Be patient
You’re excited about this person whom you’ve identified and you want to make him or her a leader in your company. If things don’t go exactly according to plan in the training right from day one, you can’t get frustrated. Or if you do, you can’t let it show.
“Very often in our business, and in every business, steps get skipped because you get frustrated,” Hayim says. “The reason why you hired the person was you needed the help. So it’s very hard to take the time to train them. But if you want a good employee that will last a long time, you have to take that frustration and put it aside.”
That’s often easier said than done, of course. But Hayim says he has learned to at least control his bouts of frustration that come from being an emotional person. This is true whether he’s training a leader or dealing with some other problem that might occur in his business.
“You always have an initial reaction of what you want to do,” Hayim says. “Unfortunately, that reaction is very often not the right one. So you need to look at it from a little bit further point of view. If you’re emotionally connected, wait for that emotion to calm down. It’s very hard to undo some of the things you say when you’re emotional. It’s like saying the wrong thing to your wife. It’s kind of hard to take it back. You need to deal with it, come up with a plan and go ahead.”
So what happens when it’s a situation where emotions are running high and you’re not exactly thinking rationally?
“I just force myself,” Hayim says. “We call it a cooling off period. We do that because I work with family and sometimes you have emotional conversations. You just have to say, ‘OK, I’m not going to react. I’m going to take a deep breath and calm down and come back to it in a few hours. If you’re still upset, then it probably was the right instinct.”
When you take a longer-term view of the situation with the person you’re trying to develop into a leader, that can be helpful in avoiding situations that you’ll later regret.
“A lot of it is instinct,” Hayim says. “You have to be slow and analytical. You can’t just make an emotional decision because one thing doesn’t get done. You have to give people some tests and let them see if they can hit it until they get out of their reach. Once they can’t reach whatever goal you’re giving them, you’ll know you’ve hit their limitations.”
Don’t take it personally. And don’t discount the possibility that other factors may be at play that are hurting your pupil’s chances at success.
“Sometimes you have to recognize that the failures may not be theirs,” Hayim says. “There may be outside factors that you need to consider. If you give somebody a sales position and it’s in the middle of a recession, it’s not great to compare them to somebody during a boom. You need to take all elements into consideration and feel it out. Weigh the strength of each item and determine whether it comes out to a sum that shows positive improvement or not.”
Have confidence in your instincts and your ability to identify talent for your business. And just as important, stick to your plan and don’t let yourself get distracted.
“You need to just focus on what you want to accomplish,” Hayim says. “I might want to put out this little fire, but I’m not focused on that fire. I’m focused on getting us to a certain destination and that’s where I need to be. Don’t second-guess yourself all day long. … It just takes a little bit of vision so you know where you’re headed.”
Of course, you may face a situation where you’ve constructed a plan and communicated it and exhibited patient support. But despite all of this effort, the leader you wanted to groom just isn’t working out. You can’t be afraid to move on at that point and admit you made a mistake.
“Not everyone has the same pace,” Hayim says. “Some people develop early. Some kids can read at 2 ½ and some kids don’t speak until they are 3 ½. There’s no rules as to the speed of it. But eventually, if they are not getting the results, you’re going to have to find somebody who is capable. You can’t keep every employee with you forever. They have to fit within the niche, and they have to get results. There are people who don’t make it.”
But if you’ve done a good job laying out your plan and communicating with the person you’re training, more often than not, you’ll find success. Just keep in mind the things that help convince anyone to stay with a job.
“People need two things with their job,” Hayim says. “They need to enjoy and love what they do, and they need to make reasonable pay. If either one fails, you lose them, so you need both.”
The focus on these two needs helped Hayim groom a reluctant leader and has helped him endure a tough economy.
“The key to it is really having a stable environment that actually lets you enjoy those ups and downs,” Hayim says. “By treating people well, we didn’t let go of a single employee during the tougher times. You need to look at where you’re headed and find a way to get there. That takes guts sometimes. It takes the ability to say, ‘Wow, this is really difficult right now. It doesn’t feel very good, but let’s keep on pushing forward.’”
How to reach: Recovery Racing LLC, (954) 607-7928 or www.ferrarifl.com
