership title. Rose wants everyone in the organization, whether in a superior or subordinate position, to take a sense of ownership in the company, take charge on initiatives and always feel enabled to figure out a way to do something better.
To make it happen, Rose has placed an emphasis on engagement at all levels of the organization. If employees and managers are informed and enabled to make decisions, a company can begin to leverage their skills and talents at a high level. Engagement can’t happen without active communication from the top levels of the company.
“The open-door policy that everyone talks about is just kind of the minimum,” Rose says. “You have to go above and beyond that. Instead of just having your door open, you need to get out of your office and spend time with employees, really listen to them in their setting instead of your setting.”
