#234: Mark Miller—Building Leaders Like Chick-fil-A
Nov 27, 2017
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Mark Miller, Vice President of High Performance Leadership at Chick-fil-A, talks about the importance of creating a leadership culture and outlines a five-step process for building leaders. They are also joined by Dan Ralphs, the Dream Manager at Infusionsoft, who explains how helping team members achieve their personal goals increases workplace engagement.
Building a leadership culture involves nurturing leadership development, valuing individual dreams, and aligning employees towards a shared vision.
Supporting employees in achieving their personal dreams improves engagement and overall performance.
Creating a leadership culture requires raising up leaders, providing mentorship and training, measuring leadership, and modeling desired behaviors.
Deep dives
Creating a Leadership Culture
Mark Miller, VP of High Performance Leadership at Chick-fil-A, discusses the importance of building a leadership culture in organizations. He highlights the need for a common working definition of leadership and how it aligns employees towards a shared vision. By nurturing leadership development and valuing individual dreams, employees become more engaged, confident, and empowered in their roles.
The Role of a Dream Manager
Dan Rouse, the Dream Manager at InfusionSoft, explains the significance of helping employees identify and achieve their personal dreams. He shares examples of how supporting individual dreams improves overall engagement and performance. He emphasizes the importance of leaders taking a genuine interest in their employees' dreams and regularly checking in to encourage progress.
Benefits of a Dream-Enabled Culture
Fostering a culture where dreams are valued and supported leads to increased motivation, creativity, and ownership among employees. It builds a sense of community, enhances employee satisfaction, and generates a positive and energetic workplace environment. This collective focus on dreams creates a higher level of engagement and assists employees in reaching their full potential.
Developing a Leadership Culture
Creating a leadership culture is crucial for organizations. It goes beyond having individual leaders and focuses on raising up leaders and creating a surplus of leadership. This surplus indicates that the leadership development process is working effectively. Teaching leadership is an important aspect of building a leadership culture. It involves providing mentorship, formal and informal classes, resources, and various training opportunities to help people understand and develop the skills required for effective leadership. Additionally, practicing leadership is essential. Research shows that around 70% of a leader's competence comes from actually leading. Therefore, giving emerging leaders opportunities to practice and gain experience is crucial for their growth. Developing a leadership culture also involves measuring leadership. While there is no perfect metric, organizations can create a leadership scorecard with multiple measures to track their progress and identify areas for improvement. Lastly, existing leaders must model the desired leadership behaviors and characteristics. By demonstrating and living out the defined leadership principles, they set an example for others to follow and create a culture of leadership within the organization.
Promoting Dream Management
Infusionsoft, a company dedicated to helping businesses grow, emphasizes the importance of implementing dream management within an organization. Dream management involves encouraging employees to identify and pursue their personal and professional dreams. This is achieved by deputizing leaders at various levels in the organization and training them to support and coach their team members in realizing their dreams. The process begins by having leaders become certified dream coaches who can guide others on their dream journeys. The integration of dreaming into regular team meetings, one-on-one sessions, or specific dream-focused gatherings helps employees feel valued, cared for, and motivated. The aim is to create an environment where everyone feels empowered to dream and believes that their dreams can positively impact both their personal lives and the organization as a whole. By engaging in dream management, organizations foster a culture of growth, innovation, and engagement.
According to Chick-fil-A Vice President of High Performance Leadership and best-selling author Mark Miller, less is definitely not more when it comes to the number of leaders in your organization. In order to effectively manage ever-changing opportunities and growth—not to mention unforeseen problems—the best strategy is to routinely and systematically raise up new leaders to actually create a surplus of them. Hope is not an adequate strategy for building a business, Mark explains, but creating a leadership culture is. We couldn’t agree more. Tune in to learn Mark’s five-step process for creating a leadership culture in your own organization. Also joining us is Dan Ralphs, who holds the unique position of Dream Manager at Infusionsoft. He explains how helping his team members achieve their own personal goals makes them infinitely more engaged in the workplace.
