When prospective employees
interview at Premiere Credit of
North America LLC, they are not just being compared with the other job
candidates, says Todd Wolfe, but they
are also being judged against the people
who already work there.
“We use the personality profile with a little bit of a different approach,” says Wolfe,
co-founder, president and chief operating officer of the 170-employee
company. “We don’t just look at
where they are hitting on the
charts. We take it and match it up
as an overlay on the existing staff
and see who do they compare
most to. If they compare most to
a highly productive, effective
employee that we’d love to
clone, that’s a no-brainer, we’re
going to hire that person all day
long. If it’s someone that is a
highly productive employee, but
they are also very high maintenance, we’ll have to give that
one a little more thought.”
By focusing intensely on personnel, the debt collection
company has grown revenue
from $4.5 million in 2003 to
$10.5 million in 2006.
Smart Business spoke with
Wolfe about how to get employee buy-in and how to get
employees to smile as they walk
to their cars each night after
work.
Q: What is the key to getting
employee buy-in?
Getting down there and talking to the
team and finding out what they are dealing with and giving them what they need.
Interacting in the trenches is a huge step
forward on communicating humility and
also passion at the same time.
I will make it a point to block out my
calendar and go out there. If you don’t,
you’ll never get out of your office. Take
the time to do it and set the other stuff to
the side. As much as some people say,
‘I’m getting behind on my tasks,’ you
know, at the end of the day, it’s creating
a lot more value. Those tasks are still
going to be there.
Following that up with notes really sets
people up for success because everybody clearly understands. It’s not pixie
dust; it’s the obvious that separates good
leadership from bad leadership.
Get down into the trenches with your
team and figure out what you need to do.
Q: How do you monitor performance?
When we’re working through a project,
we always follow that project up with
notes after every meeting. Everybody
clearly understands what we talked
about and what the expectation is. We
reinforce the message. ‘This is the objective, and this is the next step. Does anybody not understand that?’
Q: How do you get employees to be honest
with you?
It’s just through the dialogue process.
When you’re sitting down with people
and just talking, just be friendly with them. It’s really just laying the ground
rules upfront that we left the titles and
egos at the door, and we expect brutally
honest feedback so we can make the
best possible decision.
Even if it is a bad idea or something we
can’t do, take the time to talk to them
about it and explain why you can’t do it
or why it wouldn’t work at that time.
As long as people are heard, they will
value it. We apply the rule ‘listen, restate,
respond.’ When somebody comes
in and they are making a point to
me about their perspective on an
issue, I’m going to restate it to
them to see if we clearly understand what they are communicating, and then we respond.
Most of the really good ideas
that we have had over the past
24 months have come from the
employees. That doesn’t mean
you don’t get a lot of bad ideas.
But you can filter through all
those and find the pearls.
Q: Why are metrics so important?
It lets them know. People want
good leadership. They want to
know that when they are walking
out those doors at night that they
did a good job.
If you clearly define the metrics
upfront, when they are walking to
their car at night and you lay out
those three, four or five elements,
they know if they hit all of those elements. They know they did a good
job; that makes people happy.
We all want to know if we’re doing
what we’re supposed to be doing. If
they are hitting their numbers and they
are a senior employee or a tenured staff
member, somebody that has been here
awhile, we may only meet with them
monthly or quarterly.
We don’t micromanage, but we do manage tightly. If there is a variance from
expectations, we’re going to be on it real
fast. If there is no variance and they are
out there hitting it like a drum, we’re still
going to look at it and make sure everything is adding up.
HOW TO REACH: Premiere Credit of North America LLC, (866)
808-7118 or www.premierecredit.com