Create comfort in your leadership
Before Rubino could get too deep into setting out her vision, she had to deal with some of Molina’s ghosts. Previous visions had come and gone, and there are always concerns from employees when leadership sets out a new path. What Rubino has learned is that step No. 1 is to build confidence in your leadership. Whether you’re a new leader or just laying out a new path, help people understand you and your thinking so you’ll get feedback that will hone your vision and start earning buy-in.
“People come to leaders when they feel comfortable and they feel that folks are approachable,” she says. “The people closest to the work, they know stuff and they’ll tell you stuff, and they state the obvious sometimes.”
For Rubino, being approachable means she gets to use her well-honed sense of humor to help knock people’s guards down. But before you decide to start every meeting with your best “So-and-so walks into a bar line,” you need to realize being a funny boss is about tastefulness and putting the joke on yourself or the external pressures you’re facing.
“In my presentations, I have cartoons, and we call our budget crisis ‘As Sacramento Swirls’ starring Arnold Schwarzenegger,” she says. “You just weave that into the dialogue, into the conversation, you weave it into your presentations, and it just gets people to relax. … You have to not take yourself that seriously — and humor, I’ve found, in any circumstance, is a way to help people be comfortable.”
Further building up your approachability can come from giving people a comfortable setting. Rubino does “Lunches with Lisa” where anyone in the company can join her for lunch. The meetings are purposefully designed with no formal presentation or agenda, they just start with regular conversations and people are allowed to ask any question. Her ability to answer those honestly builds credibility. So does her follow-up. At one luncheon someone asked why Molina didn’t have a contract with a certain hospital. Rubino said it was probably too expensive.
“And she said, ‘Well, our patients go there anyhow,” Rubino says. “So I came back and ran a report, and we had spent millions of dollars at this hospital as a noncontracted provider, and guess what, we have a contract with them today.”
Rubino circled back and told the woman how the information helped. Don’t always expect that much help, but your open mind encourages participation and starts buy-in.
All this doesn’t mean you’re getting invited to Friday happy hour, of course.
“It’s probably safe to say they never see you not as the boss because you’re (always) the boss,” Rubino says. “… No matter what you do people aren’t going to be completely comfortable, but I just put myself in position to have people come to me. I’ve been here less than two years and I’ve already seen the culture shift. All it took was talking with people, setting a vision, steering a course, being visible, being honest and admitting that I don’t know everything.”
And even if you don’t have any good jokes, putting effort toward having people come to you will be helpful. Rubino watched one former boss who couldn’t find a way to let his guard down become a lonely general.
“Colin Powell said (that) you know as a leader in the military that you are in trouble when people stop asking you questions, stop coming to you with information, and I saw that so vividly with this guy because no one wanted to talk to him,” she says. “People wanted to get out of the room as fast as they could, and when you create that, you’re in trouble. So I’ve done everything in my power in my career to not have that.”
