Share best practices
While your job is to keep everyone rallied around the same end result, the way you’re going to get there might change. Through involvement in four major Wells Fargo acquisitions, Stevens found the best way to stay on the right path through all the twists and turns.
She lets employees take the reins.
“You have to have healthy debate, and you create it by everyone walking in the room trusting each other, knowing that you all want the same thing,” Stevens says. “You have to start with a platform of everyone believing in the same thing that you’re trying to accomplish. And if you’ve done that, then it makes it a safe environment to be able to debate.”
One of the first things Stevens did when she stepped into her position in December 2008 was bring together groups from both companies to share best practices. With the goal of leveraging strengths from both sides, she asked what they were doing that worked — and just as importantly — what didn’t.
“There has to be a certain degree of humility by the acquiring organization to be able to say, ‘We know that we can learn from the other organization,’” says Stevens, who maintained a level playing field by giving both sides equal sharing time. “Bring your curiosity to the table and make sure that when you set up the meetings that you have ground rules about, ‘We want you asking questions. We want you staying engaged with each other.’”
Consensus won’t be immediate. But to Stevens, that’s the beauty of it.
“We don’t want
to always agree. That’s when you get in trouble,” she says. “The power of us having different opinions, the power of us coming from different places, different backgrounds, different perspectives is incredible.”
The key to facilitating debate is reminding everyone you’re working toward a common goal and each opinion is an ingredient in the pot.
“Debate, disagreement — it’s all very good, but you have to master the ability to facilitate that we have to come to an outcome and we’re all on the same team,” Stevens says. “The competition is the other financial institutions; it’s not between Wells Fargo and Wachovia. How can we together be better? When you know that you’re all coming from the same intentions, it makes it really safe to have those disagreements.”
But getting employees comfortable about sharing and accepting ideas goes deeper than setting ground rules and expectations. At Wells Fargo, it’s ingrained in the culture.
“You have to foster an environment that says, ‘I will recognize you and appreciate you when you look for how to be better from other people,’” says Stevens, who gives employees plenty of opportunities to learn from each other.
Watch for those opportunities when you visit other locations and observe employees who excel or struggle. If Stevens notices a team member struggling in a certain area, she’ll set up a phone call or meeting with a colleague who’s doing well.
“When someone is struggling, they may be [too] embarrassed to ask for help,” she says. “So it’s my responsibility as a leader to reach out and say, ‘Hey, I have some ideas that might work for you.’”
On the other hand, if she notices someone getting great results, she’ll share it with the entire team. That included a two-day power-sharing session where she brought together several high-performing employees to share everything they did in certain areas, such as customer service or needs assessment. She sent the results to everyone as “the best of the best.”
To help employees explore each other’s ideas, she uses the learn-own-do process: Approach others’ ideas with curiosity to learn what they’re doing and how, figure out how to tailor it for your piece of the business, and then see it through.
“No matter how good you are and how well you’re performing, there’s always something you can learn from someone else,” Stevens says. “My mom always said you should always either be learning something or teaching something when you’re interacting with people.”
