(Photo of Mitch Modell on Undercover Boss via.)
Tonight, my good friend Mitch Modell will be on Undercover Boss, the CBS show where a chief executive dons a disguise to work as an entry-level employee in his own company.
It’s a great concept for a TV show, and knowing Mitch, he’s going to come up aces tonight. But the truth is, no manager or executive should need to be on a show to eat his or her own cooking, so to speak.
Managers and executives should eat their own cooking all the time, in order to be effective. We have to tape ourselves in meetings, so we can listen to our own pep talks. We have to be customers in our own stores, and online, so we can get the retail experience from the consumers’ side of things.
Really, no matter what level employee you are, you have to take that look in the mirror now and again. You have to read the emails you send out, as if you were the recipient. You have to spend some time at the end of each day considering how your interactions with others might have seemed from their perspective.
In short, we all have to see consistently what our decisions look like from the other side.
How else can we gauge whether or not they’re effective?
