Читать книгу The Front-Line Leader - Gorder Chris Van - Страница 8

Advice like this may sound familiar, but most CEOs and senior leaders don't do the kind of deep outreach I'm describing. More commonly they do what I call “fly-bys”; they flit in and out in a cursory manner – looking the part of the political candidate, shaking hands and kissing babies – not really bothering to truly engage with workers. Maybe they feel uncomfortable around line staff. Maybe they feel they have more important things to do. Maybe they're overwhelmed by the sheer size of their organization. Whatever the case, I doubt their attempts at outreach are doing as much good as they might think.

Here's an example. I once hired a chief nurse whom I'll call Marsha for one of our hospitals. Marsha's job was to oversee all nursing operations at her facility. Unfortunately, she became occupied with outside obligations, paying insufficient attention to her core duties. This led in short order to low morale among her workforce. Things got so bad that she had to leave the organization. Shortly after her departure, I happened to be in her hospital visiting my sick father-in-law. One of the nurses caring for him asked me to accompany her into the hallway for a private chat. “Chris,” she said to me, “I wanted to thank you. I'm glad Marsha is no longer working with us.”

“Why? You didn't like her?”

“No, because she was never here. Every so often she would throw on some scrubs so it would look like she was one of us. She would come up here and sweep through the units and smile and kind of talk to everyone a little bit. Then she'd disappear for months and you'd never see her. It was never real. We're glad she's gone.”

Employees aren't stupid. They know a fly-by when they see it. By satisfying herself with fly-bys, Marsha was highlighting for her staff how little she cared about them. She wasn't bothering to listen, talk, and build relationships. She wasn't engendering trust. She was pretending to be one of the team – and, I would add, pretending to be a leader too.