If you want to become an
approachable leader, don’t
shoot down someone’s idea, even if you’ve heard it before,
says Steve Kopitz.
Kopitz, founder, owner, president and CEO of Summit Sports
Inc., says that it’s easy to cut
ideas short when you’ve been in
business awhile and think
you’ve heard it all, but you need
to keep an open mind.
“We may have tried it 10
years ago,” says the leader of
the sporting goods company,
which posted 2007 revenue of
about $20 million. “It may have
not worked back then, but it
may work now.”
Smart Business spoke
with Kopitz about how to be
more approachable to your
employees.
Q. What is the biggest
challenge to being
approachable?
The biggest challenge is getting people over the hump of
really believing that it’s true.
They’ve usually worked for people that are not approachable or
who say they are. We have a
saying in my company, and that
is, ‘No one can be fired for anything that they say.’ Meaning,
you need to feel comfortable
and you should feel comfortable
in voicing your opinion, even it’s
completely against what we’re
doing. Maybe it’s you think
everything we’re doing is ridiculous, but we want to hear that
opinion. Even if we maybe
don’t agree with it, when we’re
done hearing it, we still want to
hear it, and I don’t think that
corporate culture exists in most
companies.
So, you can’t just have a person come in and you tell them,
‘Well, nobody ever gets fired in
our company for what they
say (and) that all of a sudden
they’re just going to be an open
book and tell you everything
that they feel. It takes time,
often months or years, before
people truly believe and understand that philosophy.
Q. How can a leader create
an open corporate culture?
The best thing that you can
do is simply go around and
ask people how they really
feel. That doesn’t mean
they’re necessarily
going to tell you the
first time, but, over
time, they’re going to
get comfortable when
you seem to really be
interested in their opinion, and especially
when their opinion
actually ends up being
something that you
implement.
Because we sell sporting goods and it’s something that everybody
who works in the company really likes, we
have these things called
‘Sports Bucks,’ and
that’s basically gift certificates that we give
employees for a variety of
reasons.
One of the things we give
them to (employees) for is for
good ideas. So, when an
employee comes up with a
good idea, we’ll give them $25
or $50 or $100 of ‘Sports
Bucks’ that they can use
toward free sports equipment
of their choice.
So, not only do we compliment them that it’s a great
idea, but we really reinforce it
by rewarding them with some
cool sports equipment.
