Prioritize personal growth
DEFENDER holds a convention each year for all of its employees that is built around a specific self-improvement message.
This particular year had not been a good one financially and it seemed as if the convention would be an easy expense to lop off the books.
“It’s easy to say, ‘We’ll cut our budget and not do that,’” Lindsey says. “But it was a real moment of truth for our senior leadership to say, ‘This is what we’re about and this is our growth strategy. If we’re going to get out of this funk, it’s going to take that.’ You have to have that and you have to have a road map.”
Lindsey needed to show employees that the talk of valuing their personal growth was not just words, so the convention was still on.
He further drove his message home by providing his employees with an actual road map for what he wanted to see them accomplish at DEFENDER. The map, which is done like a Monopoly board, contains tasks that aren’t specifically tied to the workplace, but they promote the valuable ideal of self-improvement that Lindsey wants to instill.
“If I’m thinking of a leader, I’m thinking of a person who is focused on improving themself,” Lindsey says. “We say all meaningful change starts on the inside and works its way out. It starts on the inside of somebody’s mind and works out into their life and into their team and then into the company. I’m looking for people that can talk about not just how they have grown in the last 10 years but also how they have grown in the last six to 12 months.”
These experiences include things as simple as reading a book or attending a convention or life-improvement course. There are also more involved experiences, such as going to Mexico and building a home for the poor.
“They are things that we think make somebody a leader,” Lindsey says. “There is a road map that someone can see the day they come in: ‘These are the experiences I’m going to have.’ You set an expectation not only for the employee but for the employer.”
The benefit for DEFENDER isn’t a house that an employee builds in Mexico or a book that an employee reads. It’s the wisdom that is gained from taking part in the experience. It’s the desire to find a better way to haul bags of ice that won’t come without an outlet for personal growth. And it’s showing your people that you really mean it when you say you want to help them achieve personal growth.
“We ask everybody to work harder on themselves than on their job every year,” Lindsey says. “From the time we hire someone, we want it to be very clear in our materials and our culture that we attract someone that already has a burning desire for self-improvement.”
If you get your employees looking for opportunities outside the workplace to demonstrate leadership and to grow personally, your business will reap the benefits.
“It goes back to the old line, ‘I’m too busy to take a time management course,’” Lindsey says. “I hear that all the time and I laugh. It takes leaders that are self-reflecting that really buy in to this in their own life and carve out the time and just insist that their employees do it.
“Someone can work their butt off for 10 hours or they can work their butt off for seven hours and spend three hours reading and learning. That person will be ahead of the person slugging away 10 hours every day.”