• Are you more disciplined and emotionally mature today throughout your daily routine than you were last month this time?
• Is control of your attitude and your character choices, better now than when the year began?
• Have you honed your leadership skills, people skills and the knowledge of your business to the point that peers notice and strive to match your example?
• Are you a better time manager and steward of personal and corporate resources than in the past?
• Is your leadership more clear and inspiring to followers in 2012 than in 2011?
• Are you more fulfilled, secure and self-confident now than you were last year this time?
• Have you read more serious books in the past twelve months than in the year before?
• Is your life in greater balance than it was last quarter?
• Have you become more consistent, focused and tough minded as you pursue your daily agenda?
• Has it become easier for you to “no” to the wrong things, opportunities and people?
• Has the quality of your relationships at work strengthened, and has your leadership influence expanded beyond your immediate areas of responsibilities?
• Do you make fewer excuses and accept more personal responsibility than you once did?
• Is your team better than they used to be in the critical success areas related to their jobs?
• When customers do business with you, do they see and sense excellence throughout the transaction? In your peoples’ attitude, character, competence, dress and grooming? In the way their phone call is handled or their problems are resolved?
• Do customers encounter excellence when they pull on to your service drive, when they visit your restroom, when they drive by and notice how the lot was left after you closed?

Excellence is a journey that requires constant attention and sacrifice. Rest assured that not you, nor your organization, will just stroll to the top of Mt. Excellence unopposed. The journey to become excellent is littered with potholes and detours like comfort zones, time wasters, excuses, blame games, complacency, low or no standards, and the wrong people. (As formidable as these obstacles are, the greatest roadblock to excellence is saved for the end of this article.)

While it’s fashionable to speak of a “commitment to excellence” or striving towards excellence, the sad truth is that most people would rather do something else with their time. This explains why so few individuals or businesses become truly excellent or sustain excellence. If you stop listening to most people who speak about wanting excellence and instead watch their actions here is what you’ll notice more often than not:

• Most folks are more focused on finding fault with others than chasing personal excellence.
• On any given day they’d rather sleep in or stay out late than become excellent.
• The masses are content to wait to become excellent, or for someone to “make” them excellent, than they are to work towards its attainment.
• They wing it each day, put in minimum effort, gossip, complain and make excuses rather than choose behaviors that would move towards excellence.
• Surfing the Internet, keeping up with the Kardashians and playing fantasy football is far more interesting to the multitudes than paying the price for excellence through self-education, physical exercise, the building of their most essential relationships or working to advance a cause beyond themselves.
• Many seek out shortcuts, quit when it gets tough, or snivel about how the “haves” get all the breaks rather than humble themselves, find a mirror, suck it up, break a sweat and work for excellence.
• Increasing numbers find it easier to point to their boss, the economy, their competition, their upbringing, race, creed, ethnicity, the president, their priest or parents to explain why they’re not excellent.
• The non-excellent are content in investing more energy rehearsing the tales of yesterday, and living in past glory years than they do building an excellent future.
• The “excellent wannabes” prefer to boast that they’re #1 despite the fact they’re worse than they used to be, and fail to recognize that being on top isn’t synonymous with having become truly excellent.

Excellence is elusive; it will not naturally ensue just because you show up each day and work hard. You must tenaciously pursue excellence over time by consistently doing more of what matters most. You have likely figured out by now that the number one obstacle you’ll face in your quest to become excellent is you. You simply must get out of your own way and forego the self-destructive decisions and behaviors holding you back from excellence: expedient rather than right decisions, shortcuts, an addiction to instant gratification, the unwillingness to focus, or the resistance to trade in what is temporarily easy and enjoyable for what is hard, but significant.

The lesson: many are interested in excellence; few are committed to it or attain it. How about you? How about your team? Incidentally, you don’t have to answer this question aloud. Your daily decisions and actions tell the story for you.

1. Hire the right people.

2. Put them in the right places.

3. Train them to do the right things consistently and with excellence.

My guess is that these three objectives are persistent challenges for your growing dealership(s) as well. While I’ve written extensively here and elsewhere concerning the first two points (my new book has three chapters on recruiting, interviewing, and hiring alone), I’ll present my nine favorite, and most effective, training tips to address point three.

1. There is no cheap ride to greatness. Training effectively requires large investments of both time and money. If you flinch at the cost of training, prepare to pay the substantial cost for ignorance. Incidentally, the cost of ignorance is far more than a one-time, lump sum payment. Rather, it’s misery on the installment plan as your untrained team members afflict your culture, customers, brand, momentum, morale, production, and net profit.

2. Just because people may leave is no excuse not to train them. In fact, the one thing worse than training people and having them leave, is not training them and having them stay.

3. Train your managers first and more intensively because nothing gets better in your organization until the leaders do. Frankly, little makes you look sillier than placing live eggs under dead chickens and then looking puzzled because they don’t hatch. Your managers will ultimately attract into their departments what they are, not what they want. Thus, it’s incumbent upon you to help them become more through training so that they can attract and develop more valuable associates.

4. Training trumps motivation. While motivating a team member is important unless they are highly skilled, energizing them only makes them more dangerous to your dealership. Think about it: if someone is headed off the cliff they don’t need motivation to get them there quicker! Rather, they need training to turn them around fast. Don’t mistake motion for progress, and keep in mind that progress if far more important than speed. But progress can only come when someone develops a higher degree of skills, and the discipline to apply them consistently.

5. When you don’t train people you implicitly send the message that they’re good enough as they are. In effect, you subsidize their sloth, legitimize their mediocrity, and marginalize their potential.

6. A training meeting lays the foundation for further skill development, but it’s what your people do in-between these meetings that help them internalize and perfect what they learned in the classroom. Coaching your people to turn down time into prime time so that they role-play scripts, practice presentations, and utilize online training is essential to convert training from a one hour event into a meaningful process that keeps them sharp and growing. After all, a team member rarely gets better in front of a customer, he is revealed in front of a customer. Team members get better with what you coach them to do in-between customers, knowing that the level of their practice will determine the level of their play.

7. The great separator between good and great in just about anything is consistency. Nearly anyone can manage to do the right things occasionally, and training your people is no different. But it is the consistent application of this discipline that shapes team members into top performers, rather than suffering because the people on your team are shaped by conditions you’ve failed to prepare them for.

8. You must take time away from working in your business to work on your business. This includes attending seminars, Twenty Group meetings, and educational conventions. In fact, the more you work on your business, the easier it is to work in it. Over the years, we normally receive at least one phone call at the last minute from a frantic attendee as they explain why they must drop out of an upcoming seminar because “they’re having a bad month.” The conversation I have with these folks goes something like this:

“You’re having a bad month?”

“Yes.”

“Have you been there all month?”

“Yes.”

“And the month is still bad?”

“It sure is.”

“Well it doesn’t sound like you’re making much difference then. Maybe it would be best for you to get away and learn something that might reverse this trend.”

Silence.

9. When all is said and done knowing is nothing; life rewards action. The objective of training should not be to merely impart more information, it’s to apply it. In order to make progress one must continually work to close the biggest gap in both business and life: the gap between knowing and doing. So many times someone at a workshop will remark to me, “Dave, we already know this stuff, we’ve heard it dozens of times.” My reply is, “Great. How often do you do it?” That’s normally when we lose eye contact. There’s a big difference between knowledge and wisdom. Read my favorite quote on the topic by Charles Spurgeon, and it should be easy to understand why I tell attendees to my classes that my hope for them is not they become more knowledgeable, but wiser:

“Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great as the knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.” —Charles H. Spurgeon

This would be an excellent time to demonstrate your own wisdom by teaching and applying what you found most helpful in this article to the people on your team who have entrusted their futures to your leadership.

1. The Pain Principle. Change brings pain and discomfort, and pain and discomfort are signs of growth.

If you lift weights with the intention of growing bigger and stronger, but routinely throw the weights down after the third repetition because it starts to get uncomfortable and painful, will you grow? No way. Rather, you’d have to dig deep, break a sweat and work through the pain and discomfort in order to progress. In fact, as the pain disturbs the status quo of your muscles, it would serve as feedback that you’re actually on the right track to make them bigger. Business works the same way. Leadership wimps who flinch in the face of pain and discomfort spend their careers looking for lightning bolts; the easy, painless way to grow their business. These losers would have a better chance of finding Jimmy Hoffa than discovering the easy way to become great.

2. The Persistence Principle. Persistence helps convert talent into results and lifts the short-on-talent to higher levels.

Persistence was well-defined by Amway co-founder Rich DeVos as “stubbornness with a purpose.” Talent in people goes largely unfulfilled when the talented never develop the discipline, work ethic or mental toughness—the persistence—to develop his or her gifts. On the other hand, the marginally talented who applies discipline, work ethic and mental toughness routinely run circles around the talent-privileged. Normally the underdog has bigger or more reasons—a powerfully compelling “why”—that helps them develop the persistence that can offset their talent deficit.

3. The Price Principle. There is no worthwhile prize without a price.

A price normally involves a sacrifice; it’s a tradeoff you make so that you can move towards your goals. Dieters sacrifice favorite foods and larger portions for the prize of looking great and getting healthy. Exercisers do the same, and also tradeoff television or sleeping time to hit the track or visit the gym in exchange for a more functional and attractive body they can be proud of. Leaders in business are no different. The number one tradeoff leaders must make normally involves giving up comfort zones in exchange for the pain and discomfort necessary to grow. Paying the price for what you want isn’t a one-time, lump sum proposition. Rather, it is an installment program. John Maxwell puts it well: “You can pay now and play later, or you can play now and pay later. But either way, you’re going to pay! And the longer you wait to pay it, the more it costs you, because you’ll be paying with interest.”

Author E.M. Gray added this observation: “Successful people have made the habit of doing things failures don’t like to do. Successful people don’t necessarily like to do these things either. But they subordinate their dislike to the strength of their purpose.” My guess is that whatever accomplishments you’ve racked up in life that you’re most proud of weren’t handed to you; you paid the price to get them. You can expect your next great accomplishment to require no less.

4. The People Principle. The greatest leadership lesson of all time is that you can’t do it alone.

The exception to the People Principle is if your goals happen to be small enough, so that you can accomplish them all by yourself. It’s like climbing a molehill. You can likely bumble around on your own and wind up at the top of that tiny mound. However, if you want to do something significant and climb Mt. Everest, you had better be bringing a team of great people with you. Business works the same way. In order to put the People Principle to work for you, it’s important to weave the following philosophy into the job description of every leader within your organization:

“Take the human capital you’ve been entrusted with and make it more valuable tomorrow than it is today through training, coaching, and mentoring.”

After all, as a business person and as a human being, your success won’t ultimately be measured by how far you go and how much you get; but by how many people you left better than you found them, and positively impacted throughout your journey.

5. The Personal Responsibility Principle. It is your inside decisions, more than outside conditions, that determine how far you go and how fast you get there.

I’ve written an entire article on this important topic, The Lost Art of Taking Personal Responsibility. Let me just add here that when you fail to take responsibility for your results and choose instead to blame, you surrender your personal power to things you cannot control, and put your fate in the hands of outside forces. Blame is the anti-focus. It shifts your energies away from areas you can impact and change, and casts them into no-return areas that serve only to condition your thinking to victim’s status, and cause you to spend your days lamenting your bad luck and sniveling about how everyone else gets all the breaks. The Personal Responsibility Principle makes clear that “unlucky” people aren’t really unlucky at all. For the most part, they simply have an incredible knack for making horrible life choices.

6. The Practice Principle. The level of your practice and preparation determine the level of your play.

Practice and preparation builds confidence and reduces stress. Practice demonstrates humility, teachability, discipline, and a commitment to excellence. Practice is part of the price you pay for a prize. It helps you become successful long before your success actually shows up. Perhaps Joe Louis said it best: “A champion doesn’t become a champion in the ring. He is merely recognized in the ring. He becomes a champion during his daily routine.”

7. The Performance Principle. You can work with someone for a period of time according to their potential but eventually you must work with them according to their performance, their results.

Rule #1: Tenure, experience and credentials don’t substitute for results.

Rule #2: Despite how well you like or believe in someone, you must eventually judge them by their results.

Rule #3: Don’t rationalize why Rules 1 and 2 don’t apply to the special and unique exception you have in mind and whose mediocrity you’ve committed to defending for far too long.

8. The Pride Principle. Every conceivable management failure can find its root in pride. Peel back the ostensible cause for failure, and pride is at the core.

Failing to build a team, to change, to admit mistakes, to give away credit, to continue learning, to listen to feedback and the like are all rooted in pride. The only antidote for pride is humility, but humility doesn’t come naturally, pride does. Thus, humility must be cultivated. A good start would be to face your own pride and take steps to replace it with humility. Chapter three of How to Run Your Business by THE BOOK, provides in-depth strategies for helping you to do this.

If you choose to memorize, internalize, live and teach these eight key principles, congratulations! If you have merely been entertained for the past few moments and don’t think these principles are important, or that they apply to you, I’ve included a bonus principle just for you:

The Pitiful Principle: Doing the wrong thing repeatedly, or doing nothing repeatedly, only makes you better at being bad.

1. The Pain Principle. Change brings pain and discomfort, and pain and discomfort are signs of growth.

If you lift weights with the intention of growing bigger and stronger, but routinely throw the weights down after the third repetition because it starts to get uncomfortable and painful, will you grow? No way. Rather, you’d have to dig deep, break a sweat and work through the pain and discomfort in order to progress. In fact, as the pain disturbs the status quo of your muscles, it would serve as feedback that you’re actually on the right track to make them bigger. Business works the same way. Leadership wimps who flinch in the face of pain and discomfort spend their careers looking for lightning bolts; the easy, painless way to grow their business. These losers would have a better chance of finding Jimmy Hoffa than discovering the easy way to become great.

2. The Persistence Principle. Persistence helps convert talent into results and lifts the short-on-talent to higher levels.

Persistence was well-defined by Amway co-founder Rich DeVos as “stubbornness with a purpose.” Talent in people goes largely unfulfilled when the talented never develop the discipline, work ethic or mental toughness—the persistence—to develop his or her gifts. On the other hand, the marginally talented who applies discipline, work ethic and mental toughness routinely run circles around the talent-privileged. Normally the underdog has bigger or more reasons—a powerfully compelling “why”—that helps them develop the persistence that can offset their talent deficit.

3. The Price Principle. There is no worthwhile prize without a price.

A price normally involves a sacrifice; it’s a tradeoff you make so that you can move towards your goals. Dieters sacrifice favorite foods and larger portions for the prize of looking great and getting healthy. Exercisers do the same, and also tradeoff television or sleeping time to hit the track or visit the gym in exchange for a more functional and attractive body they can be proud of. Leaders in business are no different. The number one tradeoff leaders must make normally involves giving up comfort zones in exchange for the pain and discomfort necessary to grow. Paying the price for what you want isn’t a one-time, lump sum proposition. Rather, it is an installment program. John Maxwell puts it well: “You can pay now and play later, or you can play now and pay later. But either way, you’re going to pay! And the longer you wait to pay it, the more it costs you, because you’ll be paying with interest.”

Author E.M. Gray added this observation: “Successful people have made the habit of doing things failures don’t like to do. Successful people don’t necessarily like to do these things either. But they subordinate their dislike to the strength of their purpose.” My guess is that whatever accomplishments you’ve racked up in life that you’re most proud of weren’t handed to you; you paid the price to get them. You can expect your next great accomplishment to require no less.

4. The People Principle. The greatest leadership lesson of all time is that you can’t do it alone.

The exception to the People Principle is if your goals happen to be small enough, so that you can accomplish them all by yourself. It’s like climbing a molehill. You can likely bumble around on your own and wind up at the top of that tiny mound. However, if you want to do something significant and climb Mt. Everest, you had better be bringing a team of great people with you. Business works the same way. In order to put the People Principle to work for you, it’s important to weave the following philosophy into the job description of every leader within your organization:

“Take the human capital you’ve been entrusted with and make it more valuable tomorrow than it is today through training, coaching, and mentoring.”

After all, as a business person and as a human being, your success won’t ultimately be measured by how far you go and how much you get; but by how many people you left better than you found them, and positively impacted throughout your journey.

5. The Personal Responsibility Principle. It is your inside decisions, more than outside conditions, that determine how far you go and how fast you get there.

I’ve written an entire article on this important topic, The Lost Art of Taking Personal Responsibility. Let me just add here that when you fail to take responsibility for your results and choose instead to blame, you surrender your personal power to things you cannot control, and put your fate in the hands of outside forces. Blame is the anti-focus. It shifts your energies away from areas you can impact and change, and casts them into no-return areas that serve only to condition your thinking to victim’s status, and cause you to spend your days lamenting your bad luck and sniveling about how everyone else gets all the breaks. The Personal Responsibility Principle makes clear that “unlucky” people aren’t really unlucky at all. For the most part, they simply have an incredible knack for making horrible life choices.

6. The Practice Principle. The level of your practice and preparation determine the level of your play.

Practice and preparation builds confidence and reduces stress. Practice demonstrates humility, teachability, discipline, and a commitment to excellence. Practice is part of the price you pay for a prize. It helps you become successful long before your success actually shows up. Perhaps Joe Louis said it best: “A champion doesn’t become a champion in the ring. He is merely recognized in the ring. He becomes a champion during his daily routine.”

7. The Performance Principle. You can work with someone for a period of time according to their potential but eventually you must work with them according to their performance, their results.

Rule #1: Tenure, experience and credentials don’t substitute for results.

Rule #2: Despite how well you like or believe in someone, you must eventually judge them by their results.

Rule #3: Don’t rationalize why Rules 1 and 2 don’t apply to the special and unique exception you have in mind and whose mediocrity you’ve committed to defending for far too long.

8. The Pride Principle. Every conceivable management failure can find its root in pride. Peel back the ostensible cause for failure, and pride is at the core.

Failing to build a team, to change, to admit mistakes, to give away credit, to continue learning, to listen to feedback and the like are all rooted in pride. The only antidote for pride is humility, but humility doesn’t come naturally, pride does. Thus, humility must be cultivated. A good start would be to face your own pride and take steps to replace it with humility. Chapter three of How to Run Your Business by THE BOOK, provides in-depth strategies for helping you to do this.

If you choose to memorize, internalize, live and teach these eight key principles, congratulations! If you have merely been entertained for the past few moments and don’t think these principles are important, or that they apply to you, I’ve included a bonus principle just for you:

The Pitiful Principle: Doing the wrong thing repeatedly, or doing nothing repeatedly, only makes you better at being bad.

I agree with Collins’ diagnosis, and would add that fear is an overlooked culprit obstructing the climb from good to great. This is because when you’re not currently “good,” you’re more likely to take risks, implement changes, and make the decisions necessary to grow. After all, when you’re anonymous or un-established, you have little to lose and much to gain. But when you get “good,” you tend to cling to what you have, maintain and protect it so it doesn’t slip away from you. In other words, you stop playing to win and begin playing not to lose. As a result, you neglect the opportunity to build on your foundation and reach a higher level – greatness.

If you’re willing to keep an open mind and not sink into denial, look reality dead in the eye as you consider these two questions:

• Are there areas in your personal or work life where becoming “good” has caused you to stop changing, risking, deciding, learning and stretching so that you could become great?
• Do you have steadily performing employees or departments within your organization who are stuck at “good,” and need a new perspective about the staggering difference between being “successful” (good) versus striving to reach their fullest potential (great)?

If you’re like most folks, the answer in both cases is “yes.” For you, the next question becomes, why have I, or we, embraced good and failed to become great? Here are possibilities:

1. Because the leaders within an organization are the architects of the status quo, they have the most to defend and to unlearn. Thus, you must consider the possibility that they—or you—are afraid to change because doing so threatens egos and may somehow diminish the perceived value of your past contributions. Defensive and prideful people will protect the status quo rather than rattle it, and settle for what is while missing out on what could be and should be.

2. If you’re a leader in your organization, it may be that your fondness for the “good old days” has caused you to keep the wrong people too long. These team members were good enough to get you to a certain point but don’t have the talent or drive to take you to greatness. Sometimes these are people who expect their tenure to substitute for results, and who may be good at some things but not great at the things that matter most. For whatever reason you’re afraid of stretching these loyal soldiers to reach your bar, and instead you lower your bar—and diminish your dreams—in order to accommodate their skill level or comfort zone. This strategy of surrender guarantees that you will never become great.

3. Another possibility is that you’re afraid of facing the reality that although you were once great, you no longer are—but prefer to pretend otherwise. Perhaps you even regale bored-stiff friends, family, and associates with tales of your mightiest feats, despite the fact that they took place during the Clinton years. What you’re most afraid of in this case is admitting that you once had it and let it slip away—and don’t have the guts to go after it and get it back.

4. Actually, you may not be afraid at all. It could be that you’re simply complacent or lazy. You know you’re not as good as you could or should be, but in your mind you’re still good enough. If so, you’ve got plenty of company. Countless under-achievers have allowed “good enough” to get in the way of greatness. You may give lip service to getting to the next level, but it just isn’t worth the pain, discomfort and stress. While you would admit this aloud, your actions find you guilty as charged.

Moving from good to great requires: bold leadership, high expectations buttressed by strong accountability, an eagerness to embrace change, a willingness to take mature risks and the discipline to consistently implement what you know full well is necessary to move to the next level. Without a doubt, this list is a tall order and can appear both overwhelming and scary. But what’s even more frightening is the prospect of wasting your life, allowing others to underachieve on your leadership watch, being racked with regret and haunted by one of life’s saddest choruses: “I could have, I should have, if only I would have,” or eking out an existence so average and uninspiring that when you die it will be as though you never lived.  When you think about it in these terms, the risks you take to move from good to great should be far less fearful than the terrifying prospect of remaining as you are.

Following are background observations that relay the evolution of this unsettling phenomenon. Afterward, I’ll present tactics to prevent its influence and values from infecting your culture.

1.Finishing college and entering the workplace over the past few years have been the first generation of kids brought up under the farcical “don’t keep score and everyone gets a trophy” philosophy. The intent behind “tell them they’re special, give them a participation trophy, and prohibit punishment for poor behavior” was designed to engender a higher level of self-esteem in young people. This failed approach has backfired by creating a generation largely marked by entitlement, selfishness, and a false sense of their worth to the marketplace.

2. Upon entering the workplace with an “I’ll be rewarded for showing up versus stepping up and life is obligated to make me happy” arrogance these folks are soon deflated by the realization that life isn’t easy, they aren’t special, and making it big will require work. The false self-worth built through two decades of political correctness quickly fades as they earn below-average wages, in ho-hum jobs, suffer for lack of discipline, weak character, and glean the first clues that despite all the smoke they’ve had blown up their collective backsides, they just might be losers.

3. As they fail to live up to the hyped expectations created for them they are shamed, demonstrating the principle that those not prepared for life will be shamed by life. Shame provokes one of two emotions in human beings: get your life together or blame others for your state. Many in this generation choose the latter.

4. Human nature drives people to seek purpose in their lives and to make a difference in the world. When one begins to feel that making a difference by building something up is too difficult or out of reach, the alternative is to seek purpose and attention by tearing something down. In this case, the prosperous people and companies they’ve come to resent and envy. Sadly, the ashamed generation failed to learn in their politically correct classroom that throwing rocks at another man’s Bentley won’t get them out of their rusted out Yugo. Ironically, this group’s mindset has infected generations beyond their own, attracting adherents from past eras who struggled, gave up, have been going through the motions, and in defeat decide to latch onto the same blame bandwagon embraced by the ashamed generation.

5. Thankfully, there are many from the ashamed generation who were raised in a manner that made them understand and appreciate the concepts of earn and deserve, and discount the whole concept of monuments to mediocrity like the participation trophies, and the unearned weekly allowances their counterparts relied on for affirmation. They learned discipline, respect, hard work and personal responsibility. They are refreshing exceptions to the huddled mass of their counterparts crowing out their chorus of complaints and demands. Many of these fine young men and women make meaningful contributions to businesses, churches, volunteer organizations and the armed forces.

To those caught up in the entitled, bitter, and envious mindset that pervades the ashamed generation, I suggest the following:

1. No one is impressed with the spin your parents and teachers fed you about how special you are. Respect is earned through the consistent demonstration of character, competence and results. All life owes you is what you’ve earned and deserve.

2. If you are one of the moochers circulating petitions asking the government to eliminate your share of the one trillion dollars of outstanding student loans, forget about it. When you go the party and leave with the goods, you pay the tab.

3. Gather your worthless participation ribbons, trophies, and other testaments to your mediocrity and toss them. Then borrow a dictionary and look up the words earn and deserve; memorize them, and begin to live according to their standards.

4. Shut up and pay up. Most of my hard working associates pay six and seven figures in income taxes annually, you pay squat—and you’re ticked off at them? I don’t think so. Don’t cry “pay your fair share” when you pay little or no share at all.

5. If you’re a “Warren Buffet-type”, ashamed generation sympathizer, and don’t believe you pay enough in taxes simply write a check to the IRS to relieve your guilt and leave the rest of us alone.

To those endeavoring to thrive in their business despite the assault of the ashamed driven generation’s mindset, and its potential to affect morale at all levels within your dealership, consider the following.

1. Make it extremely difficult to get hired. Dig into an applicant’s life and determine what they’ve done, overcome and flesh out their life philosophy on hard work, success, prosperity, earn and deserve. Don’t give questionable candidates the benefit of the doubt during the interview, and if you are in doubt, keep looking.

2. Don’t reduce your vision or standards to accommodate the comfort zones of others. Rather, stretch your people to reach your expectations, and if they don’t measure up remove them.

3. Require team members to qualify based on past performance for the right to participate in spiff programs, contests and other perks they now take for granted. If they don’t average producing “X” over the past 90 days, they cannot participate in incentive programs whatsoever. This earn and deserve philosophy will help weed out entitlement and make those who do qualify for your generosity more appreciative.

4. Require the team to qualify for perks they now take for granted, ranging from donuts on Fridays to lunches on Saturdays. In order to get their free lunch on Saturday, they must collectively produce at least “X” during the week. This simple change in your earn and deserve philosophy will begin to change attitudes towards benefits people now take for granted and evoke more humility and gratitude.

5. Celebrate excellence in your dealership by launching a top performers club where people qualify quarterly. Give the winners the best schedule, office, opportunities and more. When the whiners squawk about how unfair life is simply tell them, “When you do what they’ve done, you can get what they’ve got.”

6. Install minimum performance standards that cause the laggards to fire themselves faster if they cannot attain them. Letting underachievers stay on a great team is the equivalent of giving them an adult participation trophy.

7. Replace longevity bonuses with performance bonuses. This eliminates entitlement and sets the standard that tenure, experience and credentials don’t substitute for results—and that in your dealership people are rewarded for stepping up, not simply for showing up.

The cultural currents and trends in a society surrounding your dealership will adversely influence and infect your dealership’s culture unless you take deliberate steps to protect it. If you fail to shape your business cultural according to personal values and standards, society’s values and trends will shape it for you—to your great disgust and peril.

1.  Make or become less.
2. Make (someone or something) seem less impressive or valuable.

The given definitions raise the stakes considerably when one considers the effect that his or her associations with others—the wrong others—may have on their personal time, morale, and results. And while I suppose that it’s not politically correct to use a term like “diminishing people,” I should explain that I softened the verbiage considerably from my working title: “Dolts, Dullards & Derelicts,” which in some respects I still prefer. Frankly, to deny that diminishing people exist in most workplaces, or to dismiss that they have the potential to derail your day, week, month, or life, would be incredibly naïve. If you’re committed to growing yourself, your people, and your organization, it’s important to depart Pollyanna-land and face reality about certain individuals and respond accordingly; embracing those who elevate you, while you disassociate with those who have the potential to devastate you.   

Understanding the impact of “diminish,” it should be clear why a productive person wouldn’t want to spend much time around a diminisher, as well as why a leader would shun hiring or keeping them.  But sometimes you can be too close to diminishing people to discern that they do indeed diminish you, others, and your culture. While the five laws I’ll present apply to associations in all of life’s arenas, this particular article is intended to address diminishers in the workplace. To help you gain perspective as to who these folks might be, familiarize yourself  withThe Five Laws of Diminishing People below:

The Five Laws of Diminishing People:

1. People with nothing to do want to do it with you.
2. People with nothing to say always say far too much.
3. People with no vision reduce yours to their comfort zone.
4. People with low morals, who fall for everything, assail your standards, as you stand for something.
5. People who think of themselves too much and who think too much of themselves, don’t think too much of others or think of others too much.

Perhaps these might be worth reviewing with your team to help them evaluate their own tendency to either add value to others and their workplace, or to drain value from them.

If you share the workplace with diminishing people, spend much time around them, and allow them to influence you, they will affect you in the following progression:

1. Listening to their failed life philosophies and excuses will distract and deplete you.
2. You may gradually become desensitized to their loser’s limps, incompetence, character shortfalls, or rationalizations for failure. As a result, you will catch yourself saying, doing, or defending some of the same things they do that you currently find abhorrent.
3. Your personal approach to others may regress from stretching and elevating them to comforting them in their mediocrity. In addition, the energy you expend in indulging or nurturing diminishing people will leave you little or no time to help the productive members of your team grow and reach their potential. In effect, you will weaken the strong as you coddle the weak.

Diminishing people are one of the many aspects of life that you must give up in order to go up.  Even if you work at the desk right next to a diminishing person, you can limit the amount of time you spend listening to and dwelling on their words and deeds. You can also refuse to enable or encourage their diminishing language, attitudes, and actions by changing the subject or simply moving on to something else when they begin to infect your space.

Sadly, diminishing people are sometimes in your immediate or extended family. If you’re stuck with this unfortunate situation, I can only recommend the same three things that have helped me endure and survive like conditions: ear plugs, Advil, and Ambien.

In the early ‘80s I worked in my parents’ restaurant business that failed. It was in the midst of 20-plus% interest rates, 10% inflation and unemployment as high as today. I held three jobs to make ends meet, selling insurance door-to-door for two companies, and in the evenings delivering tortillas to restaurants for 50 cents per case. This wasn’t the work that I wanted or was qualified for, but it was the work that was available and I felt lucky to have it.

While living with my wife and daughter in the ugliest trailer, in the least desirable part of town I changed careers and began to sell cars. In seven years I advanced from salesperson of a dealership in Texas, to the number two man in an ultra-successful $300,000,000 dealership group in California. When I declined the pay cut offered to me by the new owners I was forced out. Despite this misfortune, I chose not to whine, sue, or pitch a tent and “occupy” the dealership in protest. Instead I founded LearnToLead, which by God’s grace, prospers to this day.

As I pursued my aspiration to write, six dozen publishers rejected my ideas for Selling Above the Crowd and No-Nonsense Leadership. Consequently, I exerted the effort to self-publish, distribute, and publicize both books. Their success attracted into my corner Wiley, the world’s largest business publisher with whom I’ve now published ten books. My publishing experience reaffirmed my belief that if something is important to you, you’ll find a way. If it’s not, you’ll find an excuse.

I don’t share this history to impress you, but to impress upon you that I’ve been broke, at the bottom and the chief architect behind numerous failed ideas and ventures. But upon hitting the wall I chose to bounce, not splatter. Like many of you, when things got tough I didn’t opt to whine my way out, wish my way out, or wait my way out. I took personal responsibility for my life and worked my way out.

This article’s purpose is to confront a dangerous trend—a burgeoning blame game and pity party spreading across continents that vilifies success, attacks the successful and endeavors to penalize prosperity. This assault has become a convenient and clever diversion for society’s malcontents and protestors to shift anger, frustration and responsibility away from their personal failings, and thrust it upon those who have made productive life choices or who have found ways to overcome stumbling blocks and turn them into stepping stones. Here’s a glimpse of a gust that’s fanning the flame:

Millions are hurting financially in America. For many, the pain is prolonged by their refusal to accept personal responsibility for poor decisions that have caused or augmented their struggles. Worse, politicians, unions and the media encourage and enable their “I am helpless” mindset by assuring them that they are blameless in their mediocrity, and that the country’s most productive citizens and companies are the culprits. Cities throughout the world are being “occupied” by protestors, blaming and making demands that the high income earners and corporations do “their fair share” to turn their lives around.

Most people 40 years and older would agree that the trend toward blaming more, entitlement, and undisciplined lifestyles has accelerated in recent decades. Not coincidentally, so has the national poverty rate. But as convenient as it is to blame others or outside conditions for one’s lack of economic progress, nothing impacts the quality of one’s life more than his or her inside decisions. Anyone blaming others for their misfortunes surrenders the personal power over their own destiny and hands its reins to someone else, a folly that further perpetuates their misery.

While you won’t hear this on the news, many suffering people have made an abundance of poor life choices to create or compound their financial hardship: the decision not to work hard or at all, not to self-educate oneself, not to live within one’s means, not to save money, as well as choosing to engage in habits like smoking, drinking, illegal drugs, gambling and a variety of other vices. If the world’s malcontents and protestors could kick the person most responsible for their woes they’d be unable to sit down for weeks. Sadly, many strugglers will not progress from their lack because they refuse to acknowledge their role in creating or prolonging it.

Following are five tenets that help you recommit to the lost art of taking personal responsibility, and place you on a path to rise above the masses that go through life assuming the position, thinking, talking and walking like victims. Please copy and share with those you know and care about who are suffering from any number of todays’ fashionable “it’s not my fault” fantasies. This includes entitled family members and mediocre employees who went into retirement years ago, but remain on your payroll, expecting to be rewarded for showing up versus stepping up.

1. Becoming precedes getting. Until you become more than you are in areas like attitude, discipline, character, work ethic and knowledge, you are unlikely to get much more than you’ve got. When you do get more (usually because it is given to you) without becoming more, you rarely get to keep it for long and won’t have the skill to replace it once it’s gone.

2. Attitude is a choice. While you cannot usually choose what happens to you, you have the power to choose your response to it. The quality of your response will greatly determine the quality of your life. No one and nothing can assault your attitude without your consent.

3. Discipline is a choice. No one is born disciplined or not. Discipline is developed when you get clear about what you want, decide to pay the price necessary to get it, and resolve to give up what hinders your quest. If you’re undisciplined, it’s not because you were born that way, it’s because you’ve chosen to go through life seeking prizes without paying prices.

4. Growth is a choice. Personal growth isn’t automatic, and it doesn’t come naturally with age. Personal growth must be intentional. In other words, you must choose to read the books, to attend the seminars, to learn and assimilate success principles, to study the lives of life’s giants and decide how you can apply what made them successful in your own life. If you’re not growing, it’s because you no longer pursue growth.

5. Character is a choice. Character is the combination of moral qualities you’ve decided to embrace in your life. If you lack strong character, you can’t blame mom and dad, the government or your teachers. Ultimately, you get to choose what’s important to you, and what’s not. Your character will develop—or not—in accordance with those convictions.

Here’s what economic protestors and their critical kinsmen in life’s various arenas must understand: Needy people can’t expect to advance by demanding more of what someone else has earned. Rather, they must advance through education, perspiration & determination. I don’t know anyone who has risen from rags to riches by complaining or protesting, or clamoring for the government to pick the pockets of those more successful than they and use the proceeds to subsidize their own inadequacy or complacency. While a humane society must support those who can’t help themselves, it owes absolutely nothing to those who won’t help themselves.

A recent television program featured an increasingly common portrayal of personal absolution: a healthy, articulate unemployed man who assailed “the system” because it had failed him and made it “impossible” to find work. In fact, he has quit looking for work and now lives his life on the sidelines cheer-leading the blame game. There is no way to know how many of the unemployed persist in their parasitic assault on our country’s resources, not because they cannot find work, but because they don’t like the work they find. This particular man remains idle despite the fact that 150 million other Americans have found work including the physically challenged, blind, deaf and mute. In fact, six million Americans work two jobs or more. It would benefit him to understand the difference between the system failing him, and he making the decision that caused him to fail himself. He’s made the sad regression from loser to quitter. A loser is someone who comes up short and tries again. A quitter simply gives up.

President Theodore Roosevelt had words of encouragement for those who roll up their sleeves to make things happen, rather than critique, complain, demand or quit. It’s fitting to conclude this piece on personal responsibility with his famous acclaim for the man in the arena:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. 

Note: I recently filmed a four-minute video on this topic: “Whining is no Substitute for Working!” It’s been posted in a variety of locations. If you’d like to view it, e-mail us at danderson@dealer-communications.com and we’ll send you the link where it is currently playing.

If you answered that they were “recruited” into service you are correct. However, I’m looking for an even more insightful answer. Think again.

In case you didn’t get it, here it is: they were already working, productive and engaged when they were called, discovered, or enlisted into service. In fact, you don’t find evidence of idle and unproductive men or women being used in a mighty manner throughout the Bible. Do you believe there’s a lesson there? I do!

While you can always find exceptions to the rule, here is the rule: The most productive, successful workers are already working! They aren’t likely to be amongst the ranks of the unemployed, showing up at your workplace hat in hand begging for a job. Thus, you need a recruiting strategy that actively attracts passive job candidates from other organizations into your own. Most leaders have no such plan. They run a silly ad that brings in the bottom 30 percent of the performers and then hire the best of the worst!

In the first chapter of my book, Up Your Business, I outline several key strategies for attracting high quality, passive job candidates into your organization. Here’s a hint: you’ll need to stop waiting to be hunted and start hunting! You’ll also need to drop your loser’s limp that “there’s a shortage of talented people in my area.” Remember, there is no shortage of talented people in a given area. The Creator isn’t likely to have become ticked off at your area and stopped putting talented people there! No, the most talented, successful, and productive people are very likely to be getting results for someone else, in or outside of your industry. Recruit them! In fact, you can start by creating a culture that becomes your number one recruiting tool. Your first step in this direction is taking better care of the great people you currently have working for you. After all, how can you expect to attract eagles from other organizations into yours if you’re not talking care of the eagles you have already?

As I work my way around the patch, I am often asked, “Swami of Succession, how do I build the success that justifies succession planning?” It should come as no surprise to you that I don’t have a “silver bullet” answer to this very good question. However, I can share some “dos” and “don’ts” regarding leadership and management that I repetitively see as components of success.

Do understand the source of success

When it comes to being successful, franchises, incentives, hot merchandise, locations, buildings and processes are not the answer. Otherwise success would not be extra ordinary. No doubt the most coveted of dealership attributes help, but they are mere components of the engine.

Your people are the most perplexing resource that fuel and make your dealership haul ass or just meander along trying to keep up with traffic. Unfortunately as a dealer, leader and manager you cannot make your people hit the gas and seek the extra ordinary. You can only teach, coach, encourage and ultimately choose to maintain or exclude each employee who collaboratively forms your organizational culture. Your employees must choose to work together as a team, must choose to go the extra mile, must choose to seek success and they must choose to pay the requisite price to be extra ordinary. They do this so they can make your business better today than it was yesterday. Every choice by every employee has an impact on your success, good or bad. As a leader and manager, your “assignment Mr. Phipps” (Mission Impossible) is to inspire and motivate them to make these choices.

Do be a role model for the behavior, attitude, passion and commitment you expect

A role model is the best motivator known to man. Recognize that every supervisor sets the standards for everyone below them. Anyone near the top of the organizational chart is under pressure to set the standard for the entire organization. Optimism breeds optimism, energy breeds energy and passion breeds passion. Unfortunately you can also reverse the formula and acknowledge that lethargy breeds lethargy and pessimism becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Therefore on those days when you or one of your managers doesn’t have the right stuff, don’t curse the field from which you are expecting a harvest. Stay home, go pound a golf ball or hang out with someone who can help you regain your focus and purpose.

Do expect the extra ordinary from everyone and express your confidence that they are going to deliver

Leadership is a game of sorts with the employees saying, “I don’t want to reveal really who I am by giving all I’ve got because my boss may discover I don’t have enough.” Unfortunately about 50 percent of your employees are scratching the bottom of their productivity tank and don’t have enough. However the others do have more to give and you will have more success if you simply acknowledge them along with the masses, continually expressing that you are depending upon their contribution and you are betting the farm that they will come through.

Do demand teamwork

You cannot compete without the willingness and capability to “do more with less.” A task master with a whip cannot create organizational alchemy whereas teamwork is the key to doing more with less.

Do praise that which is good

Don’t let any extra ordinary effort or achievement go unacknowledged. I assure you if you spend the bulk of your time affirming the good that your employees do, the “force” will pull from the dark side those who have not chosen to go the extra mile or they will be starved off the lot through lack of recognition.

Do not ‘praise but’

If you are motivated to praise a family member, manager or employee, let that seed of affirmation germinate into confidence and self-esteem before you follow with “but you can do better.” Otherwise, you are just wasting your breath and building frustration because no one hears a praise followed by a “but.” Minimally, use two sentences and lose the “but” or be prepared to be known as a butt.

Do not be crazy; assuming you can do the extra ordinary by continuing to do the ordinary.

If you are looking for different results you have got to be prepared to come out of your comfort zone and do things differently. Minimally that means new ways of doing things and probably that means new people that are receptive and motivated to try new things.

Do not tolerate mediocrity

Those who demonstrate that they are not willing to strive for the extra ordinary, not willing to subordinate personal priorities for team goals have no long term place in a successful dealership. Successful organizations are always in search of team members who will give their best and you can’t make room for dedicated team players or make them feel comfortable if slackers are hanging on.

One of the numerous skill sets that my friend and co-manager Brett possesses is the ability to “turn it up” when trying to achieve a goal. Brett has the ability to get his team to realize their full potential. Whether it’s seeing that the appointment schedule is little light for tomorrow, or seeing that the store needs another $30,000 to make its monthly goal.

I know we all like to think that we give 100% all the time, but the truth is we don’t. Let’s not take this as an insult. It would be impossible to run at 100% all the time, but the sign of a true leader and motivator is to be able to get the best out of your team when you need it the most.

By setting goals and through continuous effort and monitoring goals, we know when the effort needs to be intensified.

In the retail service business there are factors that affect our abilities to achieve goals, like the economy or the weather. Being able to “turn it up” when the opportunity presents itself is the mark of a leader.

When I have the pleasure of speaking with Brett throughout the day he always knows “where he is at” in relationship to his goals for the month. Sadly, some people only look at their monthly objectives in the last week of the month and by then, it could be too late. 

One of the reasons Brett has successes in this area is that he clearly articulates and shares the team’s goals with his members. So when the “heat gets turned up” it’s not really a surprise to the team because they already know their goals.

First lesson in goal setting is to know you need to monitor your goals. 

Second lesson is to be able to motivate your people to achieve them.

Third lesson is to be able to turn it up when you’re falling short of your goals.

A true professional knows when they need to give more; they know when they need to turn it up.

Be the person that your team counts on when it needs to get done and you’ll reap the benefits of your efforts.

In contrast, effective leaders tend to project a longer-term perspective and place more priority on turning around people than turning around numbers. Thus, they continue to build their capacity to produce at a higher and more consistent level. These leaders understand that the only way they can sustain and increase production over time is by expanding their capability to grow that production by addressing the key disciplines within their dealership that build capacity to produce. Following are six of these disciplines that will help build your own dealership’s capacity to produce. Use them to evaluate where your team may have gotten off track, and then re-address these capacity areas as a priority with your leadership team.

1. Recruiting. Proactively building a pipeline of talent to help you upgrade current positions and to fuel future growth is a key to building your capacity to produce. Recruiting is far more than running an occasional ad and collecting resumes. Recruiting demands a comprehensive strategy to consistently look in the right places, for the right people, with the right qualities, so that you can bring on the best and avoid hiring wrong fits for your organization out of desperation.

2. Training. Consistently training both your front line and management staff keeps your people sharp, upgrades their skills and lets them know there is still plenty of room to improve. In order to increase production over the long term, it is essential that you commit to the ongoing process of both getting better people and getting people better. In dealerships where training is either haphazard or optional, production is more of a roller coaster than a rocket ship.

3. Coaching. Coaching involves observing, analyzing performance and offering feedback. Because of this, managers who spend too much time in their offices and over-managing, are often lousy coaches. Since they aren’t in the trenches to observe what’s really going on in their business, they are ill-suited to coach anyone on how to improve. In addition to coaching “on the fly,” while in the trenches, effective leaders impact and develop their team members with private, one-on-one coaching sessions. These more-formal encounters are best done with an agenda that includes: diagnosing, prescribing, reinforcing and challenging the team member. By helping to develop people through both on-the-fly and one-on-one coaching, a leader is able to build each employee’s personal capacity to produce, which will in turn elevate team produce.

4. Mentoring. While training and coaching are for the masses, mentoring is for the few. Leaders must carefully select those they’ll invest more time in because effective mentoring requires meaningful investments of both time and resources. Leaders should mentor team members who are ready, willing, and able to grow, and who have demonstrated that they have the highest upward potential for increasing personal and organizational results. By building an inner circle of more highly capable leaders around him or her, a leader exponentially increases capacity to produce and can expect steady increases in production over time.

5. Strategizing. A leader who stays in touch with the realities of his or her business by executing the four aforementioned disciplines will be well-positioned to plan and strategize for the future. Too often, highly talented leaders become lazy with planning disciplines, and begin winging it, shooting from the hip, and making their plan up as they go along. They can outrun the consequences of this failure to strategize for a period of time, but their neglect will eventually catch up with them. Leaders who plan well lock like a laser beam on their desired goal, but remain flexible in their approach to how they execute their plan. They know that conditions change, and so must plans. But by taking the time to think through their approach and strategize up front, they are better suited to make faster adjustments and continue to adapt while those who rely on improvising are often caught off guard and suffer setbacks when roadblocks appear in their path.

6. Rest. Physical and mental rest improves your personal capacity to produce, so that you are better equipped to guide your team to production increases as well. Many managers rest little, if at all. They work every shift and rarely take a day off because they fail to execute the previous five listed disciplines. Because of their neglect to recruit, train, coach, mentor and strategize with their team members, they become too dependent upon themselves, their own wit, strengths and talents. With so much on their solitary shoulders they eventually burn out, plateau and decline. Sadly, they rarely take responsibility for this failure. Rather, they are likely to point to how good things used to be and then blame conditions for their lack of greater success. After all, in their minds they’ve proven that once upon a time they could deliver the goods. Because they don’t face the real cause of their problem, they are never able to fix it. Many of these leaders turn into hired guns, hopping from one dealership to the next. They blow up the numbers to heroic proportions temporarily and then begin to sink when their failure to build and the capacity to produce creates a train wreck for production. Concerning rest, Vince Lombardi said it well: “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” And tired leaders are proof of this: they stop changing anything, making any decisions or taking any risks. As a natural consequence, they become yesterday’s news, right along with their now-anemic results. 

One final note: many managers wait until business turns down to regroup, get back to the basics and begin to rebuild their capacity to produce. Don’t let this happen to you. Continue to plant the right seeds, even when all is well and all is likely to stay well rather than plateau or decline.