Don’t be a dictator
Preziotti wanted employees at Vertellus to be more engaged
with the overall goals of the company and wanted them to feel
like they were part of the process.
“When you engage people in the process, you clearly have
better buy-in and better ownership of the decisions that you
are making,” Preziotti says. “It needs to be a melding of bottoms up and top down. How do you do that? You hold people
accountable. You empower them to go make decisions.”
You need to give employees objectives and let them figure
out how they’re going to work to meet those objectives.
“You’re not telling them how to do it,” Preziotti says. “You’re
agreeing on what it is we need to accomplish. They are developing what the plans are and looking to the leader for consultation and advice and coaching.”
It’s a good way to reinforce the idea that you don’t have all
the answers and that your people, if given the chance to open
their minds and think freely, may be able to help solve some of
your problems.
“Your goal is to help people in that function or within that
business to think differently about their levels of expertise and
help them optimize it,” Preziotti says. “We encouraged them to
ask questions and they asked questions. We encouraged them
to raise issues. At first, it was a little more difficult, but eventually they opened up. Once they do, you have to show you are
going to take actions around the issues they raised. If you
don’t, you lose a lot of credibility.”
Getting past the fear of retribution for bringing up problems
can be a challenge. Preziotti has had success by fielding anonymous questions.
“Issues can be raised, but the individual doesn’t have to tie
the issue to themselves,” he says. “Once the issue is out, you
can have a debate on it.”
Getting people to open up and put their talents to use for the
company is more the responsibility of the individual than it is
the responsibility of the leader.
“A good leader makes the organization around him better,”
Preziotti says. “They lead an organization that gets results and
performance and ultimately he or she makes the employees
that are in that organization better.
“A company’s responsibility is the processes and procedures
to help develop, coach and mentor you. If people have a certain skill set that could be used someplace else and they have
a desire to use that or they think it would help the company,
the onus is on them to communicate that.”
