Real Estate and Construction

A measure of success

By Meredyth McKenzie

Print This Page

Send this page to a friend

Matt Coltharp
president, The Cyril-Scott Co.

---

For Matt Coltharp, passion is an important part of being a leader.

And the president of The Cyril-Scott Co. makes sure he shows his passion in his work every day, because he never knows when he may be meeting someone for the first time.

Coltharp says that passion is contagious, and you need to have people around you who share it with you so that they can share it with others.

“Passion gives me a quick measure on if somebody wants to be successful or not,” he says. “If I’m passionate in insinuating the positive all the time, then the people who report to me will be in the same mode constantly.”

Coltharp’s passion for the job has helped him lead his 260 employees at the commercial printing company — which also supplies creative and direct mail services — to 2007 revenue of $40 million.

Smart Business spoke with Coltharp about how to find people who share your passion and how to use that passion to help your company prosper.

Put the right people in place. You need to make sure you have the right people in the right place. Sometimes people don’t have the right people in the right place; you don’t have someone who can reflect your leadership style, your level of enthusiasm and your energy and passion level.

There’s nothing worse than a roadblock, and if you’ve got the wrong people in the wrong place, that tends to equate to a lot of roadblocks in your organization, which is tough to communicate your message.

It starts with a positive attitude. You’ve got to be positive, you’ve got to think positive and act positive, and positive things are going to happen. It all goes back to passion — somebody who’s not afraid to work and has a good work ethic and without a doubt is a good team player.

Most oftentimes, you’ve only got 30 minutes to an hour to interview somebody. And I had many interviews back in college where the interviewer did their best to make me feel uncomfortable. I don’t believe I can pass judgment on a person without getting to know them, and if you pin them into a corner where there’s no way out, I don’t think you get to know the person.

I have a good, enthusiastic conversation with them that oftentimes isn’t even about the job at hand. That tells me more about the person in the time that I’m given to find out what their makeup is. It’s not going to tell you everything you want to know, but you’re going to learn a lot more from somebody by talking to them on the level they can relate to as opposed to tricking them. You get much better people that way than by making them feel uncomfortable and not knowing how to answer it or having no confidence in my 30 minutes to an hour time.

You can make progress quickly in an organization. If you have the right people in the right place, that means your entire management team and key people are thinking the same. If you’re thinking the same, you can make the decisions that you need to make to improve your company.