Archive for Leadership
If you are a U.S. football fan you watched two teams on the verge of going to the ultimate game in the league, the 2012 Super Bowl in Indianapolis, to be broadcast on NBC, fall short specifically due to one individual player on each team.
The owners, the head coach and the players all rallied around their errant team mate on each of these teams and said, “This is a team sport, no one individual wins or loses a game.”
In the last month or so there have been two incidents where a delivery person has been caught on security cameras tossing fragile packages, where in each case the enclosed items were severely damaged.
If you were in charge of these two individuals, what course of action would you take? Is it easier to fire the employee and make an example by saying “This is what happens to you when you do not follow the rules of who we are and what we are about.”
OR…
Instead would you have the employee go through a retraining and potentially become an in house spokesperson and trainer of what not to do for new employees? How powerful would this message be with the video clip and now the talk by the same person from the video who tossed the package?
The way you handle these situations is much larger than the specific incident. When you are in a leadership role and a position of authority, you must have the leadership skills necessary to understand the breadth and the depth of your actions.
In discussions with a number of PIC (people in charge), it was amazing to me the response to both of the stories described. Many said in regard to the football games, that both players should be dropped off their respective teams as they would now be ‘head cases’ for the rest of their playing days. A large number of the PIC stated they would fire the delivery people as they had the proof they needed in the video. The delivery people did not follow their guidelines, rules, customer care, and they should be let go for cause. In following up with questions about the cost to hire good delivery people and the cost of training, wouldn’t it be worth it to retrain and refocus the individual. The overwhelming responses were that these areas were never considered when violations were incurred in the field. Interesting?
What would you do if you were in charge of the football team?
What would you do if you were in charge of the delivery person?
What do you do right now in your company, every single day which supports your decisions stated above?
Want to obtain the leadership skills needed to be a leader? Become more than a PIC (person in charge) become a real leader, go to: www.johnmaxwellgroup.com/mitchtublin.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ektogamat/
The message on my voicemail this morning had a familiar voice, yet I knew I had never met the person before, Jim Tressel, the current Head Football Coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes. The message said:
“Hi Mitch, this is Coach Tressel, from The Ohio State, would you kindly return my call sometime today or tomorrow preferably between XX AM and YY PM. My private phone number is XXX-YYY-ZZZZ, Looking forward to speaking with you. Thank you.”
Now, I am not a graduate of The Ohio State, nor do I know why this message was left for me. If it were not for the fact it was clearly his voice, my assumption would be this was a prank call. Not knowing why this call was placed to me, I returned the call and found out.
For those who do not know, Jim Tressel has run one of the most successful Division 1 Football programs in the country for many years. His program has produced a number of NFL players. Read more here on Jim Tressel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Tressel.
This is why sports fans were pretty shocked to learn about recent developments, where a few issues are going on with some major, star, Division 1 athletes who are starters for The Ohio State Buckeyes’ Football team. Read more here on The Ohio State sports http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/SportSelect. They must each sit out a number of games this upcoming Fall Season. In addition, the Head Coach must sit out a number of games as well. Basically all you need to know as the details would take quite a long time to cover. All of the details and more are readily available at www.espn.com.
Most people wonder what type of learning or lessons would be provided by the NCAA, The Ohio State or anyone in the football program to reset the mindset of these star athletes and their Head Coach.
On the phone, he was not really specific, however, clearly someone who knew Jim Tressel, had a daughter at The Ohio State currently as a student. While conducting research online for a course on business networking, apparently she came across my blogs on the subject throughout the month of March. During her research, she read where I work with Senior Executives, Competitive Athletes and others on what matters most to them in life among other highly productive and life enhancing topics. It seems she may have been discussing this topic online with her family and this is how Jim Tressel, supposedly, heard about me.
One thing I am not going to do is to jeopardize our potential business relationship. What I will say is this, my workshops on Effective Personal Leadership and The Making of A Champion are perfectly suited for instilling the right thinking and behaviors necessary for success in business and in life for participants. There is really not much more I should say about what we may be working on, where and for how long. The facts are, if we work together, the Head Coach and the players, we will make great strides in the lives of these young men and everyone else who takes part in the workshop.
See the weekly ezine, no joke, each of my newsletter subscribers read this last Tuesday, free, no joke, here: www.thementorguy.com/ezine/March29-2011.html
*This is a fictional story just for fun…Happy April Fool’s Day!*
You found the perfect frame for your photo. It was the frame you dreamed of finding. The plan was set as you already knew exactly where to hang this frame which would house the photos which you printed out from your digital camera. You bought a picture hook when you bought the frame. You have a hammer already to go. Up goes the picture hook in the exact place where you want your new frame hung up.
You place the frame up and onto the picture hook.
There it is as you step back and see…the crooked picture frame hanging there? Okay so you play around with the frame a bit and it always ends up crooked. Not a little crooked – a lot crooked.
Does this ever happen to you in your business?
Do you have examples which you might relate to – similar to this story so far?
Here is what I did when this happened to me recently.
I turned over the frame and placed a ruler on the top of the frame on the back. This was to take a measurement and see where things were right now before taking any action. The answer was not what I expected. The hanging piece was installed one full inch off center! Gathering in the facts of what would be necessary to effectively and efficiently correct this situation, I brought in a few tools which would be needed. With a pencil, I marked the exact location of where the hanging piece needed to be installed.
Unscrewed the piece, redrilled holes in locations which I neatly and specifically marked for the screws and then reinstalled the hanging piece. The picture frame was placed where my daughter needed it to be. This entire process took me less then five minutes.
How does this relate to your business?
What do you do when something is out of whack or just seems out of place?
What if the event announcements are placed in your blog by accident instead of on your events page?
Do you just go in and fix it?
Or do you take the opportunity to be a leader and a manager by finding out how this happened and make it a teaching and learning moment for your team?
