Leonid Novoselsky, CEO of the Gradient Group tells about his strongest area – the ability to trust people – and gives examples of how he uses this competency in business. Watch the video to know why the positive effect of this approach prevails over all the weaknesses.
1. Which is your strongest competency?
I trust people. I sincerely believe that there are many people who can do things much better than I. I sincerely believe that it is necessary to allow and to help them to do it. By saying "I trust" I mean I do not fear they will deceive me. According to my experience it is profitable to trust people even if you are sometimes mistaken. The positive effect prevails over all the weaknesses.
2. What do you understand by trust?
To trust it means to confide people in taking decisions, to allow them to criticize you, to let them be leaders and to develop other leaders and to make mistakes. And it is important not to criticize or punish them for their mistakes. On contrary, you should welcome their mistakes if they are interesting and constructive.
3. How do you recognize whom you can trust?
I rely on my intuition. I am choosing people I trust to head projects by two qualities. The first one is their ability to work with other people. It means to be leaders, to encourage people and to build teams. And the second one is the ability to count money. And this is what we teach people to do. If a person knows how to deal with other people and how to count money he can be trusted.
4. Could you give an example of how this competency works?
It is an example we often speak about because it is very illustrative. A man came in our company as a loader 15 years ago. Soon he became storekeeper then sales representative and after working as cash and carry manager he became director of our branch in Tyumen. He has been always different. He tried doing new things he proposed ideas for other directions, products, branches, brands and partners. Afterwards many of those partners became big and successful partners of the whole company. He had been working as a branch director for 7 years. Our branch counts about 400-500 people so he headed quit a big company. And during all this time he was proposing something new. Now he is our New Projects Director. I think we gave him a good opportunity to show his talents and his aspiration for something new, for risk and for new brands creation.
5. Could you give one more example of such trust that provided good result?
The second example is Andrei Korolev. Apart from the fact that he has recently become our HR-director he is now developing his own project that is totally new for us. Andrey has searched the whole world to find needed technology. He found synergy between the new project and our commercial and distribution divisions, and our clients. He came in our company 15 years ago as a night security guard in our first kiosk. It was his first job.
6. Does your trust always pay back?
Unfortunately we are making mistakes quit often when we delegate too much to a person and this person is not able to cope with it. Sometimes he steps down and after a time he becomes able to solve problems which were too difficult for him earlier. Sometimes acting in this way we lose people. I think we give people an opportunity to learn without any limits to their self-development. But we do not force them. They should have their own desire to grow.
7. Your approach requires many leaders while there are only 2% of leaders in the world according to some researches…
As a famous proverb says, "I live on these 2%". We try to create an environment in which it is cool to work. But we believe that the environment should be good to work in only for those who are responsible, talented and ambitious not for everybody.
