Leadership training helps owners, managers climb ladder of success

Nov. 22, 2016
Although most companies emphasize technical training, acquiring the skills to become a more effective leader is often overlooked amid the challenges of overseeing day-to-day operations.

Every business can benefit by providing everyone from the top on down with leadership training – especially owners and managers already nestled atop your organizational pyramid.

Although most companies emphasize technical training, and perhaps you additionally host customer-service training sessions, acquiring the necessary skills to become a more effective leader is often overlooked amid the challenges of overseeing day-to-day operations, according to consultant John Baldoni, a leadership coach and prolific contributor to prestigious publications such as the Harvard Business Review and Forbes. He has authored more than a dozen books translated into 10 languages and chairs the leadership development practice at the N2growth consultancy while also teaching MBA students at the University of Michigan.

“Leadership is not a title; it’s a responsibility open to all who want to answer the call,” Baldoni tells Aftermarket Business World. “Owners may wish to use an executive coach, an individual who can help them become the best version of themselves, and owners can consider offering training to every employee.”

These types of investments assist in boosting employee engagement. “Engagement is a matter of creating ways for getting people to come to work because they want to. You provide opportunities to grow, develop and contribute,” he says.

“Improving employee engagement is not simply about improving productivity, although organizations with a high level of engagement do report 22 percent higher productivity,” according to Baldoni, referring to a Gallup survey of 1.4 million workers and their on-the-job attitudes.

“In addition, strong employee engagement promotes a variety of outcomes that are good for employees and customers. For instance, highly engaged organizations have double the rate of success of lower-engaged organizations,” he says.

“While people define engagement in various ways, I prefer a plain and simple definition: People want to come to work, understand their jobs, and know how their work contributes to the success of the organization.”

Grit and determination

So where do you begin if you’re committed to improving engagement at all levels but feel intimidated by what seems to be a daunting process? “One way to simplify it is to focus on purpose. Communicate the purpose of the organization, and how employees’ individual purposes fit into that purpose,” says Baldoni, who offers training via speaking engagements at conventions, over-the-phone and video consultations, and in-person coaching at your place of business. Automotive clients include Delphi and Ford.

He reports that a question employees love to hear is: How can I help you do your job better? “That is one of the most potent questions in management for a senior executive to put to an employee. Offering such assistance is recognition by the executive that his job is to help others do their jobs better. When you hire people who are motivated to stretch themselves to reach goals for themselves and their teams, providing support for them stokes the fire of their engines. A leader who believes his or her job is to help others is a leader who knows what it takes to inspire others to do their best work,” Baldoni says.

“Nobody likes backtalk, but bosses should actively encourage employees to talk back to them,” says Baldoni, whose latest book is MOXIE: The Secret of Bold and Gusty Leadership, which explores “the grit and determination” leaders need to exert to overcome challenges. “It’s more important to hear uncomfortable truths than to have workers try to protect your feelings. The man or woman at the top of the pyramid must work hard to enable people to speak truth to power.”

Another Baldoni tome is entitled, The Leader’s Pocket Guide: 101 Indispensible Tools, Tips and Techniques for Any Situation.

Baldoni notes that “young employees often struggle to find their feet and adjust to the realities of the business world. Smart bosses treat their young employees’ missteps as teachable moments, and don’t rush to terminate wayward workers. The young people you hire today may one day run your company.”

Tomorrow’s bosses will be eschewing the mantle of being in-house “heroes,” but will instead consist of being “team-focused leaders who can get the best out of a diverse, globalized workforce. Workers in our future will not be looking for the man on the top floor; they will be looking for someone – a woman perhaps – just like them who can point them in the right direction.”

Owners and top managers are increasingly discovering that a useful direction for gleaning insights into improving your business may originate from points elsewhere. And not just through professionally run training sessions, but by also observing and analyzing what competitors and non-competing businesses alike are doing to achieve success.

“To get a fresh perspective on organizational challenges, leaders sometimes need to look outside their companies,” says Baldoni. “Different views of a company can come from customers and from other industries. Ultimately, however, it’s up to leaders to know their limits and be ready to make necessary internal changes.”

While it may seem like anathema to a shop owner competing with the local car dealer’s gleaming service department – not so much if you’re a parts provider selling to them – Baldoni advises the sophisticated readers of the Harvard Business Review that emulating the best practices of a small-town auto dealership can enhance any enterprise’s business prospects.

“Not every dealer is worthy of imitation. Just as there are poor businessmen in every field, there are less-than-reliable automotive retailers, especially ones who cheated their customers, not to mention their own employees. But these smaller, successful dealerships can teach us a lesson or two that may help us grow our own businesses,” he points out, listing three desirable traits:

• Know your customers: Small-town auto dealers know what vehicles their customers prefer. This comes from having long-lasting ties to individual families, selling new cars and trucks to grandparents and parents, and putting the children into affordably priced used cars. Part of knowing your customers means considering their changing tastes. Decades ago many smaller dealers signed franchise agreements with Asian and European manufacturers like Honda, Nissan, Toyota and VW to provide their customers with even more makes and models from which to choose.

• Service matters: Dealers will tell you they make more money servicing cars than selling them. Manufacturers pay for warranty repairs but good dealers, particularly those in small towns, will keep their customers returning after the warranty expires because they provide reliable service. They also have a reputation for honesty, a word that is not often associated with automotive retailing. Local dealers have no alternative to treating their customers right because they live in the community and word gets around.

• Maximize opportunity: Dealers are entrepreneurs. Those who are not closed will get aggressive. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, surviving dealers (of automakers’ consolidation efforts) will buy up inventory at a good price, add salespeople – some from former competitors – and expand their sales reach. One Dodge dealer in Jackson, Mich. – right in the heart of “downturn valley” – said, “I’m going to buy every car I can find with every dollar I have until I run out of money.” While that attitude may have led investment bankers to run Wall Street into the ground, hearing it from a dealer sounds more optimistic. He has faith in himself, his business and his community.

“As a youngster I recall the dealer showroom windows that were papered over every September in anticipation of the sparkling new models that would soon be introduced,” Baldoni continues. “I still remember drooling along with my chums at the brand-new 1963 Corvette parked at the corner of Carl Schmidt’s Chevrolet in Perrysburg, Ohio. We ran our fingers over the radical new lines of the first Stingray. No salesman shooed us away; our ogling and awing was a kind of a third-party endorsement.

“Maybe that’s another lesson; let the kids touch the merchandise and one day he’ll tell his friends about you,” he says.

Baldoni explains to Aftermarket Business World that your operation can achieve the type of town-wide prominence enjoyed by the local dealership if you “become active in your community by becoming involved. Certainly you can make a donation. Better yet, owners should volunteer within the community and encourage their employees to do the same – with paid volunteer time, e.g. two days per year.”

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