What makes an investment in a leadership facilitator profitable?
The following is Donald Jessep’s end of year report to the manager of a major retail outlet. It explains the relationship between the manager and the facilitator in a profitable partnership.
Mike it’s been great working with you and your team. Thank you.
Allow me to reflect on why it’s been so successful and what is still to be done.
The strength and conviction of your leadership created the space for me to work with you and your team. You have a strong positive expectation that people will show up. Your style is a profitable balance between the carrot and the stick. There are times when you give orders and there are times when you leave them totally to their own choice. Strong clear consistent leadership, that’s what made it work so well.
You have fully participated yourself, role modelling what you want to see. You show an openness to change when I challenged you as part of the group. You demonstrate conviction, but also a willingness to be coached but only by someone who has earned your respect and you are prepared to held accountable like everyone else.
You have judged me well too, demanding accountability and giving me the space, in perfect proportions to maximise your investment.
That this is working is reflected in the video and was confirmed yesterday in the meeting with the admin team. They were saying things like “it feels like we’re much more positive around here”. And they demonstrated it by participating in some great interaction.
The moment when the frustration of having to drop everything for customers and then feeling wrung out, frustrated at the end of the day because the to-do list hasn’t been ticked enough. It had only just been said when another team member spoke up in the most constructive way to say “but you’re like that too”. We have good open discussion.
These moments are pure gold because they’re doing it for themselves. They are stepping up to their first responsibility; that they have the space to do the job well.
Leadership is about people wanting to do it first for themselves and then for the team.
Starting with the absolute coalface of customer interaction, sales, has meant that we’ve made a difference to the bottom line in just 14 weeks. Thank you for sharing just how much the profit has increased. In fact the strategy of measuring and making individual performance highly visible, which you implemented just before I started, has had a powerfully complimentary affect. As you can see I work on the soft side, so I need to know the hard measuring is being taken care of, and I it is highly visible for everyone to measure their performance.
What have we still got to do?
* Human nature has it that we tend to prefer comfort to learning opportunities. So when we meet with some success we tend to ease off and enjoy it, we become complacent. There is an ongoing need to hold the positive expectation that people grow, personally. That means demanding discipline in applying a few key principles.
* The ladies yesterday explained that some of the paper work has slipped off. Some of the team are better than others at following systems. I am particularly concerned about this because of the effect on our sales process.
* The service department; we need to grab their attention and show them the benefits and what’s expected.
* Evolving the sales team further, lifting the bar, bringing on young people, more women too, showing the industry a more profitable way to respond to the changing market. I’m serious about the academy bit too.
* We’ve got to establish a system for more effectively ‘listening’ to customers, so the whole team become more accountable to the customer.
Thanks Mike. I will give you a call in January to set up the plan for next year.