Lead by example to communicate expectations. You can tell people things, but that doesn’t mean that they believe it. Over time, it’s by example.
They can see that, in the company, people aren’t going to get punished because they do five things right and two things wrong. Now, if you do everything wrong, we may have made a mistake on the person that we picked. It doesn’t mean that you have free rein to keep making mistakes.
What we strive for — what we have in the senior management group and what we strive for at other levels of the company — is to have people have enough trust in the people that they work with that they’re not afraid of saying things. They’re not afraid of feeling foolish because they throw out some idea that, once you start thinking about it, may not turn out to be such a good idea.
You have to set the example yourself. If your feeling is your employees don’t trust you as the CEO, then you’ve got to think about how you present yourself to employees. Do you solve all of their problems? Are you quick to criticize if they don’t do things the way that you would do them? Do you let them know that you wouldn’t do it that way, which makes them reluctant to do it their way?
There are often several different ways to get to the same end, any one of which is better than having a confused way to get there. And my way may be no better or worse than the next person’s way. It may be different, but it may be no better or worse.
So if people always think that you’re going to make the decision anyway, or if they don’t do it the way they think you would do it and they’re always worried about that, then you’re not going to be able to develop this kind of atmosphere of trust, cooperative management, good communication because people are always going to be looking to do it the way you think you’d do it or would please you.
If you’re having trouble with your group doing this, I think you have to look pretty hard at how you are conducting yourself, how you are seen by your employee group, and work on that. Convey to them that you are one of a number of people, [that] there is only so much you can do, that most of the work is going to be done by them and that the company is only going to be as successful as they are successful.
Keep tabs on your employees without interjecting your own ideas. We keep score, but we don’t try to substitute in, day to day, our judgment for their judgment. We sit down and talk to them periodically, and it may just be a matter of going out to lunch, seeing how things are going.
I would rather do it in a more informal way than a formal way, where somebody may not even realize that we’re having a conversation about how they’re doing.
I encourage other people, don’t wait until a review process; take any opportunity that you have if there’s a message you want to convey to somebody that you’re working with. Is there anything you want to talk about? Take them out to lunch, sit down with them and talk about it in a nonthreatening way.
Don’t wait six months and say, ‘Oh yeah, I think your approach to this was wrong.’ Sit down and understand why it is they have the approach they have.
How to reach: K-Tron International Inc., (856) 589-0500 or www.ktroninternational.com
