Q. How do you handle
employees who aren’t ready
for leadership?
They don’t have to go forward; they can stay there.
Sometimes people’s lives are
not ready. They want to be the
go-to person, but they’ve got things at home. They’ve got a
new baby. They’re still going
to school. Something’s happening in their lives that they
can’t take that on, but they
still want some responsibility.
That really helps us because
times change. In a year, they
may be ready. Then they can
move up to supervisor.
Sometimes as you grow,
people aren’t able to grow to
the position that maybe you
hope they would. In that situation, we try to be sensitive and
move them into a position
that may serve them better.
Those are tough, and we’ve
had to do three or four of
them. Sometimes it doesn’t
work, and people choose to
leave. There are no bad people; there’s just bad fits in
my world.
Q. What is the benefit of the
team leader system?
It’s risk-free — lots of people want to try something
but they’re scared to death
of what happens if they fail.
But here if you fail, so what?
I don’t care. We’re never
going to move forward if we
don’t try things.
Failure is not a big deal.
What I don’t like is dishonesty. So if we make a mistake, we just say. ‘I’m sorry, I
made a mistake,’ and we
make it right.
We do the same thing with
our customers. We tell them
right upfront, ‘I’m so sorry.’
Every one of our employees
has the authority to give an
adjustment. Just say you’re
sorry — that’s what most
people want when they call.
When you’re mad about
your bill or your service, you
just want some human to say,
‘I’m sorry. We should have
done that better. I’ll make it
right.’ So we have that philosophy with our customers and
our employees.
HOW TO REACH: Gateway EDI Inc., (314) 802-6700 or www.gatewayedi.com
