Be straight with people
Another lesson Edmunds learned from growing up in a small town is that you can always leave your keys in your car or your front door unlocked. There’s no crime because everybody knows what you’re up to and won’t hesitate to tell you when you’re acting out of line.
“One of the things that’s instilled in you is to talk straight,” he says. “People there didn’t even know what a political agenda was, much less have one. So growing up in something like that, that’s built in to your soul, so when you talk to people and listen to people, you’re straight with them. … Talking straight with people and having no agendas is a really important character and leadership (trait) that all great leaders have.”
You can start with not sugarcoating a situation.
“I have to define reality and say, ‘You know what, it is tough, we’re in a tough market, and that is the reality,’” Edmunds says. “But then you also have to provide hope and a vision as to where it is you’re going to go: Hope that we’re going to be OK as a firm, and a vision to let everyone know that I can actually see around the corner of this recession.”
And while Edmunds strives to be straight with people, he expects the same back from them.
“If I ever ask them to do something that doesn’t help them more effectively mentor and coach and develop their people or more effectively serve their clients, I ask them to push back on me and don’t do it,” Edmunds says.
Nearly every day he’ll get e-mails asking him why the firm wants them to do something. Sometimes he’ll explain why it’s in their best interest to do it, and they’ll understand and buy in, but other times, their questions challenge him to be a better leader.
“There are other times when I will challenge myself or the firm to say, ‘Why are we doing this?’” he says. “When you’re a big organization, sometimes you can become a little too bureaucratic, and sometimes you have to challenge yourself to streamline and do things more effectively.”
The last way to be straight with people is to back their decisions.
“There’s no more powerful a statement you can make to someone around trust than, ‘You have my proxy,’” Edmunds says. “It’s a business term, but it’s really powerful. … Use that word. There’s no more powerful statement from a leader to someone else to say, ‘Wow, he really trusts me and is going to encourage me to make a decision on a really big issue.’”
But this is also not something you just say freely. In order to trust someone to make the right decisions, you have to truly believe in them.
“Building trust takes awhile,” he says. “It’s through several interactions. Trust you’re trying to earn with a client could take months and months and months of doing things that are valuable to that client, and over time, they could trust that you’re not there to sell them something every time you have a conversation. It could be years. It’s the same with your colleagues internally.”
He says you can start with smaller decisions, and once you learn their decision-making capabilities, you can give your proxy on the larger issues.
“There are times when you need to let them fall down a little bit on a decision that might not be as critical, but let them learn from that,” he says. “I guess the bottom line is it just takes a little time to spend with them before you’re comfortable doing it.”
