At times I visit companies and experience an overly gung ho mentality and a strong focus on results and achievement…to the detriment of the human beings involved in delivering the results.
Does this kind of leadership work?
Yes and no.
Yes…because it bullies people into behaving in specific ways which creates compliance to follow the rules exactly. They know what is expected of them and they do it.
No…because it stifles human characteristics like empathy, creativity and flexibility which are vital in sales.
Let’s dig a little deeper!
Harsh leadership is often driven by emotions and ego. It’s the leader’s way of feeling powerful, strong and in control. This only really suits one person…the leader.
While things are going well the sales team are likely to comply in order to be part of the achievement/success but what happens when the approach of the dictator leader stops working?
- A competitor brings out a new, better and cheaper option that takes the market place by storm.
- COVID lockdown
- Your production levels or quality drops and your customers start complaining
- Think of any issue that you’ve ever had to overcome as a sales team…there are many!
You suddenly find that the well-trained approaches stop working because the context has changed.
Your sales people don’t know how to behave in this new context because you haven’t trained them for this context or to think for themselves…you’ve trained them to follow your orders.
I’ve lost count of the Sales Leaders that call me in to develop their sales people to be more proactive without realising they have trained it out of them!
Leadership for growth
If you want a team of sales people that can function without being on a lead or following your orders and instead have an armoury of skills and a winning mindset to generate sales when you’re not there you MUST create a growth mindset environment. One that focuses on developing an environment and culture where growth and success can thrive.
This means that as a leader you need to have an eye on results, behaviours, mindset and what each person needs to be the best version of themselves.
The crucial skills:
- Empathy…to deeply understand each individual in your team
- Kindness…to do the right thing for each person’s development and this is often not the easy thing
- Courage…to have those tricky conversations
- Patience…to let each person try things their way and scuff their knees as many times as needed to gain the experience that enables their growth
- Humility…to be comfortable to say I don’t know so let’s explore this together
- Strength…to have their backs when things are tough
- Coaching skills…to use every day whenever required to grow the people in your team
Simon Sinek has a great analogy that I live by as a leader and as a people developer…
“Every person in your team is a son or daughter whose parents have placed them in your care for the next phase of their development.”
Quite a responsibility eh?
It’s one I take very seriously…I hope you decide to take it seriously too!
Until next time,
Leigh 😊
PS If you want to Sales Mindset Leaders in your organisation then please do get in touch to discuss our Leadership Development options!
Thanks for the great photo Hans-Peter Gauster 😊
