You expect your sales team to role-play, your technicians to train their on their technical and communication skills, and your call takers to work together to keep a 90% closing ratio. It’s understandable why you would have those expectations. It seems like common sense.
By your team making the effort to improve themselves, it helps the company, and they become more valuable. It eventually will lead to more money and opportunity. Everyone in your company should be working on becoming better at their jobs every day.
So what about you?
You likely are still a top-of-the-line technician. No one can sell your company with more passion then you, and you haven’t left a service customer confused since you were fresh out of tech school. But these are no longer your jobs. If you own a smaller company, the man in the mirror may do one or even two of these jobs, but your job today… is to lead.
When was the last time you read a book on leadership? Have you ever thought of a leadership workshop? Why expect something from your team that you are unwilling to do? Will you not also become more valuable and earn a higher wage?
In business, you’re either growing or dying. There is no staying the same. If you think that you can keep things as they are—and everything will be all right—you’re wrong. When your competition grows, you shrink. That is not staying the same.
Think about this: What do your people think when they see your competition grow? The most likely reasons a person will leave a job have nothing to do with money. If you want to keep your great people, not only do you need to give them an opportunity to advance, but you need to give them the support and training to get there.
Your job as an owner or manager simply stated is this: Develop leaders in your organization. So study leadership. Read the books not just once, but continually. Find a leadership workshop or get a coach or mentor. Great leaders are always willing to help other leaders because it always comes back to them.
Soon you will have improved your leadership capabilities and will be able to identify leaders in your company. You can pass along your insight and wisdom, encourage them to self study and learn about leadership, and ultimately they too will become a leader—and they will want to help others in your company improve themselves. When you have a company filled with self-motivated people your company