“Help, I’ve Fallen. Is There a Leader Around Who can Help me get Back Up?”

There may not be an “I” in Teamwork, but there is definitely an “L” in Teamwork if you plan on winning.

Whether you’re dancing, playing sports, walking the dog or managing; to succeed, somebody has to Lead.

Without Teamwork, you can’t win in today’s market. Without Leadership, you will never have Teamwork.

I got two Akitas (dogs) a few years ago. Both six weeks old, from different litters and we picked them up the same day. We didn’t really know much about the breed except they’re very smart and tough to train, so we hired a trainer. The first thing he said was, “You got two at the same time?” and then laughed.

He said Akitas were smart, which made them hard to manage. If you’ve ever watched The Dog Whisperer, you already know what the trainer’s real goal was: teach us to lead, so the dogs would follow.

They learned quickly, especially the part about who is in charge. The trainer kept saying over and over again, “If you want good dogs, you have to set the rules and boundaries, you have to work with them every day and you have to enforce the rules 100 percent of the time.”

Like a lot of managers who are reading this now who received some training and had good intentions, we started out right. We did our daily training, most of the time. We developed the rules and made the dogs follow the rules, most of the time. I’m sure you already see the problem; he said 100 percent of the time and we were at best in the 60-70 percent range.

Our dogs almost destroyed our house until we took charge 100 percent of the time!

Like our house, aren’t sales destroyed by salespeople every day, too, from lack of proper training, lack of rules (processes) and lack of discipline by management?

We all know salespeople can sell more, hold more gross, get better CSI and follow up to sell more. But they can’t and won’t do those things without more effective management (a leader).

To be a good Leader, you first have to be a good manager of people, and of their activities. That means you have to hire the right people, set the rules, train them properly, track what they do, keep them motivated, set goals and keep them headed in the right direction.

Sure, it would be great if everyone who worked for you was perfect, but they aren’t. You have some great people and you also have some who aren’t, and you have some who will never let you make them successful.

If you haven’t read my “Recover & Grow” book yet (free book offers below), there are three groups of people in your dealership...

• 25 percent are destroyers who will do their best to disrupt any effort to train or develop the teamwork you need.
• 25 percent are builders who can’t wait for you to train them and give them the chance to contribute even more.
• 50 percent are followers. They’ll go with whichever 25 percent group management caters to in the dealership.

Leaders are fearless. Weak and untrained managers are fearful so they let the destroyers control the department.

Understand that leadership is like crowd control, it’s about controlling the issues important to your growth.

Leaders simply take away any options to do things differently, but they do it without becoming dictators.

You need a team in today’s market that wants to grow and succeed, and you need leaders to develop that team. Tip: Get to class and let’s start developing the leader hidden in every eight-car manager.