Set the example
Morris recalls visiting a company where the CEO was smoking cigars all the time. The CEO wasn’t alone.
“Every layer of management of the people trying to get ahead in the organization had a cigar in their mouth,” he says.
Morris isn’t saying that’s bad or good. The point is, your employees are watching you, and if you start doing something, it will spread throughout the organization. The same goes for something that you say you’re going to do, and then you do the opposite.
“People learn from your examples,” he says. “So, if you say one thing and do another, then you basically void your ability to earn that trust.”
Because Morris says he has an open-door policy, he has to live that day in and day out. Otherwise, people will not buy in to it and they will see it as lip service, which will hurt the amount of trust employees have in him.
“The main thing is you’ve got to practice that,” he says. “So, if somebody has got a major issue, you can’t tell them you don’t have time to deal with it. That has to become a priority. Deal with it the same day. Don’t put it off a week.”
Morris received a call from an employee a thousand miles away because her boss took another position and she was lost in the middle.
He took her call, spoke with the parties he needed to and got back to her in a couple of hours. He then followed it up with an e-mail with her and those taking care of it, thanking her for bringing it to his attention.
“It wasn’t anything that was an issue, but if a person gets something in their mind that it’s an issue, then it’s an issue with them,” he says.
That’s important to remember. It might not be a big deal to you, but if someone is taking the time and courage to approach the CEO, it means something to that person.
If you aren’t available when an employee contacts you, your assistant has to be the one to tell him or her that you are unavailable, but you have to realize it is an important matter.
Morris tries to leave some white space on the calendar between meetings so he can look into any issue brought to him while he was away. If it’s something he needs to handle immediately, he can at least start dealing with it in that 15-minute window or prepare for the next meeting.
“If you don’t have an emergency, you have time to write down your thoughts about the meeting you’ve just completed as well as review what you want to review before you are going into your next meeting,” he says. “Then, if you do have an interruption, at least you’ve got some time where you can handle something.”
If you are available and someone is angry or upset, take his or her call, but let that person calm down before speaking.
“You never establish anything while somebody is ranting and raving,” he says. “It’s like throwing rocks back, and you are giving them ammunition. Pretty soon, they’ll run out of gas.
At that point, you can have a reasonable discussion.
“If they’ve got an issue that’s upset them, let them finish, state what you heard and ask them what they would see as the solution,” he says.
