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Corner Office: Brooke Denihan Barrett on Family and Business

May 11, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Q. Tell me about the first time you were somebody’s boss.

A. I grew up in the family business, so one of my first paying jobs was working at the front desk of a hotel. I thought the way you got things done was by telling people what to do. That’s where I learned what not to do. I spent a good portion of my time telling people what they did wrong instead of really encouraging them about what they did right.

I used to think that was just the way that you managed people — telling people what they were doing wrong. As I got more comfortable with my own skills and grew to understand that nobody is perfect, I learned to cut people a little slack. But early on, people would shudder when I walked into a room, thinking that I was going to find something negative.

Q. How did you learn to take a different tack with people?

A. It was trial and error, and really watching as other people came into the organization. I realized that you get a lot more with the carrot routine than the stick routine. I also realized that you really needed to explain the “why” of things. You need to give people a little bit of space to come around, and say, “Yeah, that makes sense,” before you really engage them in what needed to be done.

Q. Other leadership lessons?

A. To listen a lot. It’s easy to say that you listen, but active listening — really listening for understanding — is something you learn over time. Because sometimes you don’t see people’s body language. They might be saying one thing, but they mean another thing. That’s something you just learn by observing.

Q. What’s a bit different about your company’s culture?

A. We’re celebrating our 50th anniversary in the hospitality business this year. And if there is one word I would use to describe our culture, it would be family, because we are a family-owned and -operated business.

But I always have to be careful when I use that word “family,” because a lot of times it can be misinterpreted as taking care of people to the point of not holding them accountable. You have to set certain standards that you want people to live up to. And if people need help, then we want to help them along the way.

I think people naturally want to do the right thing, and do their jobs well. Sometimes organizations can fall down if they don’t also ask: How do you give people the tools they need to be successful? How do you get that person to understand what change needs to happen, and how do you help them along the way? Because people can’t always figure it out on their own, and nor should you expect them to.

Q. What else about your culture?

A. We do something called round tables where we meet with our associates in small groups of maybe 10 or 12 people. I love to say to them, “Tell me something I don’t know.” And I’ll get comments like: “Oh, but you know everything. You’re the C.E.O.” It’s just a reminder of the perceptions that people have of the head of the company. But every time I ask that question, I learn something new.

Q. Other lessons you’ve learned over time?

A. One is, count to 10 before you say something. It’s especially true with e-mail today. People will share something and it causes terrible repercussions. You have to remember to take a deep breath when somebody says something that really ticks you off. A lot of times the context in an e-mail is so different than when you pick up the phone. And you shouldn’t “cc” the world, and don’t hit “reply” to everybody. That drives me nuts.

Q. A lot of C.E.O.’s I’ve interviewed talk about the reluctance of people to have difficult conversations. How do you handle them?

A. We’ve tried something called “lessons learned” conversations. And we’ve had them facilitated a few times. So we might bring people together in a room who were involved in a project and ask: What were the things that worked? What were the things that didn’t? What could we have done differently?

And we’ve had some very spirited and cathartic conversations. You have to be able to let people put something on the table without actually pointing the finger. It allows things to come out in more of a nonaccusatory manner.

Q. Have you received any feedback over the years, especially since you’ve become C.E.O., that prompted you to adjust your leadership style, even in a small way?

A. I like details, so I will say a lot, “Give me the facts, Jack.” Because I feel so strongly about it, I might come across as being closed or defensive. So I really have to be mindful of my body language. When someone is saying something that I disagree with, I’m good at the listening part of it, but if I don’t really like what that person is saying, I have to be careful that my body language doesn’t stop the conversation. I have to make sure it continues to flow.

Q. Let’s shift to hiring. What questions do you ask? What are you looking for?

A. By the time somebody meets me, you can assume that the skills are there. So what I interview for is fit. And I’m always very curious to know, what is it about our company that appeals to that person?

There are people who are very professional interviewees. Every question you ask them, they nail it. But you kind of want people to not be perfect in their replies, because that makes them real people. You have to be authentic. We’re all works in progress. We have to improve each and every day. Because once you’ve become satisfied, you lose that urgency and that hunger to be better.

Q. What other questions do you ask?

A. How do you define culture? What kind of organizations have you worked for? What do you think is special about this culture? Tell me about a mistake that you’ve made, and how you dealt with it. How do you view yourself? If someone were to talk about you in the third person, how would they describe you?

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/business/brooke-denihan-barrett-on-family-and-business.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Corner Office: Enrique Salem: Symantec’s Enrique Salem, on Leadership Advice

September 3, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Q. What were some important leadership lessons for you?

A. I played high school football — I was a linebacker — and then I played at Dartmouth. When you play football, you really understand it is a team effort. When you play organized sports, especially team sports, it’s not about individuals. I think organized sports are a way to learn a lot about things that will be helpful in business.

Q. Other lessons you learned playing sports?

A. I was captain of the varsity football team my senior year of high school. We called the plays the coach would signal in to us from the sideline. I used to be very much a student of the game. I would watch the game films myself and get ideas of what we should do, what we should think about.

One time the coach called a defensive play and I changed it, and after having some success with that I said, “Oh, this isn’t so hard.” But then another player runs on the field and replaces me, and I run to the bench and the coach says, “When you want to call what I’m calling, you can go back in the game.” So I sat on the bench for a play or two and then went over and said: “O.K., Coach. I got it. I’m sorry.” And he put me back in the game. I really learned this notion that whoever’s making the calls, you’ve got to listen to that person.

And he pulled me aside after the game and we talked about it, and he said: “I know you love the game. I know you study the game. But you’ve got to realize that when I make calls, I’m setting something up. I’m looking at something that’s happening, and you can’t be out there second-guessing me on this.” I still remember that story. In business, somebody has to make the call. I learned that pretty early on.

Q. And do you find yourself ever having to explain to somebody the point that the coach made to you?

A. Absolutely. You run into situations where there’s a bigger picture sometimes that an individual who’s working on a project may not be able to see, and can’t understand all the implications of any decision you make.

Q. What other leadership lessons do you convey to your employees?

A. There’s a verse from William Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure,” which is, “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.” I have this presentation that I give to our advanced leadership class, and the title is, “Lessons I’ve Learned Along the Way.” One of the slides has that quote, because if you think about that quote, it really is how I want our company to be. You’ve got to take some chances. You’ve got to take some risks, and sometimes things don’t work out, but you’ve got to go for it.

Q. What else is on that list of things you’ve learned?

A. The very first chart says, “Check your ego and your title at the door.” I learned that very early on. One of the things that my first manager said to me was: “Look, a lot of times you don’t lead by your position. You lead by how you influence other people’s thinking.” And so I absolutely believe that if it’s about you, you’re not going to do a great job. It can’t be about your success. It has to be about what you are trying to accomplish. So that’s No. 1. No. 2 came from Tennyson, his poem “Ulysses.” If you read the poem, there’s one little phrase that says, “I am a part of all that I have met.” I absolutely believe you learn from everybody you interact with.

Another one is from Colin Powell: “Positive attitude is a force multiplier.” I think that you’ve got to stay positive about things because when you go the other way, it’s de-motivating to everybody around you and you’re unlikely to be successful.

I’ll give you one more. The other day I did a presentation to some of our leaders, and one of the questions I asked them was, “If you were writing a book, what would it be titled?”

For me, and I end of lot of my e-mails with this, it is: “Expect great things.” It’s the notion that the bar needs to be high. I expect people to perform. I want to get great people around me, and I expect them to do great things. And, quite frankly, good people strive for that. My goal is to stretch people to potentially accomplish things they didn’t think were possible. But you can’t go so far that you break them.

Q. How would you say your leadership style has evolved?

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=ee3538991508338798937feeeb71f2e4

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,

Corner Office: Dominic Orr: Yes, Everyone Can Be Stupid for a Minute

May 8, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Q. What were some early lessons for you as a manager?

A. The biggest feedback I had from my people is that I didn’t give them feedback.  I was running along.  I had a pretty high standard for myself, and I assumed that everybody who joined my team was operating at the same level. Good work was assumed, so I let them know only when something didn’t go well.  People started telling me it would be nice if I gave them a pat on the back rather than only telling them when things were not good.

  Another thing I distinctly remember is that I had trouble having a difficult discussion with employees because, as a young manager, sometimes you don’t really know how to tell somebody to their face that they’re not doing a good job.  I also struggled at first with this whole process of running a staff meeting. I remember bringing my H.R. person in to have her run meetings so that I wouldn’t take over, express my opinions and then everybody would sit there silently.

Q. What are some other important leadership lessons?

A. I have had a very good mentor — Wim Roelandts, who worked for H.P. for about three decades.  He rose to become the No. 2 executive of H.P. under Lew Platt. He is someone who embraced the old H.P. way. 

Q. What were some lessons you learned from him?

A. I would say empowering people. Basically, he would push you and give you as much as you could handle until you started failing. He would encourage you to not be afraid of failing — because when you start failing, that’s when you know where your limit is, and then you can improve around that.  So he actually sometimes would reward failure because that means that you have pushed yourself.

That is an unusual approach, so people under him tended to be able to really find their limits. And once they do that, they figure out a way to overcome it, because they don’t feel that inhibition. I think that is a very big thing. The whole H.P. way of management kind of molded my approach to managing people in business.

Q. And boil that down for me. What is the H.P. way?

A. Fundamentally, the H.P. way started with the basic assumption that each employee wants to do well, and they are capable of doing well, so as a manager you have to give them that environment to flourish. When someone does not perform, the first reaction is not to get angry at them or assume that they are incompetent, but to question whether they have they been matched to the right assignment.  From the background, from the skill set, have you created a productive environment for them?  So the first question as a manager is, have you done something wrong? 

Q. Tell me about the culture of the company you run today.

A. I use a simple principle of management based on intellectual honesty.  You try to be intellectually honest with yourself, meaning that you have to forget about all the face-saving issues and so on. I tell people that if you work for me, you have to have a thick skin because there’s no time to posture. 

I also tell people that everybody can be and will be momentarily stupid.  I think that in many large companies, a lot of politics arise because somebody makes a statement in a meeting, and then it’s weeks of wasted time and effort because they have to dig in to defend that position, and then politics come into play because they now want to lobby for their position. 

So when I interview key executives of my staff, I tell them that they need to accept that they can be, and will be, momentarily stupid. If they can accept that and be able to say, “Oh, I was momentarily stupid; let’s move on,” then you don’t waste time dealing with that.

Q. How has your leadership style evolved over time?

A.  The big thing that has changed from 25 years ago is how much I think about the power of the team.  I used to, for example, look for two things in people: one is whether I clicked with somebody, and then I would look for best-in-class competence and star performance in a certain discipline, regardless of how they work with others. Now, whenever I’m interviewing for a new executive in any discipline, I look at how they might enhance the capability of the team.  Can the dynamics work? And can this person rotate to do some other things?  So I would say as I mature, I focus more and more on the performance of the team versus the performance of the individuals. 

Q. What else are you looking for when you’re interviewing?

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=196acac952f3fede5b67f29b4de3ab12

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,