Are You a Leader or a Manager?

Your answer could determine your success.

Are you a leader or manager? Your answer could determine how successful you will be in getting results from your people. I was fresh out of college, and had finally landed my first real manager job as an assistant manager for what was then a little-known company called PetSmart. It was a busy day, and the parking lot was full of shopping carts. I approached our stock clerk and politely asked him to go retrieve the carts, to which he immediately informed me he was tired of walking out to the parking lot, and that he was not going to go get the carts. What do you think I did? If you thought I immediately fired him or sent him home for insubordination, sorry, you are wrong. I immediately raised my voice, and I asked him again to get the shopping carts. He, in turn, got upset and asked me to “make him.” So, I did what any upstanding manager would do and put up both my fists and challenged him to a fight. So, there I was, in the middle of aisle 10 surrounded by bags of Science Diet® dog food with the pet turtles staring at me as I challenged my employee to a fist fight. Somehow, I must have fallen asleep in the management class about how to get results out of people. Or maybe I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. In either case, I was not acting like a manager — certainly not a leader.

If I could do it over again, I would not have let the employee get under my skin. I would have asked him to meet me off the retail floor and explain to him why his behavior was unacceptable. I would have shared with him the importance of having shopping carts available for our customers, and how this impacted the store’s success, customer experience and, ultimately, his job and promotability. 

In 2009, I started my career in the vertical-transportation (VT) industry. I worked very closely with the branch managers. I recall one branch manager who was recently assigned an underperforming branch; in less than one year, he successfully turned the branch around. Branch repair sales were off by 60%, and client cancellations were trending in the wrong direction. How did he turn the branch around? He consistently applied three key leadership strategies:

• Create a vision for success.
• Provide resources.
• Recognize and reward success.

Immediately after taking over the branch, he started conducting daily “sales huddle” meetings. The sales huddles lasted no more than 10 min each day. In the meeting room, he hung a board showing the daily sales totals broken out by each revenue line. Each person working at the branch — from field technicians to sales and office staff — knew what the sales results for the branch were daily, including the number of client cancellations. He also made sure to communicate to the team what the branch’s expected sales targets were for the week, month and year. 

He encouraged everyone to offer their input on how the branch could hit the sales goals. Some of the barriers were easy to resolve, such as providing new computer software so the branch administration team could work more efficiently with emails and the company’s ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) systems. Other resources included providing additional training for the sales team on how to prepare capital plans. He would conduct “ride alongs” with each sales representative, then offer constructive feedback on what they could do differently to close more proposals, drive more repair sales and get ahead of potential customer complaints before the client cancelled their service contract. 

Each time a new maintenance contract was awarded, or a repair sales order was processed, he made sure to recognize the salesperson publicly in the daily sales huddle. When the branch administrator dispatched a service call promptly and made sure to follow up with the customer to make sure they were 100% satisfied, he would be sure to tell the branch administrator, “Thanks for doing a great job!”

Each day, he continued to create a vision for success and provide resources for the team to be successful. Further, he recognized and rewarded the team when they achieved small and big milestones. That year, branch repair sales doubled, 40% more capital plans were presented, client cancellations were reduced by 75% and the branch exceeded its overall annual sales goals.  

If you want to get the most out of people, consider the following tips:

• Focus less on your own success.
• Be an expert at inspiring people to achieve their highest potential.
• Celebrate the small and big wins!

I once heard a quote in a leadership training seminar: “A pat on the back is only a few vertebrae removed from a kick in the butt.” Managers manage people, but leaders inspire people. Now go inspire.