As what is promised is debt, with pleasure I return to the exquisite collection of practical knowledge of Mary Kay Ash contained in her work How to organize people. In the first article, we collected a series of recommendations from Mrs. Kay related to the talent of listening actively and effectively, talent that contributes to refining and consolidating genuine leadership - remember that there are pseudo-leaders or incomplete leaders who love to recreate themselves in music. of their eloquence and sometimes become distant and inaccessible, to attract fresh ideas and maintain high levels of performance and efficiency in work teams.
Jumping from one idea to another and reviewing those portions of text that once caught my attention, it is easy to perceive that Mrs. Kay's management style was based on a single concept, in a preponderant principle: the high sensitivity to put herself in the other people's place. I was tempted to argue that this supreme value was natural to her status as a woman, that this wonderful contribution corresponds to the “feminine side of business”, but immediately came to my mind the very stretched and very sophisticated executive embodied by Meryl Streep in the stupendous The Devil Wears Prada tape, and well, I finally chose to sidestep those quicksand.
The truth is that Mrs. Kay abhorred the self-sufficiency, the lack of tact and the presumptuous manners of certain salesmen that she had known in her long career as director of sales. Its salespeople of beauty products, before appearing to their clients riding in their dominant position, as representatives of a world-famous company, had to wisely and subtly manage the talent of seduction. Her main mission was to create strong empathy with her clients, and to focus on her interests, not her own, a "magic" formula for interaction that Mrs. Kay undoubtedly took from the Dale Carnegie manuals and then applied with great success.. She herself, as president of the company, invited her future sales managers to her own home for tea and pastries… which she personally baked.Calculate, reading friends, the impact that this type of approach had on your collaborators. A masterful combination ofemotional intelligence and effective leadership.
Let's continue with the outline of article I, but this time we will include annotations that contain many other keys to form high-performance work teams:
15. Managers at the top of the corporate ladder sometimes forget the bad times they had to endure before getting there or, worse yet, try to compensate: “My boss never listened to me when I tried to communicate my personal problems, so don't bother me with yours ".
There are many stories that I could tell you about some of my past experiences. Surprisingly though, when I take the time to go through incident by incident, I see that those managers were not as ruthless and selfish as they might seem at first glance. For the most part they were upright people, capable people who sincerely believed that they were doing a good job. His shortcomings were due to a certain lack of empathy towards his subordinates. They failed to ask themselves that important question: What would I do if I were the other person?
16. As part of our training program, we taught each principal to question herself: "If she were in her position and she was in mine, how would she solve the problem?" With this “double vision”, good people managers will face problems more successfully.
17. A good administrator will confront problems (such as an untimely and unjustified request for a salary increase) with sensitivity and will seek the best solutions, although the solutions should not compromise his responsibility towards the company or other people within the organization.
18. Although many people think that there is no place for the Golden Rule in the business world, at Mary Kay Cosmetics it is part of the foundation of our company. Furthermore, I think that effective management of people cannot be achieved in any other way.
19. When you enter our headquarters building in Dallas, you will be greeted with larger-than-life photos from our National Sales Directors. Although some companies use paintings, sculptures or perhaps images of their product as a declaration, we want our message to be this: We are a company of people.
20. I remember a large corporation that bought a thriving chain of take-out food stores, fired the previous administration, and replaced them with its own people. At eighteen months, that high-profit business was already running at a loss. What the buying company never understood was that it was not buying hundreds of restaurants and equipment. The most valuable asset they had purchased was the management team that ran the chain. Without those people, acquisition soon became an expensive obligation. Dozens of other companies have made the same mistake.
21. As we grew, we were able to attract the best people to join us. We were always willing to pay the most for the best talent. When it comes to hiring people, a company gets what it pays for.
22. It is always difficult to find capable people, so when you find it, the most important thing is to do everything possible to preserve it!
23. Whenever I meet someone, I try to picture them with an invisible sign that says: MAKE ME FEEL IMPORTANT! And since I always respond to that sign right away, it works wonders!
24. I once entered a Mercury car showroom. They had a yellow model there and, although I really liked it, the price on the sales tag was much higher than what I had planned to invest. Actually, she was much more interested in the Ford than she had just looked at another dealership. However, the seller was so courteous to me that he made me feel like he really wanted to see me. When he found out it was my birthday, he asked me to excuse him for a few moments and then he returned to continue talking with me. A quarter of an hour later, a secretary brought him a bouquet of roses that he placed in my hands as a birthday present. I was deeply impressed! I don't need to add that I bought the yellow Mercury that same morning.
That seller got the sale because it made me feel important.
An administrator must think that about people, but it is an attitude that cannot be faked. One has to be honestly convinced that every human being is important. That is a basic lesson, a lesson that you have probably heard many times. However, I remind him of this because many business people dive so deeply into their work that they forget to apply that rule.
25. I believe that employees who try to meet the highest expectations you expect of them will behave above average, much better than people who are not held in high esteem. Motivate your people to get rid of that untouched 50% of their ability and their performance level will go to the clouds!
