CEO's Notepad
Managing staff with a tender touch (and avoiding harassment charges) sometimes means admitting your weaknesses and hiring others to do your dirty work. Here, Helene Solomon, the CEO of Boston-based PR agency Solomon McCown & Company, talks business.
What’s your main challenge as manager?
The challenge for me is always found in my matching my very direct style to people’s natural sensitivities. You gotta pick your shots and deliver the messages to people in constructive ways that enable them to learn and grow. I try to really think a lot about that individual’s style and what’s going to help me package information in a way that they will receive it most productively.
Have an example?
You’re managing a lot of competing deadlines for competing clients and you have to keep track of a lot of competing parts. No one’s perfect and every now and then something slips through the cracks…Instead of saying to someone, “Why did you let this happen? How could you miss this?” saying, “What happened? Walk me through how this was dropped? You must have had a lot on your plate.” You have to put yourself into the other person’s shoes.
How do you manage while keeping a tender touch?
I will tell you that my best trait is not my management skills…I have other people in the organization who are tremendous people managers…I really rely on them to both manage me and manage the staff.
Do you feel it’s important to know everybody on your staff?
Oh yeah, very important…I’m really interacting with all of them. It definitely helps me. The fact that my name is on the door…you want to bring people along, you don’t want to be turning people in and out every year. It really makes it easier if you know them and have a sense of what makes them tick.
How do you get to know everyone?
I make sure I physically walk the halls a couple of times a day, try and stop and talk to them informally. Also, when there are team meetings, I like to make sure I sit in on the team meetings on a regular basis so I can hear how the staff plans for a meeting and how they package information. And then there are some times that I just have an idea…about how they manage their work and I just talk to them directly while keeping their manager in the loop.
Do you think you can be a CEO without having a direct style?
Well that makes me feel better. I don’t think you can, now that you mention it. You’ve got to be definite about how you’re running the business and definite about the goals of the business and the standards and there’s no way to really pussyfoot around that. And I think there’s just not enough time to be indirect.
Do you feel that men and women have different management styles?
I don’t think it’s gender specific; I think people have different management styles.
Do you have a management mantra, one principle you keep in mind as a CEO?
I try to take a long view. One of the hardest things to do is not to react in the moment on the impact of your decisions…I have a very strong, gut reaction to things and my first reaction is usually right, but different aspects of the business require different styles of thinking and evaluation. One size doesn’t always fit all.
Caroline Kinneberg, who loves NYC but suffers from perpetual wanderlust, writes for Time Inc and New York magazine. She can't remember the last time she ate a hot dog.
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