We just finished another extremely successful series of webinars with many lessons and take aways. Last week’s webinar we focussed on Developing Leaders including Division Center Leaders.
Here are the most salient points, thanks to the speakers, my friends Shawn Edwards, Mike Bogan and Jason Craven.
- Use peer groups. Create peer groups internally (if your firm is big enough), or join one externally Also, our speakers said that any size company can act as its own peer group, by creating accountability and open communication among all divisions. (See below under Learning Opportunity, save $1,000 when you join my Leader’s Edge peer group this February.)
- Learners earn more. It sounds cliche, but all 3 companies focused on reading books as a group and constantly pushing their knowledge of their people forward. (This is why we read so many books in my peer groups! Learners are earners!)
- Open-learning environment. Leaders need to be able to freely own up to their own mistakes without punishment, so they can learn from them and learn best practices from others.
- Clear company culture. By getting super clear on your culture, you are super clear on the type of person that will fit in and succeed. Can you recite the values you are looking for in your next hire?
- Hire talent. Look outside the industry if need be, and hire the best, especially for critical leadership positions where industry hires may be limited. Use profiling tools to help you hire the best.
- Employ mentors. Because mentoring is key to growing new hires; someone other than the boss of the new hire. All the companies had a structures process for mentoring new hires. (Do you?) They had an intentional path that all new hires took.
- Clear systems. Leaders succeed when the processes are clear and well known. Who creates them? Let any employee improve on or help create your systems. Hold everyone to the same system, and your leaders will thrive.
- Clear metrics. One speaker, ironically with the largest company, had just 4 simply success metrics: Ability to grow, Client Retention, Safety and Profitability.
- Give ownership. Two of the 3 companies give actual ownership, all 3 make their employees feel like owners. This is your company, not ‘mine’!
- Employ outside resources. They all use plenty of resources for developing leaders: books, courses, Ted talks, Fred Pryor, Dale Carnegie, Sandler, Stephen Covey, Sean Covey, etc.
- Set up to succeed. A branch leader should be able to know all his/her employees and clients. Give each manager no more and no less than they can handle.
I would like to thank all panelists for making this Contractor Conversation Series a great learning experience, for me as well as my audience. And thank you to GREENIUS for sponsoring, as well as LMN and LM Magazine.
Take action: Share this list with your leadership team, and get feedback from them. Have them rate you on how well you do these 11 tips.
