Bob Riley says that before you can lead, you need to understand your employees.
“You have to understand the values of those you are trying to lead,” says the chairman and partner of Schiff Hardin LLP. “You have to understand what they aspire to and what they’re concerned about.”
Riley learns things about his 850 employees at the law firm through meetings and by communicating openly with them. Once you have that understanding, you can then develop a vision around those things you’ve learned, making it easier for employees to buy in to it because the vision will be based on the things they want to accomplish.
Understanding his employees has helped Riley grow the Chicago-based firm — which also has offices in Atlanta, Boston, Lake Forest, New York City, San Francisco and Washington D.C. — to 2007 revenue of $234.3 million.
Smart Business spoke with Riley about how to gain a better understanding of your employees through open communication, listening to their input and leading by example.
Keep the lines of communication open and listen to what people are saying.
It’s honesty. You have to be prepared to be candid, and you have to create an atmosphere where people are comfortable being candid with you.
It’s difficult doing your job if the people in your organization aren’t willing and comfortable having an honest exchange. And that means both listening to honest views and offering them back in response.
Those develop in the course of doing the hard work day in and day out. The exchange of views, sometimes on the fly, may be more important. The trick is to find the time amid busy work and travel schedules.
We try to keep the lines of communication open through various formal methods. All of the meetings in the world will not matter, however, if we do not do the work of developing trusting relationships among our team members.
That happens in the work-place in the same way that it happens in the rest of life. It requires mutual respect and openness to hearing the views of others, even when there are disagreements. It may be the responsibility of management to decide important issues, but that does not mean that only the views of management count.
Every once in awhile, you have to stop talking and start listening. I am learning that there are times when I am a much more effective leader if I just listen for a while. If I just let the process play out, I always learn something of value that I don’t know.
