Being a successful manager means more than just having a team that seems to follow orders, as Bryan Barrington learned at the Syngenta Business Institute in December.
“The big thing I took from the program was about feedback and communication with my crew,” says Barrington, superintendent at The Golf Club at Oxford Greens in Oxford, Conn. “We talked about how someone may not really understand what you say – they think they understand it, but when the job is done, it didn’t turn out the way you wanted.
“When you talk with them about it, you find out that it may be what you said, but it’s not what they understood,” he said.
With a seasonal crew that changed every year, Barrington often focused on explaining the job the way he knew how to do it rather than spending time on the crew member’s understanding of the chore, he said. But when faced with a problem, sometimes his team would muddle through the job rather than come to him for clarification.
“It’s the little things about the way I follow up with a job, or the way they’re progressing through a task,” he said. “The difference is between how they see the job versus me saying, ‘Here’s the job, here’s how you do it, here’s the tools and see me when you get done.’ There’s a little more dialogue and communication through the task they’re doing.”
Instead of just giving the crew members a set of instructions, Barrington takes the time to show them how a job is supposed to be done and why he does it a certain way. He also makes time for questions during the teaching process, just to make sure they understand the way he’s explaining it.
On top of that, he makes it a point to listen as well for ideas from his crew, instead of insisting on his method just because it’s his. When the crew gets the chance to have input on the tasks, they take more ownership of the work and get a greater sense of the job’s importance, he said.
“I give them the freedom and structure to think it through for themselves a little bit and see how it comes out,” he said. “I’m finding out that certain things I think should be done a certain way – they might want to try it another way. If the results are the same, then sure. I’ve become a little more receptive to the guys and their ideas.”
