Characteristics of A Leader – Paul Pickett
characteristics of a leader
SUMMARY
Identifying people who have the characteristics of a leader and making them part of your team is crucial in making your business successful.Everyone has the same equal chance to become a leader. The only difference is the people who step up and make that decision to develop that skill set or characteristics that will make them a leader.On this episode, we have here Paul Pickett. He is currently the Chief Development Officer of Wild Birds Unlimited.
Paul talks about their mission and vision in Wild Birds Unlimited. He also shares how to identify the best qualities of a business owner and provides recommendations on what needs to be developed in order to be successful.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Being passionate about building a business is one of the biggest characteristics of a business owner.Spending a lot of time talking to people is one way of identifying a good business owner.Everyone is born with the tendency to be a leader and leadership skills can be developed.One can be a leader even if not promoted into a leadership role.Being a leader is not something that we are. It is something that we do.To educate oneself of the financial elements of the business can help to start the business successful.Don’t be afraid to dote on yourself and revel on the positive feedback that you received.Characteristics of A Leader – Paul Pickett
Luis CongdonOn today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how to identify strong qualities and characteristics of a leader and of a business owner.
Kamala ChambersWe’re here with Paul Pickett, the Chief Development Officer of Wild Birds Unlimited.
Luis CongdonAll right Thriving Launchers, we are here with Paul Pickett. Paul, are you ready to launch?
Paul Pickett I am ready to go!
Luis CongdonOne of the things that I love about your company is you guys have a mission statement to have diversity.
Characteristics Of A Leader – Have Diversity
Luis CongdonCan you tell me a little about that and how it plays into the company and the business?
Paul Pickett Yes! Absolutely!Wild Birds Unlimited is the name of the company. We are a franchise as you stated. It is a franchise organization with over 330 franchise retails stores providing the joy of birds feeding via the best products out there to help people enjoy the hobby of backyard bird feeding and engagement with nature.Our mission statement is we bring people and nature together. We have a subtag of “And we do it with excellence,” because we have to have that expectation.
Characteristics Of A Leader – Focus On Honesty, Transparency, and Integrity
Paul Pickett The company has a very firm mission, vision and values and part of those values are just that focus on honesty, transparency, integrity, and a focus on diversity.We are retailers. We don’t control who walks in any one of our franchise store owner’s individual businesses and we want people who are going to embrace everybody because, at the end of the day, we want everyone to enjoy birds and nature in their own environment and community.
Committed to The Brand Promise
Kamala ChambersI love that.One thing that you guys are good at is identifying quality business owners because you are always looking for new franchise partners I’m sure.
Paul Pickett Diversity is a very important thing and just committed to that brand promise of helping all of our customers across the US and Canada experience the joy of seeing a bird come to your backyard, sharing the joy of gathering more information about birds, and how you can really help the environment doing it locally is very important to us.
Identifying Who Have The Best Characteristics Of A Leader And A Business Owner
Kamala ChambersI’d love to hear from you how do you identify who are going to have the best characteristics of a leader and a business owner and what are some of those characteristics?
Paul Pickett We are what we call a “passion brand.” We need people who are going to be passionate about building their own business enterprise and developing the processes and procedures or following ours to really have a sustainable business that gives back, that has bottom line profitability, and that provides a great stable work environment for their own individual teams.
Characteristics of A Leader – Passionate About Building A Business
Paul Pickett But they also got to have that passion for engagement with nature. You have to love people and want to do that at the same time. It’s very unique.There are many franchises that don’t require owner-operators so you are looking for just someone who is a strong business person. They’ve all got that acumen and they’re going to hire the individual operators. That’s not our brand.A lot of the hair-cutting franchises don’t want anybody who actually cuts hair. That would weed those people out of their system. They want people who are just going to manage the business. We want both.
Spend Time Talking To People To Know Who Has The Characteristics Of A Leader
Paul Pickett I guess the way that you identify the people that have the characteristics of a leader is to spend a lot of time talking to people. We do a lot of video conferencing and asking a lot of questions and then listening a lot.It’s because you want to make sure that you’ve got people who are driven and you can tell by someone’s drive by the questions they are asking. They are taking it seriously. They’re doing their validation.It’s one thing when I’m talking to a candidate who says “How many of your existing franchises do I have to talk to?” versus a candidate who is looking to open their own Wild Birds Unlimited business that says “How many of your existing franchises may I talk to?” because you know that they want to gather more Intel to make a good business decision.
Characteristics Of A Leader – Has A Go-Getter Attitude And Enthusiasm
Luis CongdonWhat I’m hearing one of the things you’re looking for is a sense of a go-getter attitude or enthusiasm and they’re not looking at “Oh my god! How can I make this go by as fast as possible so I can just make money?” They’re interested in being invested in the process and growing something valuable.
Paul Pickett That is absolutely true.We have a very well-defined process in the franchise development team. It’s a whole lot of work.I have friends of mine in franchise development and one of the brands like “Oh my gosh! You really put your candidates to the pieces. I want people who want those to be put through the pieces.” It’s because I want people who are going to make a good decision.
Characteristics Of A Leader – Relentlessness
Paul Pickett Putting them into those pieces also identifies a very key quality especially in retail but I think for any business owner and that’s that relentlessness, that grit, that ability to say you don’t know what’s going to happen today but you are going to make the most of today. Those are the people who fair the best in our system and I think in any business.
Characteristics of A Leader – Understand The Financial Elements Of A Business
Paul Pickett Well, I think you need to educate yourself on the financial elements of a business.When I’m working with a candidate and I throw out some very common terms that most people who are probably listening to this podcast say will “ Duh!” but things like balance sheets, PNLs, and casual statements.If they don’t understand that, they can go get that skill set. There are so many resources available to them. I think that would be a foundational one I talk to our candidates all the time.
You Can Develop The Characteristics Of A Leader
Paul Pickett Also are those leadership skills that you can develop.No, I don’t believe that anyone is born a true leader. I think people are born with a propensity to develop that skill set but you need to be a leader and that means you need to be self-aware and know how to motivate a team, know how to organize your time, understand the difference between being in control and being controlling. I will tell you, you can develop that skill set.
Luis CongdonOne of the things that I find interesting Paul and I’m sure that you have this happened in your life too where it seems that there’s this conversation that you’re having with one person but it’s part of a bigger conversation and it’s kind of a circle. You might end the day or at some point, through your day you go “Man, that theme came up several times today”.
Characteristics Of A Leader – Leadership As Something You Do
Luis CongdonOne of the themes I’ve heard or at least projected myself into as I was listening to you talk is this thing about leadership and what a leader is and what a leader looks like. It reminds me of this video where this guy was talking about things that we are and things that we do and leadership is one of the things that we do. It’s not certainly something that we are. It’s something that we do. By doing it, we become that.Leadership is interesting too because you can be a leader even if you’re not promoted to a leadership role. You can be a leader by doing something and being that person and then eventually people start looking to you as a leader. I think that’s something that you are saying there as well.
Paul Pickett Absolutely, I 100% agree with that statement. I’m not a big gigantic fan of org charts because it does set up a hierarchy and sometimes people who are on a different level will interact with you differently and they may not be as open, transparent, and direct as they could be.
Characteristics Of A Leader – Help People Think Through A Situation
Paul Pickett Yes, there are people that I go to in this office who are on a totally different “level” than I am but because they have developed that leadership quality in themselves, they can go and help me think through a situation. They can help me think through either it’s a firestorm that I’m trying to deal with.Or here’s an opportunity that I really think somebody has but I’m not saying it the right way. How would you say it?That could be an administrative person who just has that sort of sensibility. It could be my CEO, my COO, one of our coaches, a manager in another department, or even in my own department.
Characteristics Of A Leader Come From Within
Paul Pickett That leadership, it comes from within. It is much more from an internal position rather than external position in my opinion.
Luis CongdonOne of the things I love about what you’re saying and just a reminder for me in this conversation, sometimes I and Kamala will show up to projects, projects that are outside of what Kamala and I do for a living outside of our podcast, outside of our business.Kamala has this ability to show up and says okay “What needs to be done?” And she asks herself that question without certainly even asking anybody and she sees things that need to be done. She’ll ask that question if her mind doesn’t give her that answer which surprisingly she can come up with a lot of answers to areas where I’m just like, I show up and I don’t know what to do.
Characteristics Of A Leader – Identify What Needs To Be Done
Kamala ChambersHe did very well either.
Luis CongdonI’m like of one of those lead weights that somebody needs to move around and say “You over here and you do that,” while Kamala’s off running around, racing, and doing thingsAn example of that is we recently went to a wedding. It’s one of our friend’s weddings where weren’t at the wedding. We weren’t one of like the leaders in the wedding. We are one of the people that were there to participate.We showed up early to help out and before I knew it, people were going up to Kamala and saying “You’re the wedding organizer. What should I do?” She was doling out jobs to people and afterward, we all chuckled about it because she just showed up to help with the wedding but soon before she knew it she was the wedding organizer.
Paul Pickett You got an extra glass of champagne.
The Busiest Person Having The Characteristics Of A Leader
Paul Pickett There’s a silly saying but I love it is that if you want something done, ask the busiest person you know because they’re usually the people who are locked and loaded to organize and direct in a kind fashion and figure out the things that you wouldn’t have thought needed to be figured out.
Luis CongdonPaul, that’s a great note to wrap this up.I want to ask you is there any last lingering thought here that you want to leave our community with as we wrap this show?
Characteristics Of A Leader – Ask How You Did All The Time
Paul Pickett One of the things that we have here at Wild Birds Unlimited that sort of comes from the top down is that culture of making sure that you know how you did all the time.It’s something that Jim Carpenter incited is “How do we do culture?”We have an expectation that whenever we’re working together here internally in the franchise support center, we’re always asking each other “How did we do?” We have an expectation that we ask our franchises constantly “How did we do?” We actually use a third party to help us called Franchise Business Review that reviews hundreds of brands every year about their satisfaction. It has the same questions for all these different brands. A little braggy but we’re number 2 out of all those brands and this year number 1 in retail.
Characteristics Of Leader – Ask Your Team Members For Constant Feedback
Paul Pickett We also expect our franchisees to ask their team members, their team members to ask them, ask each other. It’s that constant feedback. I think that’s the only way to get ahead in business is asking how you’re doing. It also gives you information on what you’ve left undone and it gives you those windows of opportunity to say “Hey! What if we did this? Could this be better for everybody?”
Luis CongdonThat’s great. Thank you so much, Paul.Now, Thriving Launchers, one of the things I’m reminded of is what gets measured gets done and Paul was leaving us with a great tip. Ask for feedback. Ask for your customers to give you feedback. Ask for your partner to give you feedback and your kids.
Importance Of Feedback When Developing Characteristics Of A Leader
Luis CongdonAsk people in your life, “How do you think I’m doing? How are things going?” “Are there some things that you would like to see different? Are there things that you are enjoying about our life, our business, or my management?” That feedback can help you grow.Another thing that Paul did that I appreciate and just want to point out for you is Paul doted on himself a little bit. He talked about how great the company was doing.
Characteristics Of A Leader – Don’t Be Afraid To Dote On Yourself
Luis CongdonThriving Launchers, I want to encourage you as you’re seeking to get feedback, don’t be afraid to dote on yourself or take some of that feedback that’s positive and let it ruminate in your mind as well because that stuff is very important that we celebrate our wins and that we’re asking for feedback.When we get some positive feedback, we let it stir around in our minds. We can celebrate and continue that momentum.If it’s not great, follow it up with something better, improve, and then give yourself some mental reward just as Paul did there.Thriving Launchers, it’s been great to be with you today talking about the characteristics of a leader. We’ll catch you on the next episode and keep thriving.
