The Front-Line Leader. Gorder Chris Van

to managers, one that I hope you will heed as well. Face time with employees is something you need to do, not an option you might entertain. It's critical to the success of any team, department, or organization.

      Make It Real with Questions and Answers

      Make no mistake: rounding alone won't cut it. With almost fourteen thousand employees under my watch, our leadership team can't regularly interact with each one or even a majority of them on a one-on-one basis. Fortunately, we've developed other communications tactics that allow us to remain meaningfully accessible on a broader scale to line employees and managers. These tactics allow us to keep tabs on what's going on in our workplaces, and they reinforce the notion that we're leaders who genuinely care.

      First, we hold transparent question-and-answer sessions with groups of line employees and managers. I started doing informational meetings early on in my career when I was head of security and safety at Los Angeles' Orthopaedic Hospital. Every so often, without thinking much about it, I would gather the troops and simply tell them what was going on throughout the organization. I was willing to talk about anything, so long as it wasn't confidential. After a year, I noticed that none of our security officers were leaving the company. This was highly unusual; in most industries security officers didn't get paid much and turnover was high.

      “It's surprising,” I said to a couple of the department supervisors one day. “We've had the same staff now for a couple of years. Nobody is leaving for other jobs. What's going on?”

      They told me that the department felt loyal simply because I spent time talking to them; it meant as much to them as their paycheck. Because most other managers didn't openly share information with their teams, our staff had become information sources for the entire organization. Even some of the doctors had taken to asking the security officers for updates.

      That was a wake-up call. I realized that the higher up you get in an organization, the more vital it is that you serve as a teacher and communicator. Today I make sure to get out on a weekly basis to talk to groups and answer their questions. I might arrive at a hospital break room and invite employees to come and chat. To show respect for the chain of command, I always call ahead, letting managers on site know I'm coming and asking them to participate in the session with me. The last thing I want is managers thinking that I've come to spy on them.

      When I lead these gatherings, I make sure not to deliver a lecture, opting instead for Q&A sessions. I want the staff to know I'm comfortable with tough questioning, as it gives me the opportunity to teach. I have a rule that anything is a valid topic of discussion, with only three exceptions: I won't violate patient confidentiality, I won't discuss personnel issues relating to specific individuals, and I won't discuss business arrangements that have confidentiality agreements. Within these constraints, I tell employees to have at it.