Michael Ferraro was a corporate trainer at Woodward and Lothrop when the Washington department store went out of business in 1995. He used the opportunity to open his own company, Training Solutions Inc., in Chantilly, Va., which teaches communications, sales, customer service and leadership skills to front-line employees, supervisors and senior executives. Courses are built around stress management, listening skills, performance management, diversity training and team building. Ferraro recently spoke with Associate Editor David Hubler.
Q: How do you coach a senior executive, who presumably has had a lot of experience managing people?
Ferraro: A lot of our senior executive clients will not attend a formal class. They say they haven’t the time, and they just won’t go. So we do individual 360 [degree] assessments, which evaluate an executive’s management skills based on a questionnaire that at least 12 colleagues and company officials fill out. The accumulated report gives us a pretty good idea of what’s happening around those client executives. We ... then come up with a personalized coaching program for them.
Q: How do you work with executives who don’t want to take the time to learn?
Ferraro: We work with them once a month, sometimes twice, for a couple of hours each time, face to face in the office or outside or on the phone, so it becomes an ongoing relationship. We give them homework and techniques to try.
Q: Have you had to alter your instruction for corporate executives when it comes to working with federal contractors?
Ferraro: There are some nuances in the [information technology] arena because of the work government contractors have to do. For example, some contractors require their employees to work at the customer’s site, so there is the issue of a virtual manager. In such cases, performance management must be done at a distance.
Q: Do senior-level executives exhibit certain characteristics not found at lower levels?
Ferraro: A lot of senior managers are disorganized, and I’m not sure why that is. A lot of them are very reactionary ... instead of being proactive and setting the agenda for what needs to get done. There are some senior executives I work with who start the week with 95 percent of their time already booked. You can’t run your business that way. I try to get them to manage their schedule so that they don’t block out all their time but instead leave time open to handle emergencies. We advise them to schedule about 60 percent of their time with important things, and then the other 40 percent should be management by walking around [to] see what’s going on in the business.
Q: Isn’t it harder for, say, the chief executive of Lockheed Martin to walk around than for the owner of a small company?
Ferraro: Those guys walk around a little more because they feel it’s their niche. But even then, when you get the company to a certain place and hire senior executives, those are the folks who don’t walk around. It may be someone else’s company, but if you’re the No. 2 guy, you’ve got to get down there, too. Employees need to build a relationship with you.
Q: What is your best advice?
Ferraro: Build and sustain a good team around you and don’t try to build it with a bunch of yes-people. Bring in a diverse mind-set and people who will challenge you at times.
