Q. Tell me about your approach to giving people feedback.

A. I’ve definitely learned to be thoughtful around giving people honest feedback but not killing them with feedback. I don’t believe you can give someone 10 things to work on. I think you can give people three things to think about how they can make themselves better and make the company better, and then you check in regularly.

And the most important time is not the review time. If you see something that you talked about, you have to pull them aside right then and there.

Q. How do you spread that thinking throughout the company?

A. I’ve hosted meetings we called management round tables. I would get the young managers together in a room every two weeks, and we would share examples of times they had to deal with a difficult employee situation. I felt it would resonate more with them if they saw each other learn how to manage people.

So I would go around the room and say: “Someone give me an example where they’re looking for advice. Let’s open up. Let’s put an example on the table and let’s all talk about it.” I could always tell the managers with the strongest leadership characteristics during those meetings because they were always the ones who were most willing to share. Others would worry that they might look weak. But the point is, this is a learning environment.

Q. How do you maintain the culture you want as the company grows quickly?

A. Once you get beyond 100 people, being able to manage a culture does get harder. But certain things we were able to do have allowed us to do that. We’re 450 people, but spread across six offices. I like to empower people in each office to take elements of the broader culture and make it more their own. We created what we call employee experience teams. Every office has one, focused around employee morale and team-building. I give these teams budgets, and tell them to go figure out the types of events they want to organize.

Q. Have you taken the step of writing down values for the company?

A. We’ve done mission and vision and value statements. But I think that what you write on a piece of paper is not as important as how you behave every day. People will see and take clues from your day-to-day behaviors far more than from a plaque on the wall. Your words in action speak far greater than your words in print. I inherently believe in honesty, empowerment and valuing people.

I had an experience early in my career that really stayed with me. I worked at a big consulting firm and you’d be working 120 hours a week, and a partner would wait until the night before a pitch to review your PowerPoint deck. So you’ve just spent three weeks killing yourself, and they’d tear it apart and say, “Well, we need this.” And they’d go home at 5:30 in the afternoon and you’d be there with a team of eight people going, “O.K. guys, back to work until 4 in the morning.”

Where’s the value in that? I feel like that person placed an inordinate amount of value on their time and less on ours. And I said that’s not the kind of place I want to work at.

Q. What else have you learned about leadership?

A. I think this applies to everybody, especially in the digital world. We’re evolving really fast, and I’ve always believed and pushed hard that you have to embrace change and be willing to evolve. We’ve made major structural changes to our company about every 18 months. You will not survive and aspire to greatness if you assume there’s one way of doing things and just continually beat that drum.

So we have to have a team that’s very flexible and adaptive, and understands that change is going to happen. We’re going to do things a certain way today, but let’s assume in 18 months that we’re going to have to change it.

Q. Let’s shift to hiring.

A. I’m looking for best athletes. I’m looking for problem solvers. We need to know that at your rawest form, you’re smart, driven, intellectually curious and competitive. I’ll always ask someone: “Tell me when you were part of a team and that team failed. What was the goal of the team, who was on the team, what was your role on the team, what were you trying to accomplish and why did you fail?”

If you’re really drilling down on that, you’ll know very quickly if this person is credible and honest. I want to know how you operate in a team structure. If you can’t rattle off that answer quickly, with authority and credibility, I’ll know that you probably are not playing the role you said you were playing.

I love to ask why people left jobs. “What was it about that environment and that experience that made you want to leave?” I want to get into their thought process. “Where did this come to an end where you just didn’t think this was meeting your needs?”

That tells me a lot about how they think about culture, and how they may or may not fit in here. Because if someone says, “I just didn’t feel like I got enough direction,” that’s a red flag for a senior person.

The next questions I’ll ask are about the current opportunity. What do they understand about it, and how do they think they can make an impact here? It says a lot about their personality when you ask them to talk about how they see themselves initially fitting into the team, and whether they’re thoughtful about how they would approach the team.

So I’ll ask: “You’ve talked to these three other people about the role, and now tell me what you understand the role to be. Tell me what you think the expectations are. What do you think will make you successful? And tell me what you think the biggest challenge is going to be.”

I want to know that they’ve asked enough good questions of all the people they’ve talked to at the company to know what they’re getting themselves into. Because if they haven’t, how invested are they? I always like people who ask smart questions. It’s surprising when some people say, “I don’t have any questions.”

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/business/robert-murray-of-iprospect-on-valuing-employees-time.html?partner=rss&emc=rss