Consumer Products
Optimistic outlook
How to lead with a positive attitude
By Brian Horn
Smart Business Detroit | April 2008
Gene LoVasco
President, ALCOS Inc.
Sure, getting pumped up
is normally associated
with working out, but
Gene LoVasco uses getting
pumped up to keep a positive attitude at the office.
LoVasco, president of
ALCOS Inc., says that having
a positive attitude is key to
being a good leader at his
insurance agency, which
employs about 100 people.
“Once you’re pumped up, I
think then it’s your job as the
leader to keep other people
positive and have that attitude
rub off on others,” he says.
That positive attitude was
an asset when his company,
which posted about $18 million in 2006 revenue, was
acquired by Brown & Brown
Inc., and employees were
laid off.
Smart Business spoke
with LoVasco about how
having a positive attitude can
make you a better leader and
how it can help you get
through rough times.
Q. How do you show employees you are positive?
Probably the flip-side criticism of that is I’ve been criticized, ‘You’re looking
through the world with rose-colored glasses.’
But I think you do it by
action, by what you say.
Action is the most important,
if you are leading the charge
and you are positive. For me,
it’s a sales organization —
I’ve got to be out there selling. I’ve got be out there
working hard; I’ve got to be
showing by example. I don’t
want to sound cliché, but
you’ve got to walk the walk
and talk the talk.
Q. How do you make sure
employees know you are genuine in your actions?
Most people, if you’re not
phony, will take it as genuine
interest. And then, if you
match it with a real human
care and concern like we do
— I’ve got a clinical psychologist that comes in twice a
month and just talks to people about family issues.
HR nowadays is inundated
with all kinds of problems —
marital problems, financial
problems, drugs and alcohol,
kids’ problems. I told our HR
director, ‘Do you have
a degree in clinical psychology?’ She said,
‘No.’ I said, ‘Neither do
I.’ I said, ‘We’re not an
expert at this stuff; let’s
hire someone who can
come in so there is no
stigma attached to it.’
Q. How does that positive attitude help you
get through difficult
times?
We were acquired by
a publicly traded company recently. It’s been
tough for me because
we had a group of guys
that grew this business,
and I was one of them.
We grew it from $3 million of revenue to
about $18 million in revenue
over about a 12-year period.
When we were acquired,
they said, ‘Look, you guys
have done a great job, but
your profitability is at X, and
now we want to get it to Y.
The only way we could do that
is we had to lay people off.
It was really tough, but
what I said to people is,
‘Look, this is part of the acquisition, and we have to
deal with that.’ What we
tried to do is give people severance packages and tried to
give them time to make the
transition.
But, how do I explain it to
the other employees? I said
‘Look, our profitability was
good. It was at X level, but
now we’ve been acquired,
and it has to be at Y level.
Unfortunately, this is what
we have to do.’
Q. What advice would give
to a leader who has to lay off
people?
The thing is for the people
that stay, you’ve got to say,
‘Here’s why; here’s what the
benefits are.’ Really, with the
new company, we all can
own stock in this company,
so they’ve got a stock ownership program. They’ve got a
stock ownership program for
all the employees, and then
they have an incentive stock
plan for certain employees.
So, my whole thing was,
‘Hey guys, look, I know it’s
tough, but this company
has grown tremendously.
This is why it’s grown
because it takes its profit
and buys other agencies.’
So that’s their whole strategy, this company we were
acquired by, ... and that’s
how they’ve grown. They’ve
grown through mergers and
acquisitions.
Q. How can a leader develop
a more positive attitude?
I think mentally, you have
to feed your mind with positive books. I truly believe
that whatever you think you
are you become. I’m big into
that whole correlation
between positive thoughts
produce positive deeds.
The second thing, if you’re
negative, are you taking care
of yourself, are you exercising? If I don’t do those
things, my energy is sucked
and sapped, and you get
down. I work out six times a
week, and I feel great after
I’m done.
I could have a big day, or I
could have had a bad day the
day before, but when I’m
done with my workout, I feel
great.
HOW TO REACH: ALCOS Inc. (586) 977-6300 or www.alcos.com
