Diana M. Thimmig wants to know about your background.
Don’t get the wrong idea: She’s not digging for dirt. She is a champion of all upbringings and backgrounds as partner-in-charge of the Cleveland office of Roetzel & Andress.
But she wants to know as much as she can about you so that she can help you succeed. Born in Germany, Thimmig concedes she hasn’t followed the usual leadership path that you’d expect of someone charged with 85 employees. But she’s been a big hit at the $88 million, Akron-based firm because she is forever willing to take the time to understand her people and earn their trust.
As a result, she’s been at the helm during a time when the Cleveland office has become an anchor for the firm, almost tripling in employee numbers this decade.
Smart Businessspoke with Thimmig about how to hone your employees respect for you by taking a stake in their personal lives and why a superstar with a big ego is best off flourishing somewhere else.
Forget about e-mail, and go talk directly with employees. It’s critical to have frequent contact. That doesn’t mean an impersonal memo or e-mail but rather face-to-face contact — that’s the most effective way to communicate. I make a concerted effort to reach out to our attorneys and staff, both on a personal and a professional basis.
I don’t think you develop personal relationships through e-mail. To build a good relationship, people want to know that they’re a valued member of the team, and they want to be engaged. They don’t want to come in and simply punch their time clock and bide their time until the end of the work-day; they want to know they’re making valued contributions.
The way that you do that is through personal interaction and soliciting their ideas and listening to what they have to say. You can’t do that in an e-mail.
Roetzel & Andress has had a lot of strategic growth the last five years, and the Cleveland office has expanded to three floors now. So each day, I circulate through each of the floors to stay close to the folks, so if people have questions or concerns, they have an opportunity to voice them and they can get them addressed from me. And I know it’s effective because it works; I have people feeling comfortable enough to come into my office every day.
