You are a rising sales leader in your organization. You manage a small team, or perhaps a business unit comprised of a few small teams. You have one of the most challenging jobs in any organization. You transform the vision and objectives of your company into tangible business outcomes through your guidance of your team. You take all of the heat and you give others all of the credit. Through it all you stay calm, focused, committed to your team and your company, through thick and thin. Real compassionate leadership.
Modern leadership thinking says you should be egoless. You should lead your people with empathy and provide good counsel. You should be their trusted mentor, guide their career development and coach them to success. To upper management, you are the model of competence in your business. You must know your people, your products, and your customers better than anyone in the organization. You are adept at planning, execution, and handling a crisis. Management counts on you to deliver against your plan, and comes to you when the company needs a little extra because there is a shortfall in another area.
There are few roles in your company that are so critically positioned at the crossroads of success or failure. It is a responsibility few would ask for. But you did.
So why do so many in a position of leadership fail to assume the authority that is granted to them?
Merriam-Webster defines authority as the “power to influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior.” At its essence, your role provides the authority to influence those above and below you in your organization. Seize that power.
Many managers make the mistake of failing to find proper balance in the way they command thought in their team members and upper management. They tend to be more sympathetic to one group or the other. And their attempt to influence works in only one direction.
Here’s what I mean.
Phil is a sales leader who is more sympathetic to his manager than his team. He is often asked by his boss to push a little harder, to drive extra sales into the current quarter, to get that big customer to take a larger order. Phil understands that this will have negative effects on the business over the longer term, but because he is so biased toward his manager, he quickly pivots and passes the pressure placed upon him onto his team. His team becomes conditioned to expect the new demands each quarter. Soon the team loses sight of the longer term strategy and focuses more on how to deliver these unplanned volumes. Ultimately, the team’s customers become similarly conditioned to expect that request each quarter. Finally, the customer relationship becomes purely transactional, the team becomes reactive instead of proactive, and the business strategy may be abandoned in favor of survival selling. Phil struggles to deliver against his plan, and his future in his organization is in jeopardy.
Don, on the other hand, is more partial to his team. He’s gone beyond empathy as a leader, and is overly sympathetic to their concerns. He takes in all the reasons why success in the marketplace isn’t occurring, and fails to turn that into effective coaching with his team. Instead, he parrots those obstacles to his manager as the reasons he isn’t making his numbers. He is constantly trying to renegotiate his sales targets. He has convinced himself he is a tireless advocate for his team, and the best manager they could ask for. Unfortunately, nobody on Don’s team is winning in the marketplace. While he may be able to renegotiate his plan initially and garner some bonus payouts for his team, he can’t go to the well too often. What’s worse, management can’t depend on Don to come to the rescue when an extra push is needed. In the planning cycle, Don’s inputs are challenged as sandbagging, and planning becomes a tedious internal negotiation. In the end, Don’s team stops following him because he can’t deliver bonus payouts to them, and his manager loses faith in him as a strategic partner in delivering business results. Don’s future with the company is also in trouble.
There is a better way.
Remember, your company placed you at the crossroads of success and failure. You were placed there not because you were popular with your team or your management thought they could manipulate you to do what they wanted. You were placed there to provide your sales team and your management team with the perspective and judgment necessary to merge business plans and marketplace realities, and produce desired business outcomes. You were granted authority.
In order to be successful in this most difficult role, you need to establish your leadership authority. You need to find the balance. You need to be assertive about how you use that authority.
Before you need it, talk to your team and to your manager about how you’ll operate.
Make your team aware that you will have an ear to their challenges, and your ear will be tuned into turning those challenges into options and actions designed to deliver the results for which you are all accountable. Establish the expectation that most of those challenges will be tackled within the team, through strategies and tactics you’ve agreed upon. Be open to revising those based on the current available information. In those cases when the challenges are bigger than the team, you’ll be the advocate to the organization to drive the change that is needed to overcome them in order to win.
Make your manager aware that you are committed to the company’s vision and as the business owner, you’ll work effectively to translate that vision into solid plans and sound execution by your team. You’ll provide thoughtful input to the planning process. Upon completion of that process, you’ll commit to the plan and can be counted on to deliver. When needed, you’ll ask your team to make the diving catch, to deliver a little extra when the company needs it. At the same time, you’ll provide a coherent assessment of the implications of those requests on your customers. You won’t sacrifice a negative effect on the company’s long range vision for short term sales. In the end, the company can count on you to be an effective business owner, and provide the company clear visibility into the marketplace as a result of your leadership.
In my experience, I’ve seen new leaders miss this step. They jump into their new role with both feet. They work hard to please their team and their manager. Then a crisis hits them from either direction. They haven’t established their authority with either group, so they try to figure it all out in real time. They are ineffective in satisfying either group, may not produce the business outcomes needed, and have made a less than desirable first impression on establishing their personal brand as a leader.
I know because I’ve been one of those new leaders.
Do yourself a big favor. When you are placed in a new leadership position, take a deep breath. Take a step backward. Poke your head above the fray for a moment and look out over your team and upper management. Understand what both groups want to see when they look in your direction.
They see a chosen and trusted leader who has authority to lead.
Take that authority and take command of your success.
Lead well.
(Please share your comments below.)
Click to visit Jim’s book page:
“The Modern Compassionate Leader – 12 Essential Characteristics of the Rising Sales Leader”
Follow Jim on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter.
© Jim Martin and www.jamesmichaelmartin.com, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jim Martin and www.jamesmichaelmartin.com
