Chris Hunsicker argues that leaders train their teams through every action, whether they intend to or not. Ignored follow-ups, excuses, and mood-dependent standards all send messages. He urges dealership leaders to tighten processes, lead publicly, and take one concrete corrective step.
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Foreign. Every moment that you're leading, you are training your team. And not just while you're conducting a meeting, and not just while you're having a one on one. Every glance, every delay, every decision, every dodge. Leadership is never neutral. You are training your team, whether you mean to or not. The only question is, are you training them to rise or are you training them to lower their standard and get away with it? I'm Chris Hunsicker and this is the Dealership War Room. Shout out to David Long and the team at All Things Used Cars. After Friday's clubhouse, 10 new people signed up for the podcast. And over in Germany, to Tracy Marcotte for sharing the love over in Europe, as we continue to add at least four or five people every single week in Europe that are now in the war room taking in the dealership fire. So thank you to everyone for just sharing the podcast and helping us expand this leadership fire. This part stings a little, but it's really important. Every choice you make teaches your team something. Not in some corporate slogan kind of way, but in a real world, in the trenches, blood, sweat and tears kind of way. Imagine handing your team a blank leadership manual. And for today, every choice that you make, every delay that you allow, every silence that you offer, every standard that you enforce gets written in that leadership manual. No edits, no rewrites, just raw, unfiltered leadership. And that is the leadership playbook. And you are writing that playbook every single day. And you are training your employees and you are training your team, whether you realize it or not. Let me share with you a few examples I've seen written in leadership playbooks, including my own. When you ignore missed follow up calls, you're literally training them the commitment is optional. When you make excuses for bad behavior, you're literally training them the consequences, they're negotiable. When you let standards slip because you're tired, you're literally training your team that leadership and excellence are mood dependent and not mission driven. I put a whole chapter in my book Unstoppable Culture on mood dependent excellence because this is such a common characteristic in dealerships and organizations literally around the world. You don't even have to say anything. Your silence, it trains louder than the words. If you're taking notes, please jot this down. If not, rewind and write this next time you get to see it. But if there's anything out of today, please burn this into your brain. Tattoo this on your prefrontal cortex. What you tolerate, you train. What you recognize, you reinforce. What you celebrate, you multiply every day. You're either compounding your excellence or you are compounding your mediocrity. There is no neutral ground. Today's war room challenge. Ask yourself this brutal question. If my team duplicated my leadership in every way, the good and the bad, would we be winning? Please be honest. Where are you unintentionally training down standards by allowing missed basics, by dodging hard conversations, rewarding relationship over execution, or just accepting excuses and poor performance because you're tired? Pick one thing and flip the script today. Tighten up that process. Deliver that reminder. Lead in public, what you expect in private. Every correction you make is a vote for the leader that you're becoming and not just the team that you're managing. You're not just adjusting behavior. You're crafting a leadership identity with one standard at a time every day. You're either training strength or you're training weakness. If this hit home today, then take action. Start looking at one small thing you can do today to begin to build more leadership fire in you and the people that you lead and manage. Friday we put our first couple of things in the box of awesome. And if you have something you want to see in the box of awesome, then please comment in the YouTube section there on what you'd like to see in the box of awesome. See what we can get done, train what you want, cut what you don't, and I will see you tomorrow in the dealership war room.
