When Barry L. Carlson was in the Army, he attended a leadership academy, where a general told him something that stays with him to this day.
“You can’t get people to follow you into a hail of bullets when you are standing behind them saying, ‘You guys go ahead, and I will catch up to you later,’” he says
As president and chief operating officer of Office Furniture Source, Carlson has a similar message strategically placed in his office where he can always see it.
“As a leader goes, so go the followers,” says Carlson, who helped lead the company to more than $7 million in 2007 revenue.
Smart Business spoke with Carlson about how to lead so that your employees want to follow.
Q. How do you get people to follow your lead?
I will listen to their opinions, even when they are not good at expressing them. So, their opinion matters. Two, when I tell them that this is my opinion or it’s is my final decision, they know I gave it some thorough thought and that I will back them up if they go do what I told them to.
The third is I will monitor whatever that is and I will be the first to admit if it isn’t working, and we’ll adjust. I don’t leave them hanging.
Fourth is, if it fails, I’m going to take the blame, and I’ll come up with a new plan.
So, I think people are pretty confident when they hear me talk. I talk with authority, and they know that I mean it, and they know they are going to be accountable, and they know that I’ll never put the blame on them. I might share the blame with them. But, when things don’t go right, I’m going to go back and say, ‘Wait a minute. Is this because of the plan, or is it because we didn’t follow the plan?’
