Lead Your Tribe to Success

Interactive

Five tools for surviving the concrete jungle.
By Micheal J. Burt and Colby B. Jubenville

“Zebras and Cheetahs”

“Zebras and Cheetahs”
Book

You have likely watched one of many popular survival shows where people are dropped into a wilderness with little equipment, and it’s up to them to survive until they reach safety. Along the way, they must fashion tools to make survival possible
So, what does your work have in common with these survival shows? It can often feel like you’ve been dropped into an inhospitable environment (the global economy) with few ready-made tools, and you must get yourself, and your whole tribe, to safety.
You need to be a certain type of leader to plot a safe course forward— specifically, a Zebra and Cheetah (Z&C) leader. Z&C leaders exhibit qualities of both animals. Like zebras, they boast a distinctive appearance that others can easily recognize. Like cheetahs, they possess great speed and quick accelerators. And like both, they utilize their senses so well that they excel in adapting to their environments. Thus, these leaders are able to survive and thrive in the fast-paced, highly competitive business world.
Just being an engaging, adaptable, forward-thinking person won’t convince people to follow you. To lead diverse tribes in the concrete jungle, you must show others that you have the tools to survive, including a map, and know which way to go.
Five simple tools will help you to create a map to guide you through the concrete jungle and lead your tribe to safety and success:
1. Equip your tribe with focus and emotion. When your tribe is trekking through the concrete jungle, everyone must share a dominant focus. This goes beyond what your company does or the outcomes it wants to achieve; it encapsulates what drives you, your core purpose and passion. Without that focus, tribe members will jump from one thing to another, seldom being highly productive. While their intent may be as good as gold, a lack of understanding, unity in their efforts, and common passion will lead to scattered results at best. You need to infuse your tribe with focus and emotion to be the sales leader or best service provider in the area. To ensure employees stayed emotionally connected, hold celebrations at certain sales milestones.
2. Empower with excellence through good goal-setting. We live in a goal-obsessed society. So why do we end up lowering so many goals—or not achieving them at all? Randomly set goals rarely work because they don’t have emotional staying power. Our follow-through is vulnerable to external variables, moods, or momentary circumstances. Good goals are clear, specific, measurable, and linked to your dominant focus. Such goals work because we can break them down into quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily increments of progress.
They are explicitly connected to a dominant focus—your passionate purpose. They organize efforts toward daily activities that concentrate on things like sales processes and customer service activities, which are systematically connected to organizations’ dreams. Because they’re loaded with an emotional pull, these good goals allow people to do more of the things they want to do and less of the things they feel forced to do.
3. Create the scoreboard. People play harder when there’s a scoreboard, when—eventually—a clear winner and loser will emerge. You can build a scoreboard using these five guidelines: 1. Determine past performances (What did each person do over the last 12-month cycle?)
2. Identify market variables (How much growth is possible for each person to achieve in her/his specific marketplace?) 3. Estimate future capacity (How much do you want each person to realistically stretch herself/himself over the next cycle?) 4. Determine high-value activities
(What things must each person do to achieve her/his future capacity? What is a wise use of time and what isn’t?) 5. Determine metrics

25

Video

(How will each person measure, record, and report their progress?).
When you set up your scoreboard, reassure tribe members that they are not competing against one another but against their own potentials.
This spawns positive peer pressure instead of cutthroat competition, and ensures that low performers can’t hide in the middle of the pack, taking valuable resources but not contributing to the tribe’s survival.
4. Coach ’em up. If the low performers your scoreboard won’t or can’t improve, the Z&C Leader’s responsibility is to move them out.
That’s the easy (if not always pleasant) part. What takes more time, energy, and passion is coaching your remaining tribe members up: helping mediocre ones to become good and the good to become great.
Coaching up is about providing continuing education and teaching technical skills—and compensating tribe members fairly. Let them know it’s safe to be creative and innovative, treat them kindly, and assure them that their work is making a positive impact and building a proud legacy. When you address these areas satisfactorily, you build a tribe in which everyone is passionate, motivated, and productive.
5. Throw in thunderbolts. Your tribe will be excited once they see how quickly and effectively you’re moving through the concrete jungle, but eventually, their enthusiasm will reach a lull. Although they may be committed to the team’s dominant focus, many simply aren’t accustomed to producing at high levels over time. Z&C Leaders keep their tribes fresh by throwing thunderbolts—unexpected jolts to the group that renew energy or pull everyone out of the doldrums.
Thunderbolts might take the form of a dynamic guest speaker, a high-intensity meeting, unanticipated bonus or incentive, a rally, or any surprise event. We find that weariness and complacency tend to creep in around the sixth or seventh month of every cycle. So, throw in thunderbolts to stir emotions and stoke energy.
The concrete jungle is an organic place where the winds of change, failure, success, and opportunity are always present. But if you have tools that allow you to harness the power of human capital, the odds will be stacked in your favor as you chart a course toward your dominant focus. SSE

Coach Micheal Burt is coauthor of Zebras & Cheetahs: Look Different and Stay Agile to Survive the
Business Jungle (Wiley). Visit www.coachburt.com.
Colby B. Jubenville, PhD, is coauthor of Zebras & Cheetahs and principal of Red Herring
Innovation and Design. Visit www.redherringinc.com. sales and service excellence essentials presented by HR.com | 02.2014

Copyright of Sales & Service Excellence is the property of HR.com, Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.