Great Leaders Establish Guiding Principles
I’ve seen leaders who choose the "Don’t do anything without my approval" approach. It doesn’t take long before team members stop contributing new ideas and solutions. Sales drivers respond the most negatively to this environment because in their mind, it slows them down. When a driver feels like they are being held back, their attitude suffers. Both formal and informal leaders begin to reach their breaking point and it spreads quickly amongst the team.
Observe your leadership team for a couple of days. Are decisions being made based on guiding principles or is everyone asking for permission?
Creating an environment for success begins with the establishment of guiding principles. These principles position you and your team to make confident, high quality decisions. When everyone knows where they’re going, what’s acceptable, and what’s possible, you create a culture where people don’t have to ask for permission before they take action. Over time, you will develop into a team that thrives on good judgment, speed, efficiency, and results!
What guiding principles does your team live by?
Our guiding principles are quite general, but understood by all of us.
For instance, we emphasize personal help to other team members. We operate without territories and we work online too. It's better for us all if we give and give and give to each other, without expecting return, instead of protecting our "territories" our "leads" our "information". When our organization prospers, we all prosper.
Another attitude we foster as a team is to be moral and ethical individuals. When the individuals are well-behaved and upstanding salespeople, the organization prospers and our image, our brand, is enlarged favorably. We're encouraged not to make claims that are not supported with clinical studies, for instance.
Our mantra is "never quit". We support one another through master mind groups and other types of support groups... conference calls and webinars.
Our leaders, and I, as a leader, don't hold each other down, even though we teach a particular system of building the team. We allow our members to think outside the box and we applaud them for doing so, especially when the results are phenomenal!
Our team is not a traditional salesforce within the J O B sector. We are direct salespeople, independent business owners, entrepreneurs...a grass roots movement outside the traditional workforce (network marketing). Many of us are employed in the traditional way, while bringing in several other hefty streams of income.
But in our entrepreneurial roles, we never even think of asking permission! Freedom is a wonderful thing, but it takes a special kind of mind to be a driver, a driver that's actually free to do as she sees fit.
It works well. There's no ceiling on our earnings...
I guess that's why we're highly motivated.
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Do what is right for the business!
Do it as a team!
Get the right results!
Mark Herbert
New Paradigms LLC
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Nice going. Great Article. This is so very true, all too often. Squelch a team members creativity and self confidence and you soon have no team
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Very impressive point. I've studied entrepreneurship -- and entrepreneurs -- for years and this is THE deciding factor for success. If a company can't hire a team of people they trust to do a good job and make good decisions, it's the company's shortcoming and they will never be able to grow beyond the leader's time and resources.
Great entry!
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I do not believe in the theory that says" do it, and if wrong, then apologize. It is better than asking for permission every time." thats why there is a hierarchy on a business organization.
One of the best qualities for a leader is to be a good listener and consider everyone's opinion, but at the bottom line, he is the one who makes the decisions.
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Building an effective team requires more than just bringing together a group of people. The more you
know about the team’s strengths and weaknesses, the better you can balance your team and focus
your management efforts for positive results. There are several considerations that make up a team that requires evaluation of at least the following top key factors:
• Control • Quality orientation
• Composure • Team player
• Social • Positive expectancy
• Analytical • Ambition
• Patience • Precision
• Results orientation • Emotions
A proper assessment of a team and it's leader outlines team members’ characteristics compared
to the team leader’s characteristics. This gives the
team leader insight into the role he or she must
play on the team to achieve team objectives. A properly designed and fitted team makes all of the difference.
This is my profession.
Bob Getz HR Solutions USA 817-371-7894
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I think the greatest successes come from when you let your team know that it is their business too! Tell them to think in an entrepreneurial manner and they will. Micromanaging and strict guidelines are a good way to alienate those under you and create an unpleasant work environment. It doesn't just trickle downhill either! Resentment goes both ways, those under you resent you causing high turnover, thus creating a rift between you and your superiors, damaging productivity, and creating "that" reputation, you know the one where no one wants to work for you anymore. I have worked in those environments and the sad thing is that those companies never grow!
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Doyle,
This is bang on with me. I have had previous bosses like that and yeah it did limit me, and stop me from making ideas. I am the type of guy that will ask for help if I need it. So, on the flipside if I am not asking for anything, everything is fine.
Regards,
Mark Secko
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A team is at it's strongest when it is sharing a common goal and vision. The art of leadership is to create a vision using all available information from their team, data, their market, experience and their customers and to pragmatically work with their team to develop the optimal strategy with buy in and full participation from the team.
The days of the carrot and stick passed many years ago and new styles of management are needed to adapt to a dynamically changing market internationally where the consumer or 3rd party customer is pro actively involved with both the innovation and strategy dynamics within both the market and the product or service provider.
Web 2 and the next generation of mobile communications will facilitate this. Companies will not be successful acting in isolation of the market place in which they exist. As the structure of international markets change through globalisation, then so conduct will need to evolve and innovate in order to drive performance in increasingly internationalised and globalised markets that become less differentiated. The differentiation frequently will lie in the brand and within the holistic customer experience within the value chain and less by actual product and service differentiation.
It is for this reason that the power and image of brand will become linked around the experiential dynamics and this is all about people and people management. It is how sales people represent and deliver the brand, image and belief to their customers based upon their own passion for what they do that will create this differentiation at customer level. Sales involves the entire customer experience from field sales, customer service, after sales service, finance and all customer interface departments and activities.
This requires not orders from management. This requires a culture throughout the organisation that encourages team work, a shared vision, full interactive participation between teams and team members and a culture which above all focusses on, serves and prioritises excellence towards the customer.
The 80-20 rule is a truth and it costs 30% more to capture a new client than it does to retain and existing one. The even better news is that satisfied customers tell other customers and external viral expansion can be a snowball down a mountainside, but only if customers are satisfied and the key to this is staff that are satisfied.
For this they need to be fully involved at all levels of strategic and operational activity and frequently the ideas and innovation that they can generate feeds back into strategy development and evolution in a dynamically changing and consolidating market place.
Management are gate keepers and focusses to take the best and implement it in a team orientated and customer driven organisation.
Best wishes
David
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Doyle,
As the economy tightens we will see team members in leadership roles move to “management modes” verse continuing to lead their team through this difficult time.
I was fortunate to have sales leadership training at Frito Lay, and what they taught us was to be ; firm, fair, and consistent in the leading of your team.
Sales leaders must have a strong vision and not seem worried or in panic mode as their team will follow their lead.Our job is to prepare our team to win.
I am a strong advocate of servant leadership. When your team or members of your team are struggling, it is a great time to look at the process, positioning and tools. One of the first things I do to understand the market condition my team is facing is conduct win/loss calls. I meet with prospective clients, current clients, and prospects currently evaluating our solutions. More often than not the market changed, yet we were continuing to approach it in the same way.On average 50% of lost sales is not about the product or service. Find these issues and refocus your team.
I choose to empower my teams and provide boundaries within which they can work. If they feel they need to go beyond one of those boundaries it prompts a discussion and often a learning moment.
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