Unlocking Potential Through Compassionate Leadership

Ever wonder how the right leadership can unlock hidden potential? I share a personal story from my peewee football days, where Coach Bright recognized my strengths and placed me in the perfect position to excel. This episode is all about how great leaders, like Coach Bright, harness their team's unique skills, foster trust without micromanagement, and create a flourishing workplace environment. Learn how effective leadership involves more than just assigning tasks but also understanding each team member's capabilities and encouraging them to shine.

Curious about the small actions that set exceptional leaders apart? We dive into the traits that define impactful leadership—allowing employees to challenge decisions, showing genuine care for their personal lives, and expressing appreciation through simple yet meaningful gestures. Hear anecdotes that illustrate how consistent, supportive actions, especially during tough times, make employees feel truly valued. Discover how these qualities can transform your leadership style and build a cohesive, motivated team. Tune in for a refreshing take on leadership that goes beyond the ordinary, offering practical insights to help you lead with compassion and effectiveness.

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Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Link to my website: The Toilet Paper Salesman ™ – Who Says Selling Toilet Paper isn’t Glamorous? ™

Link to my book: Wisdom from a Toilet Paper Salesman | BookBaby Bookshop

Link to buy Toilet Paper Salesman swag: My Store

Link to David Mirarchi's website: David Mirarchi

Link to RJ Schinner Co, Inc: RJ Schinner | Home

Transcript

Mike Mirarchi 0:19

Welcome to Episode 3 of the Toilet Paper Salesman Podcast. My name's Mike Mirarchi I'm your host and I appreciate that you've joined us today. Today we're going to be digging into leadership, but before that, if you get value out of this podcast, I would ask that you like and subscribe to the podcast so that you can get updates on new episodes, as well as to help spread the word. So we're going to dig into leadership today and I'm going to start out with a story from my book about the best coach I've ever had. His name was Mr Bright.

Mike Mirarchi 0:50

When I was seven or so, I wanted to join peewee football. My parents didn't want me to because, quite frankly, I was peewee. I was very small and they were concerned about my safety. After being relentless and asking a million times, they decided to let me play. The issue that I had is I wasn't good, but my brother was really good my older brother. When I came in to play, they had high expectations for me because of how good my brother was. When I started out, they had me at outside linebackers. Starting outside linebacker. They quickly realized that I couldn't play. I went from starting outside linebackers. Starting outside linebacker, they quickly realized that I couldn't play. I went from starting outside linebacker to second team outside linebacker to second team inside linebacker. One day we got put into a group. Mr Henderson came over to us and said okay guys, you're in the scrub squad Now. I can't imagine today that there would be such a team as the scrub squad. Fortunately for me, I was put into that group. Actually, it took off some of the pressure of living up to my brother's expectations In the scrub squad.

Mike Mirarchi 1:50

What they did is they taught us the basics of football, which I needed. What they did is they ended up putting me at right guard. I actually embraced this position. I remember getting the playbook and seeing the plays and where I block and I worked really hard at it and became the starting right guard. And I'll remember the first game that I played starting right guard. One of the first plays I clipped somebody. It was an obvious penalty and the coaches didn't say a word because I think the coaches were probably like well, at least he's out there hitting somebody. But from there I refined the position and I became really good at it. It was clear I was the starting guard and I learned how to block. Well, if I would have been bigger, I would have loved to play guard in high school. As a matter of fact, in high school I asked to play guard and they all laughed at me because I was, you know, five, three and a half 140 pounds. But I still believe to this day that I could have been really effective at that position because of my technique was so good, and I learned that from my coach.

Mike Mirarchi 2:43

The point of this is that we didn't have the best players. We won the championship, but we did have the best coach, and what the coach did is he figured out where his players were best and he put them there and he allowed them to thrive in those positions and he took his worst players and made them productive. The best leaders take their team, figure out who does what best and they put them there. Sometimes we get locked into thinking somebody should be in a certain position and they're not good at that position. If you think about it, an all-pro center in the NFL would not make a very good running back. They're an all-pro center, so we've got to let them play center and let them thrive at it For our teams at our workplace. That's what we need to do. We need to understand our employees and what they do best and stick them in that position and let them thrive, let them be successful and then work on the areas where they're lacking.

Mike Mirarchi 3:29

Let's talk about the traits of a great leader. What do great leaders do? Well, there's certain things they do and there's certain things they don't do. The one thing that they do not do is they do not micromanage. Great leaders do not micromanage. They hire good people and they let them go to work. If you can't trust that your employee is going to be able to do the job, then you shouldn't have hired them in the first place. If you have to constantly be all over them, micromanaging what they do, then you're not going to be a great leader and you're going to actually stifle great employees. If I have to start thinking about if my employee isn't working or if they're not doing the job right, then I've got a real problem. I don't think about these things. I expect that my employees are out doing the job every day and I know they're doing the job. I don't have to worry about it and I don't certainly have to micromanage them.

Mike Mirarchi 4:18

Great leaders don't give meaningless projects. They don't feel like they have to make sure that their employees are working every minute of the day and so they don't pile things onto them that are unnecessary and unproductive. They're not slave drivers. They understand that people have a life and they have work, and if they allow them to work the way they work, they'll get the work done. If they can get the work done in four hours, let them get the work done in four hours. Do they have to work eight? Do you have to keep piling on busy work for them? And the answer is yes, they're going to work eight. If they're in your office, they're going to be there eight hours. But give them a different project. Give them something they want to do fun. Give them something that they want to work on, develop them, train them, help them. You don't have to keep piling on busy work to them to make sure that you get the full eight hours out of it.

Mike Mirarchi 5:05

Great leaders are always available to help. They have time for their employees. When your employee calls, or somebody calls, pick up the phone. You're not too good to pick up the phone. A lot of higher managers they don't pick up the phone. As a matter of fact, I get a lot of vendors that say to me wow, you always pick up your phone. Well, I don't always pick up my phone, but if I'm available and I can answer the phone, I answer the phone. I think it's important that you're available and you answer the phone, because a lot of times if you let those phone calls pile up and then you've got to call them back at the end of the day or whatever and I know a lot of leaders do that and that's okay too, as long as you have a system and as long as people know what to expect. A open door policy, except for the fact that it's not open. Don't say you have an open door policy, have an open door policy, just do it.

Mike Mirarchi 5:51

Great leaders are humble. The only thing that my title gets me is the right to pick the place to go out to eat, and I'm serious about that. I love to go out to great restaurants. The fact that the title gets me to pick the place that I want to eat, I love that. I love that about my title. But everything else having the title of vice president of sales doesn't get me anything else in essence. Yeah, sure, I could try to throw around my weight. I don't do that. I work hard for my employees. I serve my employees and help them to be successful, and then I get to pick where we go to eat. That's pretty fantastic. As far as I'm concerned, great leaders are at the bottom of the pyramid, serving the employees and helping them to be successful both professionally and personally.

Mike Mirarchi 6:33

Great leaders help their employees. They offer training. They coach and mentor them. They want them to do better than themselves. Even A lot of leaders have a problem if their salespeople make more money than them. I'm thrilled if my salespeople make more money than me. I hope they make more money than me, because if they're making more money than me, then I am wildly successful as a manager and they are going to be thrilled and happy as employees. You want your employees to succeed. You don't have to worry about if they surpass you in some way, and you shouldn't worry about it. You should be overjoyed in it and grateful in it. Great leaders want their employees to be independent of themselves. They want them to get to the point where they can make decisions on their own and they could be self-sufficient, so that the leader doesn't have to do all the work. And when you hire an employee in the beginning, it's a lot of work to get them up to speed. You're constantly working with them and helping them and training them and doing all the work. The bottom line is that you want to get them to the point where they're independent, and if you can achieve that, that is success in management.

Mike Mirarchi 7:34

I have a saying. The first time I'll say this to one of my employees. They kind of look at me cockeyed. There's a point to it Just because I tell you to do something Doesn't mean you have to do it. They'll look at me and say what and I say, just because I tell you to do something doesn't mean you have to do it. In other words, if you think I'm wrong, if you have a problem with it, you're on the street, you know the customer, you know the situation. If you think I'm wrong, then you need to come and tell me that. Tell me we need to talk about this further.

Mike Mirarchi 8:06

Obviously, be respectful, but you need to be able to come to me and tell me you think I'm wrong and then we'll talk about it and you'll say well, okay, why do you think I'm wrong? Well, if you do this or that, then I think the customer's going to be more angry or we may lose the business and we can talk through those issues and maybe we'll do what the employee is asking and maybe we won't. But the bottom line is we've had that discussion and those discussions are really important because sometimes the leader's not connected. Sometimes I'm not always fully engaged in that situation and I'll make a judgment call, but the salesperson who's involved in that situation knows better and they have a bad feeling about what I've just told them to do. And then they'll sometimes do it. And then I'll say why did you do that? And they'll go well, you told me to do it and I go well, just because I told you to do something doesn't mean you have to do it. Use your own judgment and if you have an issue with it, be able to come to me.

Mike Mirarchi 8:49

It's an important point that great leaders do. They don't have to always be right. It's like C&I dogs. C&i dogs are trained to be completely obedient, except for one thing they are also trained. They have an inherent trait of being able to disobey an owner if the owner wants them to do something that's going to put them in danger. In other words, if the owner is telling them to cross the street but there's a car coming, the dog will not obey the owner. That is what I'm talking about and that is a great CNI dog and that is a great leader who allows their employees to challenge them and who actually listens to the challenge and makes changes.

Mike Mirarchi 9:24

The best leaders take time to understand their employees and get to know their employees. They take interest in their lives. They're concerned for their families. They are there for them when they need them. Family situations happen. They have compassion on them. If they need some time off for something, they allow them time off.

Mike Mirarchi 9:42

The best leaders show appreciation. They're appreciative of their employees and everything that they do. Sometimes great leaders will surprise their employees with special treats. They'll buy them sports tickets, they'll do a cookout, they'll do a barbecue, they'll give them merchandise, whatever. It is little things, gift cards just to show that when they give that little extra effort, that you appreciate it. Do you have to do it all the time? No, there are times when it's appropriate to give that little extra something to your employees so they know that you appreciate them. The best leaders correct with kindness when something happens, if something goes wrong, if the sales numbers are down, the best leaders correct with kindness so they show them hey, what's going on with the discount? Why are we off in this? What's happening? We understand. Let's work on a strategy to get that business back. You're not harsh on them, you're not hammering them. They know they're down in these accounts and if they don't know, they you're going to react. But I say, if you have an open enough relationship, they'll come to you and say, hey, I'm having an issue in this account, we're down in these items. How can we get this back and allow the leader to actually coach them through that process and help them to get back to business? The best leaders relate with every employee.

Mike Mirarchi 11:01

Who's the most important employee in your company? The answer is every single one of them. There was a restaurant owner who was driving down the street one day and he saw this truck and the truck was so clean, it was sparkling clean. It was so clean that impressed on the restaurant owner enough that he decided to call the company to do business. He called the company. They sat down and had a meeting. They ended up doing business and he told the company owner. They sat down and had a meeting. They ended up doing business and he told the company owner the reason why I'm doing business with you is because I saw your truck and your employee did such a great job cleaning your truck it was so clean I figured that your company must be excellent and I need an excellent company and it ended up bringing millions of dollars of business from this restaurant chain into this distributor because of one employee who took pride in their job and cleaned the trucks extra well. Every single employee is important in your company. Every single employee is a reflection of your company and how they act and how they treat the customers Every single one. So we need to treat every single one as important as every other one.

Mike Mirarchi 12:04

Great leaders make the workplace fun. You got to be light. Work is hard. We work hard. It's a tough business. There's crazy things that happen all the time, but it's up to the leader to set a tone of having fun. Have a light workplace. Be joking around, it's okay. Create a fun atmosphere. Set up games. Set up incentives. Help make the workplace fun so that they don't dread coming into work every day, that they look forward to it. Your employees spend a lot of time at the workplace. The more fun you make it, the more they're going to want to come and the better employees they're going to be. The greatest leaders when the going gets tough, the leader gets going.

Mike Mirarchi 12:45

I told you in a previous podcast about when we purchased Huff Paper and how crazy it was. We took that business. Over the 1st of December we started making deliveries. The week of Christmas was the first delivery and the week of New Year's was the second delivery that we made to the Huff customer. So it was bedlam. It was crazy. We're all underwater. We have an incentive trip called Journeys and that is usually taken in January. This is 2021. We actually went to Cabo for our incentive trip and, yes, it was during COVID, but we went. It was a great trip. Nobody got sick. I was scheduled to go on this trip, but I'm looking at this. I've got my employees that are underwater. What would it have looked like if I would have went to Cabo and be sitting on the beach drinking margaritas and I've got my employees underwater in the business trying to make the transition? How would they have felt? So, guess what? I didn't go on the trip, and it was a great decision because I was so busy that week trying to dig everybody out and I know, even though none of my employees said anything, that they appreciated that I stuck in there and I didn't take that trip.

Mike Mirarchi 13:45

Great leaders dig in and do the work when the work's got to get done. They don't just sit back in their office and let the whole world explode around them and do nothing about it. They are jumping in and helping to make it happen. Do you want to be a great leader? Then you've got to take action. Start today. You have one day to be a great leader. Make small changes. Work to be a great leader. If it doesn't work today, you've got tomorrow. It's a fresh start. I guarantee you, step by step, if you put these into practice, you become a great leader. Your employees are going to thank you. That's all I have today. If this was valuable, like and subscribe to the podcast Until next time. Who says selling toilet paper isn't glamorous? We sell toilet paper. That's what we do. Thanks a lot and have a great day.