Leadership
Building rapport
How Mike Bolen keeps McCarthy Building Cos. on top by listening first and speaking second
By Mark Scott
Smart Business St. Louis | September 2008
Page 1 of 4
Mike Bolen always has an opinion. And when you’re someone
who has risen to the role of chairman and CEO of a $2.3 billion
company as Bolen has, your natural inclination is to want to share
that opinion.
“Your first reaction is always to demonstrate that you are the
smartest person in the room or that you’ve got the answer or to
shorten the meeting by saying, ‘I’ve thought about this; this is the
way we’re going,’” Bolen says. “You don’t need other people and
you don’t need meetings if that’s the approach you are going to
take. That’s very much human nature, especially if you’re dragging
around a big ego.”
Bolen has learned to check his ego as the head of McCarthy
Building Cos. Inc., thanks in large part to some strong leaders that
he worked for in the past.
“They weren’t bashful about getting in my face and pointing out
to me that I might learn a little bit more if I keep my mouth shut
and listen to the smart people around me,” Bolen says. “You have
to build it into your philosophy in order for that to really be the
most effective.”
So that’s what Bolen has done. When his board of directors met
recently to discuss how to proceed with what could be the largest
and most risky job in the company’s history, McCarthy kept his
opinions to himself for most of the meeting.
“I’m very careful not to offer up or be led into giving my analysis,” Bolen says. “I was able to get a very broad-based comprehensive analysis from the other eight people in the room and then
added mine at the end. That gave us the broadest playing field with
several significant risk issues that I hadn’t thought of. A couple
ideas might not have hit the table had I started the whole process
by weighing in with how I thought it looked and how I thought it
should go.
“At the end of the day, we were able to fold all that together with
my opinions and conclusions and get a nice, surprisingly tidy consensus on how to move forward.”
That leadership style is one of the reasons McCarthy has grown
to one of the top construction firms in the United States, with an
average project value of $25 million and experience in 45 states
across the nation.
Bolen makes it a point to listen to what his 3,000 employees have
to say and factor that into any decision the company has to make.
“You have to be able to effectively communicate downstream to
your people and, maybe more importantly, to effectively hear things
that are coming upstream or sideways at you,” Bolen says. “The
most challenging piece of it is that we’ve been in a very intense
growth mode for a number of years. To be able to effectively grow
and operate a business and have it function at a high level, the
notion of two-way communication is by far the most critical aspect
of it.”
