Set a good example
It sounds too obvious to even say it, but in a good organization, employees take leads from their leaders on how to act and behave in the workplace. If you want employees to feel like they are part of a team and act accordingly, you need to show that you support it, too.
“If the employees that we have as part of this organization can see us as a leadership team visibly working together for a common cause and promoting the organizational goals over departmental goals, I think employees and members of our team begin to get it and support it,” Cornwell says.
“It’s the point of time when the actions don’t support the words that can be very hypocritical and destructive. So we are constantly needing to monitor that, and it’s not easy.”
DRS-SSI has a legacy that stretches back to World War II, and Cornwell says that wasn’t always easy to work with in his effort to come up with the team concept that he wanted to develop.
One of the key steps in the process is the idea that employees can see their importance in the organization being in direct correlation to how their team rates or is thought of. If it feels like the team you are working on is making a difference and contributing to the goals of the company, you’re going to feel a lot better being part of that team.
Cornwell had to work through the challenge of getting leaders of his various departments to take authority and show leadership to their teams.
“Every question that was asked, the middle manager would just
send it up the chain of command and say, ‘They want to know this,’” Cornwell says. “We finally said, ‘Guys, you have that answer. You have that ability to answer that question, please go ahead and answer it.’ It’s been very rewarding in terms of watching our leaders grow and provide on-the-spot feedback to our employees to what might be considered in the past difficult questions to answer.”
To ensure that these middle managers could be strong leaders for their teams, Cornwell initiated what he called huddle manager meetings.
“Every two weeks, we assemble about 10 percent of our organization who are middle-manager leaders, and we have a senior leadership team member who will share information firsthand,” Cornwell says. “We can then discuss at that meeting any questions, issues or feedback. We ask those huddle managers to go back into their natural work groups and share that information. They are empowered to address questions or concerns from their employees.”
Cornwell says he is willing to accept that, in some cases, the communication may break down and a middle manager may provide incorrect information.
“We just go ahead and correct it,” Cornwell says. “We stand behind the leader recognizing that none of us are 100 percent, and we support them when maybe the answers aren’t as accurate as they need to be.”
The goal is to give those leaders an active role in what you’re doing so they convey the energy and sense of team that you need to get things done.
“We challenge our collective 800 employees to think in terms of, ‘How do you take that vision and goal and drive it into your day-to-day job?’” Cornwell says. “That’s how the leaders of our company are challenged. They are asked to sit down with each of the employees and talk in terms of what they can do and what we can do in support of the goals.”
When you or others leaders in the company talk with employees, don’t just say, ‘Hey, I’m here, you got any questions,’ Cornwell says.
“People are very quiet,” Cornwell says. “They’ll say, ‘Nope, I don’t have any questions.’ But if I go into a work environment and see what they are doing and I ask them, ‘What is that? What are you doing? Where is that used? How is that used?’ People then are comfortable and they’ll talk about that. Maybe that’s the icebreaker. Then I believe they are very quick at that point to share concerns they might not have brought up in a strictly question-and-answer group thing.”
You also need to resist the urge to try to fix every problem on your own.
“That’s probably one of my biggest challenges,” Cornwell says. “I have a tendency when someone brings an issue to me, I feel compelled to fix it. In my career as a leader, I’ve had to train myself to accept the input but allow the responsible party to address the issue. … It’s very important that employees have a sense that we support the managers, supervisors, vice presidents, whatever in this organization and that we support the work that they do. Otherwise, I don’t think anybody would want to be a leader.”
How to reach: DRS Sustainment Systems Inc., (314) 553-4000 or www.drs.com
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