Tatum: Sharp Leadership Starts with Finding Balance Within
We have arrived at the final installment of our 7 Habits of an Effective Lube Manager series: Sharpen the saw. What does that mean? It means that you must maintain and sharpen the most valuable tool that you have—yourself. You need to create a balanced program between four areas of your life. They are the physical, emotional/social well-being, mental, and spiritual sides of yourself.
As you do things to create a balance in your life, you are creating growth and change in yourself, you re-energize your being to be able to continue to practice the other six habit areas. Without taking the time to work on your own balance, you will find that you will become a prickly person. Worn-out body, short-tempered, and selfish in actions. That is not what we want to be as leaders. So how can we create this recharge?
Take time to do things that you want to do in your time off. We know that you are working 50 to 60 hours a week in an outside environment. When it is cold, you are cold. When it is hot, you are hot. This can quickly drain you mentally. So, create a work/life balance that you can maintain week after week. Maybe you like music, so find a concert to go attend. You might be that person that likes learning new things or going on trips through history, so maybe you will visit a museum and relax. Whatever it is that you like to do, make sure that you add it into your life weekly.
Another thing that many people do is start to work on their physical self. Working out for an hour a day a few times a week will not only improve your physical body, but also create a better emotional self as you start to see the fruits of that labor. You are building a habit of continuous growth and change that will help you move upwards and become a more efficient individual, especially when you do them in a balance and not overindulge in one area. As you build habits that you enjoy doing, it brings a balance to the stresses at the jobsite.
How does this make you a more effective shop manager? Besides the fact that you will be energized in the business each day, you may start to see the changes that you are making, and your crew is too. Let us say that you are working on your body health with gym time and changes in diet. You are starting to lose some weight, have more energy and a cheerful outlook. Now, your assistant manager has seen what you have done and what it has done for your life. Now they want to do the same thing and get the same results. You are motivating others to make positive life habits by just doing them yourself. And this can and will continue to roll along from one person to another and another.
To be a highly effective lube manager, it takes dedication to creating processes and habits to make you and your team the gears that keep it running. I hope that each of you that read these articles can take one thing from them to make a positive change in your business or your downtime, as this submission talks about. Do not be afraid to reread a section and change what you did. That is the point of all of this—hanging and molding your team and yourself to become not just a highly effective lube manager, but a full shop team!
About the Author
Adam Tatum
Adam Tatum is the Director of Operations for Virginia Lubes, a Jiffy Lube franchisee with 11 locations. He has over a decade of experience in the industry with a proven track record of building customer counts and sales, as well as using innovative ways to bring a new look to the automotive field for both the customer and the employee. Performance comes from growing your business through people.