Being a leader is often a challenge because of the workplace environment we find ourselves in.

Being a leader is like being a parent. For example, if one parent stays at home, it can be more difficult to discipline the children due to being around them all the time.

Most of my readers are in the automobile business and are often around the same people for 12 plus hours a day.

Most dealerships have systems and processes in place designed to create focus and discipline. Even under the best of circumstances processes are constantly breaking down which contributes to poor performance and a poor bottom line.

The reality is that it’s much easier to run a large dealership than a small one. As a leader in a large dealership, you can delegate much more and separate yourself from some of the personalities that can cause the breakdown of discipline.

Do not take that to mean that you don’t need to be involved, friendly or whatever. It just means you have to separate yourself from the emotional side of the equation.

If you are in a smaller dealership the task of separating yourself from the staff is even more daunting. I’m often amazed that leaders feel that they can socialize with staff members and still be able to properly manage and lead them.

How can you:

1. Have lunch with the same people all the time?
2. Have dinner with spouses and members of your team on a regular basis?
3. Have after work drinks with staff members?
4. Party with staff members?
5. Attend sporting events with staff members?
6. Play golf on weekends with staff members?

Any of these in and of themselves is not a bad thing. But, to do any of this with the same person on a consistent basis does nothing but create problems for you and them.

Aside from the fact it makes it difficult for you to manage them (let alone fire them) it creates a perception of favoritism that will destroy morale and team spirit.

Never forget, perception is reality. If you perceive that I’m a jerk, then I’m a jerk. The only way for that to change is for me to work toward changing your perception of me.

The burden is on me, not you. That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs

I’m often reminded that we should remember that business is about blocking and tackling.

It’s about doing all the little basics that we know we need to stay focused on. Even more important is to remember it’s a contact sport.

It’s how you contact with your team and your customers. A head football coach realizes he can’t be successful if they are only communicating/contacting with the offensive line personnel.

The most successful coaches connect with all the members of the team. They make it a point to have “touch conversations” as frequently as possible.

If you’re in the automobile business let me suggest that you start each day in the service department having a brief chat with every technician, porter, and recon person you can find.

From there work your way through to the service advisors, parts department, administration office and lastly the sales department.

If you want to improve your ability to win, just remember it’s a contact sport.

The more you contact with your team and your customers the more you get to run up the score. That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs

Recently, actor Michael Keaton was featured on CBS Sunday Morning. At the end when discussing his success he said, “The key has been my good fortune.”

There’s something to be said for good fortune or good luck. There is little doubt that either can play a role in one’s journey toward success.

Good fortune is often the result of good decisions, one of which is surrounding yourself with good people.

When asked what’s been their key to their success, people in leadership positions will often say that the key has been their ability to hire good people.

Of course there’s some truth to that once you have “arrived,” but to “get there” you have to have the good fortune of deciding who you are going to associate with. Who will be in your circle of influence?

Sometimes it’s the good fortune of where you decide to go to work and who you decide to work for. Sometimes it’s the good fortune of leaving a group of people who aren’t smart enough to let you have a seat at the table and who aren’t feeding you the skills you need for success.

Your good fortune is really all about you. Who you choose to be around? Who you choose to influence you?

I’ve had great good fortune to be influenced by some really great people. It could have been just the opposite.

I could have created my own bad fortune by allowing myself to be around bad people. Good fortune starts with you. That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs

Answer: The person answering the phone, the receptionist and your cashier. Yep, that’s who they are.

I realize phones are old fashioned, but believe it or not people still use them.

I know cashiers are going out of style, but most dealerships still have them.

And of course most dealerships have a receptionist.

Since the odds are pretty good that you have all three, you need to have the best people in those jobs that you can hire. You need to train them well and you need to pay them well.

They are the front line. They are the back line. They are key members of the team that smart leaders never overlook.

A. If you haven’t thanked them lately, then you should.
B. If you haven’t sent them to a seminar lately, then you should.
C. If you haven’t given them a raise lately, then you should.
D. If you haven’t let them know how important they are to your success, then you should.
E. If you haven’t bought them lunch lately, then you should.

If you aren’t acknowledging the three most important people in your organization, then who are you acknowledging? That’s all I’m gonna ask, Tommy Gibbs

The older I get, the more I see parallels between sports and business. Business, without a doubt, is the most competitive sport.

The most successful businesses and successful business people are always trying to score. There are some businesses and some individuals that have more money than they will ever spend, but they still try to score.

Be it good or bad, besides developing people, money is one of the main ways of keeping score. Why bother to play if you’re not trying to score?

And since you’re going to play the game, you may as well run up the score.

In all sports, you have coaches. You have a head coach, you have assistant coaches, you have position coaches, and specialty coaches.

Even Tiger Woods has a coach. The best of the best have coaches.

Here are some questions for you:

1. Who’s coaching your sales staff?
2. Who’s coaching your management staff?
3. Who’s coaching the general manager?
4. Who’s coaching the dealer/operator?
5. Who’s coaching the Owner/CEO/President?

Coaching for you and your team may come from a number of sources:

1. You go to 20 group meetings
2. You go the NADA Convention
3. You go to your State Convention
4. You go to seminars and workshops
5. You hire consultants

If you’re not doing any of these how will you ever run up the score? That’s all I’m gonna ask, Tommy Gibbs

I’m often asked by managers and others what it takes to be successful in business and how to move to the next level.

They will often imply that they do a good job, but feel frustrated by the lack of forward progress.

Doing a good job doesn’t ensure you of anything except you get to keep doing a good job…until someone else comes along who can do it better and then you may be looking for another job that you can do a good job at. It takes more than doing a good job to get you noticed and to the next level.

21 Tips For Getting Noticed

1. Come early.
2. Stay late.
3. Come to work to work.
4. Stay busy.
5. Seek information and education.
6. Understand you are owed nothing.
7. Do more than you are asked.
8. Be tenacious.
9. Steal someone’s ball and run with it.
10. Force the passion. You may not be in the perfect job or perfect place. It’s up to you to make it the perfect job at the perfect place.
11. If you do these things, someone will notice.
12. If you get noticed, you have a ladder to the top.
13. If you don’t get noticed or this isn’t the place for you, then you are developing some skills that will eventually get you noticed.
14. Do it at the next place and the next place until you get noticed.
15. Be so good that you can’t be denied.
16. Pull others up and up you go with them.
17. Set an example for others.
18. Get up, walk around, be nice.
19. Be enthusiastic, even on your worst day.
20. Dress up to the next level. Don’t dress like the rest.
21. Your answer to the question, “How are you doing?” should be “I’m living an amazing life.”

Thanks for noticing. That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs

One of the issues management often struggles with is doing the right thing vs. doing the right thing based on the rules of what’s fair to the bottom line.

Most dealerships have written or unwritten rules primarily to protect the company and at the same time keep peace with the troops.

Though well intended it doesn’t always work out so well.

One issue that often comes up is a split deal. A split deal can create as much hate and discontent as almost anything that goes on in a dealership. Its short-term and long-term effect will often cost you money and additional sales, and can destroy morale.

Every split deal has to be determined on its own merits, but I’ve often paid the full commission to both sales people. I’m not suggesting you do it on every deal. You’d go broke doing that, but on those deals where it’s obvious that we would not have sold the car if not for the efforts of both sales people then it might just be the right thing to do. Especially if you know it’s going to create a burr in both saddles.

The alternative is to pay half deals and now you have two sales people sideways. When sales people get sideways they can’t perform. When sales people get sideways they stir the rest of the team up. When the team gets stirred up by a negative issue we all lose.

Doing the right thing can even be fun. I went to Office Depot the other day to return an item and to pay for an item that they forgot to charge me for on Monday.

When I got to the counter I said, “I have two issues to discuss with you. I’d like a refund on this item I purchased sometime back.”

The cashier said you can’t get a refund because too much time has passed. I said, “There’s a time limit?” He said, “It’s an electronic item and you have to bring it back in 3 weeks.” (It was a USB port extension, $10)

I said, “OK, I don’t think it’s a good rule, it’s still in the box, but no problem.”

He had a bit of an attitude and said, “Let me check on it” or something like that…very grumpy about the deal…he then agreed to give me my money back. I was very gracious and thanked him.

Then I said, “My second issue is I was in yesterday, purchased several items, you waited on me and you didn’t charge me for the printer cartridge I purchased. I want to pay you for it.”(It was a $70 item) His expression. PRICELESS!

It’s also PRICELESS when you do the right thing that in the end helps you sell another unit. That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs

Below are 40 fundamental traits of a good leader. These are traits that everyone should seek to emulate regardless of their position on the totem pole.

There are 3 ways you can use them:

1. Evaluate yourself. How’d you do?

2. Evaluate the person above you. Your supervisor, department head, team leader, dealer, GM, person in charge, etc. (You don’t have to tell them, just tell me.)

3. Have someone you work closely with or someone you supervise evaluate you.

If you do all three you’ll become a better leader.

My Top 40 Leadership Traits:

1. Leaders have pep in their step
2. Leaders are disciplined
3. Leaders arrive early, stay late
4. Leaders have a sense of humor
5. Leaders are consistent
6. Leaders follow the golden rule
7. Leaders don’t put themselves above others
8. Leaders don’t show favoritism by hanging out with subordinates
9. Leaders can be counted on
10. Leaders answer their own phone
11. Leaders return phone and email messages promptly
12. Leaders dress the part
13. Leaders show respect for others regardless of position or social status
14. Leaders say thank you…a lot
15. Leaders cut to the chase and get to the point
16. Leaders listen because they know others have great ideas too
17. Leaders use the word “We” vs. the word “I”
18. Leaders pull others up not put them down
19. Leaders don’t work in fear of their job; they coach people “up” to take their job
20. Leaders do what they say they are going to do when they say they are going to do it
21. Leaders pick up after themselves…and others
22. Leaders know what they know and they know what they don’t know
23. Leaders take the blame when something fails and they give others credit when it works
24. Leaders communicate then communicate some more
25. Leaders help establish vision and direction
26. Leaders remove obstacles to production, not create them
27. Leaders attack a problem now, rather than letting grow it into a cancer
28. Leaders seek ways to simplify not complicate
29. Leaders seek knowledge; they learn, then they coach others
30. Leaders make the tough decisions now, not later
31. Leaders don’t tolerate a fearful workplace
32. Leaders are enthusiastic
33. Leaders set the accountability standard
34. Leaders have controllable passion
35. Leader detest the statement “We’ve always done it that way”
36. Leaders accept mistakes as a part of progress
37. Leaders see a problem as an opportunity to “fix it”
38. Leaders guard the processes but recognize when they are not working
39. Leaders are optimistic realists
40. Leaders lead from the front and they push from the rear

The review is over, that’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs

There’s a big difference between complaints and whining. I can’t stand whining. But, I love complaints. Complaints are an opportunity to fix something. I love fixing stuff.

When dealing with customer complaints I like to ask the customers, “What is it you want us to do to make you happy?” I try not to tell them what I’m going to do unless I already know exactly what they want.

Regardless of what they say they want, a good leadership technique is either to give them all of what they want or nothing at all.

Let’s say you have a dispute about a service bill. If they say they don’t think they should be charged anything and you offer up 50/50 you have just wasted your 50%.

They may very well take it but they are still mad, they hate you and they are going to say ugly things about you and your dealership to their friends and relatives.

I have another leadership tip I want to share with you along these same lines and it goes like this: If you get a complaint, you own the complaint. Seems easy enough, doesn’t it?

What I mean by that is, you will often get a complaint but it’s not necessarily your responsibility to handle it, so you hand it off to the person or department whose responsibility it might be.

A good leadership technique for you, and for you to teach your staff, is that whoever first got the complaint “owns it.” Meaning they should take the responsibility to follow up on it to ensure that the person you or they handed it off to has handled it.

These are two very simple leadership disciplines:

1. When it’s your responsibility to fix it, give the
customer everything they want or nothing at all.

2. You own the complaint. Follow up and make sure it is taken care of.

That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs