By his own admission,
Donald A. Buck Jr. can sometimes be too intense. So,
throughout the years, to
counter that, he has made it a
point to work on being more
personable at WDG Construction
Inc., where he is president
and CEO.
By talking to his management
team about how he could better
present himself to his approximately 300 employees, Buck
has learned to keep a smile on
his face, take more time before
reacting to a situation and pay closer attention to what he
says. And if he says something
in a meeting that he feels
someone took the wrong way,
he makes sure to talk to someone else who was there to find
out how he could have stated
it better.
Buck says his more positive
attitude has benefited the
morale of his employees and
puts everyone in a more
relaxed environment at the
company, a full-service site
development firm that posted
2007 revenue of $70 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Buck about how identifying
your strengths and weaknesses
can help you develop a better
attitude and make you a better
leader.
Understand your strengths and
weaknesses. To work hard on
your strengths and weaknesses, you have to really
look hard at yourself and
just step back and evaluate
yourself as a person.
Just look at the way you
have handled things in the
past. Look at what you have
done that has succeeded.
Look at what you have done
where there was room for
improvement to maybe do it
a little bit different or a little
bit more efficient.
It’s very, very difficult to do
it, especially to understand
your weaknesses and to
understand what areas you
need to improve on as a person. I’m the type of person if
I am strong at something, I
will give it 100 percent effort,
but I don’t like to take credit
for it. I would rather my people get the credit for it. That
makes them feel good, too.
If there is an area in business that I am weak at, I try
to look at my staff and find
someone that’s strong in that
area, let them work at that
and always try to be
involved, so that I learned
more about my weaknesses
or my areas I am weak in.
The biggest thing with me,
with the weaknesses, is it’s
more personal, making
myself a better person to
where people view you on a
more positive attitude all of
the time, rather than, ‘I wonder what kind of mood he’s
in today?’