People Power - March 2009

By Scott Humphrey

I’ve often heard that a wise man learns from his experience, a wiser man learns from the experiences of others. Lessons in leadership are everywhere, if you keep your eyes open. Today, our nation, along with the business community and our industry, is faced with problems unlike any in recent times. Leaders will rise above the fray, reassess their circumstances, and make often difficult decisions.

Here are a few lessons that seem particularly relevant.

Real change makes a difference. This is an unprecedented time in our nation’s history, just as it may well be for your business. The current economic crisis would make any transition to power in Washington a challenge to say the least. Yet, it’s during times like this that the opportunity for change best presents itself. This is the time to change the way business is being done. After all, what got you to the point of success will not sustain you there.

One simple yet powerful change you can make is to invest in your store appearance…inside and out. We rarely take the time to evaluate our store from the mindset of a consumer when things are going well. Take time to ask yourself what message your store is sending. Cleaning your windows and cleaning your store doesn’t cost much, gives you a good way to utilize your employees when customers are not in the store, and can make a big difference to your customers, both now and in the future.

Know your team. When you’re seeking to create the right team for your success, make sure you do your research. An interview is a great initial step, but it rarely provides the depth of insight that is needed to make the final decision. President Barack Obama lost some credibility in the first 30 days of his administration when several of the candidates he nominated had to pull their names from consideration due to various mistakes in their past. I’m not saying that the president should have known about these issues, but he certainly should have people around him who can find out the background on his nominees before he faces a crisis of credibility. Here are some things you can do to make sure you have and hire the right employees:

• Have each candidate interviewed by several people in the store. The weight of several interviews makes it more difficult for a candidate to play the part to get the job.

• Don’t trust your feelings. Whether or not you like someone has very little to do with their qualifications to do the job.

• Do your background research. There are several companies that you can use to find out background info on potential candidates. Companies like Equifax will do a background check to determine such things as criminal record, credit history and employment history. This is money well spent, since it is estimated that the cost of replacing a bad hire is one and a half times the cost of that person’s annual salary.

• Re-interview your existing employees. Just because you hired them right doesn’t mean you are fully utilizing them. People change, so ask yourself if you have everyone on the right seat on the bus. These one-on-one interviews give your people an opportunity to open up and share what they would like to be doing. Here are two good questions you can ask when reinterviewing your current staff:

1. If you could have any position in this company, what would it be and why?
2. If you could change anything about this company, what would you change?

Create incentives that challenge all employees, especially your top performers. Putting together an effective federal stimulus package is a huge challenge and the $787 billion bill has drawn fire from many quarters. Proposals to help homeowners with their mortgages have been equally controversial because some believe they promote the wrong behavior and reward people who don’t deserve it.

The lesson for us is to evaluate and make sure that our compensation, incentive and bonus plans are encouraging the behavior we want and need to see to accomplish success. This is the time to change your current pay structure to accomplish new and better things.

Have the courage to do the right thing. I’m sure it’s challenging to bring together two very divided parties. Very few have had the ability to mend these severed ties. Yet, in the midst of conflict, leadership always emerges above the noise.

Several years ago, the movie “Dave” came out, based on a presidential look-alike who was forced to become president after the real president had a stroke. For a while he was just a puppet, serving for a powerful presidential wannabe. But, as leadership always does, something rose up inside of this everyday American that desired to do what was right. He held a conference of leading government officials seeking to find money to fund what he considered an essential children’s program. As he went around the table and disclosed where each of the officials was spending money, they would first defend their reasons, then look at the camera, and ultimately give the president what he needed.

In your daily work environment there are also opportunities for pointing out negative behavior that is likely influencing the performance of other employees. Here are the steps I recommend for dealing with this:

1. Go to the individual in private and reveal in detail what you have noticed. This must not be hearsay. It must be how the behavior struck you. Lay out a time frame for when you want to see improvement and let them know you are there to help.

2. If the behavior doesn’t change, take one other individual with you who has also been impacted by the negative behavior and again approach the guilty party. Be careful again not to pile on. Your purpose in both of these instances is to improve the person, to hold them accountable to a new standard.

3. If the person continues to act in an offensive manner, make the fact that you have addressed their behavior with them public to all involved. This may happen at a staff meeting, but should only happen if you have done steps 1 and 2.

I’m sure there will be many more lessons to learn as we move forward through this challenging time. My challenge to you is not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Let’s learn from them. Look around you each day for examples of leadership in action and then take them back and apply them to your work, community, home, and personal life.

Print the Article