Is your team following the leader or playing hide-and-seek?
When I was a kid, one of the games I used to play in nice weather was follow the leader, usually followed by a rousing series of hide-and-seek.
For me, the games would only end when my mom would call me in for dinner, and I’d normally bring four or five friends along to join us.
Just recently, I witnessed the same kinds of games going on at a dealership I was visiting.
This time the games were being played by adults and involved a dealer principal, senior management and departmental employees. Only they didn’t know they were playing. The only thing that was missing was my mom calling everyone in for dinner.
It started with the leader, the dealer principal, laying out the day’s action plan and expectations. At least that is what he thought he was doing.
All of the managers nodded their heads and expressed agreement, ready to go and appeared to be following his lead.
As the dealer principal vacated the dealership property to fill an official dealership function at a local charity golf event, he left feeling on top of the world. His team was empowered and he could not wait to return at the end of the day to learn about their significant accomplishments.
I was minding my own business, but could not help but glance around and watch what unfolded.
The managers all retreated to their offices, closed their doors, stared at computer screens and smartphones and stayed there for what seemed like an eternity.
Occasionally an unsuspecting underling would quietly knock at a manager’s door. In some instances, the manager did not even look up, and in others, a brief conversation took place usually resulting with the employee leaving scratching his/her head.
I had been there for almost three hours, and although there were customers in the service waiting area, I did not see anyone take the time to greet them. And by the way, the coffee pot was empty.
It really was quite an interesting exhibition of hide-and-seek, focused more on the “hide” part of the game.
So what happened?
Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” In my mind, this definition applies to both those individuals within and outside of your dealership environment.
I believe that transformational leaders create an inspiring vision of the road ahead, motivate and inspire people to want to travel down that road, manage their journey by building teams with relevant tools and engage in coaching activities that empower teams to achieve that vision.
In its simplest form, by default, leaders must create followers.
In the example above, it is clear that the dealer principal and his followers are not on the same page. The sad thing is that the dealer principal must believe that they are, otherwise he would not have taken the management approach that he did to start off the day.
The hide-and-seek syndrome can be caused by a number of factors. It could be that the managers do not believe in the dealer’s vision or believe that there will be no negative consequence to not playing follow the leader properly.
When managers do not believe in the vision, the dealership begins to decay from the top.
It takes clarity, consistency and a lot of work to make sure that the dealership vision is understood, not only by managers but also by all employees. The vision has to become part of the way of life — more than just some nice words in a framed plaque on the wall.
In many ways, everything flows from a properly crafted vision. Vision drives the policies and procedures in your dealership to provide an environment and framework for execution.
For example, without a roadmap, how do you craft an effective set of pay plans that deliver the results you are hoping for? Performance-based compensation by definition entices your team to pull in the directions you need to achieve your vision.
Without a roadmap, how do you effectively empower employees and guide them to do the right thing without constant leadership intervention? Without an effective roadmap, how do you get all departments seamlessly working together to achieve common goals?
At the end of the day, as the leader, you want your managers to manage. That means that as a leader you want your team leaders to consistently do the right things, and same with your employees.
True leaders are hard to come by. Ownership does not make you a leader.
It simply states that you own the place.
Barking orders or having a fancy title does not make you a leader.
You only become a leader once people understand and believe in your vision and develop trust in your leadership. Simply giving instructions does not cut it.
Having people believe in the vision, developing trust from your team and empowering them to do the right thing for the dealership within the spirit of the vision is effective leadership.
Ask yourself, “have I given my entire team the inspiration behind the vision and built the necessary trust for them to believe in me? Do I trust my team to do the right thing at the right time each and every time and do I support them by equally respecting both their successes and failures?”
If you can answer “yes” to those questions, then your organization is following the leader.
But if you answered “no” I suspect some of your team is playing hide-and-seek and you still have more work to do.
