Gerald F. Hammond
learned the hard way
that being honest can sometimes come back to bite
you, even when you are trying
to show integrity by being
upfront with employees.
Hammond, president and
CEO of SHP Leading Design,
once had an intern who was
so excited about what was
happening at the company
that she shared confidential
information with friends at a
competitor.
“So, we made a policy
change at that point and made
it very clear to our staff that
when we send around a
newsletter, it’s for their information (and) their spouses,”
says Hammond, who leads the
design firm, which posted
2007 revenue of $21.6 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Hammond about how to be an
honest, open leader.
Q. How do you motivate your
employees to work with
integrity?
By my own example would
be No. 1. No. 2, I talk about it a
lot. It’s in our newsletters. Not
hammering it — just reminding folks that they have great
responsibility to themselves
and to their clients.
We have a very open and
transparent philosophy about
how we run the firm. (We) try
to keep our staff in the loop as
to what’s happening so they’re
not blindsided by surprises. To
me, that’s all part of it. If you
came to see our office right
now, you would be shocked
because there are no private
offices that are not totally surrounded by glass. That’s on
purpose to not be hiding anything behind closed doors.
Yes, we have a conference
room, and there is always
somewhere you can go, but,
on a day-to-day basis, everything is very open and very
transparent.
Q. Is there a danger in being
too open and honest?
The only thing we have
found is there is a philosophy
of sharing everything with
everybody, and the old Navy
axiom about loose lips and all
that — I think there’s
still a practical limit to
not sharing information
with people that don’t
need to know it.
Because if they’re not
prepared to understand
it, chances are they are
going to misunderstand
it. So, we try to communicate in a way that
keeps things clear, and
we provide people information they need to
know.
We don’t provide them
a lot of information they
don’t need to know.
