I have witnessed all types of behaviour over my years working in business and even within professional sport. I believe you can run a successful business treating every one with the same energy and respect. In sports I believe you can achieve the best outcome with a better approach to all people. Over the years teams have proven they can over achieve against expectation and always describe a great working environment off the pitch as a major factor. In business I think the benefits are huge also with over achievement when you create a great happy enjoyable environment. Here I tell you why along with some experiences along the way...
I've always been fascinated by working personality. Seeing how people act and change amongst different people. I've worked in companies that are small and also in huge enterprise businesses. I've also worked in a number of professional football clubs.
Now I'm all for healthy respect for people in high ranking positions. Albeit, I feel they have to earn my respect. But I'll always start with good manners and respect. But I've seen people change their personality on a switch and that has always fascinated me.
Whilst I have experienced so many positive situations I maybe should share some others that maybe others could relate to.
I've been the customer, the colleague, the boss, the supplier. Having been in all corners I've seen all these different personalities. I've worked in Business and in Football and my word I've seen and heard some things that make you cringe. I've seen people that manage upwards extremely well but to general staff members they were awful. I was at a football club and a new middle management team came in, this guy that no one had heard of was clearly granted the role of being in charge, and I sat in his welcome presentation. He said "Manchester City was like a palace with a dysfunctional family living inside, but we fixed it". Silly me, I put the improvement down to them buying some incredible football players like Sergio Aguero. This guy had the biggest ego I had ever come across in any business. I had rubbed shoulders with incredibly wealthy people, successful in business and sport yet I had never seen Ego like this and from someone I had never heard of. He changed the management team and they followed the same DNA/Approach. The new chairman turned up one day and as described by grandad on Only Fools & Horses, I was amazed that none of them had come down with Cherry Blossom Poisoning. The crucial part for me though was they didn't speak to people. The actual people that make things work day to day. I turned up one day to training and it was belting down with rain, there was a guy there that hosted visitors and made tea for visitors to the academy, he also cleaned the dressing rooms. I changed my teams thinking. I asked my players to acknowledge him, shake his hand on arrival. Don't walk past him. Also, were gonna call him Mr B****, show him respect, I always tried to stop and speak to him. This day though, he was drenched. It was torrential rain and he didn't have a jacket. I asked him where his jacket was and he said he had asked, but they said they didn't have any spare. That was nonsense, there was a shed with loads of them, in my book, they just didn't care. In their eyes, he is not important. I went to find the keys to the shed and also to see if I had a spare jacket in my car. My then colleague Terry asked me what I was doing and when I told him, he was outraged, he took his jacket off and went and gave it to Mr B.
I was in a huge business chatting to the MD and he said he wished people would talk more. For example, to the receptionist. I told him that the receptionist downstairs is struggling to juggle the return to work post pandemic. She told me some challenges she is facing and also how she is worried meeting so many people everyday so soon. Because when I signed in, I spoke to her, I always try to acknowledge and talk to the receptionist. When I was the MD at one of my more successful businesses, I loved arriving early and talking to the engineers and warehouse people before I went upstairs. I learned so much in them early chats. I also and still today always talk to the cleaners. My late mother was a cleaner. These are real people with families and I don't think I am better then them. I went with my mum to clean in the evening and learned how to use the floor buffer to help her. I guess this makes me very comfortable in conversation with people doing roles like this, a job title or role doesn't define the person. I was working for a business that was doing a large exhibition. Now I've done exhibitions as a company owner and always helped. This time I was a staff member and this show was clearly behind schedule. So, instead of heading back to the hotel, despite not being engineers, we have hands and legs so we can use them to help. Several of us decided to muck in and rolled our sleeves up, to be fair, as did some of the middle management. Later on in the evening we seen one of this huge companies most senior board members. He was there to do a presentation the next day. He walked past us all with his head down to not make eye contact. All working late into the night. He didn't say two words to any of the staff. I lost all respect for that guy that day and vowed that I would never act that way, however big my own company becomes.
So, in business I have seen this order of importance on numerous occasions. This is the most common order I've seen.
1) Customers: These are the most important people. They pay all the bills and keep everyone in jobs. Therefore, we must make these the no1 people we are double nice to. So put your kindest voice on. Like the bosses in your own firm these people are afforded the most decent communication and treatment.
2) Staff: They should be grateful. You can ignore them. As long as you do some positive PR about caring them publicly, that is fine. I see this a lot with some large enterprise firm's that join righteous campaigns whilst acting differently. These mere mortals can be walked past, they are not important. Just a financial drain on the business that's easily replaced.
3) Suppliers: These are the least important. These people should be manipulated, bullied and treated with resentment and ignorance, you can shout and be rude to these people because that's what they are there for. To be the sounding board of our frustrations and the blame for all problems becasue they cannot argue back or dispute it.
It's my humble opinion that this is fundamentally wrong. All these three groups of people are equally and crucially as important as each other. Imagine if you had all three of these groups loving working with you, trying their best to help you succeed? It seems so obvious but I rarely see it. This class and relationship equality is the mindset that has seen sports teams achieve unthinkable over achievement. Why can't this be done in your business and would probably make everybody happier and for me, happy equals better performance and productivity. Never fear smiling and laughter!
There are some things these groups all have in common...
- They are all just trying to make a living.
- They are all members of someone's family.
- They all want to do well.
- No one wants to make mistakes on purpose. But all three could, and should understand the Win and Learn approach.
- They are all people.
A business needs all three, and all three groups working happily and willingly in your favour means that you have the foundation for a great business. Imagine the consequences of taking anyone of these elements out? When I've seen great successful businesses, I have seen how they have all these three elements working well. Imagine if work colleagues, or management treated staff with the same energy, happiness, enthusiasm as they do with a key customer or a customer they want to win? Imagine how special that would make staff feel, and the energy that would create that can scale your business? Staff that want to go that extra yard willingly! Imagine suppliers that want to help and work with you, and want you to do well?
I also feel that you surely must be trying to be rude or ignorant? It's a lot easier to be polite and nice? I've seen this in football as well. There is a decision on a player to be released at the end of their term, I've seen coaches then make that players life a misery, start to exclude them, ignore them. I seriously can't get my head around this. Even if you know a player is likely to be released, why does that mean the best thing is to alienate and isolate them? I've even seen this happen to youth players. Equally, I can't get my head around seeing someone sucking up to a high ranking staff member, then being rude to the canteen lady. (I've seen this). I don't know if some people have only so much manners and nice communication, so they save it up for what they naively think is the people with the most influence. I always think and say "always get caught being yourself", because if you're pretending or acting to impress, then eventually you are going to get caught out.
Tony McCool
@antmccool7
@enablevc
@footbapathway
Comments
Post a Comment