How To Deal With An Overbearing Service Director

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This is your drive by. A little something going into the weekend where Chris, Joan and I answer your questions. No jokes, no playing around. This is serious business. We're going to answer questions, maybe some jokes. The number, should you have a question is 8333, ask SDR. 8333 ask SDR. And if we play your call, there's a swag bag coming your way that also could include parts hold swag, which is pretty exciting. Those parts hold trucker caps look pretty good.

Yep. And the T shirts are very flattering.

Did a good job with that. Flattering, yes. Maybe if we gave those out more females that want to be technicians.

That's great.

So let's start off with the news.

There's no news. This is a drive by.

So marine scientists have successfully blended an electric eel with a sponge. You know what they're calling it?

What?

A shock absorber.

Okay, let's get to the calls. We're gonna do two calls today, by the way.

Call a couple of months ago regarding.

A motivation issue that I had with taking Adderall, etc. Since then it's been two and a half months. I've taken a lot of inspiration from Chris. I've started a new routine where I'm going to sleep at 9 in the morning, waking up at 3:30. I've been reading books that you guys are recommending and I'm happy to say going to the gym. I'm happy to say that it's been two and a half months without taking one single stimulant. Man, my body feels a thousand times better.

You guys are awesome, man. You guys have no idea how much you guys inspired me and other managers in our group. And I appreciate you guys very much, man. I do have one question.

As a service lane manager, 99% of the shop looks me to solve issues and in guidance. Right. I love service. I love helping people. And because of that, I excel in it. My service director, on the other hand, he's great. He's amazing. But when it comes to teaching, when it comes to training, when it comes to motivation, he's more of a get this shit done right away. Whereas I'm more like, what's going on? Talk to me. Is there something going on internally? What can I do to make you better? How can I approach my service director?

That's very sweet of Will. That's very sweet. That's great, Willie. I was really. I thought about you a lot after that call. So I appreciate the, the follow up to kind of let us Know, but man, you're such a sweet guy. So I, I have a kind of an answer to this, and Christian has an answer to it. And I think, you know, because of your.

Just kind of your understanding and your willingness to. To kind of self reflect and wanting to get better.

The, you know, the answers are going to be a little more specific and kind of right on the nose. But it's because.

I think that's, you know, at the end of the day, kind of what. What you want. And I can't say enough like, how much it means to us that, you know, we've made any difference, because that's what, you know, that's what's driving us. So hearing that means a lot. So go ahead, Chris. Joan, your idea is pretty good.

Yeah. So the thing that I would want to do is one, especially if you have a good relationship already with your service director and you have a lot of respect for the. For that. That person in that role is one is. I would say that if the interpersonal communication between him and the team members is not his strength, he might be more aware of it than you think, and it's probably not his favorite thing to do. So I always think that when you have a strong leader that's really good at a couple of things, I want them to do those couple of things. And with you. And I'm just gonna. I'm not surprised when you say that the shop really likes you because you seem extremely likable in a couple of phone calls that I've heard. I really like you. So you. It's not a stretch to think that you're probably a team favorite. So what I would do is I would proactively approach my service director and say, hey, when it comes to. And I would probably preface it by saying, I want to be a service director one day like you are. And part of that I understand is I got to be able to manage a team. So would it be okay with you if I take over essentially all of the interpersonal communication between the shop and the drive and all, you know, all the departments and. And you just kind of let me know what you want and I'll go out and I'll get that done. And then I think that there's so much stuff that they'll appreciate hearing from you versus from someone coming down and just saying, hey, get this done. Because I said so you'll catch more bees with honey at the end of the day. So I would voluntarily offer to take it over, because I think at the end of the day you'll get better results. So that was my advice for what I would do in this situation.

Then I would, and this is a deeper answer, but I, but I know, I think you'll, you'll understand and appreciate it. Is. So your, your service director is the way he is for a couple reasons. So one is he grew up probably in a time where that was the approach. And most of what we do is mimicking what we had done to us. Right. So if you worked for a boss that treated you that way, more than likely that's going to be your management style. And it's very rare that somebody deviates from the, the structure that they grew up in. Right. So if you grew up with a very disciplinary type father, you're probably going to be disciplined. It's just how it is. And so if you had bosses that did things a certain way, then you're, you're going to mimic that in a sense also just taking into consideration childhood and all of that stuff. So. But the other part of why somebody ends up that way, and this is where you have a good leadership lesson, is there's, there's different sides to the coin when it comes to leadership, and it isn't a one size fits all. So what happens is if you're very empathetic for employees that can work with a certain type of employee, but you're going to have other employees that you're going to take advantage of, that you're going to get burned, and then what happens a lot of times is then people overreact and they start being a little more cut and dry and, and a lot less empathetic because they've, they gave their, you know, they were treating people the way they wanted to be treated, and then it didn't work out, they got burned. And so then in a sense, you overreact and you go the other way. So don't, don't lose the lesson here that you might want to end up somewhere in the end to be really effective as a leader. You might want to end up somewhere between where you are now and where your man, your director, is now. Somewhere in the middle is, is probably where you end up. Because as, as you go through this, you, you're going to invest a lot on people that at the end of the day, didn't care, didn't want it, you wanted it more than they did. And that's just a part of, you know, growing as a manager and learning. We all go through it and it, and it happens. But I would just tell you, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and think it's one or the other. There's, there's, you know, there's a way to, to kind of be in the, in the middle. I remember Socia, the, the Angels skipper one time came in and did a management meeting for me. This is right after they won the World Series, the Anaheim Angels. And he, he said, you know, some players need a pat on the butt and some need slotted teeth. Yeah. And he goes in and the, the secret is to know who's, who's who, like which is which. And so as, as a leader you can't assume that everybody's like you. Some people don't want to be successful no matter what you do. Some people are just doing a job because they need to do a job, not because they care about customers or care about the company or care about you. And no matter what you do, you're not going to be able to, to change that. So just keep that in mind that you're, as you progress and you move up. There's, there's a reason why a lot of people are the, a lot of directors are that old school and it's because they threw the baby out with the bathwater. But in the middle probably is the answer, right? It's like the, we all probably have a friend from high school that got their heart broken and then they never loved again. I had an uncle that he was single his entire life because somebody broke his heart when he was in his early 20s and he never loved again. You don't, you know, you don't want to set your up, set yourself up for that either. So just be careful and we'll send you a set of the books. Let's remember to do that. So we'll, if you don't have the books, we'll send you a set of the books. We really, we really appreciate it. Keep us posted how it's going. We, we want to hear and whether we, you know, if you don't want us to play the call on the show, we won't. But we would love to know what's going on with you and hopefully someday we get to hang out and then. Let's go. One more question.

I, I did have a question for, for you guys. I was just wondering what is the best way to convince upper management to sign up for your guys services? With what, what is the best case that we could build and how could we go about selling the idea?

Curtis is great.

So Curtis, we love the question and there's a There's probably the first part of this answer is we're a little different in the sense that what we believe to be a healthy service department is the customer experience. So customers that are coming back, retention and a profitable department. What most service managers are going after is gross profit, not net profit. There's a difference. So they're, they're trying to put as much gross as they can on the books, but not really understanding what the net profit is. So to come into our, to our coaching group, we get on a strategy session and we go through your numbers and your, you know, your department. Everybody's different. Your problems are different, your location, your brand. Everything creates kind of a unique opportunity. And we give, you know, we look at what you have going on and then we give you some ideas. And then from then we decide if we're a match. Sometimes we're, we don't think you're a match and sometimes you might not think you're a match. But there's a lot of value in doing a strategy session and getting, you know, getting some ideas for your business the way that it sits now. And that's something we do completely complimentary, just to make as many friends as we can. We always say, like, we're not for everybody, but we want to have as many friends as we can. So if you were going to pitch it, the thing I would say is, hey, they do this complimentary strategy session, they'll look at our business and they'll give us some ideas and that's all you have to do. And then we can, you know, do a strategy session and kind of decide from there. But no matter what, you're going to walk away with some ideas and some value. So that's how I would, that's how I would present it, in a sense. And you'll learn a lot on the strategy session.

That's pretty good.

Thanks for the, for the question and thanks Willie and everybody listening. We hope you have a great weekend and we'll see you next time on Service Drive Revolution. Thanks for watching this week's Drive by. I hope we gave you something to think about over the weekend. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333-ASK SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333-ASK SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chris collins inc.com that's offers.com chriscollinsinc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.