There’s one letter Joseph V. Barna tries to leave out of leadership.
“I always tell people, ‘Forget the ‘I’ word and adopt the ‘we’ word,’” says Barna, principal of CRESCO Real Estate. “When you hear owners of companies and it’s, ‘I did this, I did that,’ it drives me crazy, and it negatively affects the morale of the company.”
By replacing pronouns, Barna strives to boost engagement by seeking input from his 26 employees and involving them in problem-solving.
First, before you can expect employees to open up, you need to gain their trust. That starts by proving your credibility.
“I would never implement a policy or a strategy or a goal that I wouldn’t do myself,” Barna says. “When you’re doing it and you’re taking the lead and people see that it’s getting done by the management, you build credibility.”
But as credible as you may be, employees won’t trust you if you’re distant. You also have to develop personal relationships.
“Take an interest in the people. Know a little bit about what they do outside the office,” Barna says. “It’s good to know what their family’s about, if their kids are playing baseball. So when you’re talking to your employees, it’s not necessarily about work but it’s like, ‘What’s happening with you? How’s Johnny doing in Little League?’ When you start to develop that type of relationship, you build that trust.”
Barna asks simple questions while walking through the office like, “What’s keeping you up at night? What’s bothering you? What can we change?” Initiating conversations comes with the caveat that you’ll actively listen to the feedback.
“It means that you’re gathering information instead of shooting from the hip, giving information that you probably don’t know that much about,” he says. “You’re much more effective when you listen to the people — I call them the foot soldiers. Go to the people that actually do it hands-on and have an open conversation with them.”
If you’re trying to streamline a billing process, for example, you’re better off asking your billing coordinators than trying to handle it yourself. Barna even calls trusted advisers who lead other companies and asks their billing coordinators how they’ve mastered the process.
You start with digging expeditions to uncover frustrations, then asking front-line expert employees for their suggested solutions — but hopefully you foster ambitious problem-solvers along the way.
[See Barna talk about using ‘we’ in leadership on video]
“I would rather people come to me and say, ‘Here’s the problem. I looked into it, and here’s three solutions, and of the three, here’s the one I think will work,’” Barna says. “It’s a lot easier to do things that way than for them to come and say, ‘This doesn’t work.’”
But trust goes both ways. It’s not just about them opening up to you; you also have to trust that they’re giving you viable solutions. It’s easy to believe your IT tech who’s been with you for 20 years, but it is more of a process with newer employees who haven’t proven their problem-solving abilities.
“If they’re not proven yet or I don’t have the same level of confidence in them, then I know I’ve got to investigate other solutions,” Barna says. “Or I just get to the second- or third-level questions: Why? Are you sure? What makes you think this?”
