Servant Leadership: Why?
To lead, Managers Must Serve
Throughout history, the servant has been subject to contempt. Here is a person whose chief function is to take care of the busywork so that those who are far superior can concentrate on the big, important stuff. Kind of pathetic, when you think about it.
Let’s think about it some more, though. On the surface it seems that while the servant exists to serve, the leader exists to be served. But like many either/ors in life, this is yet another false dichotomy. The fact is there are no pure leaders and there are no pure servants. Everyone is a hybrid, everyone engages in both activities, and neither is a due subject for contempt.
And the best sales management leaders lean heavily toward the service end of the spectrum, as do leaders of all kinds.
To learn more, I invite you to read Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership by James Sipe and Don Frick.
Sales Effectiveness: The Source of Your Sales Problem May Be in the Roots
We’ve been talking about a paradox that I’ve observed in some the best sales management leaders–they’re leaders AND they’re very dependent. In short, they are interdependent, pulling the best out of each person on the sales team.
Here’s a great illustration. California’s Coast Redwood, Sequoia Sempervirens to scientists, is the world’s tallest tree. In fact, the current record-holder, found in Redwood National Park in 2006, soars 379.1 feet into the wild blue. To put that in perspective, picture a 38-story building, a massive undertaking of metal and manpower. The mighty Coast Redwood, however, manages with a few minerals, sunlight, and water. Plus the help of those around it.
If you were to dig around the base of that tree – which you wouldn’t, because they’re protected, but let’s just say you did. Instead of the massive roots you’d expect to find in such a tall tree, you’d see relatively tiny roots only one inch in diameter, about the same as a human thumb. Further, those roots don’t dive deep into the ground for support, as you’d expect, but travel horizontally, and rather shallowly, through the soil.
Think about this: Here you’ve got a tree as tall as a good-sized building with small, shallow roots. If we were to build something so tall with such a minimal foundation, it’d last only until the next stiff breeze. Yet these trees routinely reach 600 years of age – sometimes over 2000.
The secret? The answer lies in that same shallow root system. If the tree had to rely on this alone to stand, few would, and certainly not for millennia. But Sequoia Sempervirens interlocks its roots with others of its kind, forming a supportive network that’s kept some of them upright since biblical times.
Now, let’s go back to Clint Eastwood and effective sales management leadership. If a Coast Redwood took the Eastwood approach to leadership – standing tall with help from no one, thanks very much – it’d suffer the same fate as our high-rise with a weak foundation, and sooner rather than later. No matter how strong this tree was internally, no matter how much it felt its fate was in its own hands (or limbs, in this case), it would topple just the same and never reach the great height that is its true potential.
But the Coast Redwood leverages the resources around it. While it doesn’t stand on the shoulders of other giants, it gains foundational strength from them. And they from it. Interdependence.
The Sales Lesson: This is the paradox for great sales leadership: To be strong, you must also be dependent. You must be dependent but internally resourceful, as well.
So how do you pull this off? Actually it’s quite simple – you listen. You constantly gather insight from those around you. Their collective wisdom, their creative ideas, and their inspiration become yours, and yours becomes theirs. Together, you build an interlocking network that enables your business to stand when others fall. Like the tallest of the Coast Redwoods, you lead. You show the way to greater heights. You let your internal strength inspire the others. But at the root of it all, you collaborate with them, taking strength and giving it, creating a majestic and towering sales organization that withstands the test of time.
Other experts say that these sales management leaders are demonstrating high Emotional intelligence.
The Sales Question: How much do you listen? How effectively as you accessing the rich resources of your sales team?
Servant Leadership: Strong Sales Leaders Are Also Dependent
Here’s another sales management leadership paradox I’m observing: The strongest sales leaders are also the most dependent.
When people think of a strong sales leader, they often picture the tough guy or lady, the one who stands alone, needing nothing and no one, leading by the sheer force of their will. Like Clint Eastwood, these singular sales management powerhouses are always asking you to make their day, knowing full well that their day’s going to be great no matter what you do.
Then there’s the more humble kind of leaders, the sales leaders who remind you that if they’re seeing farther than others, it’s because they’ve stood on the shoulders of giants.
In Hollywood, and in life, you get both types. The Eastwood sort of leader is more dramatically interesting, and that’s why that type dominates the screen. But the humble leaders, the ones who recognize that much of their strength comes from their environment, are more effective, and that’s why this type quietly dominates the sales world; they are the real transformational leaders or servant leaders.
But if you get strength from outside yourself, doesn’t that make you too dependent, too subject to the whims of cruel fate?
Not at all – actually, the opposite is the case. The strongest sales leaders, the ones who stand the test of time, depend most on the wisdom, insight, and inspiration of those around them. And in turn, they share their own resources with those they lead. Together, dependent on each other, they are individually strong. Take away that interlocking dependence, however, and everybody falls down, including the sales management leader.
It sounds like the characteristics of someone with an incredible high Emotional IQ, or EQ. Or, someone who’s a Servant Leader, doesn’t it? For some practical insights on how to DO Servant Leadership, you’ll find value in reading Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership: Practicing the Wisdom of Leading By Serving.
The Sales Leadership Question: Which type of leader are you?
How to Improve Sales: Disciplined Creativity
Sales Process and Sales Discipline as the basis for Creativity
As I work with successful, high performance sales organization, there’s a theme: a balance of sales process and innovation.
Any musicians out there? I started taking piano lessons in second grade and continued through college. Talk to any music professor and you’ll hear that the eight-note musical scale is responsible for what we know as music. Without that framework, that discipline if you will, there can be no creativity or innovation (to hear this in action, listen to a child who has no knowledge of scales bang away on a guitar.) After all, what would creativity and innovation be working on, exactly?
Sales Management Processes
The same goes for sales management leadership. Regarding sales management, in particular, well-defined sales management processes for recruiting salespeople, coaching, motivating, and ensuring business accountability are critical if you want anything more than random, unrepeatable successes. But at the same time, creativity is crucial for growing company sales. Without it, your processes are frozen and can’t evolve to meet changing conditions. And because you’re stuck in the past, you won’t be able to repeat the successes of the past.
Robert J. Herbold reflects on this paradox. Herbold joined Microsoft’s team in 1994 following a stint at Proctor and Gamble. At P&G, discipline was the guiding principle, and Herbold was trained to stick to the script, to follow procedure. Microsoft’s ways, however, came as a big surprise. While preparing for a board meeting in the way he’d been taught, Bill Gates himself told Herbold that this was unnecessary. The board meeting didn’t require an agenda. Herbold was exhilarated. Here was a chance to stimulate creativity, to find out-of-the-box answers to out-of-left-field problems. But it was also a chance to generate chaos and fail miserably.
Herbold was hired to find the ideal balance between discipline and creativity. And that he did in spades. The operational discipline he introduced, combined with innovative creativity, was reflected in Microsoft’s enviable growth in the years following. Summarizing his work during that period, Herbold observed that successful organizations – the virtuosos and the shredders of the business world – maintained a delicate balance between imposing discipline from the top and delegating authority to encourage creativity and innovation.
The message must have sunk in at Microsoft. Steve Ballmer, who took the reins from Bill Gates, puts it this way: “We define the measures. You put all your creative juices into growing them.” Few would argue Microsoft’s track record, so clearly there’s something to this creativity-plus-discipline stuff.
The Sales Question: How about you? Does your team have the discipline it needs to make music that sounds like music? Does it have the creative freedom to make music that sounds like a masterpiece? Do you maintain the disciplined processes that make true creativity possible?
If you do, anything is possible.
Sales Management Program – Dealing with Paradox
Sales Management Paradox: Creativity requires Discipline
In my work with sales management programs, there are some practices that seem contradictory. Or, are they really complimentary?
Here’s a paradox that I often observe with sales management leaders. A sales team without discipline, without organizational structure, is doomed to painfully unrepeatable successes and lamentably regular failures. However, a sales team without creativity is…well, it’s doomed to exactly the same outcomes but for different reasons.
If you’ve ever listened to a jazz musician, shredding away on their instrument, firing a fusillade of notes into the air or squeezing a life story from a single held tone, you know how breathtaking it can be. The creativity and passion is almost palpable, and the expression of complex musical ideas seems effortless and off the cuff.
Now, rewind 20 years. If you were to look in on this virtuoso, you’d find them practicing scales, endlessly, up and down, down and up, in eight note sequences. For that matter, it’s a good bet you’d find that musical genius still running the same old boring scales today. And you’d probably ask yourself, “Why, when they can fly, do they walk?”
The answer is that true creativity requires a structural framework. Think of it this way: if creativity is rule-breaking – and it often is – there must first be rules to break. If everything is wildly creative, obeying no order whatsoever, then nothing is creative – all you have is chaos.
The same is true for sales management leaders. To tap the creativity of our sales teams, we need to provide clear processes, i.e. measurable goals, scorecard, selling system, selling methodology, etc. Without the structure, without sales process management, your team won’t realize their greatest potential.
The Sales Lesson: Without proper sales processes in place your sales team will never reach total sales effectiveness. Creativity and Discipline must go together.
The Sales Question: Where does your team need development, with creativity and innovation? Or, discipline and structure?
Strategic Sales Planning: Synergize Management and Leadership
Action Steps to Synergize Sales Management and Leadership
Although management and leadership are undoubtedly two separate functions, doing one without constant reference and deference to the other results in an organizational vehicle that’s either careening out of control or stuck at an eternal stoplight. Here are four actions steps to help you keep to the road and get to your destination as quickly as advisable:
Understand your sales forces’ strengths and weaknesses. You may have a semi-clear picture of the individual strengths and weaknesses that each member of your team possesses, but that picture can – and usually does – change. What was a strength in the early part of this decade may now be a weakness and vice versa. This is a big part of the vision + resources = employee empowerment equation. Without a deep understanding of individual strengths and weaknesses – something you’ll need to shift to your one-on-one management gear for – you’ll never know what your resources really are and never realize the benefits of the corporate synergy. If you don’t have the time or internal resources to establish your sales effectiveness, look to outside help – it’s that important.
Review your Strategic Sales Plan regularly – Know that business opportunities and risks are subject to change. In many sales organizations, there seems to be a tendency to analyze an opportunity and the associated risks, then carve them in stone. If you could somehow freeze all the initial conditions present when you set out toward your destination, you’d be fine. But you can’t – and you won’t. Instead of brainstorming opportunities and risks only at the outset, plan regular rest stops to gather new information and adjust your course accordingly.
Know employee motivations. Adversity brings out the best in some people, but not everyone, and what inspires one employee to greatness may leave another flat. If inspiration + coordination = teamwork, you’ll need some inspired ideas and excellent employee coordination. Again, if you don’t want to go this one alone, seek an expert in the field, sales motivation is a must.
Understand what you shouldn’t do as much as what you should. There are countless ways to navigate your business toward its sales goals, but there are only a few ways that won’t take you through the badlands or through ultra-busy metros. Before you travel and during the journey, identify areas of the map – actions that are counterproductive to long-term business and sales strategy, tactics that undermine employee morale in favor of short term profit, etc. – that you’ll avoid, even if doing so seems to make the trip longer. In the end, doing the right things in the right way is the framework upon which all the other synergies are based.
The Sales Lesson: In any Sales Organization you need synergy between management and leadership, without that your Strategic Sales Plan will fail.
The Sales Question: Have you considered using the services of an outside sales professional to give you an objective opinion about your company?
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