Colleen McDonald likes her
employees to set goals, but she wants to make sure they
are realistic goals, “because
there is nothing worse than not
having a chance to hit anything,” says the president of
Holiday Automotive Group.
Yet, even if an employee hits a
goal, McDonald doesn’t want to
broadcast it to everyone
because it could seem like bragging, which may lead to contention within the organization.
“Bragging sometimes gets the
other people really mad,” she says. “It depends on the person. It could have just the
opposite effect of doing well.
They could get down and that
kind of thing.”
However, sharing some good
news may foster some friendly
competition among the stores
within the 170-employee organization, which posted 2007 revenue of about $148 million.
“If someone sees one store
doing quite well, it’s good,” she
says. “Because [they’ll say,]
‘Hey, what are they doing? How
are they doing that?’”
Smart Business spoke with
McDonald about how to keep
employees informed, involve
them in decisions and lead by
example.
Keep everyone in the loop. In
any organization, the key is
communication to your
employees. I started a quarterly newsletter a couple of
years ago that seems to
work out very well. When
we get disgruntled employees, I think the reason they
get disgruntled is because
they don’t know things are
happening and they don’t
know certain things that
are going on in the business.
I try to keep everyone up
to date on what we’re doing
… how business is, whether
we’re hiring people — I
always give them the first
shot of family, friends. So, I
kind of make it more of a
huge family atmosphere, for
lack of a better term.
I do a lot of that through e-mail, constantly telling them
where the deals are. My
newsletter I send out via e-mail, and then those that
don’t get it, the managers
make copies. I also include
their home if they want their
home on there. No one likes
being left out of the loop,
especially where they are
going to work every day.
Most employees, when you
are starting to dig holes
somewhere or are putting
up the building (they’ll say),
‘Wait, what’s that?’ They all
just want to know what is
going on, why it’s going on,
why we’re doing this.
Make yourself clear. Everyone
likes to communicate in different ways. With the way e-mails are now, I think we
have a much easier time of
communicating than we
ever had because there is no
way I’m going to be able to
sit down and talk to 170 people during the course of
a week. That’s impossible.
I rely on my management
team at other stores.
It’s management by wandering around. They’re not
stuck in an office. They’re
talking to people, talking to
customers, closing deals,
talking to service, handling
problems. So it’s just really
that face to face.
