Banking & Finance
Comfort zone
How Tim Riddle gets employees to let their guard down at Chartwell Investment Partners LP
By Brian Horn
Smart Business Philadelphia | November 2007
Dishing out recognition to employees who do well is a picnic compared to supporting someone who is struggling, especially when that
employee has always been successful in
the past.
Yet Tim Riddle, managing partner and
CEO of Chartwell Investment Partners
LP, has found that when one of his more
than 50 employees is struggling, it may
be best to let him ride it out and tell him
he’s not alone.
“It’s kind of like being a manager of a
baseball team,” he says. “Maybe
there is a pitcher out there struggling. He’s been doing everything
right, and it looks like things are
going to start turning around for
him because he is working hard
and not doing anything differently than he has before.
Sometimes it’s just luck, and
you have to stay with him.”
Smart Business spoke with
Riddle about how to create an
open environment and how to
find the right employees for
your business.
Q: What can leaders do to make
employees feel comfortable
coming to them?
It does have to work itself out
over time. You can’t send everyone an e-mail. That doesn’t work.
It all adds up. There are lots
of pieces to this because that
is why you try to have these
get-togethers where you see
them at the company picnic
or have an impromptu softball game after work or you
get together and take them
out for a cocktail after work.
It’s the one-on-ones and casuals that
tend to break down any sort of the sort
of old-fashioned — I hate to say this —
but I think a lot of this has become old-fashioned protocol, quite frankly, that
really in a lot of places, particularly in a
small firm like ours, you have to make
sure there is less and less of that, and
people don’t feel like there are any of
these formal lines of communication.
Some of it does have to function in any firm, but you can’t become too wedded
to that type of organizational structure
because if you do, then all of a sudden
communication breaks down and people
don’t feel like they can come and just
talk to you about an issue.
But, usually there is someone else in
the firm, if they can’t approach me, then
there is someone they can approach,
who will approach me and get the job
done. That’s the issue. It’s not like everyone has to because not everyone is going
to feel comfortable doing that.
As long as you make sure you get the
information and it’s correct, you have
the opportunity to, hopefully — if, in
fact, it’s something that needs to be corrected — you get in front of it before it
becomes a major problem.
Q: How do you know if employees are buying in to change?
You have to talk to them, and individually is probably the best way to get that
done. It’s not always me because I realize they may tell me one thing and tell
somebody else something else.
You try to let people know they need to
be open, and if they got concerns, no one
is going to hold anything against them.
Oftentimes, from those concerns, you
are able to address something that may
be a weakness and improve the firm.
Q: How do you know during an interview
that a potential employee is being honest?
The best thing you can do, in
that case, is have plenty of
people, certainly, everyone
they are going to be working
with, have an opportunity to
spend time with them in the
interview process.
Something else that is important, that we found anyway,
particularly from the standpoint of hiring the investment
professional, is to give them,
it’s not really an exam, as more
as it’s a project. Say you are hiring an analyst. Give them a
stock and tell them, ‘What do
you think about this?’ A lot of it
is, let’s see the way you write,
write a summary about this
company, but also be able to sit
down with us and point out pluses and minuses.
That’s a wonderful way to
uncover the way someone thinks.
From that, then you get a little bit
better idea of how they would fit
within the group.
And to try to put them at ease so
they are willing to be candid with
you in terms of discussing things
that have worked well for them at
their current job or a previous job.
What they liked, what they disliked. The
more time you spend with them in the
interview process, the easier it’s going
to be to get through to them, and hopefully, make them feel comfortable so
that they are willing to talk about some
of those things.
HOW TO REACH: Chartwell Investment Partners LP, (610) 296-1400 or www.chartwellip.com
