Insurance
Beyond the open door
Why saying you have an open-door policy is not enough
By Erik Cassano
Smart Business Cincinnati | April 2008
Anthony Cook
CEO, The Dental Care Plus Group
Anthony Cook calls himself a
big believer in overcommunication. The president and CEO
of The Dental Care Plus Group
— a dental insurance provider
with an estimated $60 million
in 2007 revenue — says it’s
a concept that he first learned
years ago and one that he
has been reminded of ever
since.
Though overcommunication
might seem like a synonym for
excessive communication,
Cook says that’s the furthest
thing from the truth when it
comes to engaging your
employees, who rely on communication from you for direction, motivation and a sense of
how their job fits in to the bigger picture of the company.
Smart Business spoke with
Cook about why you need to
communicate with your
employees as often as possible
through many different avenues
and why merely saying that
you have an open-door policy
isn’t enough.
Always overcommunicate. Overcommunicating means
having very thorough communication with all levels of the
company. I’ve grown up in
multiple companies, big and
small, and have had a lot of
different positions in most
companies.
What I noticed about their
communication was that the
message was generally sent
once, and then it seemed as
though everybody forgot about
it. In the big and medium-sized
companies I’ve been in, they’d
get us all together, herd us
into a room, show us a presentation, and tell us that from
now on, we’re going to be a
bottom-up driven company,
and then they’d go away.
There were no examples, no
repeated messages, no follow-up communication about what
that really meant. That’s when
I started to believe in over-communicating the message
and to say the same thing in
multiple ways so that folks get
as clear a picture of the vision
as they need to do their jobs.
Keep your audience in mind. Remember that people hear
things differently. You really
need to think about what you
want to say but also how you
want to say it.
You want to communicate
the message, but you want to
do it in a way that is going to
be understood. The most
effective leaders are also
excellent listeners. They do
active listening; they hear what
is said and what is not said.
Many times, there is a
wealth of information in what
is not said in a conversation.
So you need to listen before
you react and think through
what you want to say and
how you want to say it.
Sometimes folks speak at a
50,000-foot level, and sometimes people hear at a specific
5,000-foot level. So you try to
say things in a general way,
and it leaves a lot of room for
people to misinterpret it. You
have to be very thorough in
your listening and in your dialogue to really understand
what it is they’re saying and
what they need.
As an example, when I’m
talking with my clients, one
thing I’m hearing is that they’re
having a really hard time with
budgeting for their health care
expenses. What they’re really
saying is they don’t want
unpredictability. They want
fair, consistent rates.
If I walk out of that conversation thinking that they
don’t want to pay for excellent service, I’d be wrong.
What they’re really saying is
they think we have a great
product, but they don’t
want big swings in their
premiums.
Don’t just leave your door open. An open-door policy doesn’t
go far enough. I can sit here
with the door open and not
talk to anyone all day. Sometimes it’s the title — it’s the
role that is intimidating them
or keeping them away.
I’ll run into people in the
employee lounge all the time,
I’ll sit down and have a cup of
coffee with them just to hear
the conversation and interact
with folks. That way, people
don’t feel so uncomfortable
talking to me when the time comes. And I’ve seldom found
being that open and being
that accessible has resulted in
people bringing trivial things
to me.
I make it a point when I am
in the office to walk around
and meet and bump into people and engage them in conversation. It doesn’t have to
be about business; it can be
about anything. It can be
about the football game over
the weekend; it could be
about their grandkids.
But it is necessary that they
see I am a real person and
care about them and interact
with them. I ask that my managers do the same kind of
thing. That way, we permeate
throughout the company the
idea that we’re accessible,
we’re open.
Make time for communicating in
person. I prefer face-to-face
communication. I prefer the
human touch, looking at people while talking to them. I
also think my impact on them
is greater when I’m there,
when they have me as the
model, when they see my passion and my belief in the company. I prefer that. It helps me
send that consistent message
to them.
There is no doubt it’s easier
to send out an e-mail, but I’m
committed to face-to-face
communication. When I organize my workday, I organize it
with that in mind. I make time
for that. I also try to be sure
that my management staff
reflects my belief in face-to-face communication.
HOW TO REACH: The Dental Care Plus Group, www.dentalcareplus.com
