Stay in front of your people. One
of my goals for 2009 is to do
a better job of communicating, either through teleconferencing or videoconferencing. It’s really talking on the
phone. I’ve often threatened
to have an e-mail-free Friday,
where everybody closes the e-mail and puts down the
BlackBerrys and they go and
talk to people.
As a general statement, I
don’t like e-mail at all. It’s a
tremendous efficiency tool.
But when you hit ‘reply all’
and you’re just having a conversation via e-mail, that’s
when something is wrong.
What you need to do is
keep them pithy, three or
four lines, and stay focused
on that. That is my personal
rule for e-mail. Try to communicate it in a couple of
sentences. If you can’t do
that in an e-mail, go talk to
the person.
People can absolutely rely
too much on e-mail. It’s a terrible disease to get into. You
can’t tell inflection in your
voice. Even on the phone, you
can tell the sincerity in someone’s voice or the sarcasm.
Being a pretty sarcastic person, sometimes that doesn’t
come across so well in e-mails.
It’s easy to hide behind e-mail. It’s efficient, but I don’t
like it as a primary communication tool. If someone is trying to do too much with e-mail, I shoot the e-mail back
and ask them to come talk to
me.
I tell them that I’m not
going to read this book you
just wrote to me. It’s not
easy. I could be sitting at
home at 7 p.m., watching TV
and getting e-mails on my
BlackBerry. But then it’s easier to communicate at my
desk that way. I even see it
with my kids.
This society doesn’t talk
anymore. It seems like we
always text or e-mail. That’s
going to be a problem for our
society in the next five or 10
years. You need to develop
those communication skills.
Build trust and credibility. A good
leader should never underestimate the rumor mill. Any
time I’ve tried to do something or have a business
transaction that doesn’t need
to be made public, the rumor
mills starts up.
Usually it’s pretty accurate,
a kind of ‘where there’s
smoke, there’s fire’ scenario.
So don’t underestimate your
people and their ability to
recognize what is coming.
You gain a lot by heading off
the rumor mill and staying on top of it all.
It’s a matter of making sure
you have channels and
forums for people to communicate their thoughts and
concerns. It’s not just saying
that your office is always
open. I have people that
actively seek out feedback
from employees.
Another key would be that
you have to build TRUST,
which we say stands for
‘total respect under stressful
times.’ When you go through
stress together, you establish
this respect for each other in
the business.
You have to trust your
employees, and they, in turn,
will respect you. If they
respect you, they will listen
to you.
HOW TO REACH: Zotec Partners LLC, (317) 705-5050 or www.zotec.com
