Creating a Winning Attitude
By Mark Tewart
This is the time of the year that many head football coaches lose their jobs. Do the coaches who lose their jobs because of lackluster records, have inferior knowledge or technical coaching skills? I hardly believe that so many coaches could be that deficient in their skills or knowledge. So what makes some coaches superior to others? The ability to create a winning attitude. The managers in a dealership are the same as coaches of a football team. The probability of success of a management team depends on their ability to mix their knowledge and technical skills with their ability to create a winning attitude among their team.
Most of us have witnessed a poorly performing dealership that with a change in management has dramatically increased their performance. Could the technical skills or knowledge of that new manager or management team be so superior that it would lead to a significant turnaround in such a brief period of time? Maybe, maybe not; however, the ability of the new management team to create a winning attitude is probably the major reason for the increased performance in a short period of time.
Major parts of the art of managing are more psychological and relationship oriented rather than being technically oriented. The ability to motivate individuals and create a team of momentum is a bigger challenge than learning to buy and manage inventory correctly or advertise effectively. Managers can research and learn from experts on the technical aspects but many mangers will never have the innate or acquired ability to relate to people in a manner that motivates or creates a feeling of winning.
Motivation by fear alone tends to evaporate quickly. Therefore, a manager has to be able to tap into each members psyche and create the feelings of winning and the unstoppable drive of momentum. The same dealership, same team, same basic game plan but managers with a different attitude create a totally different result.
Motivation and momentum are created by establishing new possibilities for the team members beliefs. A manager must establish much higher goals that puts the members out of their comfort zones. The manager must now create a belief in the goal and constantly direct the team to take positive, continual actions towards those goals.
Each successful step towards the goal needs to be reinforced and acknowledged positively with the constant reminder of the new belief system that the managers are establishing. If it walks like a duck...
The positive change will occur not in a week, month or months; the change will occur the moment the team members start to believe. A team member becomes the new person the moment they decide to be the new person. The change is instantaneous because they will start to walk, talk, act and be the person with the new belief system. Team members will begin to put pep in their step and glide in their stride. Speed of the boss, speed of the crew, the team will get moving, if the manager does to. If a manager works as hard on creating a new, more positive belief system, as they do on inventory or doing administrative chores, sales will increase immediately.
Mark Tewart is the president of Tewart Enterprises Inc., a sales, management and customer service training and consulting organization. mtewart@dealeronline.com
