Business Services
Breaking through the ceiling
How to keep star performers from leaving
By Matt McClellan
Smart Business Atlanta | April 2008
Eric J. Lindberg
founder, president and CEO, MSI International
It is Eric J. Lindberg’s goal to
grow MSI International every
year, but it’s not because he’s enamored with gaudy revenue
growth percentages. Instead,
MSI’s founder, president and
CEO says that if your business
isn’t growing, your employees
won’t have the opportunity to
grow either.
A stagnant company runs the
risk of losing its most talented
and ambitious employees when
their heads hit the ceiling, and
the leader of the $24 million
recruiting and placement company doesn’t want his best people to leave.
“The worst thing in a company
is losing a good person because
he or she had nowhere to go,”
he says.
Smart Business spoke with
Lindberg about how to create
opportunities for the future
executives in your midst.
Q. How do you create
growth opportunities for
your employees?
After an employee has been
with us for six months, he or
she has the opportunity to go to
his superior and say, ‘I’d like to
be considered for the management associate program.’
If the boss agrees, that person
fills out a biographical sketch
and is interviewed. If he or she is
selected, they go into a three-day, leadership-training program.
We don’t talk about the technicalities of our business; we talk
about what motivates people.
We do case studies. We have different executives from the company come in and speak to the
class. We keep it small, [usually
eight or nine people], so we have
a lot of interaction and feedback.
I teach the class, so I get to know them, and they get to know me.
Q. How does the program
benefit the company?
A side benefit is I get to know
each one of these people a lot
better. I see how they react to
questions, how they answer
questions. As a result of that,
I’m able to identify people that
can really help us grow.
Also, the manager of the office
that recommended that person
gets feedback from me about
the person. For instance,
if somebody flunks the
written test, it means he
or she has just not studied
the homework and is not
very serious about what
he or she is doing. So it’s
feedback that helps his
manager evaluate the
individual participant.
Q. What is one of the
major traps a leader can
fall into?
Hiring weak people
because you’re afraid to
have someone better
than you on staff.
I still see this in some of
my managers, unfortnately, because they feel that
if they hire a really great
person, that this person might
replace them. So part of it is
fear for their job security —
which is wrong, but it still happens.
If we’re talking about the CEO
in a company, the same thing
can apply. A CEO who hires a
really brilliant (chief operating
officer) who is really strong, that
CEO could have some real fear
that this person that is coming in
can replace him.
Q. How do you remove that
fear from your staff?
They’ve got to feel comfortable
that their boss has got integrity
and is not going to pull the rug
out from under them. It’s a difficult thing to answer because
there just has to be a trust between the manager and the
manager’s boss, the superior.
A major reason for people
staying or leaving their job is the
quality of the relationship they
have with their manager. If that
relationship is not strong, that’s
why there is a lot of turnover.
Q. How do you build that
relationship?
It’s communication; it’s doing what you say you’re going to do.
It’s helping your subordinates
achieve their goals and providing support and feedback.
Help them develop their people and develop themselves. If
you can do that effectively, you
can build that trust.
Q. How do you help your
managers develop?
If I send somebody to Dallas
to open up an office, that person knows that whatever he’s
doing, it’s got to be legal, it’s got
to be moral and ethical, it’s got
to be within company policy, it’s
got to be within the budget.
As long as those four parts of
the fence are there, he or she
can do whatever, just about
whatever, they want to do to
grow that business. They know
these are the fence posts. As
long as they stay within these
broad parameters, they can use
as much of their imagination
and creativity as they want.
They know that I’m not looking over their shoulder. I’m not
going to micromanage them.
Not only do I want them to, but
I expect them to be very entrepreneurial.
Q. How does empowering
employees benefit them?
It benefits them only if that’s
what they want to do. You have
to have the right personality.
You’ve got to have the right person who does want to grow,
who does want to be his or her
own boss. ... It benefits that person because they feel like they’re
running their own business, and
if they do well, they’re going to
make a lot of money.
HOW TO REACH: MSI International, (404) 659-5050 or www.msi-intl.com
