Slaying the Giants

By John Gibson

After years of success, a multi-location service business’ progress ground to a halt. Despite their success, infighting, employee disengagement, and consistent turnover were significantly undermining their development. In desperation, they reached out to a brilliant business coach. He quickly identified three giants in their land.

The business coach surmised that there were three E’s that must be addressed—and slain—for the company to move forward.

These oppressive giants were elephants, egos, and expectations.

• Elephants—progress stopping issues, in the room, that no one wanted to address.
• Egos—crippling mindsets of those who only valued and respected their own perspective, at the expense of devaluing the brilliance of others in the company.
• Expectations—intentions that were unreasonable, unexamined, and unhelpful in attaining what was truly best for the company and its employees.

These brutal giants—like all giants—weren’t easy to slay but, because the company embraced these truths and confronted the issues, the company prevailed. Together, they took on this initially uncomfortable but freeing process, and they now enjoy higher profitability and engagement of their people throughout the organization. While no organization ever achieves perfection, this company managed to complete their transformation, as they slew the giants. Now, their employees remain loyal, even when competitors offer a higher salary because they feel like the quality of their work-life would not be matched elsewhere.

So, how do you slay the giants that loom within your company? Answer:  We at DRYVE Leadership Group use three foundational principals that are consistently effective giant slayers. Each DRYVE Leadership principle directly counteracts one of the three giants mentioned above, and they are the foundation for real success.

TOOLS FOR SLAYING GIANTS

The three DRYVE Leadership Foundational Principles:

• Meaningful dialogue
• Mutual respect
• Shared purpose

Meaningful Dialogue not only addresses elephants that stifle great work but also cultivates brilliant solutions produced from a collective genius that no one person has on their own.

Mutual Respect views everyone’s contribution as important, which empowers your people. This principle addresses individual egos and gathers everyone into a collective ego. Great leaders leverage this opportunity to implement the best decisions that are backed by a collective buy-in from your team.

Shared Purpose slays individually distorted and unexamined expectations. Too many teams, cohorts, companies of people, relationships, etc. fail to live up to their potential because many of the participants are looking primarily to advance their agenda. Interestingly, most of these people are just playing by “the rules of the game” that have unknowingly been established. The only antidote for this is a co-created shared purpose for “why” they are all there and what they seek to accomplish together. This collective purpose creates an unstoppable force for good that also inspires the ultimate feeling of good in its participants and customers.

If Elephants, Egos, or Expectations are some of the giants you currently face in your organization, contact us now to discuss how we can customize the DRYVE Leadership foundational principles to create a lasting, healthy, high-performance culture for your organization.