Editor's note: This is the second installment in a two-part series in which successful “managers of managers” share strategies and best practices for mentoring, inspiring, motivating and guiding the people who run their stores.
“We give a ton of autonomy to our store managers,” says Marc Pons, president of Chapel Hill Tire, an 11-location dealership based in Chapel Hill, N.C. “But you first have to set that up within a framework.
“What does your company stand for? We ‘re very clear about our values. Those values dictate the atmosphere of our stores. They dictate how our team interacts with each other. They dictate how our team interacts with customers. They dictate how you make decisions when you’re not sure what the right thing to do is.
“The energy of the shop and the behaviors of everybody in that shop are going to be dictated by your values,” he explains. “If we have clear values, we don’t have to micromanage our managers.”
Each Chapel Hill Tire store operates as its own profit center, according to Pons. And each Chapel Hill Tire store manager is fully responsible for his outlet’s profit-and-loss statement.
This arrangement only works when store managers buy into the concept of “extreme ownership,” he says. “You want people who own the outcomes.”
Without that sense of ownership, Pons explains, managing store managers is tantamount to “babysitting.”
Chapel Hill Tire, which is building its 12th outlet, holds weekly manager meetings to ensure everyone is on the same page and issues can be addressed. “We have what’s called ‘an issues list.’ Managers are invited to put issues or problems on that list. We go through it and allow managers to ask questions about those problems or what they’re stuck on.”
Other managers are encouraged to help them. “You have to make sure that as the leader, you’re setting the right environment, where people are OK with being vulnerable and saying, ‘I’m struggling.’ If you don’t create the right environment where people can have the courage to admit that they’re struggling, nobody will ever bring up problems.”
Some managers may believe “it’s a sign of weakness if they don’t have a handle on everything that goes on in their store,” says Pons. “People don’t want to admit that they don’t have it all under control. If your team is telling you there are no problems, that’s a problem.
“One of our core values is ‘strive for excellence,’ but we’re very clear that striving for excellence doesn’t mean perfection,” says Pons.
That said, “we help our managers succeed by having a high level of accountability. They always know what’s expected of them. They’re encouraged to have that same level of expectations and accountability set up with their teams.
“If someone’s straying off-course, it won’t go on very long without us talking about it. We’re going to communicate how that behavior isn’t consistent with our values. If it comes to the point of putting things in writing or having a manager create an action plan for how they’re going to get back on course, we’ll do that. You have to hold people accountable.”
