Building Unity and Loyalty with Your Best Resource
My personal assistant is tough as nails, so when I looked up from my desk and she was standing in my door with tears running down her face and a highway patrolman standing next to her, my stomach went into my throat. In an instant I was worried about my wife and my kids. What in the world was happening?
It is amazing how fast your mind can process situations and visual stimuli like that. The patrolman said he was there to deliver some really bad news. There had been an accident, a head-on collision, which took the life of a young mother and her little girl; only the younger child, a baby, had survived. This was the family of a young man who worked for me. We asked the officer if we could tell him, which he said was fine, but he needed to be there to make sure the sad news had been delivered. My heart was beating wildly, and my head was spinning. How in the world can you tell a young man that his wife and child are gone? I could hardly breathe. We sent word up to his department for him to come to my office and that was when we discovered he wasn’t in the building. Where was he? Man, this was getting messy.
Finding his leader, we figured out he was working with our live events crew that week and so he was over a hundred miles away setting up in an arena. Because the wreck was so big it was going to play on the evening news, so the officer was insistent the young husband get the news very soon. We chartered a jet to go pick him up and got it in the air in a matter of minutes, so that by the time we could get ahold of our young man the jet was almost there. We called a leader on-site and had him plus a few others gather in a hotel room with our young husband. Sadly we had to deliver this horrible news over the phone but then sent him straight to the airport with a leader riding the jet home with him for comfort. We got his family and pastor to meet the jet as it landed so he had as many people as possible who loved him around him in that horrible time of need. That was one of the toughest days of leadership that I can ever recall.
How did we make decisions quickly and wisely in such a stressful situation? How did we know what to do in that wild crisis without hesitation? Simple. We handle all of our interactions with our team, in any situation, based on one simple rule: The Golden Rule. I know I have mentioned this before, but you have to learn to treat other people like you would want to be treated if you want loyalty and unity in your company. I knew exactly what to do: everything within my power to minimize the extreme pain that life had brought to our young husband.
Do you know why most employees aren’t loyal to their company and leadership? Because their company and leadership aren’t loyal to them. My wife always told my children growing up that if you want to have friends you have to be a friend. If you want loyalty you have to be loyal. Too many people in business have abandoned sight of the fact that their team members are humans, they are people. Too many people in business have become so shallow that they are merely transactional, not relational. The people on your payroll are not units of production, they are people. They have dreams, goals, hurts, and crises. If you trample them or don’t bother to engage them relationally you will forever struggle in your operations.
“Treat others as you want to be treated” is a core EntreLeadership principle. When you would expect to be praised, praise. When you would expect a raise, give a raise. When you would need training, train. When you would need some grace, give some grace. When you would expect a reprimand, give one. When you would feel competent and want the dignity of being left to do the job, back off and let the competent execute.
Quality people—really all people—have a need to be treated with dignity. If you want your team to buy into your dream and execute with every ounce of passion they have, you must be caught caring about them personally and treating them with dignity.
We hired a superstar marketing guy to reel in some large relationships. We clearly defined his Key Results Areas and set up his compensation so that when he landed a whale or two he would make some great money. About six months into his employment he brought in a one-million-dollar deal. He got creative with a client who was nibbling and sold them on something completely outside of what we hired him for. We realized, and so did he, after the deal was signed that his compensation structure specifically said he would not be paid on deals outside his area. The decision was made instantly to pay him anyway. This poor guy had been in bad companies for so long he had become cynical and could not believe that some company would actually pay him money that was not technically due. He cried when he opened his check; it was awesome.
If you want your team to buy into your dream and execute with every ounce of passion they have, you must be caught caring about them personally and treating them with dignity.
We made that decision instantly. How? That is what I would want someone to do for me if I brought them a million-dollar deal. Do you think this guy is pumped? Sure. Do you think this guy will be loyal? Of course. Do you think anyone anywhere anytime can say something bad about me within earshot of him and not have a fight on their hands? Loyalty. Possibly best of all he will be motivated, highly motivated, to bring in some more million-dollar deals, because he knows I have his back, he will be paid. Sadly some shortsighted companies do the exact opposite. They save the money they would have paid him but lose his trust, loyalty, motivation, and creativity. All that loss for a saved commission check is really bad business.
http://www.entreleadership.com/loyalty
Loyalty comes also from fanatical integrity. Let your yes be yes and your no be no. When you commit to pay someone, pay them. Never miss payroll. You’d do better to lay people off if your company is struggling than to have them work there and their checks not clear. Tell the truth in tough times and in good times. Be transparent about how decisions are made and what the team is facing.
Don’t cut pay when someone is producing; you will cause them to dislike producing. A company cannot attract and keep quality, talented people when you mistreat them and those around them.
Integrity also means consistency. If you react the same way every time in every similar situation, you don’t have to put your company values in a brochure, because your team sees them lived every day. The more predictable you become on matters of principle, values, and culture, the more you grow leaders and team members who you can delegate to. You can delegate to them because they will know what to do by watching your consistency.
If you react the same way every time in every similar situation, you don’t have to put your company values in a brochure, because your team sees them lived every day.
Loyalty is born and a quality culture occurs when the EntreLeader follows through in a predictable, positive, and proactive manner on every issue and opportunity. People only allow themselves to be led when they feel valued and when they are treated with dignity.
Know your team. Know their kids’ names, their wives’ names, and their dreams. Find out their story—everyone has one. Visit the funeral home, the hospital, and never miss a birth. When you have the power or the connections or the money to help them live their lives better, always do it.
I have reached the point with the size of our company where there is no logistical way I can be that deep in every team member’s life. That does not mean it doesn’t get done. My leaders at every level need to make really sure they stay in touch with their individual team.
If you think I have gone off the deep end, I have not. I have a goal to get to the end of my life and have one of the great joys be not only winning at business but how I won at business. None of us get to the end of our lives and think we should have done one more deal or made one more dollar; when your life draws to a close you realize what is important: people and how you treated them.
Your team is watching, and just like your children, they would rather see a sermon than hear one anytime.
http://www.entreleadership.com/wounded
One of the largest, strongest horses in the world is the Belgian draft horse. Competitions are held to see which horse can pull the most, and one Belgian can pull eight thousand pounds. The weird thing is if you put two Belgian horses in the harness who are strangers to each other, together they can pull twenty to twenty-four thousand pounds. Two can pull not twice as much as one but three times as much as one. This example represents the power of synergy. However, if the two horses are raised and trained together they learn to pull and think as one. The trained, and therefore unified, pair can pull not only twenty-four thousand pounds but will hit thirty to thirty-two thousand pounds. The unified pair can pull four times as much as a single horse. They can pull an extra eight thousand pounds simply by being unified. But unity is never simple or easy.
There are numerous examples from the basketball court or the football field of superstars who are jerks and bring disunity to a team due to their self-centeredness. A group of superstars is seldom a dream team in sports. It usually looks more like a large day care, with temper fits and messes. Most sports fans and most athletes yearn to watch and play with the unselfish player. It is amazing how a well-coached team of unified B-level players will often beat the big names, if the big names don’t have unity.
In business we often make the same mistake. We can mistakenly believe that if we just hire talented people we will win at business. So some companies gather a group of talented people and among them are several jerks. Because there are some jerks in the bunch no one wants to pull together, and the disunity more than offsets what the talent brings, and together they lose. I would rather have a group of passionate, unified B and C players than have a group of disgruntled superstars. My little band of highly unified folks will win almost every time.
The 1980 “Miracle on Ice” story is proof of the principle of unity. When assembling the 1980 Olympic ice hockey team, Herb Brooks, the coach, turned away some of the most talented ice hockey players of the day. His comment was that he wasn’t looking for the best players, he was looking for the right players. Herb wanted players who would play with heart, play selflessly, and thereby create tremendous unity. That unity in a band of no-name players pulled off one of the greatest victories in sports that year by winning the gold medal, against all odds.
Unity, like so many other things in this book, is seldom found in companies but is always found in great companies. Unity, like so many things, must be intentionally created in your culture. People don’t naturally unify; they must be led to do so. To create a culture of unity you have to get your team to buy into a cause bigger than their selfish motives. Unity can be created only when the team not only knows the company cares for them but also cares for each other. Your team will only be unified when they are willing to give up personal glory or gain for the good of each other and the good of the cause. This phenomenon is so rare that when we find a group that is unified we stand back in awe at the beauty of it.
People don’t naturally unify; they must be led to do so.
As I have fought to build unity in our team I have discovered, the hard way, what destroys unity. I have found that if we keep these five enemies of unity away from the gate of our company we become increasingly unified. Unity brings us a great work environment where productivity, customer service, creativity, and the resulting profit more naturally occur.
Poor communication causes a lack of unity. This is so important that we spent the whole last chapter on it. To recap, if the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, disunity, anger, and frustration will fill your company. A team is only a team by definition when they are unified, they are on the same page. If you want a fabulously unified team and all the good stuff that brings, you will have to work unbelievably hard to create and maintain high levels of communication.
Lack of shared purpose causes a lack of unity. If the team doesn’t share the goals of leadership and of each other, there isn’t unity. Again, this is so important that I opened the book with dreams that lead into vision, into mission, and into goals. Shared goals create unity. There is no unity where there isn’t a common goal, a common mission, a common vision, flowing from a common dream. If you want a fabulously unified team and all the good stuff that brings, you will have to work unbelievably hard to create a common vision and goals.
I can’t stand gossip. I have done it and I have seen people do it, and gossip is gross. In a company culture gossip will destroy all the good things you work so hard to create. There is no possible way you can have unity with a group of gossips. The very nature of gossip is the opposite of unity. Instead of pulling people together, gossip pushes them apart. Everyone knows inherently they can’t trust a gossip.
Gossip about the company, or about leadership, is a particularly evil form of disloyalty. And it is suicidal when the person gossiping is hurting and running down the place and the people who pay him so he can feed his family. Why do people want their own company to fail?
I hate gossip so badly that after putting up with it at the start I decided to have a no-gossip policy in our company. You are not allowed to gossip and work for me. If one of my leaders or I catch a team member gossiping we will warn them once, then we will fire them. Yes, I have actually fired people for gossiping, and I will again. Gossip is evil, it is insidious, and it is contagious. Stamp out gossip if you want unity. Proverbs says, “Whoever guards his mouth and tongue keeps his soul from troubles.”
People who work on our team will have frustrations. They will have problems, and they will get upset. If they don’t have any of these things happening we probably don’t need them. Most of our hires are brought in to grow something or fix something, which means problems either way. When they get bumped around or frustrated with leadership or a team member, they need to know how we define gossip so they can avoid it. We know team members are going to have problems. It is how they handle them that matters.
Problems or gripes are fine, but they must be handed up to leadership. Problems or gripes that are handed down or laterally are by definition gossip and run the team member the risk of being fired. We had a man who was constantly struggling with his leader. They clashed and both were talented. He made the mistake of sharing his frustrations with the sales support person in the group. We warned him once, and then he decided to share with two other people, so he doesn’t work on our team anymore.
The sales support person can’t do anything to help him with his frustrations, so that is gossip. I had a young lady who was processing orders whose computer was trash. IT had done a poor job getting it fixed or replaced, so she had a legitimate gripe. But she made the mistake of sitting with our receptionist and venting for fifteen minutes as to how management didn’t care and IT was incompetent and how could Dave let this go on. My receptionist has never fixed a computer or budgeted to replace a computer, so she could do nothing to help this stupid little gossip. If she wants her computer fixed she should try seeing someone who can make that happen.
Hand your negatives up and your positives down. Otherwise it starts to sound a lot like gossip.
Gossips are usually the most small-minded of people anyway. People of greatness don’t have time to gossip. As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Small minds talk about people, mediocre minds talk about events, and great minds talk about ideas.”
The good news is that quality people also hate gossip. Once you have a culture that openly hates gossip and values the awesome environment created by a “gossip-free zone,” the whole team will self-police, which is a big help. If a new or errant team member begins to gossip, other team members will remind them they will get fired for that and “none of us do that here.” I have had that happen many times in our company and it is really fun to watch people bend to positive peer pressure. If you want a fabulously unified team and all the good stuff that brings, you will have to work unbelievably hard to keep gossip out of your organization.
When some of your team members have a disagreement it has to be resolved. Unresolved disagreements paralyze people. There are particular levels of maturity and some personality styles who can’t stand conflict. Conflict is debilitating to them and must be resolved. Conflicts that remain unresolved grow and grow, and kill unity.
Unresolved disagreements remain unresolved when the EntreLeader doesn’t know they exist. Teach your team to either resolve conflict or openly talk about it with leadership so they can get some help solving the problem. One of the beauties of the high and low points on the weekly reports is conflicts will show up there, giving you the opportunity to help solve the problem.
One week when I was reviewing the team’s weekly reports, I saw that one of our sales support ladies had as her low point “I hate it when people talk down to me.” My first thought was, Oh, grow a backbone and get over it. But then I started to think about what she was really saying. She was really asking for help, so I had her leader check it out.
It turns out that this young lady, who was pregnant, was upset about a comment a fiftysomething coworker, who was having a bad day, had made to her. Let’s see… a pregnant woman and a lady in her midfifties—no hormones involved there, right? We sat them both down, the older lady apologized, they both cried, and they went on to become great friends, with the older lady even mentoring the new mother for many years. That only happened because leadership stepped in and didn’t let an innocent disagreement go unresolved.
I don’t require everyone on my team to like each other or be best friends off campus. But I do require they respect each other and agree that while styles may be different we have shared integrity and shared intent. We will sit and talk until we can get to that point.
Sometimes disagreements are unresolved because leadership is chicken or doesn’t want to be bothered by the drama. Part of leading a team is helping them grow together, otherwise they will grow apart. EntreLeaders must have the courage to deal with conflict and must bother with the drama. Some days I have felt like I am running a beauty parlor with enough drama for an Academy Award, but it must be dealt with if you want a quality culture that is unity based. If you want a fabulously unified team and all the good stuff that brings, you will have to work unbelievably hard to make sure all disagreements are resolved.
John Maxwell says, “Sanctioned incompetence demoralizes.” When a team member is incompetent, for whatever reason, and leadership won’t act, the good team members become demoralized. Why should I work hard if he doesn’t have to? becomes the prevailing thought in the whole company. Team members who are motivated will become the exception rather than the rule if you tolerate misbehavior.
Team members will often take their direction from the way you treat other team members. I have struggled between being kind to people, giving them every chance to turn their performance around, and on the other hand letting their lack of performance spread through the whole place.
I had an assistant in the company who was just never going to get to where she needed to be. She just didn’t have the mental tool set to rise to where she could perform with excellence in her role. However, she was one of the nicest people I have ever met. Everyone loved her and wanted to see her win. Because she was so well loved and so nice we let her lack of performance go on for a year too long. Finally we started getting the sense that our team was rolling their eyes when her name was put on a project. They really didn’t roll their eyes, but there was this sense in the air that everyone knew she was getting a pass.
I finally realized that even in the nicest of circumstances, when we allow someone to stay who isn’t excellent we aren’t doing anyone any favors. We also didn’t have specific clear corrections to give her; it was more this looming black cloud of incompetence.
What happened when we finally gently let her go was amazing. That move sent a message to the whole team that leadership is actually competent. And the message was also sent that while we love you, you still have to perform with excellence.
Like we talked about in chapter 7, the only time our company allows team members to function at a less-than-excellent level is when we are extending grace for them to get through a personal problem. We are so gently tough on performance that if someone is underperforming the rest of the team automatically assumes not that leadership is chicken or incompetent, but instead that we are extending grace for a time of healing.
I think most of us who lead make errors by being too slow to act on issues of incompetence, or too fast and harsh. Finding that balance is tough, but sometimes leadership is more an art than a science. Most leaders have a tendency toward being too slow or too fast to act. Find your tendency and move two steps in the other direction; then you will see your team culture balance out.
If you are too quick to fire someone due to performance issues you can spread a spirit of fear and you will struggle to build loyalty. If you are too slow to fire someone due to performance you become viewed as weak or out of touch with operations. Working this balance to never sanction incompetence and yet give the team member every opportunity to make it is one sign you are becoming a true EntreLeader. When you do this you will see real unity grow along with loyalty. If you want a fabulously unified team and all the good stuff that brings, you will have to work unbelievably hard to avoid sanctioned incompetence.
If you value unity, then fight, and teach your team to fight, these five enemies of unity. These enemies are so strong that any one of them can cripple your business and two of them can cause you to fail. To the extent any one of them has a foothold in your culture they are stealing your fun as a leader. They are worth fighting to the death.
1. Lack of intention and thoroughness about communication.
2. Lack of intention and thoroughness about goal setting and shared purpose.
3. Gossip.
4. Unresolved disagreements.
5. Sanctioned incompetence.
So few companies have unity and loyalty that when your company does, it automatically stands out in the marketplace. Great talent stands in line to join your team because the culture becomes the stuff of legend. Great customer service is a natural occurrence in a company that has these values. However, I think most of all, this type of culture is tremendously satisfying to lead. You will not have all perfect days, but you will enjoy a richness of soul in your business that few ever experience.