Developing the Leader Within You – Chapter 4
2013
9We’re back again this week with Jason and Brad to talk about Chapter 4 of Developing the Leader Within You, entitled ‘Change’. We’ll talk about why change is necessary and how a good leader handles change. Also, if you watch all the way through, you may get to see Jason get indignant about the orientation of a cheeseburger.
Comments
Something that I have realized I have needed to change recently is how I view the Breakout team.
It has been easy for me to focus on the individual stores that I work with as “all of Breakout” and have disregarded that there are stores outside of the Rust Belt District (who is in 1st place of the Gift Card Competition……..) and that there are decisions to be made that are better for the entire Breakout community that may not be best for my specific District.
Something that I have worked on changing is, am I a team player for all of Breakout or just the stores I work with? I want to be a team player for all of Breakout and I believe this change in mindset has helped me become a better leader.
Mitch “Rusty” Kenney
This is great Mitch. I find myself often focused on what is right in front of me – The Columbia location I am at a day to day basis. One thing I am growing in is if I try something at Columbia & it works make sure I let other locations know or if I remind the Columbia team of something chances are it would be good to remind the whole district.
It often means more incentive as I then need to communicate or relay something to all locations instead of just one but it often pays off by getting ahead of issues that could come up down the road.
So I have had the opportunity this year to do a lot of local marketing, and when you are out there and representing something you love, you want to do that to the best of your ability. I sometimes lacked confidence — not in the product or my ideas, but in myself, so my most recent and active change has been physical; I have started to try new things and push myself physically in the same way that I (think I) push myself mentally. I have been doing high intensity interval training, kickboxing, dancing again, and anything besides running because I am terrible at it and the closest I have had to a runner’s high is when I tripped and hit my head. I have lost weight, and gained energy, and that is awesome. But the best thing about this is that I was scared when I first went into these classes, and now I can do things way out of reach three months ago. Change is scary, but when it is done with purpose, it can lead to great things.
In a conversation with another manager, they recommended I revisit Who Moved My Cheese, which was so on point, too. I read it a while ago, but going back to it was helpful (plus there is a video on youtube). Sometimes we just have to remember that we are agents of stagnation or change, and that applies to all parts of our lives. Rather than fear change, we should anticipate it, and see the opportunities it presents; I love the improv example — this is our world and we have to embrace it. We might as well enjoy it, too.
My favorite part of this chapter
“Each year I explain to my key leaders that they carry two buckets around with them. One bucket filled with gasoline and the other with water. Whenever there is a ‘little fire’ of contention within the organization because the people fear a possible change, the influencers are the first to hear about it. When they arrive on the scene, they will either throw the bucket of gasoline on the situation and really cause a problem, or they will throw the bucket of water on the little fire and extinguish the problem.”
What I love about this is that it makes it clear we have a choice. We can either be part of the problem or part of the solution.
As far as personal change and Breakout change goes, recently I have really been trying to read more. I’ve never been a big reader but it seems to be more and more apparent how important this exercise is. A long time ago I heard someone say “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers”. That stuck with me, mostly because I’ve never read very much. Since I’ve started purposefully reading more I’ve felt more grounded and focused. It’s been awesome!
With Breakout I’d love to see a more organized and structured review system implemented for GMs and DMs. I think this consistent feedback would be both encouraging and helpful in knowing how we can continue growing and developing as leaders.
This video was so relevant to me! I’ve been working very diligently on myself for the past couple of months because I tend to want to control every little thing, especially things out of my control… for example, if we get a negative review- I can’t take it personally and I cannot control everything, but I can control how I REACT. I can choose to be defensive and say ‘oh, I know my team is great.. this guest was just hard to please,’ etc.. OR I can accept the negative review and use it as a teaching moment for myself and my team, (In addition to attempting to make it right for that guest!)
Since I have been working on it for a couple of months now, I’ve found that I am much less stressed and much more perceptive to find teaching moments for both myself and my team when I don’t immediately react or get defensive about things I don’t necessarily like.
I’ve been reading a good book that’s called: “How to be a Badass: How to stop doubting your greatness and start living an awesome life.” and it’s a book about inward reflection which has been very eye-opening. I think it’s taught me things that have crossed over in both my personal and professional life!
I liked what Brad said about change shifting who or what is in control. I have recently been challenging myself and staff to become comfortable with being uncomfortable. ( I’ve been reading lots of Leadership from the Navy SEALs books)
I accidentally clicked submit too early.
Over the time I’ve spent in this company I’ve been fortunate enough to witness one or two changes. ( It may have been like…yeah, way more than one or two )
A very human response to change is defensiveness and it’s been an interesting road to walk since I began making myself more aware that I need to welcome change.
I think that change is necessary for growth.
A change that I would like to see is one that has been voiced across my district for most of this year, it is a yearning for more staff swag purchase opportunities. There ya go Lone Star District AKA The Round Table, your cries have been heard.
Long-term, since starting with Breakout, I’ve become so much better at organization and time management. Those things plagued me throughout my younger years and even into the beginning of my career. However, taking the reigns of a store with loads of responsibility and a team of 15-20 people working with me, I realized I could no longer play the role of passenger. I started utilizing calendars, setting dates in advance (despite my natural hatred of committing to things early) and even preemptively assigning tasks in order to make sure goals and deadlines were met. While it isn’t a huge change to some, it personally requires thoughtful planning and action that doesn’t come naturally to me. It’s honestly more stressful for me to think about completing a task early than it is waiting until hours before….as crazy as that is, despite it absolutely resulting in better outcomes!
For Breakout, I think we should start accepting Bitcoin payments. 😉
But for real, the thing I think most managers would love to see is more games/revenue, thereby reducing employee turnover due to inconsistent hours. And instead of looking at changing that problem from an operational point of view (i.e. hiring, scheduling and labor manipulation), a more positive approach is to consider capturing more customers and increasing each customer lifetime value (how much each customer is financially worth to us over their lifetime). When stores are busier and more profitable, they’re able to carry more team members at a higher level of productivity with less turnover.
Where to start? I think the implementation of dynamic scheduling and pricing, along with a customer loyalty program could potentially be beneficial. These two things could work in conjunction – while some price variation between customers may occur (causing some unrest among full-price paying customers), loyalty programs can reward customers by how much they’ve “invested” in us (like airline miles).
Also, expanding the scope of our value-added packages for things such as birthdays, proposals, teambuilding and more, to increase revenue per person in these areas.
Of course, these are ambitious and time-consuming endeavors, but if we are to change, I’d much rather change moving forward than assume a defensive posture.