Often I discuss leadership skills, culture, and processes that assure the success of individuals and dealerships. Today we will look at something that involves all three of these in a unique fashion. 

Everyone has a leadership characteristic that others would be able to see and define in them. This could be an employee or a family member that recognizes the characteristic. A friend of mine who has struggled with weight had a spouse that thought leadership was being a dictator. He hated the fact his wife was overweight so spent as much time, effort, and energy as he could to manipulate and shame her into compliance with his desire she lose weight. One illustration of this was that he purchased a treadmill for a Christmas gift. You can imagine the results of this gift were not positive in any way. Would anyone reading this expect after receiving this gift she was more motivated to reduce weight? Would it build up her self-esteem or desire to accomplish weight loss? My belief is this behavior would do exactly the opposite. It would reduce self-esteem and make her more determined not to comply with the husbands desire she lose weight. The great truth in all of this is that until she desires to lose weight for herself no positive results would happen. Until you want to change I believe that frankly you won’t. 

Real leadership understands this and develops a culture that fosters self-esteem and the desire for improvement. When I was a fixed operations director one of my technicians struggled to turn hours and was against additional training because it sent him harder work that was tougher to make time. I took the time to listen and understand his issue in great detail. It was only then that it came out he found a piece of property he desired to purchase that was coming up for auction in three months. He was going to place a second mortgage on his house to bid on his dream property and was struggling emotionally about the stress of additional debt. Pulling out a calculator it was easy to determine he only needed a couple more technician hours sold per day to accommodate his bidding without additional debt. Instantly his technician hours sold climbed dramatically over our conversation. His attitude went from constantly complaining to producing a positive result. 

The reality is until someone wants to accomplish something the result will be less than impressive. This all starts with you. What do you want to accomplish for yourself? How do you want to improve? What changes in your lifestyle are required to accomplish what you want to do for you? I hope you have the courage to start with you and develop the culture that will illustrate the leadership characteristic of caring for everyone. Only then will you see the result benefits all including yourself. Do this for you!

Sincerely,
Rob Gehring, President
1 (888) 205-8718
Fixed Performance Inc.
rgehring@fixedperformance.com

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