GreenAd Press Release

Fast Lane

Straight shooter

How to form trusting relationships with your employees

By Meredyth McKenzie
Smart Business Broward/Palm Beach | February 2008

Phyllis Green is a straight shooter. She tells it like it is to both employees and clients and looks people straight in the eye during conversations to establish trust.

“You can tell me anything,” Green says. “I may not be happy, but tell it; we’ll work through it
and move on.”

This philosophy has helped the chairman of Green Advertising create trust among her 38 employees at the advertising firm — a division of Pace Advertising Inc./WPP Group Worldwide — and achieve 2006 revenue of $32.4 million.

Smart Business spoke with Green about how trusting relationships lead to confident employees with strong decision-making skills.

Phyllis Green - chairman, Green Advertising

Q. How do you develop trusting relationships with employees?

Two-way communication of honesty and trust. If employees know they can be treated with respect, you can honestly communicate with them.

A trusting relationship is being able to depend on a person and being treated with respect. It’s also culture. If every employee sees that the top people are committed to doing the right thing, then that trust is generated at every level.

Employees trust the company, they trust management, clients trust management. It’s a culture where employees realize they are going to be treated morally and fairly. There are nomagic words to a trusting relationship; it just builds on communication and honesty.

Communicate the expectations from the top down and what employees can expect from management.
It’s having an open-door policy. But open door is just the beginning. If there’s a problem, expose it to the sunlight, open it up; otherwise, it just becomes a wound with a Band-Aid on it. The only way you solve a problem is to get everyone involved in one room and work toward solving it. Allow people to
participate in the solution.

Q. How do you create that culture?

Recognize that people are individuals and have lives outside of work. It goes a long way when management recognizes that people have families and responsibilities, and it goes beyond just asking someone on Monday, ‘How was your weekend?’

It’s recognition that a career is a career, a job is a job, but people are individuals, they have different needs. At the end of the day, they have a life. Recognize that they have this life and make adjustments in the workday that allow them to handle other aspects of their life and family.

Q. What are the benefits of developing trusting relationships with employees?

Employee retention because when people trust each other and management, they feel comfortable in their career. It creates an open, honest culture where employees feel recognized as individuals, and their opinions are validated.

They trust each other, and it creates a teamwork mentality.

Q. How do you encourage employees to make decisions on their own?

You know you can do things better and faster, but you can’t do it all. You have to delegate and understand that there are employees who will do it at maybe a 70 or 80 percent level, but it will help them grow, and the job will get done.

Allow employees to make a mistake or an error in judgment, but have them walk out with the problem that they walked in with. Help them arrive at a solution, but don’t take it upon yourself. And never say, ‘I’ll handle it.’

Be willing and committed to delegate responsibility. You can’t just say you’re going to delegate, you have to be committed to moving projects and decisions off your desk and into someone else’s hands.
Realize that you cannot do everything. As you grow your company and have to devote time to managing it and to the financial disciplines, you have to learn to delegate certain things that you may have been proficient at for years, but you no longer have the time to do and shouldn’t be doing.

Make decisions, then train the people who have the ability to handle those tasks to learn from you. Allow your employees to grow and make an effort not to be the smartest person in the room. Instead of having the answers, continually ask questions. If you have the answers, keep them to yourself.

Q. How does allowing people to make decisions benefit them?

The employee develops more confidence in their abilities. More confidence leads to better decision-making. It enables and empowers them to make decisions on their own. It also encourages them to look toward being promoted and to be more forthcoming asking for promotions, additional compensation and more responsibility.
As confidence develops, it’s sort of a circle because as people get the ability to make decisions, and confidence leads to the notion of, ‘I can do that. I wasn’t doing that six months ago, but I’m doing a great job at it today.’

HOW TO REACH: Green Advertising, (561) 989-9550 or www.greenad.com