Education
The best and brightest
How to establish a self-directed leadership team
By Patrick Mayock
Smart Business Akron/Canton | February 2008
John O’Donnell
President, Stark State College of Technology
John O’Donnell is by no
means shy; he just prefersto keep interaction with his senior team to a minimum. In a
highly functioning organization,
he says, this hands-off approach
is the best way to elicit imaginative input, and the only time
leaders should ever intervene in
the boardroom is when their
staff has hit a wall and cannot
find a solution.
At Stark State College of
Technology, the president
fosters that self-directed culture
by surrounding himself with
797 of the “best and brightest”
full- and part-time employees in
the industry. This laissez-faire
approach is generating positive
results: The institution, which
has an annual budget of
approximately $40 million, is
the seventh-fastest-growing,
midsized public two-year
college in the nation.
Smart Business spoke with
O’Donnell about how listening
builds a great team and how to
get your team members to
raise their hands and contribute.
Listen to your best and brightest. The author David Halberstam
wrote a book called “The Best
and the Brightest,” and it was
about the cabinet Kennedy recruited from academics — the
best there was and the brightest there was in their areas of
expertise.
After Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson kept many of them.
What happened under Johnson
was they stopped talking. They
stopped the debate. The best and
the brightest became ineffective.
Kennedy wanted to learn, and
he wanted debate, and he wanted give and take. Johnson really
felt locked in by his own ego
and his own perceptions of how
things should work.
The base of communication is
actually listening. Many leaders
fail because they start talking
too soon, don’t listen and don’t
turn to the natural talents of the
individual to solve the problem.
Don’t start with your value-added because plenty of other
people have great ideas, great
solutions, great abilities to facilitate. In a highly functioning
organization, the only time a
leader has to intervene is when
the group ... has really hit a wall
and cannot find a solution.
I firmly believe that most people do their jobs very well. By
listening, what you do is pull
out their expertise.
Display your expertise by tapping
into the expertise of others. The
individuals and the group have
to trust in the leader’s expertise.
They have to believe that the
leader can bring a value-added
to their day-to-day operations
and to the organization.
Pull out the facts that they
know about the problems. Pull
out the gaps that they have
about the problem. It’s in any
interaction or forum, just asking questions and listening. Don’t pepper them with questions, though.
Say, ‘Here’s where we can go
to fill these gaps. Here’s what I
know that would fill the gaps.’
What you’re doing is really getting the complete picture of the
organization because everybody
sees it in a different way, and
you have a comprehensive view
of how it’s working.
Listen and respect the expertise
of those around you. You show
your expertise by bringing that
value-added comment when
they present you with a problem.
By giving the value-added and
listening, everybody is more
willing to trust. You build a team
that will work together to make
the organization great.
Look at history to gauge future performance. For any individual who is applying for a position,
regardless of the type of organization or job, the best window
to that individual is their job history and their references.
History is telling.
How we behaved in the past is
perhaps the best predictor of
how we will behave in the
future. If you speak of an individual’s core character, there’s a
constancy to it over time.
And then, here’s something
that is very often left out of a job
interview: the expectations of
the organization, letting folks
know right upfront what the
expectations are.
It’s an issue of match, and it’s
an issue of match on two levels.
One, are the tasks and the
responsibilities they will have, is
their skill set a match with those tasks and responsibilities?
The second part is an issue of
spirit. Does the person really
feel and believe in the mission
of the organization?
People are very insightful. If
they hear the expectations, they
can hear that there’s really not a
match with their history and
their answers as they sit right
before you in terms of the organization’s expectations.
Get your team members to raise
their hands. I spent many years
teaching, and [during] the first
class I would say, ‘In order to
have this class work, I really
need you to put your hands up.
It’s OK to be wrong. Don’t look
at being wrong judgmentally.
We’ve ruled out one of the possible solutions or one of the possible data elements. Keep putting your hand up because that
means you’re thinking critically.’
That’s what it finally gets
down to. It is not the right
answer or the wrong answer. It’s
the critical look at the problem
that’s on the table.
At some point, there has to be
a final product — we have to
make decisions — but every
question and every presentation
of another viewpoint really
should get you to rethink the
hypothesis.
I would tell (another CEO) to
admit that he doesn’t have the
answer, and that he really needs
their help. Then be quiet and listen. People love to help. They
love to talk about what they’re
doing and their job. Just pull
back and listen. (Employees are)
a window to effectiveness.
HOW TO REACH: Stark State College of Technology, (330) 494-6170 or www.starkstate.edu
