Chris Hunsicker argues that great leaders hold high standards and high warmth at the same time. Most managers crack under pressure and choose one or the other. He uses David Long at Hansel Automotive as an example of someone who does both.
Chapters
Foreign. Most managers collapse under pressure in one of two ways. They either go soft or they go cold. They go soft by lowering the standard, right, so they can keep the peace. Or they raise the bar but forget to care. And if you want to lead through a recession, if you want to lead through difficult economic times, you better master the rarest of business skills. And that is how do you hold the line while still holding someone's heart? I'm Chris Hunsicker and this is the dealership war room. Welcome to seven minutes of clarity, challenge and execution Fire for automotive retail leaders to help you win at work and win at home. You can't control the market and you sure can't predict interest rates. But you can 100% decide how are you going to show up when things get hard? Because here's what separates those leaders who grow under pressure from those who get swallowed by it. They master the balance between high warmth and high standards. Now this isn't some feel good idea. This is actually a science, research based thing. In both positive psychology and in elite performing teams. In tough times under pressure, when things are hard, most managers default to one of two options. Number one, they lower their standards so they can keep the warmth. People will, they'll stay light. They'll still have a connection with people, but it just breeds mediocrity. Or they'll lower their warmth to create some distance so they can really creep the pressure on and just drive the results and end up breaking their people. In my book Unstoppable Culture, I speak to this exact issue. It's called high performance leadership. And high performance leadership says this. If you need to raise your standards, you need to raise your warmth by exactly the same amount. They have to match each other. You can be absolutely hard on the issue, but you need to be soft on the person. You can be relentless about the results, but you must be equally relentless about building hope and building belief in the person that they can achieve the goal, that they can hit the standard. You don't have to choose between standards and performance and connection and relationship. You can have both. That's the purpose of high performance leadership. You do both every day on purpose. That is high performance leadership. I want you to ask yourself this question. When you're under pressure, which do you lower first? Do you lower your warmth or do you lower your standards? Because everyone is either warmth dominant or they're standards dominant. When I was writing the book Unstoppable Culture, I was teaching this principle to David Long, the executive general manager at Hansel Automotive. Now not Only is a world class basketball player. He'll take your lunch every single day. He's an even better operator in the car business. And we were discussing his need to raise standards to increase performance and like, great. How are you going to raise your warmth? He's like, what do you mean? And I taught him the principle of high performance leadership. Because all of us are warmth dominant or we are standards dominant. And just like in basketball, you can be right hand dominant or you can be left hand dominant. And if you are really talented, you can play high school basketball at a great level, at a state level just being right hand or left hand dominant. But if you want to play Division 1 basketball, if you want to play in the pros, you better develop both hands. And I would say the same thing. You can only build your team so far if your standards dominant or if you're warmth dominant. But if you want to be elite, if you want to compete at the highest levels, you got to work both hands. You need to be both warmth and standards at all times, on demand when you need it, and balance them both as you go through. So your challenge for today, I want you to ask this question for you. Are you more warmth dominant? And if you are, then I want you to pick one area where you need to raise your standard. I'm not talking going from a 2 to an 8, I mean a 6 to a 7, a 7 to an 8. Where's one area where you know if you raise the standard, that's the metric that's going to drive the results that you're looking for. Now if your standard's dominant, I want you to look at two or three people in your team where you can have a one on one conversation with them, intentional and purposeful, in, in the next 24 to 48 hours and connect with them. Build more of that connection, build more of that relationship. Let them know that they are seen, heard and understood. Let them feel your faith in them, let them feel your belief in them and build that hope, build that confidence, build that belief so that that relationship drives them to engage in the behaviors that hit the standard even when you're not around. Let me finish with this. The economy is not testing your store. It's testing your leadership maturity. Raise the bar, raise the warmth, and let's go create some leadership fire and I will see you tomorrow in the dealership war room.
