Humanitarianism Builds Strong Teams
I really don’t believe team building can be leveled out in a strategy.
It’s a culture, core value, and belief, and if you have those, you’ll do whatever it takes on a daily basis to let people know that you care about them as individuals.
You can do all kinds of things to make people feel good, but if they think, “He’s only doing this so we can write more business,” or if they think your motives are not sincere, you’re wasting your money, time, and effort.
Anything you do has to be done without expectation. That’s the key.
If it’s a conditional experience, it will do nothing to enhance teamwork. When you put conditions on people—
“You ought to do more of this or that”—you’re just taking all the energy out of that person.
But if you say, “You have no idea how much I appreciate such a great job you do” or “What would be your opinion about doing this?
You know better than I do because this is your area of expertise,” you’ll do more to enhance team building than you ever could with any kind of program or reward.
When I arrived at this office, our 11 agents and six staff members had not had a general agent for about eight months. The G.A. who was here previously was a dictatorial guy who had a lot of rules and stipulations. My approach is more casual: “Let’s talk, peel the onion back, see what the issue is here, and make it so that everybody wins in the deal.” My approach is also more personal. I want every individual here to know that their contribution is valuable to me, so I listen and pay attention to them.
For example, my business manager has been with me for 10 years. She is a single mom. Her son turned 16 recently, and she wanted to buy him a used car for his birthday. Someone in our office was selling a car, but he was asking for more than she could pay. I gave her the additional money to buy the car. I was not trying to entice or bribe her in any way. I just recognized that it was a critical moment in her and her son’s life, and I knew that she needed help. It meant a lot to her that I heard what she had said and did something to help her.
We have multiple locations in five states. Recently, when I was visiting one of the offices, I heard that the receptionist’s daughter was having complications with her pregnancy in California. Our receptionist wanted to go visit her but couldn’t get a flight that day. I told her, “Just take the corporate plane.” I told her that our pilot could have her there in five hours. Her daughter called back within about half an hour, saying that she had stabilized, and our receptionist got a commercial flight out the next day, but the fact that I offered to help meant a lot to her.
Another thing that’s a regular part of our culture is these amazing baby showers. When someone in our office is expecting a baby, everyone in the office pitches in and gets tons of gifts that spill out of the conference room. And we have a wall where we post pictures of everyone’s babies and children. Then at our annual banquet, we show all of those photos in a slide show. When people are sitting in the audience with their peers, and they see their children up there on the screen, it makes them feel like they’re truly valued as individuals.
When the state fair comes here each fall, we have Fair Day. I make arrangements with the people at the fair in advance. I take the entire staff to the fair and give them money to buy food and play games. We rent out this one balloon game for an hour. We take pictures of everyone having fun and show them at the slide show at our annual banquet.
I also take about 150 people, mostly children, to Frontier City. I rent a pavilion and hire balloon animal makers and a clown, and everyone has a memorable time.
We give a birthday card to everyone who works here, and their children and grandchildren who are age 18 and under receive a Blockbuster gift card for $10 on their birthday. We spend about $2,000 on Blockbuster cards each year, and the children really look forward to them. My reps and staff members also receive the dubious honor of having me sing happy birthday to them. It’s corny as hell, and I’m not a good singer, but on their birthdays, they’re waiting for me to do it.
In our monthly newsletter, we have a “Hugs Corner” column where people submit “hugs,” or positive things that someone did. Someone might write, “Jan sold her first case and is on her way to a fruitful career” or “Joe helped me unload my car” or “Mark gave me an encouraging word when I needed it. Thank you.”
At Christmas time, we all pitch in and gather 200 to 300 presents for a family that wasn’t going to have Christmas. We will get a family name through a local church. It’s usually a single mom who lives with her kids in a place that breaks your heart, with no heat or phone. One year, we brought gifts for a woman who had five children. We got every child a bicycle and the smallest one a tricycle. We got the mom a TV, a VCR, lots of movies, a computer, and two years of Internet service, and our tech guys set it all up in Spanish. All 20 of us were there helping this family enjoy Christmas, and it was heart-wrenching. We all sang carols and brought them food, too. I can never go to that without shedding a tear, and it brings all of us in the office even closer.
When people go to a company function and don’t want to be there, no single strategy will fix that. It has to start at the core. We’re all human beings with a purpose in life, and we all bring our gifts and talents here. Rank doesn’t matter. We work together to provide a quality service to the people we serve. That’s it in a nutshell: “We work together!” The staff comes to work knowing that each and every one of them can make a difference in our organization. Our staff retention rate is proof of this mindset—I have had virtually no turnover of staff in the last 10 years; with the exception of a few people moving out of state! Build your core strong, and success will follow. It’s that simple!
Thomas McCaskill III
General Agent
MassMutual Financial Group
Oklahoma City, OK
As leaders we belief in our people and constantly reinforce their abilities and talents. It’s the heart that matters
Richaard Wong RFP, ChLP, FChFP Best Practices, Training & Development
33/F, AIG Tower, 1 Connaught Road Central Hong Kong Tel: +852 2832 6762 Fax: + 852 2572 1792 Richaard-kl.wong@aig.com
“Leadership by the Compass not the Clock” – Dr. Covey
Check out previous articles at: http://regleaders.blogspot.com/
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