An Example of Impressive Leadership

A recent episode of Undercover Boss was incredibly memorable. The featured company was fast food chain Checkers & Rally's, and the executive who went undercover was CEO Rick Silva. If you're not familiar with the TV show's premise, a top executive changes his or her appearance and name for a week and goes undercover in his or her company. The executive tries out several positions, and in the process, gains a better understanding of the company's strengths, weaknesses, employee experience, and customer experience.

More often than not, the executive experiences a great deal of trouble in accomplishing the frontline jobs. In this particular episode, despite a lengthy history in the fast food industry, CEO Rick Silva had trouble making hamburgers, hot dogs, placing orders, etc. Bottom line, he was not the ideal employee. But measuring his skills was not the objective – either of the show or his reason for going undercover.

Silva was able to learn about his employees, the talented and dedicated employees as well as those who needed an attitude adjustment and a return to Basic Training. But he was the right person at the right place at the right time to make a difference. He even made an on-the-spot decision to close a restaurant to improve the customer experience – by re-training all the employees.

This episode stood out from many of the other episodes because the top executive demonstrated leadership in a unique and inspiring manner. He did not intimidate his employees, he did not belittle his employees, and despite inappropriate behavior, he did not fire people. He genuinely wanted to make improvements to benefit both the employees as well as existing and future customers. And based on his actions, he definitely did.

While Checkers & Rally's was started in 1986 in Mobile, Alabama, and today, there are more than 800 Checkers and Rally's drive-in restaurants throughout the USA, by the end of the show, the viewer wished that there was a Checkers or Rally's nearby.

Click here to watch the full episode.

“Keep Your Hands Off the Wheel”

The concept of keeping your hands off the wheel cannot be applied when driving a vehicle, but when it’s applied to leadership, it can actually be a positive concept. It’s positive because it enables a leader to do his or her job and lead, and it empowers an employee to do his or her job and produce. When a leader gives instructions, answers questions, provides whatever coaching is necessary, and then steps back, or “keeps his or her hands off the wheel,” the employee is able to drive and do his or her job.

This important leadership rule is just one highlight in a useful leadership book entitled, “42 Rules For Your New Leadership Role: The Manual They Didn’t Hand You When You Made VP, Director, or Manager” by Pam Fox Rollin.

In the words of Judy Gilbert, the Director of People Operations at YouTube: “When making the transition to a new role, even a top performer needs to exercise a different group of muscles. Pam has distilled extensive leadership lessons into simple and actionable guidelines. With the insights from this book, you can make your next start your best ever.”

Pam’s book is full of leadership tips, but here are some of my favorites:

• Draft your own strategic one-pager, a coherent summary of the state and trends of your industry, company, division, function, and team.
• Create your own onboarding plan – this is so much more than just setting up a phone, smartphone, laptop, and reading the Employee Procedures manual.
• Set realistic milestones – include the big rocks as well as the small pebbles.
• Surround yourself with all types of people, not just those who think like you do –  your weaknesses may be their strengths, and the result will be a better functioning team.
• Make it easy for people to work with you – tell them how often you want to be updated, how you want to be contacted, any triggers that may cause you angst, etc.
• Determine how you will measure your own metrics – and help your team to measure their performance.
• Make the most of screw-ups and take ownership of mistakes.
• Organize your priorities – and deflect early requests to go off-mission.
• Grow more leaders: champion your people and be their advocate.

While there are countless leadership books on the market, “42 Rules” is a must-read. But be warned, you will pick up the book again and again because revisiting the rules will make you a better leader. 

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What does your company give away with its name or logo?

Does your company have pens, mousepads, t-shirts, or some other gadget that promotes it? Do the items make your competitive advantage, name, logo, tagline, or website easy to remember? Do people like the items? More importantly, do they result in new business or repeat business?

Heidi Thorne is an expert in sales, marketing, advertising, and public relations, and answered these and many more questions in her new book, SWAG: How to Choose and Use Promotional Products for Marketing Your Business.

While some people might define SWAG as “souvenirs, wearables, and gifts” or “sealed with a gift” or even “stuff we all get,” according to Thorne, “The term swag refers to any product that has a logo, message, tagline, or some form of personalization on it – usually with the intent of advertising a business, event, association, team, person, or cause.”

Thorne explains that many products have a “WOW” factor for a variety of reasons, but they may lack what she calls “staying power.” Remember the AOL disks that were distributed free of charge by being shrink-wrapped in basically every magazine when AOL was just starting out? Today, those same disks would be considered drink coasters because they are outdated technology. Consider if your company had manufactured thousands of those same size disks – your customers would think you were crazy if you distributed them at tradeshows or other events.

Here are some mistakes to avoid when creating your own SWAG:

• Many restaurants don’t think long-term. Often, they don’t provide pens with the name of their restaurant for their servers to use, but instead, force servers to provide their own pens, which means that the pens might feature the names of hotels, banks, or heaven forbid, the names of competitors.
• Eco-friendly bags might be great for some companies, but if your company is in the business-to-business arena, they may be inappropriate.
• Your logo might look great on T-shirts, but do you have a big budget for printing shirts in all sizes ranging from children’s to women’s small to extra large to men’s small to extra large – with such a myriad of sizes, t-shirts may be cost prohibitive.

Above all, remember that whatever SWAG item you create to promote your business reflects your brand. Don’t give away a pen that leaks ink or doesn’t write. Don’t give away anything that is too hard to read, has tiny font, or features illegible information about your company – such as, your company name, address, website address, telephone number, etc.

For more info: http://pwptoday.com

Connect on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/heidithorne

Connect on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/PromoWithPurposeTV

Connect on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/heidithorne

If you still have your heart set on ordering branded t-shirts or other clothing, read Heidi’s article first: http://www.corporatemeetingsandevents.ca/promotionaltshirts.aspx