Full disclosure – this is not my boss, nor anyone I work with. This is a copy that ended up in my girlfriend's hands and we agreed this needed to be posted here.
My GF knows this small business owner, and some of the folks that work here. The owner wrote up his “Leadership Philosophy” and had all of his employee's sign – I assume that they agree to buy into his 'Work philosophy'.
Might this be a result of the Pandemic new work reality, or possibly (and likely) this person has never taken a business class in his life. The fact he provides this to all of his employees and make them sign for their employment file is extraordinary.
What is not captured here is the amount of red font, and underlining included in the original document. I know this is long, and at times painful. Question for the greater group is: Why would anyone sign this?
Company name and other personal info has been removed to protect the innocent.
XXXX Leadership Philosophy
MY STYLE, IN GENERAL
● For the most part, you’ll find I’m a very relaxed guy. I like to joke around and have fun while doing serious work. Very little bothers me these days as I grasp a better understanding of MYSELF; and of course others. I’m very good at keeping my emotions in check. If I am unhappy, I wait for specific times in the day or week to bring it up. That IS a problem for some people. Just because I am relaxed, it doesn’t mean that my standards are.
● I am very open and straightforward – what you see is what you get. I have not got time for games and I do not come with any hidden agenda. I say what I mean and there is nothing to read between the lines. If I say you’re doing a great job, you’re doing a great job. If I say you can do better, or I challenge you to do more, it means I think you are letting yourself down. It is a compliment. I am reminding you that you are better than what you’re doing right now.
● I am very impatient. It is the reason you’re employed now and not in five years. I do NOT believe patience is a virtue – it is often an excuse to underachieve.
● I am at times unreasonable. Scrap that, I am unreasonable more often than not. I am unreasonable in that I refuse to accept being told that something can’t be done. Again, you are here today – in this role right now – because of my repeated and never-ending unreasonableness. It is possibly my greatest attribute.
● I am not a fan of people being “busy”. Being busy is self inflicted! Ants are busy – but they don’t achieve all that much. They’re largely pointless. I am outcomes and action oriented. Fair, but somewhat impatient. I value the outcome being achieved and detest excuses and rationalizing of why something could not get done.
● I like to know the bad news. Do not keep it from me. If you smile and tell me everything is going well and I find out later, you knew it wasn’t, then there’s a level of distrust being created between us and it is difficult to repair. If you know something is going to affect the company, tell me before it does and I’ll be able to deal with it better.
● Contrary to that, occasionally I will vent about something I do not like if something has gone wrong. If you suspect I am venting that I am being completely irrational, or you’ve caught me at a bad time, take everything I say with a grain of salt and ask me a day later what I really think. You’ll nearly ALWAYS find I have a different perspective.
SOMETIMES WRONG, RARELY UNCERTAIN
● I make very quick decisions. I may take my time to decide – to think – but when I have made my decision, things happen fast. It is often the case that I am wrong, but I am rarely uncertain. If you have a feeling that I am wrong, you’ll need to let me know that very quickly. What is more, I am very happy with you telling me that I am. I will thank you for it.
MY BUSINESS PHILOSOPHY
● It’s always about providing maximum value to our clients. I want clients for life. I do not want to get a client to make a sale. I want to make a sale to get a client to enhance and add value to the rest of their life.
● The source of all value in any business comes from my staff – that is you. You have a big responsibility. I believe that the value does not come from the product or service (e.g. what they EXPECT) – that is what the client gets in exchange for paying their money. For the most part, they don’t want products or services – they want to feel a certain way about getting them. That is value and you deliver it by providing world-class customer service, going over and above a typical employee-customer relationship to build lifelong relationships with our clients.
● Team member relationships are the secret sauce to a great culture. If I don’t have a great culture, my clients will not have a great experience and maximum value will not be felt.
● I strongly believe in the customer service experience, in helping clients decide what is right for them – NOT the other way around. The fallacy in business is that “the customer knows best”. In my experience, that is rarely true. It is why so many people buy things they don’t need or never wanted. Our job is to never compromise our most important role: helping people make good decisions about our products and services to enhance their health – while simultaneously achieving the EXACT outcome they desire… and deserve!
● I believe in accountability. I do not know anyone who has ever achieved success without being held accountable to higher standards. I am held accountable in many areas of my life – and that is another reason this business exists. Individual responsibility (ownership) is essential and it means that individuals will be responsible for their own results.
● My responsibility is to establish the major outcomes needed for the business to be successful, set the priorities, and ensure that you have the resources you need to achieve goals. Your key responsibility is to deliver the outcome and get the results we agreed upon in the time frame we set. You will have a lot more autonomy and complete accountability to succeed. My job is to ensure you have everything you need to succeed – your job is to not let yourself down.
● You are compensated on an agreed schedule for your help in achieving the outcomes I decide I want for the business, and in the fastest way possible. What I want is not open for debate. How we achieve it is.
● My business is my first baby (don’t tell my daughters, aaaa and bbbb this ) – I care about it nearly as much as I do them. I’ll do anything to protect it and ensure that it grows old. I do not expect the same level of intensity from you, but the closer you can get, the better. Give it the same love and affection that you would give to your niece or nephew (or anything else you love dearly) and we’ll get on fine.
● I have very strong opinions. Success as a leader requires strong opinions on important matters, but you and I do not have to agree completely. I have hard and inflexible rules about what is good, what is acceptable, and what is stupid and sloppy.
● Consistency is important to me. I work to ensure that I show up the same person each day. You will rarely see a wild side of me, and you’ll hardly ever see a negative side. I am for the most part pretty consistent in my actions and emotions. I am definitely a glass half full person, but at the same time I am not an eternal optimist who loses sight of reality.
NEVER OVERPROMISE, ALWAYS OVERDELIVER
● Never over promise me, your team members, or our clients. But feel free to overdeliver.
● If you tell a client you will do something, do it.
LEAVE YOUR EGO AT THE DOOR
● The fastest way we can get stopped in our growth is if our people stop communicating. You might be in marketing, but sales and finance still need to know what you’re doing. You might be in clinical care or health and wellness, but the marketing team still needs to know what our clients are saying. You might be in the admin role, but clinical care and health and wellness still needs to know what our clients are saying. The better our communication, co-operation, and support, the faster and farther we will go.
● Improvement is integral to fulfillment. The most fulfilled employees are always the ones who are committed to getting better. If you’re committed to getting better, success will follow.
● You might be in a senior or supervisor/leadership position – you might even be a medical professional – but you don’t bring your ego to work. Check it at the door. We have different levels of responsibility, but we’re all equally responsible for achieving the business outcomes. Do not ever feel like you’re inferior and never make someone else feel that way either. The latter is not tolerated.
EXECUTION MATTERS
● Good ideas are easy to come by. Candidly, I come up with dozens every hour. Your ideas and suggestions are ALWAYS highly valued. But execution is where the magic happens.
● Excellent requires good ideas to be well executed. Do not leave your contribution to the company at the idea phase. Good ideas must be whittled down to the top one or two best ones and the most important to execute.
MY EXPECTATIONS OF YOU
● High performance – all of the time! We are a numbers/outcomes-based business and we MUST produce the results we agreed upon.
● Back me in public, criticize me in private.
● Support the decision when they’re made. You will be invited to contribute
before those decisions are made. Nothing is worse than someone who sits silently during the decision-making process and then, after the fact, seeks to undermine the decision made.
● If you have a hang-up about anything, come to me personally. If you are not happy with me, tell me in private. My door is wide open to criticism.
● If you’re not happy with a decision, make sure you have an alternate suggestion. If you’re not armed with an alternative, you’re moaning. I will not tolerate moaning.
● If you tell me I am wrong, you must tell me how to improve.
● Agree not to know enough – but commit anyway. It might be that you don’t have all the facts. That is okay, I rarely ever do and yet we’ve got this far this fast. Agree to fail forward and commit to filling in the blanks as we discover more.
● I hate anyone saying, “I didn’t have time.” One of my pet peeves is being told a day after a project was scheduled to be completed that someone ran out of time. I accept that you might run out of time. But I want to know ahead of time if it’s going to happen. Otherwise, you simply forgot or prioritized something else. If I know you are pushed for time, I can help you reprioritize and remove other projects from you that are getting in the way. Tell me you’re running out of time – but don’t tell me you did.
● Do not tolerate me putting more and more on your plate. I am an entrepreneur at heart. I am used to spinning many plates without dropping them. I do not expect the same from you even if I keep giving you plates. You have permission to remind me that if I keep giving you more plates then you can’t be successful in your role. Because I know myself and my team members (a.k.a. high achievers, perfectionists, go-getters, etc.) I make sure I do my best to offload your plates… at times even from yourselves.
● Plan your day before it starts. Your workday must start with careful consideration of what you need to achieve that day. Ideally, you did that the night before you arrived for work.
● Prioritizing is the number one skill of any employee. If you can’t prioritize, you’re working hard on the wrong things. Every day starts with prioritizing the four to six major things that must be achieved that day in order to help you achieve your goals for that week and that month. Anything else is busy work. Remember, ants are busy – but they don’t achieve much.
● Help others. You’re not just paid to do your own work. You’re paid to be an influence and helping hand to team members who need it. Check in regularly with your team members to see what blanks you might be able to fill in for them. Hallway conversations are perfect for this. “What are you working on?” or “What can I help you with?” are great ways of keeping lines of communication open across the company.
● Leave your problems at home. We all have problems. And we all think our problems are the most important. They’re usually not. The workplace I created is a place to come to forget about things happening at home. It is a nine-hour break from things going on at home.
● Tell me when you want to leave. The reality is that I’ll know three months before you tell me that you want to leave. It will show up in your performance. On the off chance you’ve dipped in performance, please tell me that you want to leave as early as possible – even if you haven’t yet found another job. I promise you that I will respect you more and honor your employment until you leave. The more time I have to replace you, the better chance I have of finding the best candidate for your role.
● If you’re on time, you’re already late. For admin roles: If the time sheet says 9 AM, but if you arrive at 9 AM, then you’re not starting work until 9:10 AM (opening procedures). If you do that every day, you’ve taken nearly four hours of unauthorized paid leave every month. That isn’t fair. Equally, if you leave the building at 5 PM, you clocked off at 4:50 PM. That is another four hours of unauthorized paid leave. You are now claiming a day per month. That is twelve days per year. Nearly two weeks of productivity lost in my company. For practitioners: If your shift starts at 9 AM and you arrive at 8:57, you are not giving yourself enough time to be mentally prepared for your client/class/work. This also doesn’t allow you to be part of our daily huddle or to fill you in for the priorities of the day, any schedule changes, etc. How would you feel if your favorite professional sports team showed up at the sound of the first whistle without a proper warm-up? Equally, if you rush out at the end of your shift without saying ‘goodbye’ to your team members or haven’t asked a fellow team member if there is anything they need assistance with, then you are not being a team player. Small cracks lead to broken windows
● Be coachable. My organization is dependent upon you being humble enough to accept that you don’t know it all and hungry enough to want to know it all.
● In summary: do the right thing. Be humble, be hungry, and be smart. Show others you care and be coachable.
CALL IT “TIGHT”
● Say what needs to be said, when it needs to be said, to whom it needs to be said. If your colleague needs to be reminded that work starts at 8:45 AM, and not 9:00 AM, please tell them.
● Equally, if your standards are slipping, thank your team members for reminding you that you’re letting yourself down.
● If someone – me included – calls you out for your lack of performance, your first instinct might be to wonder why you’re being criticized and begin to defend yourself. Take a moment and realize the person calling you out is most likely just fed up with you not doing something you said you would, or that is part of your role. Thank them for it – they’re giving you a chance to put it right and save your job.
● If you make the same mistake twice, more fool you. If you make it three times, more fool me.
MAKE MISTAKES, BUT DON’T BE RECKLESS
● Be courageous and adventurous, but don’t be reckless. I don’t want a risk-averse organization. At the same time, I cannot tolerate recklessness. Be guided by your intent.
● Learn from your mistakes and, even better, keep a log of the lessons you’ve learned from the mistakes you’ve made in the pursuit of progress.I am an employer that even provides you with an opportunity to stop to think through all of the consequences of your actions (rarely done by most people) and learn from them (e.g. scorecards). Yes, it is possible that you will make a mistake, but at least it will not be costly or irreversible. The key is to stop and think.
● If you make a genuine mistake that a client does not agree with, I will ALWAYS back you.
ONE-ON-ONES
● I manage by a lot of walking around and talking to staff about how all of the other staff/clients are doing. (e.g. “How’s the pulse?”)
● If you feel you need to talk to me, I welcome it. Please have an agenda and send it to me twenty-four hours in advance.
● If you feel you could do with or benefit from my insight, experience, or advice on any topic – personal or work related – just ask. Always ask for a meeting with me if you have a cultural or communication issue that is unresolved.
● If we have a meeting, plan for it the day before. Have an agenda with the three things you'd like to discuss and possible solutions for them all. If a meeting is worth having, it is worth planning for.
● If someone from outside wants to meet with you, demand the same. You want an agenda and the three possible outcomes, or you don’t show up.
IMPRESS ME WITH ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND RESULTS
● Do not impress me with what you plan to do – only what you did do.
● Do the work in which you are held accountable for in order for you to be
successful in your role. Don’t expect a pat on the back for how “hard you work” (e.g. how many phone calls you made or emails you sent.)
THE TAKEAWAY
Please understand, the intent for this write up is for me to be as vulnerable as possible with you on paper. That way there is no miscommunication. Providing you with the clarity of what is expected of you during your employment with xxxx is vital and it will let you know how your part contributes when it comes to the big picture. This will help ensure that I as the “company leader” and ALL the employees of xxxx are on the same page when it comes to core values and the main goal.
Lastly, there is nothing more valuable than the people we employ to help us achieve our company vision, purpose, and mission. And there is nothing more we can be grateful for as well. Which is why I owe you to be as transparent as possible and communicate what success looks like as an employee of xxxx. This is how we create a healthy, effective, and motivating company culture.
Leadership Philosophy Signature Form
(See Original Document Titled “ Leadership Philosophy)
Individuals violating this Leadership Philosophy will be subject to discipline, up to and including termination.
I have read, understood, and agreed to abide by these standards when conducting business as an employee of xxxx. I will be held accountable by my team members, team leader(s)/supervisor(s) when performing my job/role at xxxx.
Signature________________________. Date___________
A copy of this policy is to be provided to the employee. Signed original to be maintained in the personnel file.