Hello, and welcome to the Service Contractors Business presentation of the month. This monthly CD web series represents yet another step in accomplishing Grandy and Associates vision of teaching contractors how to run profitable businesses. Each month, a different national speaker from throughout the service and trades industry shares dozens of cost-reducing, profit-increasing ideas to help you become a more profitable company.
Most people think of a leader as a person with a title. However, real leaders lead when the opportunity arises, whether they have a title or not. A true leader, titled or untitled, will receive ROI, Relationships, Outcomes, and Improvements.
Mark Sanborn will share numerous short stories that are not only entertaining, but have real practical value. He will also share the six qualities that he believes true leaders have, whether they have a title or not. If you have been a listener for any period of time, you’re more than familiar with Mark Sanborn.
He is one of the top professional speakers in the country and has provided a number of presentations for this program over the years. Most of our listeners are now receiving this content either directly through Grandy and Associates website or the website of your local association, manufacturer, or distributor. If you’re listening online, you might want to go to the media list and type in Mark’s name.
All of Mark’s past presentations will be listed. We would strongly suggest that you take the time to listen to his past presentations. Now sit back, relax, and be ready to learn about what it really takes to be a leader.
Back many years ago, a 19-year-old young woman was in college, fully expecting to become a school teacher. But she had a few setbacks. Her boyfriend, who she thought she would marry, broke up with her, and she suffered a minor but early identity crisis.
She wasn’t sure what she was going to do with her life. As it happened, at the same time, a bread truck driver named Bobby Merritt had an unfortunate accident. He’d been working long hours.
He had started the day at 4 a.m., and as a result of this accident, he was hospitalized with serious injuries. And Bobby had grown up believing that if you worked hard for a company, they took care of you. But that didn’t turn out to be the case for Bobby.
He became disenfranchised with his employment situation and decided to strike out on his own. He read the classifieds, and he found that somebody was looking for a managing partner in a restaurant in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he lived, called Sonic. Bobby answered the ad, and his first hire as the managing partner in that Sonic restaurant was a young woman named Barbara Stammer, the 19-year-old college student.
She became a carhop. She worked for 90 cents an hour, but she said that didn’t bother her because she knew her job was to take care of the customer and make them happy. And she said she made great tips.
When Bobby decided to open another restaurant, since Barbara was so good, he asked her to do the training. And she became well-versed with all of the various operations of a Sonic restaurant. And the more she learned, the more she did, the more Bobby trusted her, and she became his go-to person.
She says that for some 15 to 20 years, she never had a title. But she accepted more and more responsibility. One day, Sonic Corporate came to visit the Merit Group, and they said to Bobby, they said, you know, you’ve grown so big, you need a president in an org chart.
So Bobby went to Barbara. He said, would you be the president of my little company? She said, let me think about it. Bobby had a unique closing technique.
A week later at the all-employee meeting, he announced that Barbara Stammer was the president of the Merit Group. Today, the Merit Group operates 130 Sonic restaurants, does $160 million in revenue, employs 5,500 employees, and has some of the highest performance numbers in the entire industry. And if you ask Barbara Stammer or Bobby Merit, they will both tell you enthusiastically, you don’t need a title to be a leader.
As a matter of fact, I would suggest that before we could ever hope to be titled leaders, we must first be untitled leaders. So the question becomes today, what makes for a titled or untitled leader? I want to suggest to you today that a leader, titled or untitled, always increases ROI. You’re familiar with ROI as a financial term, return on investment.
But today I want to use it differently. I believe ROI stands for relationships, outcomes, and improvements. Wouldn’t you like to have everybody on your team focused on leading whenever it was appropriate and necessary to improve relationships, to increase outcomes, and to increase new ideas? I was speaking in Fort Collins, Colorado last June.
Fort Collins was the first city in the United States to adopt the Fred Factor based on my book as a citywide initiative. Now you might have picked up by now that I’m a highly caffeinated individual. That morning, I went into a Starbucks in downtown Fort Collins.
I ordered my double tall skim cappuccino. And then I said to the barista who made my drink, I said, do you sell USA Today? I like USA Today. It’s the adult coloring book of newspapers.
She said, we don’t sell it here. I said, where can I find one? Now she pointed out the window across this busy intersection, and on the opposite side of the street, there were newspaper boxes. She said, I think they sell them over there.
I grabbed my coffee, and as I was heading out the door, she yelled, hey. I turned around. I said, what? She said, be careful crossing the street.
Now I began to wonder, is this the deadliest intersection in Fort Collins, Colorado? I was looking for flat and Starbucks cups just to see. But what impressed me is for just a few seconds, I believe she practiced little L leadership because she improved the quality of my experience and the relationship I had with that particular Starbucks. You say, Mark, that’s fairly insignificant.
Think about this. I’ve drank Starbucks coffee all over the world, but that’s the only Starbucks location that I talk about. See, that’s what I believe leaders do.
They improve ROI. For instance, the store greeter at Walmart was not a management idea. It came from a cashier.
The integrated circuit was invented not by a title engineer, but by an entry-level engineer. The Frappuccino selling millions of dollars each year for Starbucks was suggested by a barista and opposed by corporate for many years. If you can get people focused on how to build better relationships, how to improve the outcomes and contribute ideas that will improve your organization, then you will have an organization not just well-led, but a well-led organization of leaders.
So if you don’t need a title to be a leader, and that is the title of my book that comes out in September of this year from Double A Currency, one of the sponsors of this event, along with the Center for Leadership Advancement, the Terry School of Business, University of Georgia, and also Business Week. If you don’t need a title to be a leader or if you don’t need a title to be a better leader as a titled leader, what do you need? I’m going to give you six things today. In limited time, I’m going to move quickly, but let me give you a complete overview of my forthcoming book.
Here’s the first thing you need. You need self-mastery. You must first master self before you can reasonably expect others to follow you.
One of the questions I’m frequently asked, and I know John Maxwell is as well, what gives leaders credibility? I believe there are three Cs that give a leader credibility. The first is competence. They’re good at what they do.
Nobody wants to follow somebody that hasn’t mastered their art or their craft. That doesn’t mean that you have to be better at what you do than anyone else, but it means you need to be competent. The second C is character.
If competence is how good you do what you do, character is how good a person you have become. But see, you can have competence and character and still not be a leader. The third C is what makes you a leader, and that’s connection.
People rarely change outside of relationship. People change because they want to be more like you. They want to emulate.
You know, Earl Woods, Tiger Woods’ father, passed away yesterday, and on the news broadcast it said that Earl had recognized Tiger’s potential when at the age of 10 months, Tiger was emulating his father’s golf swing. There’s a nugget of wisdom in that, and that we all emulate those that we respect and love. And so the three Cs are character, competence, and connection.
I believe that is the foundation of self-mastery, and that self-mastery is the foundation of leadership. The second thing you need to be a leader isn’t a title, but it’s—well, before I tell you what it is, let me tell you a quick story. I have a friend who lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
A few years ago, he moved into a new home on the edge of a wooded area. He likes to feed birds, so he put a bird feeder up in the backyard and filled it with feed. Before the sun set that night in Kalamazoo, Michigan, squirrels were swinging off the bird feeder, scaring the birds away.
And so Bill is not a violent guy, but for the next two weeks, he tries everything to keep the squirrels out of the bird feeder. First thing he does, he greases the steel post the bird feeder’s on. Figures this will keep little rat-like rodents out.
Two weeks later, nothing’s worked, so he goes to the hardware store. He finds this ugly steel bird feeder. It’s got wire mesh wrapped around it.
It’s called the Squirrel-Proof Bird Feeder, guaranteed $29.95. He buys it, takes it home, puts it up in the backyard. Before the sun sets that night in Kalamazoo, squirrels are swinging off the squirrel-proof bird feeder, eating the feed, scaring the birds away. Now Bill’s really angry.
He rips the bird feeder down, he takes it in the next day, and he demands a refund. He says, this is not a squirrel-proof bird feeder. Guy says, hey, I could have told you when you bought it.
There is no such thing as a squirrel-proof bird feeder. Bill says, wait a minute. You mean to tell me we put people into space on a regular basis? We can communicate anywhere in the world via satellite in a matter of microseconds.
Are you trying to tell me that a rodent with a brain the size of a pea can outsmart our greatest scientists and engineers’ efforts to design and manufacture a squirrel-proof bird feeder? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? Store manager said, yeah. I’m just not taking as much time to tell you. Bill says, why is this? Explain this to me.
Store manager said, sir, let me ask you two questions. First question, how much time have you spent on average each day for the last two weeks trying to keep the squirrels out of your bird feeder? Bill thinks about it for a minute. He says, on average, probably 10, 15 minutes a day.
Store manager said, yeah, that’s what I thought. Second question, how much time do you think the squirrels have spent each day trying to get in? The answer, every waking squirrel moment. I googled squirrels.
Listen to this. Squirrels are unique in the animal kingdom in that they spend 98% of their waking time foraging for food. Squirrels would rather eat than procreate.
They would rather forage than fool around. This is the focus of the squirrel. Honest to goodness truth, a few years ago, I’m telling this story in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
I get to this point, a woman on the third row jumps up and says, I must be a squirrel. But see, still see her face. But see, that’s great news for you and I. I mean, not the woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The great news for you and I as leaders, focused attention beats brains, brawn, and technology every time. Focused attention beats brains, brawn, and technology every time. Leaders create shared focus.
Leaders know their MVP activities. You’re going to hear a lot of great sports speakers today and you’re used to MVP meaning most valuable player. I use it differently.
It stands for most valuable and profitable activities. I hope you leave today knowing more clearly what your MVP activities are. Second thing you need to be a leader is focus.
Third thing you need is power with people. Managers have power over people. Leaders have power with people.
If you do not have a position or a title, it is a skill set that gets people to want to join you and to want to change. And that’s why so much of what we talk about in leadership development is developing people’s skills. Harvard Business Review had an interesting article recently called Lovable Fools, Confident Jerks in the Formation of Social Networks.
And the premise of the article is this. In the workplace, when you need help, you would prefer to go to a friendly, congenial person even if they were less capable than someone that was capable but not likable. And the message was is that if you’re capable, you need to be more likable.
I think an important message for leadership is this. We should strive neither to be likable nor capable but both. We should always leverage substance with style.
And by style, I don’t mean appearance but our ability to be congenial, to be likable. You’re going to hear Tim Sanders talk about likability later today as well. The third key is power with people versus power over people.
Fourth key. You don’t need a title to be a leader but you need persuasive communication skills. Most people tell, leaders sell.
Most people tell. They think that if they can provide facts and figures and statistics, that will be enough for people to make a decision. The height of arrogance is believing that your product, your service, or your idea is so good that it doesn’t need to be sold.
Everybody sells. Now, I notice when I talk to audiences that are not salespeople, there tends to be this resistance to selling. It’s because I don’t think people know what selling is.
I’ll give you a classic definition of selling. I don’t know who originally said it. And if you’ve heard it before, it’s worth repeating.
Selling is helping people make a decision that is good for them. And if you believe that what you offer is good for the buyer, you owe it to them to sell it well. If you have a life-changing message, a life-changing ministry, a product of value, a service of extraordinary quality, it must be sold or else you run the risk of letting your customer go elsewhere for an inferior ministry experience, product, or service.
You’ve got to go beyond telling to sell. That’s what persuasive communication is. The fifth skill, if you don’t have a title, you need to be a leader, is IQ.
Now, I do not mean IQ as measured by the Stanford-Binet intelligence test. Only about 18 to 23 percent of success in life is based on intelligence quotient. I mean IQ standing for implementation quotient.
It is your ability to execute. Leaders are not evaluated on their intentions. Leaders are not evaluated on their desires or their aspirations or their ambitions.
They are evaluated on the results they can achieve with and through others. So the fifth key is implementation quotient. And here’s the sixth key, giving, contribution.
The most overlooked part of leadership in a secular world is the fact that leadership is not about what you get but what you give. It is not about your resume. It is about your legacy.
Most people focus on results only. I’m suggesting leaders focus on relationships and results. Results that increase and improve the quality of relationships.
A few years ago, my friend Charlie Tremendous Jones came to a group of us that we’re meeting and he made a bold announcement. Charlie’s one of the most philanthropic human beings I know and Charlie said, I’ve given up, excuse me, he said, I’ve given up on giving. And we couldn’t believe it.
We knew there was something going on. Charlie was too much of a giver to give up on giving. But he did get our attention.
He was a good communicator. But Charlie went on to explain. He said, you know, in my late 70s, I’ve come to realize that everything I have in life is a gift.
My birth, my time, the talents that I have developed, even those latent talents were a gift. I’ve given up on giving. I have nothing to give for the balance of my life.
I will spend my time returning. Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to go beyond giving, I think the challenge is to return. I hear leaders say, you know, I want to put as much back into the system as I took out.
Folks, if you do that, that’s not contribution, that’s barter. I think the challenge of a 360 degree leader, titled or untitled, is to see if they can out give the blessings they have received in their own life to create a positive asset rather than a negative liability. The sixth key is giving.
As you focus your agenda, as you take responsibility for impacting and influencing others, whether or not you have a title, what is ultimately the contribution that you hope to make? A couple years ago, I got a very sobering phone call from a woman who lived here in Atlanta named Gloria Tibbs. Some of you know Gloria. Gloria was a longtime friend of mine in the professional speaking business.
One of the most vivacious, enthusiastic human beings I have ever met. And I say that literally, not figuratively. Gloria also led one of the most tragic lives of anyone I’ve ever known.
I mean, I could tell you stories that you would not believe. I mean, we all have our own challenges, but if you listen to Gloria’s stories, chances are there are few in the audience today that could compare to the kind of setbacks and adversity and tragedy she’d experienced. Gloria called me a couple years ago to ask me to be a pallbearer in her funeral.
She was dying of a disease, a very rare disease that in the history of medicine, only three females had ever died of. It was a disease that typically afflicted men. And of course, I agreed, but I’d hoped it would be many, many years before I had to make good on my commitment.
It wasn’t. About six months later, I got the phone call that Gloria had passed. And at the memorial service that night, before her funeral, people were sharing memories of Gloria.
And a woman stood up and she said, you know, I never heard Gloria complain. And it was the first time I realized that I’d never heard her complain either, ever. And she said, I never heard Gloria complain, but I got angry because she was dying of this disease.
And I said to her just a couple weeks before she passed, I said, Gloria, with all the bad people, all the evil in the world, why you, why are you suffering this way? And Gloria smiled. She said, why not me? I’m strong. I’ve got faith.
I can take it. Folks, I can’t get out of bed in the morning without complaining. And now whenever I encounter a difficulty or a challenge or an obstacle or a setback, I think of my friend, Gloria Tibbs, we called glow.
And I think, why not me? And when you encounter opportunity and setback and challenge, I hope that as a result of being part of this simulcast, you will not respond in the way that non-leaders respond and say, oh Lord, why me? But instead, you will say, Lord, why not me? I’m strong. I’m tough. I have faith.
I have the skills I need. I can take it. Because ultimately, it’s that, not the title, that makes you a leader.
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