HVACR Business - August 2010

1) You will identify people in your company who are great, hardworking people who just do not posses the leadership necessary to grow. If you adopt this philosophy, all of your leaders must know going in that nurturing leadership is the No. 1 goal as growth occurs, and not everyone will be able to advance as they hit their limits on leadership ability. You will need to leave dignity in place for everyone while promoting the higher talent.

2) You, as the leader, will be faced with tough decisions as I have just described.

3) You will have to be open to personal growth and input from others. You must become comfortable in your own skin to accept this.

solved. You will have clear-thinking leaders in place to think through the complexities of growing a strong and profitable business.

The work that you start today developing your own leadership-aptitude scale will be directly proportionate to your future growth and success. You must grow yourself and grow those that hold the most potential to lead in your company if you are going to hit your goals. n

Finally, evaluate what I call clarity of
thought process. This is where separa-
tion on the leadership-aptitude scale
happens. You have three basic groups of
thinkers:
• Cluttered: They see everything and
so are overwhelmed and find change
and decisiveness difficult.

• semi-cluttered: They can sift through some of the distractions and have limited ability to make decisions and support change.

• Clear thinkers: Clear thinkers, the highest level, have an innate ability to sift through all of the clutter and facts and quickly determine what needs to be done. They present a very clear and concise plan. They know how to major on the majors and minor on the minors.

that is offered is quickly met with “what if . . .?” The sound thinkers will find the root cause of the problem and offer a simple solution.

One situation that comes to mind for me is when we were trying to figure out ways to increase our sales volumes. The easiest way to achieve this is through increased closing percentage. We stepped back and simply looked at our sales process and actually sold ourselves our own product. We quickly saw how disjointed our sales process was to our customers, so we made a presentation book that simplified our interface with our customers. It was designed to address our customer’s needs, and we have seen our closing percentage increase, which in turn increased our sales volumes.