Comments

1. Selim Eslaquit says

   June 20, 2012 at 1:27 pm

   Steve,
   I read your posting about empowerment and here is my comment. I took over as a General Manager at Audi of Alexandria about a year ago, I knew we were going to be successful but I did not know for sure what approach to take with the employees until I had taken their pulse, after being there for a couple of weeks and sharing ideas either during lunch or just conversations with the lower paid people, I was actually surprised at the thirst for participation in changing the culture people had.
   I asked them to put their ideas on paper and that we would start conducting meetings once a week to share them and I gave the participants the empowerment to make a difference with the implementation of their own ideas, the accountability level in which they held each other to was truly amazing, people were no longer pointing where the bathroom was but actually walking people to it, people stopped walking on top of the same peace of paper, instead they were picking it up, people now cared, part of this was because of the culture we came from Steve but the huge part was they were participating in changing something, they now had the power of changing someone’s experience at our dealership, what can be more powerful than that?
   Almost like when your father went on a business trip and he would say to you, you are now in charge you are now the man of the house make sure everything goes smoothly and take care of your mom, brothers and sisters and something did go wrong and you fixed it and when your father came back he recognized you for it.
   The results were incredible, we did not only achieve our goals but it gave the participants a place to belong to, this was not only a job anymore but also a place to grow professionally in.
   Steve, when you and Mike came to visit me, the first thing I communicated to you is how much I believed in empowerment from the bottom up as well as how much I enjoy promoting success for other people in the level which success is translated to them, money, better schedule, recognition etc. which in return provides me amazing self gratification. Bettering peoples lives!!!
   Needless to say we keep moving the needle in our Dealership, we as a team have only scratched the surface of what we will do together even though the numbers have escalated to levels not expected. I recently promoted 2 people that used to clean vehicles into sales associates, the wife of one of them used to have to work 2 jobs to support their family, now she only has one job and she is able to spend more time with their kids since he is now doing better financially and he is also the top CSI salesperson in the dealership. The other tripled his income and is being able to put his fiancé thru college that is success to me. Giving individuals the empowerment to control their destiny!

   Selim Eslaquit
2. Steve Dorfman says

   June 21, 2012 at 4:27 pm

   Selim, your story is so inspiring. Thank you for sharing it here so more people can benefit from your proven strategies.