Create a Culture of Excellence

One of the great misnomers in business today is to call your personnel department Human Resources. Humans are not resources.  They are people who provide services for their clients that make a positive difference in their lives and provide opportunities for professional and personal growth. If your team is your most important asset, don’t refer to them or view them as resources.  Team members need to be viewed as people who use their unique talents and experience to exceed their and their clients’ expectations.  At a time when attracting and retaining best-in-class talent is a top priority for most kitchen and bath showrooms, creating a culture that builds relationships and recognizes and rewards performance is paramount.

Cultures of excellence are built by recognizing and leveraging team members' strengths.  Every team member excels at certain aspects of their responsibilities.  It may be design. It could be customer service, process improvement or a host of other responsibilities.  Great leaders take the time to learn those strengths and leverage them.

Frequent and quality communication are two other factors that help to build a culture of excellence.  Frequently communicating with your team fosters connection and provides the foundation for professional development, growth and progress.  A recent Gallop study found that managers who held regular meetings with their teams are almost three times as likely to be engaged than employees working for managers who ignore them.

A culture of excellence requires everyone to have the opportunity to provide input, ideas and to have decision-making authority.  Providing team members opportunities to grow, contribute and develop improves creativity, morale, and performance.  Just the opposite occurs if owners make all decisions.

Your team should feel comfortable coming to you with questions, problems and challenges, knowing that you are available to help them.  And when they do, the best leaders listen actively demonstrating a desire to help address those concerns and providing opportunities for team members to express their opinions and ideas.

Never criticize an individual for performance shortcomings or mistakes. Instead, it is perfectly acceptable to criticize work that is not satisfactory.  Focus on what can be done in the future to improve.  When you attack a team member, you are making a statement that you don’t care about them.  Mistakes should be viewed as opportunities for improvement.