Believe it or not, there is something more important and scarce than ability. It's the ability to recognize ability. One of your primary responsibilities as a top leader is to successfully identify leaders within and outside of your organization. It's tough, critical work. Below are nine essential traits any leader must possess:
1. Integrity. Look for this first. Flaws in integrity cannot be ignored. They will render a leader ineffective every time. Leaders with integrity problems will be the weak link in your dealership. Integrity is nearly impossible to fix if it's not already in place. There are no "Three Day Character Workshops."
2. Positive Attitude. Don't even think about hiring or promoting someone into a leadership position with even a lukewarm, much less a negative, attitude. I am amazed at bosses who hire or promote leaders with marginal attitudes. Negative leaders smother their people. They are pollutants who contaminate every environment they enter.
3. Obvious Strengths. If a candidate doesn't have any glaring weaknesses, but doesn't have any obvious strengths, don't hire them. All you'll get is mediocrity. Why would you want to put anyone in charge of anything if they didn't possess some obvious strength or ability? There are no great "safe" choices. I can describe "safe" choices for you in three words: average, average, average.
4. Great People Skills. Leaders with poor people skills soon have no followers. A leader has to like people, must be concerned about them, be able to understand them and make positive interaction with them a top priority. In today's job market, followers simply won't follow leaders they don't like or respect for very long. They don't have to. If your leaders can't laugh, tell them to smile. If they can't smile, tell them to grin. If they can't grin, tell them to stay out of the way until they can.
5. Personal Growth. Growing leaders grow people. Growing people grow organizations. Leaders who have hit a personal growth plateau will flat-line your organization. They will be a lid on organizational growth. If on a scale from 1 to 10 they are a 6, they won't keep, attract, or hire any 7 to 10's. This is because more often than not, people attract who they are, not what they want. With today's rate of change in our business, non-growing people will get run over. Ask potential candidates to describe the books and tapes in their personal growth library, or seminars on sales, management, or leadership they've been involved with in the past year. If they can't be specific and if the list isn't long, then smile, thank them, and lead them to the door.
6. Proven Track Record Peppered With A Big Mistake(s). Proven leaders have proven track records. They've also made some big mistakes along the way from which they've learned. If a leadership candidate doesn't have an impressive enough answer when you ask him what his biggest screw-up was, don't hire him unless you want a play-it-safe maintainer who'll never help your organization reach its fullest potential. If you interview or hire a mediocre candidate from another dealership, without a proven track record, don't expect him to change in the U-haul on his way to your place.
7. Self-Discipline. People who can't run their own lives can't run your dealership. Self-disciplined people are willing to pay the price and delay instant gratification for long-term growth and benefits. They prepare themselves and their teams to succeed. They have control over their emotions and reactions. When things are going well, they don't crawl into a hammock and relax. Instead, they remember the exhausting path that took them to their success so they can survive success and be consistent top performers-not one month wonders.
8. Sense of Urgency. Top leaders have the same intensity and focus whether it's Saturday or Tuesday, first of the month or the end of the month. They set the tone for their team and are intent on making each day the best day of the month. They adopt a "Red Alert" mentality that energizes the atmosphere. They make things happen. Their attitude brings the best out in their people; it motivates them to new levels. No one is allowed to wait for something to happen. No huddles. No country club mentality. When you walk into the showroom you feel the electricity and enthusiasm. You can just feel that something good is going on. (Don't let bean-counting "administrators" try to manage fast-charging people. Lock them in an office in the back with their laptops and let them manage the numbers. Administrators have no sense of urgency. Besides, most people don't want to be administered. They want to be led.)
9. Vision-Driven. If a person can only see people and things as they are, and not as they can be, he or she will be an ineffective leader. Potential leaders have to lift their eyes off the bottom line long enough to see the horizon. They have to be able to see further than their people. If they can't cast and communicate a compelling vision of the future for their organization, there will be little power in the present.
These nine areas certainly do not make up all the criteria of a successful potential leader. However, a lack of any of these should eliminate potential leadership candidates because having these nine essential traits will be the difference between having a real leader or merely having someone in a leadership position.
Two Parting Thoughts:
1. Your top leaders should do the interviewing and hiring of potential leaders. People naturally tend to hire people at a slightly lower level than they are at. It's the Law of Diminishing Expertise. For instance, if you have 9's and 10's doing the hiring, they'll be more likely to bring in 8's and 9's. However, if you delegate hiring to lower level managers-5's or 6's-you can expect them to hire 4's and 5's.
2. I have watched in disbelief how organizations have top leaders vote on job candidates. What a joke! Since when is running a business a democracy? Selecting potential leaders is no time to join hands and sing "Kum-ba-ya." It's the time for top leaders to make the tough decisions they're getting paid to make. Get input. Discuss. Consult. Research. Then decide. Having too many people involved in the hiring or promotion process elicits personal agendas and compromises and you wind up picking the "safe" candidate that no one hated enough to reject.
Dave Anderson has been a car salesman, GSM, GM, and Director of Training for Joe Verde Sales and Management Training. He currently works as Director of Training and Front-End Operations Manager for the Anderson Dealership Group in Palo Alto, CA. He is the author of over 50 sales and leadership programs.