Transcript
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I think everybody wants more women in the industry, we want more diversity, but we have built up a lot of cultural systems and stereotypes and double standards over the years that we're not always aware of.
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So hey, it's Kathleen and Shannon here and this is Get in Her Lane.
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We are two automotive professionals, diving deep into why women are so underrepresented in this industry and trying to make a positive change.
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So ride along with us as we discuss ideas and takeaways that can help everyone further this effort in the automotive world and beyond.
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Hey Shan, welcome back, hello Kathleen, and a warm welcome back to all of our listeners out there here at Get in Her Lane.
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Shannon and I are on a mission to reshape the automotive industry through her perspective.
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Our goal is to attract, retain and foster the growth of more women in this fantastic industry.
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Yes, our fantastic industry, and we are trying to grow our Get in Her Lane community.
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So make sure to like and subscribe the podcast wherever you're listening, and also come check us out on our website, getinherlanecom Today on the show.
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Our guest is Fleming Ford.
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She is the director of business talent solutions at NCM.
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She's going to take us through some of her wisdom and expertise on coaching, dealership management and helping them build a positive culture and maximizing their team's potential.
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More specifically, we pick Fleming's brain on the general manager role and some of the industry stereotypes around, kind of who is quote unquote best for this role, and how we can break through these dealership stigmas to make sure that we are hiring and retaining a more diverse team, because people need to see themselves in these roles.
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So Fleming really dives us into how we can overcome that and also offer some fun data driven solutions for diagnosing culture and growing leadership skills which, kat, I know you and I nerded out on a little bit.
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We love our data.
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I think ultimately, you know, cultivating authentic leadership involves self-awareness and it's no easy task Fleming shares that but it's essential.
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Your customers and staff.
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They're seeking authenticity in their relationships with you, in their workplace and their long-term careers, and this authentic leadership is really going to create a distinct culture for your dealerships and separate you from the traditional dealership norms.
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Exactly so.
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We are so excited for you to listen to this conversation with Fleming, so let's go ahead and dive right in.
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Fleming, we are so excited to have you here with us today, been looking forward to this for a while.
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Love what you guys are doing with the podcast.
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Awesome, Thank you.
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So maybe to start you know, will you tell us a little bit about your background, what you're passionate about, what gets you fired up and how this has led you in your career journey?
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I think I've always been passionate about people, which is funny.
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I am not that interested in cars, but the people in this industry just are so fascinating and they're so passionate, enthusiastic, and started working in the industry probably like 20 years ago and always have been on the people side of the business managing the people, hiring the people, getting, building the best teams and through all of that, have met so many leaders.
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It really is what people really cultivate.
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The leadership is what changes the dealership or changes the organization.
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And getting to talk to so many leaders about their frustrations and challenges and it really does come down to they do care about their people.
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They do want them to be successful.
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Yes, of course they want to hit profits and be number one, but it is really fascinating to me how much passion everybody in this industry has for their teams and what they're building.
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So that's always been my super passion and really being able to work with them to cultivate and elevate their leadership.
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So that sounds like you collaborate a lot with dealerships, which I know is always, like you said, just so exciting.
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There is so much passion in this industry and I myself also am not the most car girl out there, but the people side definitely is what keeps me here as well.
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So when you go in and let's say you're collaborating with a new dealership and a new leadership team, what's your approach to how to diagnose where they're at within their management team and how they're running, and then what are your first steps to attacking any opportunities that you see?
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I'm a data person so I love to look at their data.
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So gathering at Ncm, we'll use their composites, which is where we're pulling all their financial data, and we're always looking at gross profit for employee and what is driving that number.
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Are you being effective with your team?
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Are you getting, are you optimizing, are you getting their discretionary effort?
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And then I will even look at a dealership and maybe do an employee engagement survey or I'll do focus groups with the team and we'll really dive into what are some of the roadblocks that are keeping them from really giving their all or growing and why are they leaving.
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Those are really interesting stats.
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So looking at the dealership holistically to craft all right, how do we make this a better place for everyone to work?
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And using data kind of helps that be more fine tuned so we can really kind of get in there and accelerate progress.
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And I feel like you know, especially as a female, I think everybody wants more women in the industry.
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We want more diversity, but we have built up a lot of cultural systems and stereotypes and double standards over the years that we're not always aware of.
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So using data and tools to kind of open up your eyes and look at blind spots.
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Maybe a dealer has will help me start working with them on their culture and shifting.
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How do we make it more inclusive?
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Absolutely, you mentioned it starts at the top and it starts with people and it starts with leadership.
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Obviously, you have loads of experience working and coaching leadership.
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When you're looking at this data and you're having conversations with dealership management, how do you you know advise them to effectively address any of these issues that they're seeing or any unconscious biases they may see in themselves?
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How do you advise them to navigate some of this?
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I always start with the story that we all have bias.
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So I always share within this story.
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I'll be like you know, I was on my way here and I was running late for the flight.
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And you know, I was running up to the gate and luckily, the flight attendant was just getting ready to close the door.
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So I ran inside, ran past the pilot and sat down.
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Actually, interesting enough, you know, I sat down and I was next to a general manager and we started talking through the flight and then I always say, okay, let's stop.
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What did the flight attendant look like, what does the pilot look like and what does the general manager look like?
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And that's all of us have grown up with a vision of what these roles look like.
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So we all have bias, and so kind of understanding and be more aware that we all have bias helps us start learning how to remove the bias.
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And so we'll look at how do we systemize your hiring process, how do we present your career page so that it shows Diversity, because you may not be realizing the signals you're sending.
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You may be hiring in your own vision Of what you think a role looks like.
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And show me.
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Yeah so really looking at what do we need in the role, what's the traits, the attitudes, the attributes, the skills and building out scorecards and questions that really help you Assess that versus do you like the person or not or do you connect?
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You know, like Jim's are always like you know well, I just want to connect.
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If I connect, I know they're gonna be good on my team and I'm like, no, you're just gonna hire more people like you.
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Well, I'm good, I was good at that job, so yeah.
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Do you do any sort of testing with a general manager?
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Is there any sort of questionnaire You'll put them through, or is it just conversation to kind of gauge some of these thoughts and feelings?
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Yeah, we do have what I would call like best-in-class practices, that they can kind of self-assess.
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So we'll do that sometimes in our 20 groups or if we're there in the store.
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We also do leadership 360s where we get opinions on are you having?
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Are you as approachable as you think you are?
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Are you being fair?
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Do they see that you do care?
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Is that consistent?
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And so you know we can break that out, even demographically, if we have a big enough group so that we can say you know what you?
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We all don't always see how things are actually happening, because when it becomes a norm I don't know that we always see it.
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So I do love the idea of assessing a GM, assessing the culture and being able to really start being tactical about how we're gonna improve it.
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Yeah, I love the idea of culture being something we can measure through data, because I think when people Talk about culture and how, what that means to them, it can be a lot of like touchy-feely words or it could be words that are hard to maybe like.
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Tangible, exactly exactly.
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It's like oh, you got to feel it to know it, but explaining it how you are, of how the data can back it up, and then also it you can show Incremental improvement in certain categories to improve this.
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I think that's just so a different way to look at it and that's really cool.
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Well, and I think your right culture can sound really soft, but it's actually the hardest thing to change.
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So a lot of times when we're working with dealerships they're like, oh, I want to improve the culture and I'm like, do you?
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Because it's not a, it's not a quick, it's hard work.
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And it really is hard work for the leadership team to really Define what who we are and then hold people accountable to it, because culture is really not only what we say we want, but what we tolerate.
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And tolerating poor behavior or a bad salesperson who's toxic, or negativity or complaining tolerating is Also what creates the culture.
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Being able to kind of be intentional with your culture and can make it healthy, make it a place that Energizes your team it's still the foundation for high performance.
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So it's not soft, it's actually what we build all that high performance on.
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Yeah, I also think it's you know.
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Kudos to the leadership that wants you know, that is seeking this help, because I do think you know you got to let your guard down a little, you got to let your ego down a little to if you're gonna hear feedback from your entire Dealership body on on your leadership style.
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Some of it may hurt a little bit, but taking that first step is so important.
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So I think that in itself is a great sign that there's good things to come, and I would add to that, doing it right now.
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Right, because I think that we are in a time in our industry when the selling environment let's say that we've been in for the past couple years it seems like the tides are going back to maybe our normal before the pandemic right.
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And so I think, honing in on culture, maybe the culture you thought you had was just sustained by some success you were having.
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But now that things are gonna start to be a little different in in our business Culture, I think making sure you can accurately diagnose what's going on is gonna be key the quote I love is and I'm gonna butcher this, but the parent that Reads baby books is gonna be a great parent.
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Not because of what they learn in the baby books, but because they have the intention and the thought to read it, and I think it's the same, the same concept there well and I think, too, Everyone's realizing, being a people manager is probably one of the most challenging and complex things, because people are complex and it used to be Do your job, I'll pay you, and you couldn't move around.
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That looked bad and now the world is very much different.
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So, being the type of leader that people want to work for, that people enjoy working for, that people want to give their All and their loyalty to that's a skill set and you know, I think I was exciting, you know, and I recently joined in CM To build out their executive coaching program, and I love being an executive coach, working with GM's one-on-one.
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You really do see how much they care.
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But there's not always that Road map on how do you build culture, how do you leave more effectively, how do you build your teams.
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People think that you just do that naturally and there are people with a Natural lean towards that, but it is still a skill set.
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Just like technicians have to learn how to fix under the car, we have to learn how to fix people and work with them and make them better.
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So I do think we're seeing more and more leaders reaching out with, I would say, vulnerability, to say, hey, I do need some help here, but getting that feedback and that support and that Somebody to run ideas by or get best practices from really helps.
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I would say like that the higher the leadership goes, the higher the team goes and the more we succeed.
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So it's very exciting to see the industry kind of turning away from being a boss to Really being.
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What does it mean to help people be their best and build a legacy and have that outcome of being very proud of the team you've put together?
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hearing that description.
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I think it hearing that these we need leaders who really care about their people right in order to do you can't fake that.
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You that has to come from an authentic place and that's something I think when your owner, let's say, is judging who I want to promote, it's hard to always gauge, like, the authenticity of who wants to be there and lead.
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So I guess when you're advising people, especially when I think we have this idea of what a GM should look like, you know what I mean.
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How can leaders cultivate that authenticity in their roles while still meeting expectations of what the role can be, but kind of finding that balance of who's here for the right reasons and it can grow within this organization Authentically because they want to be here?
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I when I think that's what's such a powerful and hard thing to navigate is the number one need of an employee is do you care about me?
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Do you value me?
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Do you see me?
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So that care piece is there.
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It has to be balanced with.
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You know what I would say is candor, or you know that accountability, because if you care enough about me, you will hold me to the highest standards, you will hold me to be in the best I can be.
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So sometimes I think we have this fear of accountability being like a negative and it's actually like it is apparent.
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You're not going to let your kid run around and do whatever they want and just be happy because they can't be the best person.
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So I think, as a leader, if you know I care and I care enough about you to hold you accountable and grow you, you're going to get the results.
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You're going to get high performance because you're going to have employees who care about you, about the company, and doing their very best, pleasure, equipping them and empowering them.
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To you know, grow, and that's what employees want and are looking for in their leader and that's what leads to overall achieving success.
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I think we all have the image of the GM who has it all together and comes in and demands everything and get it done, and maybe we all grew up with a boss like that.
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It didn't make anybody feel good.
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I don't care who you are.
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Being able to find a place that you feel pushes you and challenges you, but also supports you.
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Everybody wants that job.
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How do you put away the image of the tough and the assertive and be okay with what your strengths are as a leader and utilizing those authentically?
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People are smart.
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They know the truth, they know when you're full of it.
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They no matter what your image is they all people are.
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Your employees are way too intelligent.
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So being your real self and helping them be their real selves is just builds that culture of authenticity and teamwork.
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And I think right now, like the number one thing CEOs are looking for in their leaders is that emotional intelligence which is being aware of yourself and your strengths, being aware of your communication, your targets, your triggers and then helping your team be better at that and think about how, in the customer, I mean we all can.
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As a customer, you feel the culture.
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You feel it.
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If it feels like a trusting place and a team place that everybody's helping each other out, that's an easier place for me to buy a vehicle than a place that just feels aggressive and tension and everybody's hiding each other to be top of the board.
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I mean.
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So it's soft but it's hard, and it's to me.
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Committing to being the best leader you can be does help the performance of the store or does help?
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the performance of your team, the financial gains will follow.
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I think the trap you can get into is prioritizing solely financial success and pushing the people to the side.
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If you reverse it, you put the people first.
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I know that is one of your.
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You know your big beliefs.
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But the financial success will follow.
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So if you're really effective.
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You know, I was just with a 20 group and it was a bunch of service managers.
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So we were talking about how we can really like service advisors hard position to fill and keep, but we were talking about how you tie your vision and your goals to theirs.
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And if you just come at people with here's what I need you to help me accomplish and you don't tie it to their personal lie, then it's just work.
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But as the leader, if you can connect and make it a win, win, hey, if you reach these goals, this is going to help you achieve getting your kids to Disneyland, getting into that private school, being able to be on the club team that costs so much money that we all can't stand, but the things that drive.
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I think that's why leadership is now you've got to know each person's why, shift to their like, what they need, and then they will buy into helping you get what you need.
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And then you get all that extra effort, because now it's personal to me, it's not just I need to help you sell cars, which all this takes time and everybody's busy.
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So that's, I think, are really challenge for leaders.
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Shifting gears a little bit.
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Women in dealership leadership obviously not always a walk in the park.
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What challenges do you see them facing as they're trying to fit into this role?
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What tips would you have as they're trying to overcome some of these hurdles?
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On the other end, where do you think they could succeed?
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I think that there is a boys club and what's interesting is not all the boys fit into the boys club, so a lot of us are pretending to.
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You know, I saw a stat like almost half of even men don't particularly like watching sports, but it's you all pretend you watch the sports on Monday.
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You have to know the scores on Monday.
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Yeah, you fit in and so we're all somewhat pretending.
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You know we get to work and, as a woman, the more yourself aware of your strengths, the more that you believe and have confidence and you know what your skill set is and you kind of I would say the more comfortable you get with that then the more it's easier to step into yourself, getting additional training, getting yourself certified or listening to books, and I mean there's so much information now you don't just rely on your current leader, but you really can find mentors.
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You can get an executive coach to help build up your confidence and your skills.
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I think that helps you stand up with a little bit more.
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Here's who I am, because you believe in yourself more.
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So you know we don't want people to have false confidence.
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And if I'm a leader trying to help women feel more confident in my dealership, I'm like coaching with them.
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I'm doing one on one, so I'm sending them to service advisor training or I'm giving them leadership books and talking to them about it.
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So it's really helping everybody.
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Step into you are enough and that confidence level is what we want to generate in the store.
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But again, when you walk in I always say you know, this is if you're a man.
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It'd be like you had to go work at Victoria's Secret.
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You could find a way to be successful, yeah.
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I'm not going to be very comfortable, but the discomfort of the conversations and what it looks like, and that when you step up to a group of the women they all go oh, you're here.
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So understanding the discomfort actually causes people not to enjoy their job and that's why we see more women leaving.
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So it's not that anything is bad or wrong and it can be but sometimes it's like people do well when they feel safe and comfortable.
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Yeah, and confident, and confident.
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I think another thing that our industry is not always the best at is showcasing like a career in this industry, not just a job in the position that you're currently in.
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So if I'm a young female as a dealership, maybe a sales consultant or an advisor, as we were talking about, what are things that I can do to position myself so that I can kind of be put on a leadership path?
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And then what kind of should our leaders be looking for in their younger associates as like the things that, okay, I should invest in this person.
00:21:22.085 --> 00:21:23.751
So kind of the both sides of it.
00:21:24.085 --> 00:21:31.712
Great question because I think this is a huge challenge and for some reason, women and women friendships were not built on.
00:21:31.712 --> 00:21:36.750
Let let me show you how great I am and outdo you, so they're not as comfortable with.
00:21:36.750 --> 00:21:38.413
Let me point out why I'm better.
00:21:38.413 --> 00:21:40.007
You know I feel like men.
00:21:40.007 --> 00:21:43.212
That's part of their cultural friendship.
00:21:43.212 --> 00:21:45.317
Growing up is out doing one another.
00:21:45.317 --> 00:21:47.377
So you do have to get a little bit more comfortable.
00:21:48.105 --> 00:21:51.934
I would say, get really comfortable being uncomfortable because you do have to advocate for yourself.
00:21:51.934 --> 00:22:06.518
Get really comfortable that collect data, set goals for yourself and track what you're doing so that you can feel more comfortable Like here's what I set out to do and here's what I did and here's the timeframe I did it in, so that you're promoting your achievement.
00:22:06.518 --> 00:22:13.003
Definitely, find an advocate for yourself who's going to mention you and they're like who are we bringing to NADA?
00:22:13.003 --> 00:22:17.932
Who are we sending to that leadership class you want, you know, somebody advocating for you.
00:22:17.932 --> 00:22:21.786
Ask, I don't think we ask enough as women, you know.
00:22:21.786 --> 00:22:28.858
Hey, here's what I'd really like to see myself as a team leader, the manager, or I'd like to be promoted to district manager or whatever.
00:22:28.858 --> 00:22:37.759
How, what do I need to do to get there and get that feedback and then take initiative to kind of keep pushing towards that and, you know, really just staying resilient.
00:22:38.244 --> 00:22:46.935
Yes, there's going to be roadblocks where there's just people who don't because of their bias won't see that, but luckily we have different avenues and roles and careers we can follow.
00:22:46.935 --> 00:23:00.500
I think if you are the leader removing bias from your own promotion practice and who you are asking to sit at the table and who you are developing one on one, make sure that career path is really structured and laid out.
00:23:00.500 --> 00:23:01.500
So it's objective.
00:23:01.500 --> 00:23:14.601
And a new thing that I'm really pushing my GMs to do is before somebody's eligible to be promoted to manager, they need to have coached and worked with some like several people on their team.
00:23:14.601 --> 00:23:18.115
So if there's three people who are struggling, they're not selling enough cars.
00:23:18.115 --> 00:23:18.757
You know.
00:23:18.757 --> 00:23:25.916
Work with one of them, help them turn it around and that shows me you have the ability to grow a person, a team and change behavior.
00:23:25.916 --> 00:23:35.680
Just promoting the top salesperson or the top technician, that doesn't mean they're going to be great at growing teams and building loyalty and building, you know, talented people.
00:23:36.365 --> 00:23:48.085
Yeah, so often in this industry we promote the best individual contributor and, to your point, the skills you need to be a great salesperson is entirely different to be a great manager.
00:23:48.085 --> 00:23:54.045
Your job is to coach and lead and grow and not necessarily like perform day to day.
00:23:54.045 --> 00:23:57.671
You have people that are going to be doing that, so it's a very different game.
00:23:58.085 --> 00:24:02.085
It's one of the hardest transitions to go in from being the producer to being the manager.
00:24:02.085 --> 00:24:34.345
I've coached so many GMs and they're well into their careers and they're still struggling with this transition, because going from doing and being great at doing to now get others to do is a completely different skill set, and so sometimes we have a tendency as leaders and this is women leaders too they sometimes try to outwork it instead of having the difficult conversations or holding people accountable, because as leaders, we want to be liked and we like to swoop in and save the day and so.
00:24:34.345 --> 00:24:42.459
But that actually takes pride away from your team and it takes away their natural growth and ability to let you know, mess up and fail.
00:24:42.459 --> 00:24:48.017
For example, I probably 90% of the time when I'm working with a GM, I'm like get off the desk.
00:24:48.017 --> 00:24:49.627
You don't belong in the desk.
00:24:49.627 --> 00:24:50.829
Don't sit at the desk.
00:24:50.829 --> 00:24:51.911
Why are you doing that?
00:24:51.911 --> 00:24:54.675
That's not your job, that's that deal I always am like working with them.
00:24:54.997 --> 00:24:55.958
Yeah, don't touch it.
00:24:55.958 --> 00:25:00.755
I can do my laundry better and faster than my kids.
00:25:00.755 --> 00:25:03.289
I don't do it because they need to learn how to do it.
00:25:03.289 --> 00:25:04.891
I don't want to do it.
00:25:04.891 --> 00:25:18.924
One of the great opportunities and the big reason I even went to NCM is I've been able to help managers in that transition year From going from the producer to leading is such an exciting and powerful time.
00:25:18.924 --> 00:25:33.654
And being able to help them because I feel like if I help them, I'm helping their teams, and then I'm helping the other departments because people aren't getting stressed and frustrated and triggered and so You're, you know, building a little town of happy people just by helping a leader.
00:25:34.056 --> 00:25:46.684
I do want to go back to one thing that you said, because, as you were saying it, kathleen and I's heads were both nodding very vigorously Just the idea of how women tend to assist a generalization but tend to communicate their wins differently than men.
00:25:46.684 --> 00:25:50.619
It looks different, right, and that is one of the biggest lessons I remember.
00:25:50.619 --> 00:25:52.775
Learning is that I need to advocate for myself.
00:25:52.775 --> 00:26:11.131
It's up to me and that is one of the first pieces of advice, of advice I also give when I see people joining this industry is that you have to be intentional about making sure your successes and your wins are communicated, because it's sometimes, it's just not in everyone's nature, right, it's, it's the priority of the team goal or making sure.
00:26:11.131 --> 00:26:12.115
Oh, this is part of my job.
00:26:12.115 --> 00:26:18.343
I'm just gonna keep my head down and do my job right, but it is so important to communicate that you hope somebody noticed.
00:26:18.383 --> 00:26:20.768
Yeah, exactly because you would notice.
00:26:20.768 --> 00:26:23.315
Sometimes you got to be your own advocate.
00:26:23.476 --> 00:26:29.902
Yeah, I remember learning that and it's stuck with me and it's like I said, it's the first thing I tell people when they're doing the end or any industry.
00:26:29.902 --> 00:26:35.714
Really, it extends beyond just automotive, for sure, and I think to get comfortable with it the more it's fact-based.
00:26:35.815 --> 00:26:38.545
So then you don't feel like you're, you know, embellishing.
00:26:38.545 --> 00:26:47.347
But if it's like, sit down and say you know what is it gonna take, what do I need to accomplish, and then track that you're doing that and then bring that back and promote the achievement.
00:26:47.347 --> 00:26:49.240
So you don't want to shy away from it.
