Douglas Conant Quotes

I can't tell you how many thousands of small moments that I've had with employees in our company that have been nothing more than a one-on-one. I'll see the baggage-services person, he or she is by himself. I'll pull them off to the side and have a 15-minute conversation about their history, their life, that kind of thing.

Do you have a real interest in people who work for you? Most good leaders have that - it's hard to get someone to follow you if they feel like you hate 'em.

What you can't buy is the loyalty that comes through our dedicated crewmembers.

When leaders throughout an organization take an active, genuine interest in the people they manage, when they invest real time to understand employees at a fundamental level, they create a climate for greater morale, loyalty, and, yes, growth.

Taking care of your employees is extremely important and very, very visible.

It seems like those of us who run a business can't go five minutes without encountering the term "company culture." The phrase is always uttered with extreme adoration, yet the very concept seems as nebulous as it is elusive.

Everyone talks about building a relationship with your customer. I think you build one with your employees first.

The way management treats associates is exactly how the associates will treat the customers.

Just the act of listening means more than you can imagine to most employees.

Corporate culture matters. How management chooses to treat its people impacts everything - for better or for worse.

You gain a lot of insight from employees by listening to them.

Never stop listening to people at all levels of the company. Be physically out and about so that you always have your finger on the pulse and know, at the ground level, the truth of how people are feeling.

We treat the management-to-workforce relationship as very important and will continue to invest in that relationship.

Onboarding starts with satisfying the most basic of Maslow's psychological needs: belonging. New hires shouldn't arrive to an empty cube and be forced to forage through corridors searching for a computer and the bare necessities of office life. A new hire isn't a surprise visitor from out of town. Plan for their arrival.

I think Tesla doesn't sound like it has a very collaborative culture.

We take such good care of our employees. What I do is think about what I would want my employer to be like. We started helping our employees with every facet of their lives, and our HR problems went from A to Z in reverse.

Happiness is the secret ingredient for successful businesses. If you have a happy company it will be invincible.

At HBO, my leadership had to inspire and gain the respect of employees in a large company with over 100 external business relationships in dozens of countries.

I don't have an office. I sit in a cubicle with everybody else. That's partly so no one can ask for an office, which in a fast-growing company isn't practical. But it's also so I can keep my finger on the pulse of how people are feeling.

The key to good management is keeping the guys on your team who hate your guts away from the guys who haven't made up their minds.

You want to show your people that you value them, and you're not going to hurt them just to get a little more money in the short term. Not furloughing people breeds loyalty. It breeds a sense of security. It breeds a sense of trust.

I care very deeply about the people at Tesla. I feel like I have a great debt to the people of Tesla who are making the company successful.

Company culture is my number one priority. It's more important than the team, the product, the business model, or the investors. All of those things can be fixed and made better over time. But culture has to be established on Day 1.

I certainly feel appreciated at Chelsea.

People are the core of every business. Businesses are based on relationships, and relationships are based on people. I would go to an average restaurant run by amazing people over an outstanding restaurant run by awful people.