Trust people and overcome mistakes
Think about your life. Most likely, you’ve made more good decisions than bad ones. You probably have a family, a home, a successful career. You run your life. And here’s the kicker: Your employees run theirs — and probably just as good as you run yours, if not better.
“If you think about people at work, they come to work after they’ve left their home, so at home, they run their lives like adults,” Clark says. ‘They’ve had successful lives. No matter what their status, no matter what their family situation, no matter what it is, they’re running their life really well, and they’re managing a lot of different things in a very adult way, in a way that works for them, so they bring that to the workplace, and I think that’s really important for leaders to just acknowledge that the people they work with are adults who run their lives really well because the stuff we do here is, arguably, less important than running your life really well.”
Once you can come to terms with that, then you can trust your employees more easily, which also builds a great work environment.
“Let people make decisions,” he says
. “They make great decisions every day of their life, so when they’re in the work environment, set up an environment where lots of people can come together to make great decisions and have the types of discussions that foster decision-making. People come to work because they do want to be part of a success, something that’s bigger than themselves. Everyone wants to know that their work is meaningful, and that it’s significant. That’s how we derive richness as people.”
When you let people make decisions themselves, though, they won’t always make them the way you’d like or, for that matter, correctly.
“You have to recognize that people are fallible,” he says. “We’re just people. We make mistakes.”
When people make mistakes, help them better understand what happened and what they could do better.
“You don’t encourage them to make mistakes, but you encourage them to make decisions and learn from the decisions,” Clark says. “When you talk about creating teams that lead an organization through change, learning is a huge part of that and just recognizing that you’re getting better.”
Don’t call someone out in a group setting when the person makes a mistake.
“Do it in a one-on-one setting where you can be candid — where you don’t shed light on the person who made the mistake,” he says. “If you can, do it in a quiet setting and just ask questions and learn.”
And don’t lecture the person — instead have a dialogue.
“It’s just asking, ‘What could I have done better? What could I have done differently? What did I miss? What information should I have had that I didn’t? What information should I have valued more highly that would have gotten me to a different answer?’”
Clark once knew someone who started a new job a few years ago, and when he started that new job, he asked his manager what success would look like if he had a good year.
“All his manager said was, ‘If you make 1,000 decisions and you get 501 of them right, that’s going to be success,’” Clark says. “You have to learn, so you have to set up an environment where people can learn.”
How to reach: The PNC Financial Services Group Inc., (216) 222-2000 or www.pnc.com