Leading with language

It wasn’t quite the same as
your mother putting a special
note in your brown-bag lunch
for school, but it was close.

In the early days of her
company, Cindy Marion
couldn’t resist writing personalized notes along with
employee paychecks.

“I loved doing that,” says
Marion, founder, president
and CEO of Marion,
Montgomery Inc. “But the
eventuality was we got big
enough that if I did that consistently two times a month, it
would take too much time.”

Marion found other ways to
communicate with her
employees as the marketing
firm continued to grow, reaching 53 employees and $11 million in 2007 revenue and a projected $18 million for 2008.

“I think about it like plates
on those poles,” Marion says.
“Everybody needs to have
their plate spun routinely to
make sure they understand
and are rewarded for the
good things they are doing.”

Smart Business spoke
with Marion about how to be
a good communicator and
why the word “and” is
always better than “but.”

Q. Why is communication so
important?

If (employees) ask a question, it deserves an answer. If
it’s bothering them, it should
be bothering me.

As parents or bosses, we
sometimes don’t give our associates or kids enough credit. Most
people are happy to understand
the position you’re in. If you say,
‘We can’t do this, and this is
why,’ they say, ‘Oh yeah, I hadn’t
thought about it that way.’

They aren’t the ones responsible for implementing a lot of
these programs. They just take
them at face value until you
explain, ‘Well, the reason we’re
doing it this way is this.’ The
light bulb comes on, and they
say, ‘OK, now I get it.’

You can’t tell them to be honest and then make a decision
that is contradictory to that.
You have to be consistent in
your actions with what you’re
communicating. You have to
tell them often. You can’t send
out a once-a-year update
and feel like you are
communicating with
your employees.

Q. What’s the key to
having a good dialogue
with employees?

You need to send lots
and lots of communication and reward good versus punishing bad. We try
to catch people in the act
of delivering unquestionable value to clients, and
then we send out a companywide e-mail routinely.
Probably every couple of
days, something goes out
saying, ‘Hey, so-and-so did
this or so-and-so did that.’

A lot of leaders don’t
do that out of the risk that it’s
unfairly distributed or somebody gets left out by mistake. I
routinely tell the employees
that I’m going to leave somebody out sometimes and I’m
sorry.

If somebody has a feeling
that they were on a project
and they didn’t get proper
credit or didn’t get mentioned
or whatever, they can come
talk to me, and I’ll try to spin
their plate in another way. I
think it’s consistently pointing
out positive behavior toward
the ultimate objective and
vision for the company.