Stay busy; avoid fear. Communicate with employees optimistically but also realistically. We’re pretty open on where we stand. They have a clear understanding that new business opportunities are extremely important and have to have as much focus as current clients.
That equals harder work and more hours because we cannot lose the client base that we have today. Recently, we had a whole slew of people working over the weekend to get pitches out. While in the past, they might have taken several days off to make up for the time they worked over the weekend, that’s just not acceptable anymore.
Don’t command, empower. Our people have a tendency of including me on every single e-mail, and at one point, you realize it’s not necessary for me to be in on every e-mail and at every meeting. It’s a great sense of pride to be independent and successful. It kind of helps them grow their own skills and their own style.
You develop that by letting them handle clients from start to finish. Empowering employees is letting them know all their ideas and improvements are welcome. That’s one of the things we say when we make a hire.
We let them know, ‘If you see something that you do not like and that you think we can do better from an operational or a customer perspective, please let us know.’ If it’s a great idea that will benefit both the customer and the company, we let them run with it.
They become charged. They decide whether or not it’s really important. We’ll let them know, ‘If you want to make this change, you need to spearhead it. You need to put a committee together and you need to run it.’ I always ask, ‘What are the benefits? How does it benefit the customer and how does it benefit Schifino Lee? How much does it cost?’ That’s the proof on whether or not they believe it is a worthy change.
Share great news. We give a lot of praise when we win an account or when a great job went out the door. Some parts of the team might not even know what was just completed or they might not have worked on a pitch, so we share that with the entire company. It’s sharing successes and giving people praise and making them feel proud of working with each other. Take the time to do that.
‘Hey, this is what we’ve done in the last two months. What have you been working on?’ That way everybody kind of stays connected.
How to reach: Schifino Lee, (813) 258-5858 or www.schifinolee.com
