Bennet Simonton

I managed people for over 30 years, as few as 22 and as many as 1300. I began my career as an authoritarian spending the vast majority of my time figuring out what needed correction or needed doing or needed to be communicated and issuing orders. After 12 years of this and being quite disappointed at not being able to significantly raise the performance of my worst and middle level performers, I reevaluated my approach. I decided to start truly listening to my people. I found they had many complaints, suggestions and questions and I attempted to respond appropriately to those . The more I did that, the better they performed, eventually doubling their productivity above what I had thought possible. Through listening, I eventually learned how to double even this level of performance. The result was that the vast majority of my 1300 person workforce became highly motivated, highly committed, and fully engaged literally loving to come to work and easily able to best our competitors.

I wrote all of what I learned in the book "Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed"