Every employer has a vested interest in the well-being of their employees. But Dick De Witt says it’s how you show that interest that can really make a difference.
De Witt is the president and chief operating officer of Marketplace Chaplains USA, a provider of chaplain services to businesses throughout the country that has $12 million in revenue. From his perch, he’s seen business leaders with many different kinds of leadership styles.
In his experience, the best leaders don’t just take care of the employee who works between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. They take care of the person with a life apart from work, which, in turn, helps create better employees.
“I lead with three E’s: engage, empower and encourage,” De Witt says. “As a leader, you have to be touching your people, and in the process of getting to be with them, you understand what their strengths and weaknesses are, and you want them to use their attributes to the best of their ability.”
Smart Business spoke with De Witt about how you can build better employees by showing that you care.
Live the three E’s. Engaging is a matter of communicating with employees on many different fronts and making in-person contact with them as often as you can. Empowerment is a matter of building up and augmenting the strengths that each one of us have. We all have weaknesses and we all have strengths, so to find those and be sure the giftedness that is present in each person is used to its fullest extent. My job as president and COO is to bring those skills out, draw attention to them and encourage them in the process.
The encouragement side is really a matter of so many attaboys. We do not use monetary rewards since we are nonprofit and our chaplains are more driven by helping people day in and day out.
You do need to show a genuine and earnest interest in your people. Most leaders do that. But in doing so, there has to be another mechanism by which you can get to the heart of the matter with a person.
Someone can put their best game face on for a good interview, but who are they really on the inside? As a leader, if you can get closer to that real person, that real employee, that part of the team that you really care about and are investing in, you’ll have a better employee who is not going to be distracted, who is not going to be absent, who is not going to leave after you’ve invested in them and trained them to be ready.
