Sometimes Dennis J. Engel
finds himself sticking
longer than he should with an employee who isn’t
cutting it. Yet, that patience
has also paid off for the CEO
of KeySource Medical Inc.,
such as the time that a member
of Engel’s management team
had a problem with alcohol.
Even though the immediate
reaction may have been to fire
the person, Engel saw talent
and waited while the employee worked through the addiction.
Engel says being patient is
all part of being a coach, and
that trait has helped Engel
take the pharmaceutical distribution company with more
than 40 employees to 2006 revenue of about $22 million.
“The more you bury your
own ego and bring out the talents of the individuals that are
working with you, the more
productive those people
become,” he says.
Smart Business spoke with
Engel about how to be more
of a coach than a taskmaster.
Q. How are you a coach
rather than a taskmaster?
I do it by allowing people to
tell me what is necessary,
rather than me telling them.
When I sit down with subordinates, the question is, ‘What do
you need? What will make you
more effective? Where are the
problems in the organization?’
Rather than making it a top-down arrangement, I usually
try to make it a bottom-up
arrangement.
I have always found that to
be much more effective than
giving people their marching
orders and expecting them to do exactly what you say. That
rarely happens.
Q. How can leaders become
more of a coach?
I would suggest you back
off of what you normally do
and open your ears and listen more. I think the worst
problem that someone in a
leadership capacity has is
the tendency to bark orders.
You have so many things
that need to be done, you
tend to give marching
orders rather than sitting back and listening.
And it is a difficult discipline to sit back and
open your ears and
say, ‘Let me listen to
somebody, even if they
aren’t as important as I
think they are or as
maybe as I want them
to be.’ Maybe they are
lower in the hierarchy.
But, it is important to
listen to someone
before you go out and
give them orders.
I think for anyone in a
leadership position, to
me, the most important
thing you can do is back
away from tending to
push people, and back off and
listen to them.
Q. Is there a process to
being a coach, or do you just
have to tell yourself to
back off?
For me, that’s pretty much
what it is. I mean, you have
to bite your tongue sometimes because the tendency
is to go out and tell somebody or cut them off and say,
‘Yes, yes, I know all that, but
this is what you have to do.’
It’s a quick tendency to do that. So sometimes you have
to bite your tongue. So if
there is a process, maybe
that’s a process of biting
your tongue and sitting back
and just saying, ‘Tell me
what is going on.’
Q. How do you get people
to be honest when they
come to you?
I try to make it as relaxed
an environment as I can. I
normally don’t do it across my desk. I have a round
table in my office and I normally will seat them there so
they don’t feel as if they are
being dressed down. And I try to make it as much of a
peer-to-peer arrangement as
I possibly can.
The organization we have,
we try to keep as flat as we
can. There isn’t any preferred
status on individuals. As a
matter of fact, the higher up
you are in the organization,
the more responsibility there
is, rather than the more privilege. So you tend to work
harder the higher up you go.
So people know when they
come in, they’re usually going
to get more help than they are
criticism.
Q. How has creating
that atmosphere benefited
the company?
I think that turns the organization on. I think it switches
people on. When people are
lambasted, when they’re
beaten, it takes away their
morale and it takes away the
gusto to perform.
So, even if you know somebody has done the wrong
thing, to sit there and chastise them and criticize them,
you are probably going to
have somebody that is going
to go out of your office with
their tail between their legs.
And, instead of getting more
work out of them, you are
going to get somebody that
sits at their desk and grumbles.
And to me, that’s the worst
thing. I’d rather sit at my
desk and grumble and have
the person I just chastised go
out and feel good.
HOW TO REACH: KeySource Medical Inc., (800) 842-5991 or www.keysourcemedical.com
