Examples in Effective Top Leadership-The Ambassador
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Performance, Professional Growth, Values
Note from Art: This Saturday feature is best served with a cup of coffee and some time to reflect on the leaders that have influenced you in your life and career.
In contrast to last week’s Effective Top Leadership feature where I focused on an example inside a multi-national firm, this one is squarely in the small business category, topping out at about $20 million in annual revenues. While it was not a large firm, this organization and its founder left an indelible impression on customers, employees, suppliers and the southeastern U.S. communities that the firm served.
Like all of these examples that I will describe in this Saturday feature, the passing of time and the fact that I was a temporary observer, in this case eight years as a supplier, ensures that my view is narrow and personally biased. Nonetheless, fourteen years after the passing of this founder, I recall observing him and his business and his employees and his approaches as clearly as if the events all occurred yesterday. In my opinion, the sign of quality is truly the permanent memories that these effective leaders impress upon us as we navigate our own careers.
The Ambassador
I suspect that this individual was larger than life in my mind in part because I was a young professional learning the ropes in an industry, and this gentleman, The Ambassador, was a founding father respected for his tremendous success in the marketplace and revered for his firm but genteel approach to dealing with employees and suppliers.
A new job with a different firm in the same industry put me in a position to work closely with The Ambassador’s firm and on occasion to be in his company in meetings or one memorable personal driving tour of his home town.
As the years ticked by and I forged some close business relationships with the individuals in his firm, I learned a great deal about what made that firm successful and how his leadership practices and ultimately, his presence alone, motivated his employees to strive for excellence.
Observations and Lessons Learned:
-Dress for success…this was a customer focused business from salesperson to technician to receptionist, and I’ve never since walked through a business where people were so well dressed—dark suits, white shirts, a colorful tie and a properly folded handkerchief elegantly protruding from the upper suit-coat pocket. The mirror in the restroom had a little sign on it that said, “Remember, this is what the customer will see.”
-The Demeanor… everywhere you went, people smiled at you, introduced themselves and were happy to explain what they did for the business and for customers. I have no doubt that this was politely drilled into the operating routine inside the firm, with the intent of showcasing the operations and the people to prospective and current clients. It worked. You could not leave an encounter with the staff without thinking about what an impressive and comfortable organization this must be to do business with…regardless of whether you had toured headquarters or the smallest of the regional facilities.
-The People…were top flight professionals and individuals that you were equally comfortable with servicing your business or conversing with at the Sunday afternoon church picnic.
-The Commitment to Training…selling was a profession to The Ambassador, and he had been the best in his day. To take a job as a salesperson here was to commit to this profession with your heart and mind. You would attend sales training. You would attend vendor product training. You studied, you learned and you were evaluated on performance…and on your character as a salesperson. Dishonest and slippery salespeople that didn’t understand how to build lifetime relationships with clients need not apply.
-The Pride…employees used the name of their firm frequently in discussions and it was clear that the name meant something very personal to each of them. As it turns out, almost every employee had a story of how they came to be part of the organization and why they owed their founder for positively affecting their lives. The Ambassador had hand selected the majority of his team.
-The Results…this firm was a leading force in its markets and deeply embedded in the culture of the communities that it served. Getting involved in the community, joining the country clubs, volunteering and becoming visible were both part of the brilliant marketing approach of the firm and representative of The Ambassador’s pride and love of his part of the country. Winning was expected, great sales results were part of the culture and customer satisfaction was part of everyone’s DNA.
The Man:
I only knew this individual from a distance, with a few delightful encounters and what seems like countless tales of his ethics and professionalism from his staff. Perhaps the second most distinct memory of him was his ability to work a room, and thus my nickname of “The Ambassador.”
This gentleman was the best that I’ve ever observed at walking into a room and raising the energy level. I never tired of watching him at our annual conferences and noting his technique. He moved from person to person…starting politely at the top and he carried that attitude of “I’m honored to be here with you,” versus the ego-driven, “I’m here, please pay homage,” that so many lesser senior leaders portray.
The Human Element
My favorite memory of him outside of the many business dealings with the great people in his firm occurred just a few months before his death. I was visiting his main office along with one of my cohorts and everyone knew that The Ambassador was suffering from some form of cancer. As our meeting wrapped up, the door opened and much to everyone’s surprise, he walked in, dressed in his usual dark suit, white shirt and pocket-handkerchief, and wearing his usual “You’re here!” demeanor. While shocked at how the disease was ravaging his physical self, his persona was unaltered.
We went to lunch, enjoyed great conversation about the industry, our firm’s latest developments and his organization’s prospects for the year. Of course, he expected to be at the podium at our annual conference pulling down yet again another top producer award.
After lunch in uncharacteristic fashion, he sent his employees back to the office and invited the two of us for a ride. During the next hour, the Ambassador took us on a personal tour of his hometown, showing off with pride the churches and country clubs and sharing stories of his past and hopes for his firm’s future. I knew at the time that this was perhaps as special of a moment as you can have in business, and I sat back and soaked up the pride that he had in showing off his community.
He died a few months later.
The Bottom-Line
I did not know his family or his personal dealings, but on the professional side of the equation, this gentleman left much more here than he took from his time on this planet. The lessons on running a great business and most of all forging unbreakable relationships with customers and employees are tremendous. The life lessons of treating people with respect, helping people achieve more than they ever expected and teaching people to take great pride in their profession, no matter how mundane, are permanently etched in the minds and on the hearts of the many people that The Ambassador encountered during his walk through life.
Effective Leadership: How Do You Know When You Are Getting It Right?
If you’ve spent time in a leadership role, you know that it is remarkably difficult to get good quality feedback on how you are doing and for that matter, how everyone else is doing under your leadership.
If you haven’t wondered about this, you are either naïve or you are caught up in all of the nice things that people say in your presence. Newsflash: almost no one tells the boss he stinks, when he’s in the room.
Some of the worst leaders that I’ve had the displeasure to cross paths with, plied their evil practices with glee, protected by the cheering throngs around them. Behind their backs however, conversations sounded a lot like a planning session for a greeting party for Caesar during March. If I’m not mistaken, I heard the sound of knives being sharpened.
Alternatively, some of the best leaders and managers that I’ve encountered struggled a great deal with this issue. They heard the same cheers but were curious and concerned enough to wonder whether the cheering was for the title or the person and practices.
Some organizations attempt to remedy this by the use of assessments of various types, and these absolutely can be helpful. Nonetheless, I find assessments a lot like wondering what the temperature is outside on a sunny day by turning on the television. It’s a lot more real if you stick your head out the door and feel it for yourself.
I write and talk and mentor from the perspective that a primary task of a leader is to create the effective working environment. While the pace and energy of the environment may vary depending upon business or cultural circumstances, it is always up to the leader to infuse the environment with the values and practices that support accountability, results, innovation, fair-play and even creativity and innovation, to name a few.
Taking this a step further, I encourage leaders to look for signs in the environment that their leadership practices are working. While this approach lacks the rigor that some HR professionals like about formal assessments, an astute leader can learn to stick her head out the door and get a pretty good feel for the temperature of her leadership practices.
The Seven Indicators of the Effective Work Environment
- Individuals and teams display a great deal of pride, collaboration and cooperation to meet and exceed objectives.
- Failure to meet or exceed objectives is met with healthy frustration that quickly is channeled into lessons-learned and “what we’ll do better” discussions.
- Regardless of individual roles, teams spontaneously assemble to meet specific challenges and then dissolve once the challenges have been met.
- The group becomes self-policing on quality, timeliness and conduct.
- The drive to innovate and create value comes from within the team not from management.
- The teams learn how to fight and to play together.
- Output tangibly supports strategic objectives and improves the ability of the organization to meet customer needs.
While there is a great deal of subjectivity in judging the Seven Indicators, I’m OK with you’ll know it when you see and feel it or when you don’t. The weatherman can give you all of the meteorological reasons behind the sunny day you see through the window, but until you step outside of your Chicago office in February and feel your nose hairs freeze on your first breath, you don’t truly know what it’s like out there. (OK, metaphors aren’t my strong suit!)
The Bottom-Line for Now:
The best leaders are critically aware of their role and power in shaping the environment on their teams and inside their organizations. They are also aware that almost no one will ever provide the boss honest, actionable feedback on performance. I encourage leaders to develop an extreme awareness of what is going on around them as the best indicator of their effectiveness. Pay attention, look, listen and then ask questions and take actions that help people solve problems. Do this enough and that sunny day might just feel a whole lot warmer.
In Search of the High Performance Team
A special note: today is Veterans Day
While we may struggle in business to consistently produce high-performance teams, our soldiers in service of our country live this on a regular basis. Thanks to those who have served, those who are serving and to all who have sacrificed. Our gratitude has no end.
In Search of the High Performance Team
I regularly poll my seminar participants and MBA students on their team-focused experiences in the workplace and I am consistently surprised when very few report ever being part of something that they would classify as a “high performance” team.
The results of my unscientific polling are all the more surprising given that we live during a time when involvement in short-term projects with individuals across functions is a part of the regular work experience of most professionals.
The business literature is filled with articles and interviews from leaders and pundits on topics tied to innovation, business execution and team heroics. Of course, the same companies tend to be the focal point of these articles. It seems like we cannot get enough of the stories of heroics pulled off in companies like Apple, Ideo Google and the few others that seem to make the short-list for the popular business press. It’s curious that those companies got the memo on creating high-performance teams and the rest of us are relegated to reading about their successes.
When I ask about involvement on high-performance teams, there is invariably someone in the audience sharp enough to ask me what I mean. Admittedly, my definition is one of those kind of squishy, you’ll know it when you experience it answers. It’s also a multi-part answer that goes something like this:
- A high-performance team is a group of people that have figured out how to work together to knock down and succeed in pursuit of audacious goals. They’ve learned to leverage their respective strengths, compensate for weaknesses and tap into the power that a group of people uniquely focused on a goal are able to generate.
- High-performance teams thrive on challenges, revel only momentarily in successes and mostly seek the next big challenge. They tend to be paranoid about becoming overconfident and in general, they don’t seek significant public recognition.
- The working environment on this team is comfortable for collaboration, encouraging of disparate opinions and singularly focused on turning ideas into actions. High-performance teams are
self-policing. Values and accountabilities are clear and there is an explicit expectation that membership requires honoring the values. Membership on this team is a true privilege.
- The leader on a high-performance team recognizes that his or her role is teach, to knock down obstacles and to constantly focus on creating the environment that allows others to succeed at high-levels. This leader may be tough, but this leader tends to be quiet, letting actions talk. You generally won’t find this leader to be loud and boisterous, although they may be a great cheerleader as well as a stern disciplinarian behind team walls.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Effective leadership is a pre-requisite for the creation of a high-performance team. Perhaps if more leaders focused on their responsibility to empower others, I would see some more hands raised when I ask about whether your employees have been part of a high-performance team. It’s not too late to start working on this.
How Good Leaders Approach a Recession
While I don’t know too many business leaders that look forward to a recession, I know a few strong leaders that do a remarkable job of working through them from a “glass is half-full” perspective.
It’s not yet clear whether we are in or heading for a recession, but the topic is on the collective mind of people in the U.S. and around the world. If we are heading for recession, the right attitude and the right actions on your part will help your firm weather the storm and even prosper during or shortly after any period of business contraction.
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