Culture Shock - A Guide for Heart Centered Leadership

Love your customers, love your people and they will love you.

Diary of a Salesman

8:30am on Friday morning; my heartbeat increases as I settle into my leather, ergonomic study chair. I glance at the screen, the myriad of Excel figures blur as I try to ready myself for the weekly forecast call with my manager. I fumble around my desk looking for a pen amongst the detritus of papers and notebooks.

8:40am, 20 minutes to go. Tick-tock, I stare at the clock gathering my thoughts as I read each line on the spreadsheet and run through the order of forecast deals on my laptop; deal size, customer, description, probability, close date. My thoughts race through the qualification process; budget, authority, need, time.

8:55am, only 5 minutes left; next actions, my managers words flood into my mind; “aim higher than you think you ought to earlier than you think you should”, have I called all the C-Suite in the decision making process?

8:59am, my stomach churns as I hear the all-too-familiar “beep-bop, there are 5 people on the call”, I announce myself and am thrust into the early morning sales banter. I fill my lungs counting to 7, exhale slowly to a count of 11, my heart screams out.

Let’s face it working from home, or WFH, as it appears in your teams’ diaries, is not every leaders ideal scenario. You want to get everyone together, face-to-face or F2F as it’s colloquially known, look him or her in the eye as they commit to a deal or confirm that the call you insisted they made has been done.

Your skills as a leader are truly tested managing a disparate team. When you have them present in the room you are able to judge the mood of the room. You can see the interactions between sales and pre-sales as you pose those searching questions. Reading the body language and facial nuances are essential in helping you to decide whether a deal is real or not, the timeframe accurate and the value realistic.

As leaders there has never been a more compelling time to embrace change. The future of work was slowly evolving; WFH has been lurking in the dark / left of stage. Except now it’s centre stage and we find ourselves thrust at light speed into a new world where our emotional intelligence is under scrutiny.

Adaptation has never been more important; trust is a new metric we’re measured by; placing trust in your people will reap their trust in you. By adopting a more heart-centered approach you show them the vulnerable, empathetic side of your personality. In turn you will see their energy levels rise rapidly as your team become more passionate and demonstrate true purpose.

Transition now from meetings to orchestrating briefings where you lead with your heart. Focus on performance, not results and watch your team rise beyond your wildest dreams.

Written and published by Paul Stephenson and Dom Auton.