By Chelsea Stebner
Do all repairers dream of electric cars?
Do you dream about bumpers?
I do.
Owning, managing or leading a business in this industry can overwhelm the best of us. With so many things thrown in a business leader’s way, managing to stay afloat can be stressful. I often wake up in the night — and my mind goes zero to sixty in about three seconds flat.
Do you find yourself overwhelmed with all the responsibilities of leading a business that you sometimes don’t know where to start? I certainly don’t have all the answers and am often in this boat — I hope I am not the only one who missed the memo — but thought I’d share some of my ongoing learnings that help me to stay the course in leadership and business.
Support, Mentorship and Accountability
Surround yourself with people inside and outside your industry who you can count on to lend an ear. Not to solve your “problems,” nope, but to simply listen, lean in and let you work through challenges and solutions out loud.
It might be those some of those same people as above, or someone totally different, but do you have a mentor that offers a shoulder, advice and accountability to stay on track? Whether or not this person is in the industry or not, a person with values, a purpose and a passion to share their learnings with you can bring great value to your life. If you’re in the position to offer mentorship? Give the gift of your skills and abilities to the next generation of leaders. Your struggles and successes can provide valuable learning to someone just starting out.
You need someone to call you on your bull****. Again, this can be a combination of who I mentioned above. When you set your goals, when you say you’re going to do something and need follow-through, when you complain about the same problem for the hundredth time and haven’t done anything to make change, you need someone who will kindly, firmly put you to task to belly up to the bar of leadership and shift your perspective when the going gets rough. Because it will.
Leadership Development
Development is different than training. Don’t get me wrong. Training is necessary. It is the constant in our industry; the continuing changes necessitate training. However, development is the soft skills of training. It is a crucial part of leadership. A formal class, workshop, performance group, and business coach can immeasurably change how you lead people, how you manage your books, how you market and brand yourself and your business. It’s also an opportunity to meet with other like-minded individuals and draw from each other’s learnings and failings. Even though it is often difficult to remove yourself from your day to day operations, I highly encourage this part of leadership. Over the last couple of years I have learned that removing myself from the business, even for a day a month, provides perspective in how you view the business, to how you view your team, and that distance allows decision making and future planning to happen more easily.
Goals
Someone wise once told me that a dream written down becomes a goal. Once that goal is on paper, it’s not as easy to let it slide when it gets hard to move forward. Goal setting, and better yet, smart goal setting helps you to take that great big elephant and manage it in bite-size chunks. Am I successful in all my goal setting? Heck no. But failure is also a part of learning. I’ve learned that setting a goal and failing at it sometimes creates new or different opportunities.
Quiet
Take a social media break. Sit in silence. Mediate. Breathe deeply. Pray. Maybe your quiet time is golfing, or fishing or running. Whatever you do to silence your mind; do more of it! And if you’re not doing any of that? Start. Time and space provide perspective on tough days and tough decisions. When I get ramped up fast, about a situation or something going sideways I practice the 24 habit; 24 seconds, 24 minutes, 24 hours. Create that habit before you react to the challenges that you face as a leader.
Gratitude
We’re often so busy, being busy, managing all the balls in the air that it’s easy to buy into the “woe is me” feeling. It’s a daily practice of mine to take five minutes and jot down five things I’m grateful for. There’s a lot of talk out there right now about being grateful and I’m jumping on that bandwagon. We are lucky to live in an amazing country. We are stepping up to lead teams of amazing people. We surround ourselves with a team that’s smarter than us to run successful businesses. And we continue to progress forward in this crazy, progressive, technology-filled industry. We do have much to be thankful for.
Everything I do is an opportunity for learning and leadership. It is a journey. I know that this isn’t a usual body shop article. It is, however, a part of leadership and success that we often forget along the way. I challenge you to put into practice one or two of these learnings as a leader and shift your perspective. Surround yourself with good people, good values and a vision for your successful business and enjoy the ride.
