Episode 64: The Feedback Loop That Builds Champions | The Dealership War Room

Foreign. If your people don't know how they're doing, they'll assume the worst. In the absence of information, people will always make up a story, and the story will always be bad. Think about Pete gsm, sitting this tower, arms crossed, looking out over his floor, and watching one of his top new guys fast another delivery. Inside, he was just feeling fuming. But deep down inside, he knew it was his fault. He'd never actually sat down and specifically shown him what a great delivery looked like. He just kind of assumed they'd figure it out, you know, get it from the osmosis, watching everybody else. Have you ever done anything like that? That's what I call the coaching void. When your team gets sporadic feedback, inconsistent support, and almost zero visibility on how they're doing, what that creates is a sense of doubt, confusion, uncertainty, and worst of all, disengagement. I'm Chris Hunsaker, and this is the dealership war room Leadership fire. Built daily, fueled intentionally, and delivered relentlessly. And this has been our behavioral change week. All week we've been looking at simple habits that you want to get installed in your store. And every day I'm giving you a weapon, a tool that you can go in and start hacking the habits, the mindsets, and the attitudes of your team. So. So you have the ability to get more of your people to execute more often on the things that matter most. So with that, let's dive into what does Pete need to do to change his team and change his execution? And maybe, just maybe, you can use some of this in your store too. Let's get this straight. Your team isn't ignoring your coaching. They just can't see their progress. And when they don't hear anything from you, they assume one of two things. They're screwing up or you don't care. And if the only time your people hear from you is when something's wrong, don't be surprised if they stop trying. You've all had that boss that you worked for where every time he showed up on caller id, you just whole heart just sunk because you knew he wasn't calling to say, hey, great job on last week. He was calling to tell you one more thing you did wrong. Because it was a constant barrage of negative such that you finally start to just give up and avoid. You know this is true. You've lived this. Most managers don't lead through feedback. They manage through fire drills. Feedback isn't a tool. It's a transfer of belief. It's a giving of confidence. And if you want consistent behavior you have got to commit to consistent reinforcement. One always follows the other. That's where this comes in. Our weapon for today, your tool, the weekly feedback loop. This is how champions are built. Ten minutes a week, one person at a time. The weekly feedback loop has three elements. Celebrate, calibrate, and commit. Number one is celebrate. Find something small. Celebrate it loud and clear. Look at some man. Hey, that delivery, the way you did that, that was awesome. That's exactly what we're looking for. Because what gets celebrated gets repeated. What gets ignored gets erased. And that is exactly your job, to repeat what's excellent and erase what isn't. Two is calibrated one piece of coaching. Not a rant, a simple redirect. Hey, next time you do this, maybe you just tighten this up just a bit. Simple, small, executable. Calibrate. Number three, commit. Ask what's one thing you're going to focus on next week and let them talk. Let them create it, let them own it. This is an adult to adult conversation, not a parent to a child. Getting them to clean their room. Then write it down. And then next week, that's the follow up. That's how we're going to start to create a loop. Ten minutes every week, one person at a time. That's the power of the weekly feedback loop. That's why it's a weapon, because it turns feedback into fuel. Let's go back to Pete, my GSM standing at the tower getting all upset when I shared this with him. He got it. Those clicked for him. He could absolutely see how that could go through. So he pulled three of his team members together and started right away there. Ten minutes, one on one each week. At the end of three weeks, two of them had already shifted behavior that they've been struggling with for months. Why? Because they felt seen, coached, and supported. It was consistent, not random. If you can do that, they need to bring the celebrate, the calibrate, and then finally the commit and you add consistency and focus and all of a sudden you have recipe for executable attention. You have a way to absolutely move people from A to B to C and start repeating the behaviors, habits, mindsets and attitudes that you most need in your store. Today's war room challenge is simple. Kill the coaching void. Pick one person on your team, celebrate one, win, calibrate one behavior and commit to one next step. And then loop back next week and coach. Fill that coaching void and build that consistency. If this episode hit home, if you can relate to Pete, if you could see some of yourself in that, I Want you to step back and look and say, hey, how am I doing? Like, when people see my caller id, do they feel excited that they're going to engage with me, or are they like, crap, what am I in trouble for again? When you walk onto the showroom floor, does your team light up and get ready, or does everybody duck their head and wonder who's going to get in trouble right now? Do you have the right balance of positive and negative communication in your store? Because if you don't, now's the time to start. Now's the time to look and say, hey, wait a minute. What are the three or four habits that my team doesn't have that I really need them to have? And then I want you to ask yourself, how many times have you been catching someone doing those right in the last 90 days? And if your answer creates some pain, if your answer creates some embarrassment, welcome to the club. Because almost every manager I've ever put through this exercise, and at this point, that's well over a thousand managers, almost every single one of them have said, oh, my gosh. And other words that we're not going to repeat right here. I had no idea. Because when you start looking at which habits aren't happening and your positive to negative communication ratio, there's almost a direct correlation between you are hardly ever catching anyone, right? And those habits don't stick and stay. And so, please, please take the war room challenge. Go through today. Execute around this, pick a person, and then celebrate one small win, calibrate one new behavior, and then commit to one next step. But then you add the focus, you add the consistency. So you start to build a loop where you are constantly shifting behaviors, mindsets, and attitudes till you have the kind of dealership that you are proud of, you are confident in, and that absolutely sings. And with that, I will see you tomorrow in the dealership war room.