Look for and encourage these leadership traits in your employees

June 29, 2018
As we refine our own leadership skills, a measurement of our success will be in how effective we are in influencing the hearts and minds of others.

This is the third part in a series of articles in the MSO Supplement on the importance of establishing leaders in your MSO business. In the first part I covered the difference between management and leadership. Briefly management is about strategy and organization and coordinating. Leadership is about social influence of others in accomplishing tasks. The difference is in ability to influence the hearts and minds of people. It is what that person feels inside that can be such a great motivator, caused by the words and/or actions of the leader. I established that leaders can be born and they can be developed or a combination thereof. I suggested that you become a ‘coach’ to help turn some of your managers into leaders.

In the last part I talked about what difference it makes in terms of business performance. I also covered leadership ‘style’, including attributes and behaviors. It included the following top 10 list:

1. A real leader listens firsts and acts second.

2. A real leader knows what they don't know.

3. A real leader doesn't make decisions in the heat of the moment.

4. A real leader gives constructive, not negative, feedback.

5. A real leader never acts like the smartest person in the room.

6. A leader focuses on the strengths of people.

7. A real leader cultivates a positive culture.

8. A real leader does what has to be done.

9. A real leader always finds a way.

10. A real leader celebrates the process as much as the rewards.

I concluded by covering how perfecting our own skills is the best place to start in passing leadership skills on to others.

Next steps

To continue let’s get into what are the next steps. As we refine our own leadership skills a measurement of our success will be in how effective we are in influencing the hearts and minds of others. The traits we observe in others will be the evidence. This leads to the question, “what traits do we want to see and cultivate in our employees?” Let’s look at a few:

Compliance. Obedience. Performing tasks as directed as well as complying with company operating procedures is important. However we are looking for something more compelling and powerful. It doesn’t necessarily take a great leader to get some people to perform some tasks. A harsh dictator can accomplish that, causing people to perform tasks out of fear instead of personal motivation. We’re looking for leadership that inspires people to perform and also become leaders.

Competence. A good indicator of intelligence and understanding. Beyond that it indicates the individual cares. They have taken their responsibilities to heart and are completing their tasks successfully.

Enthusiasm. This is a great indicator. Indicative of an internal desire to accomplish and showing motivation. There is a very positive aspect to people who display motivation.

Grit. The drive to persevere in the face of challenges. A willingness to accept some sacrifices and work hard towards a successful future. Dedication. A stubborn and relentless effort that refuses to lose and will only accept success. These are great attributes and essential for any team. These can also indicators of good leadership.

Grace. Includes qualities of decency, respect, and generosity. This one is exceptionally powerful. These mark a person whom others want to cooperate with. This is a person who ‘gets it’. These attributes influence the hearts and minds of others, striking to the core of great leadership.

Google’s Project Oxygen

Since the early days of Google people throughout the company questioned the value of managers. They had a highly technocratic culture and as one manager said, “We are a company built for engineers by engineers.” As described in a report from the Harvard Business Review, Google launched Project Oxygen, a multiyear program to measure key management behaviors and to cultivate them through communication and training. By 2012 the employees had widely adopted the program and the company was showing statistical and significant improvements in multiple areas of managerial effectiveness and performance.

They analyzed managers’ performance through exit interview data, Googleist ratings, and semi-annual reviews, comparing managers on both satisfaction and performance. They found employee retention was more related to manager quality than seniority, performance, tenure, or promotions. The data also showed a tight connection between manager’s quality and workers’ happiness. Employees with the highest scoring bosses consistently reported greater satisfaction in multiple areas including innovation, work-life balance, and career development. By examining data from employee surveys and performance reviews, Google’s people analytics team identified eight key behaviors demonstrated by the company’s most effective managers.

A good manager:

1. Is a good coach
2. Empowers the team and does not micromanage 
3. Expresses interest in and concern for team members’ success and personal well-being
4. Is productive and results-oriented
5. Is a good communicator—listens and shares information
6. Helps with career development
7. Has a clear vision and strategy for the team
8. Has key technical skills that help him or her advise the team

The key behaviors primarily describe leaders of small and medium-sized groups and teams and are especially relevant to first- and second-level managers.

People ops designed the training to be hands-on and immediately useful. In “vision” classes, for example, participants practiced writing vision statements for their departments or teams and bringing the ideas to life with compelling stories. In 2011, Google added Start Right, a two-hour workshop for new managers, and Manager Flagship courses on popular topics such as managing change, which were offered in three two-day modules over six months.

One manager reported, “I now spend a third to half my time looking for ways to help my team members grow.” And to his surprise, his reports have welcomed his advice. “Engineers hate being micromanaged on the technical side,” he observes, “but they love being closely managed on the career side.”

Project Oxygen has accomplished what it set out to do: It not only convinced its skeptical audience of Googlers that managers mattered but also identified, described, and institutionalized their most essential behaviors. Oxygen applied the concept of data-driven continuous improvement directly—and successfully—to the soft skills of management. Widespread adoption has had a significant impact on how employees perceive life at Google—particularly on how they rate the degree of collaboration, the transparency of performance evaluations, and their groups’ commitment to innovation and risk taking.

In other words, these “character” qualities outranked sheer drive and technical expertise when it came to predicting success.

Managers who use “character” focused leadership skills can cause staff to display the attributes, or traits, that we seek. Those traits lead to a better work environment and a higher level of performance. They also cause staff to develop their own leadership traits that put them on a track to become leaders.

Our task

As we continue to work on our own skills to be the best leaders, it is up to us to continue to find ways to cause our staff to display the traits we seek. To continue to get deeper into the subject one might ask, “What is the best way to instill grit and grace in your team?” It can be about cultivating three specific emotions; compassion, pride, and gratitude. Our success is built on the ability to form relationships. In these relationships we need qualities including honesty, fairness, and diligence. Moral emotions including compassion, pride, and gratitude are what drive these qualities. Research has shown that when people feel grateful, they’re willing to devote more effort to help others, to be loyal even at a cost to themselves, and to share profits with partners rather than take more for themselves. When they feel proud – an authentic pride based on their abilities and/or their team’s abilities – they’ll work harder to help colleagues solve problems and feel better about themselves, including a higher level of confidence. When they feel compassion, they’re willing to devote time, effort, and money to aid others. It’s about caring. And all of these behaviors draw others to us. People who express gratitude, compassion, and pride are viewed positively by those around them.

The correlation of these emotions to the qualities of grace (including decency, respect, and generosity) are direct and obvious. Gratitude and compassion lead to generosity and decency. Compassion and pride and gratitude inspire one to treat others with respect.

These emotions also build grit. They increase the value people place on future goals relative to present ones, and thereby pave the way to perseverance. People induced to feel grateful typically show increased patience when it comes to financial and other rewards. They’re twice as willing to forgo an immediate smaller reward so that they can invest it for a longer-term gain. In a similar vein, people made to feel pride are willing to persevere more on challenging tasks precisely because pride induces them to place greater value on the future rewards of obtaining the ultimate goal.

Another benefit is that these emotions also help solve an increasingly common problem of professional life: loneliness. Today, loneliness has become an epidemic in the U.S., with 53% of American workers regularly reporting feeling isolated in their public lives — an immense problem given the toll loneliness takes on the both physical and mental health. New technologies where we interact and communicate electronically contribute to the problem. Regularly feeling gratitude, compassion, and pride — because these emotions automatically make people behave in more communal and supportive ways — build social connections. For example, people assigned to engage in simple interventions to feel and express gratitude show enhanced feelings of social connection and relationship satisfaction over time.

It is therefore our task as leaders to cultivate these emotions. Gratitude, compassion, and pride make us more willing to cooperate with and invest in others. But because they accomplish this feat by increasing the value the mind places on future gains, they also nudge us to invest in our own futures. In so doing, they make both teams, and the individuals who comprise them, more successful and resilient. As a result we are more effective leaders and we cause others to take on the traits that cause them to become leaders.

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