Make yourself visible. You have to manage by walking around. We have 75 people, and I know everybody by name and a little bit about them. You have to know your people. They have to see you.
You can’t just be in an office behind a desk. They’ve got to know that you’re there. They’ve got to know that you’re accessible, even if they just see you to say hi.
By walking around, people get a chance to see you, they get to talk to you. And once people feel that you’re an everyday human being, not just the guy running the company, they’ll feel a heck of a lot
more comfortable.
People should know that, whether they can write you or they can call you, they can get a message to you some kind of way. It may not get taken care of by you, but at least they know it got there and it got
somebody’s attention.
You should get back to that individual and let them know that that suggestion was heard, it was taken into consideration and whether anything was done with it.
Take it outside of the office. We have these little get-togethers twice a year. We have our annual year-end party, then we take a bus trip somewhere, like last year we went to Whiskey Island.
Those kinds of things create camaraderie. When you do that stuff on a personal basis, you take it outside of the business realm. You get to know people better when it’s not in a business setting all the time.
Now you know something about that person. If that person is starting to slip, you can talk to that person and give them a warning, whereas if you don’t know that person, you may just release them. People do have personal problems. Sometimes personal problems do come to work.
If a person feels that you have their interest at heart, they’ll do a better job for you.
HOW TO REACH: Mike Pruitt Honda, (800) 323-2945 or www.mphonda.com
