I can still remember the day, many years ago, when I was provided the opportunity to ‘officially’ become a leader – my General Manager phoned me late one afternoon to offer me the position of Sales Manager. I can recall as if it was yesterday the excitement of the role and the anticipation of what lay ahead. I had been working towards this role for the previous 18 months and was so grateful that the opportunity had been provided to me – I was determined to do my very best to not only impress and earn the respect of my General Manager, I was also determined to earn the trust and respect of my team. I could not wait to get started.

The first 12 months in the role was anything but smooth sailing – in fact it was filled with challenge after challenge. As I look back now, I think I was somewhat naive, particularly with regards to the role and the expectations that I placed on myself to perform, especially at the beginning. Whilst I had been a successful sales person and had been preparing myself for the leadership role, I hadn’t as yet actually performed the role of Sales Manager, and I was expecting everything to roll smoothly. When it didn’t, especially early on, I found it quite challenging to overcome, and to keep moving forward.

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Early last week I was having a conversation with a client, who has been in a Sales Leadership role now for approximately 6 months. Tiffany (not her real name) has a successful background in direct sales, and this being her first foray into the wonderful world of people leadership, she commenced her journey filled with big ideas, tremendous enthusiasm and boundless energy. She had established a firm 90 day plan and set out to make an impact on her team and business quickly. Her first 90 days were impactful – she was tested constantly by her team and her customers, she implemented the majority of the components of her 90 day plan, and her learning curve was incredibly steep. She was relishing the challenge. By contrast, her next 90 days were somewhat of a let down. The lustre of the new role started to wear off, and whilst she continued to implement her new 90 day plan with vigour, she noticed that some of her peers appeared to be ‘coasting’, almost going with the flow, and her perception was that the senior leaders were allowing it to happen. As such, Tiffany shared with me a level of frustration that I hadn’t seen her express before. She was frustrated that her peers and her senior leaders appeared to be comfortable with okay results, even though they recognised that they could drive significantly better outcomes. And through this, she felt as though her energy was being sapped as her senior leaders appeared to be more focussed on the administrative side of the business and not the business development and people development side. Rather than investing her time in front of her customers with her people developing relationships, she was expected to complete multiple Continue reading →

Last week I was working with a client who has been experiencing some challenges in his leadership role. Jack (not his real name) is a Sales Director with a medium sized enterprise and has responsibility for a sales group delivering new business acquisition as well as managing existing customers. Recently, Jack feels as if he has been blind sided by some of his people, and has even been accused by his management of being ‘asleep at the wheel’. Whilst the sales results look okay, there have been some examples where questions are starting to be asked about Jack’s capability and whether he is the right man for the job. In delving more into Jack’s situation, we discovered the potential issue – he was only getting a view of his business through the eyes of his direct reports.

As Jack contemplated this possibility, he realised there were a number of recent examples where this may have been true, and what were his people telling him? Only news that they thought Jack wanted to hear. And of course the challenge with that was that he Continue reading →

Last week I was working with a Leader who was not in a good place. He was getting ‘hammered’ from every direction – his team’s sales numbers were well behind target, his 1 up Manager was, in his words, ‘all over him’, his customers were complaining about lack of response from the Account Team, and he didn’t feel he was getting the support he needed in order to get back on track. And in listening to his language, he was tending to externalise a lot as well, identifying other parts of the business which were letting his team down, how he was not getting the support he thought he deserved, and how he felt very much alone. Being in this place can be a very lonely place, and it is commonly known as the drama cycle. Continue reading →