Business Is a Sport
Janusz the founder and his team
Twenty-seven years ago, Janusz founded one of Poland’s largest fish-processing companies. For the years that followed, work was everything to him. But by now he only dreamed of retirement. His fish empire he planned to hand over to his daughter, 30-year-old Iza, whom he had employed in the company ever since she turned 23.
Although the company was in very good financial shape, Janusz had quite a few reservations about part of the staff. Not about production, which was overseen by his business partner Hubert, but about the sales and marketing department, which – alongside administration and accounting – Janusz supervised personally. Hubert ran production with an iron hand. There was practically Prussian discipline there, no doubt because Hubert mainly hired people similar to himself: precise, matter-of-fact, demanding of themselves and others, outstanding specialists with an excellent command of the fish-processing industry. His people knew every legal aspect of it – the regulations and requirements, EU standards, fishing quotas, and so on. On the production floor and in machine servicing, everything ran like clockwork.
Unfortunately, things were far worse in the sales department. Michał, the department head, who was very popular with clients, had lately fallen into a kind of lethargy; for six months he hadn’t landed a single new contract, and he carried out the duties tied to servicing existing clients mechanically, plainly without enthusiasm.
Arek, hired two and a half years earlier and someone who struck up contacts very easily, was clearly – under Michał’s influence – sliding into extreme complacency. He too was neglecting his duties ever more openly, wasting time, more often pretending to work – especially when Janusz appeared on the horizon – than actually working. And although he was growing ever more familiar with clients, nothing came of it.
Watching all of this in horror was Dorota, who had worked at the company for 17 years. First she had prepared the documents for the sales that Janusz carried out, then she also drew up the offers he took to clients, including foreign ones, so she prepared them in English as well. When the company began expanding into German-speaking markets, Michał came on board – fluent in the language of Goethe – and then Arek, who, like Dorota, had a strong command of English.
Dorota was furious. She had long disliked Michał’s way of working, and she took the hiring of Arek as a personal dig. She criticised both Michał and Arek – and even Janusz himself – ever more boldly. She held him responsible for his colleagues’ lack of discipline. She was angry that he still kept Michał on, and, no less, in the role of manager; angry that he failed to see Michał’s and Arek’s slacking, while she, despite having one of the longest tenures in the company, was being treated like a poor relation.
In all of this – in the whole atmosphere of unspoken grievances, mutual complaints, and envy – Iza, who worked as coordinator of the Sales and Marketing department, felt, to put it mildly, uncomfortable. Although the department’s staff fell silent the moment she came anywhere near, Iza could sense perfectly well the peculiar mood among them… This certainly didn’t make her think with any joy about taking over the running of the entire company, especially these people at odds with one another. What interested her most was marketing analysis – or rather, analysis of any kind. Compiling metrics, costs, and revenues, comparing them, building simulations – that was Iza’s world. Decidedly a world of numbers and data, not of people. People only distracted her needlessly, like Magda, her assistant, who could hold forth for hours about nothing and time and again bothered Iza with strange questions or meaningless stories – Iza didn’t even listen to what they were about. In short, the Sales and Marketing department was rife with complacency, mutual distrust, a lack of cooperation, and an inability to communicate.
All these problems were quickly noticed by the consultant Janusz had asked for help, feeling increasingly ill at ease working with people he had, after all, chosen and hired himself, and with whom, not so long ago, he had cooperated quite successfully. What had happened to them?
The consultant quickly grasped the situation. Aware, however, of how complex and multilayered (owing to their long build-up) the team’s problems were, he proposed carrying out MaxieDISC® analyses and discussing them together using a metaphor.
The MaxieDISC® diagnosis showed that:
- Dorota is a CD style,
- Michał is a SID style,
- Arek is ID,
- Iza – CSD,
- her assistant Magda – IS,
- and Janusz turned out to be an SDI type
As you can see, then, each of those assessed – with the exception of Magda – had within them a „power factor,” that is, a D component, though to varying degrees.
The strongest presence of Style D appeared in Janusz, Dorota, and Arek. This meant that each of these people believed they „knew better” what should be done, how to organise their own work and their colleagues’, what mattered most in that work, and so on. And while such an attitude is, of course, entirely natural for the group’s actual leader – namely Janusz – in his subordinates it caused friction between them, difficulty in falling into line and accepting the rules, a conviction of their own exceptionalism and infallibility, and a sense of entitlement to question the established order.
Dorota – sales are a procedure
Despite the „shared D,” the dominant profiles of the sales team members and Janusz were radically different from one another. Dorota’s dominant C meant that what mattered most from her point of view were facts and knowledge – properly organised in the form of procedures and applied strictly according to them. In Dorota’s view, sales are a procedure like any other. The client looks first at the technical data – quantity, price, quality, delivery times. Selling isn’t about trading compliments and reassuring each other of mutual liking – something she shuddered at in Arek’s behaviour – but about preparing procedure-compliant offers with the best possible parameters. Negotiations are a waste of time, because we’re certain the client won’t get a better offer from anyone than ours.
Arek – sales as a game and a flirtation
Arek’s attitude, by contrast, was the polar opposite of Dorota’s. In his view, sales are a kind of social game with elements of flirtation, won by whoever is better, cleverer, more charming, more captivating – able, through personal charm and charisma, to turn even a stone into chewing gum. Which is always Arek. And although for the first year of his work this strategy paid off handsomely – Arek successfully closed many sales across Poland and the Baltic states – over the past six months the closing of a sale itself had stopped interesting him as much as the process of getting there: a kind of seduction of the client, entering into a close relationship with them, exerting influence and holding sway over an ever wider range of matters – by now not even purely business ones.
To Dorota, this was incomprehensible. With undisguised distaste she listened to the way Arek spoke to clients on the phone, more than once betraying her astonishment through snorts, incredulous shakes of the head, or sarcastic remarks. Arek, insofar as any of it registered with him at all, paradoxically behaved so as to astonish, surprise, and disgust Dorota all the more. He deliberately spoke to certain clients – especially female ones – about personal matters, and in such a way that Dorota could hear, drawing undisguised satisfaction from the signs of indignation or distaste she displayed.
Janusz and Michał – sales are relationships
For Janusz, on the other hand, the greatest value was peace. A satisfied client guarantees peace for the company. That’s why one should do everything to achieve that client satisfaction and, in turn, that peace within the company. Janusz was a warm, likeable, conciliatory man, able to defuse many a ticking human bomb by the sheer force of his calm. He was an excellent listener. Clients liked and respected him greatly. Janusz would listen, nod in understanding, perhaps ask one or two well-aimed questions, and at the decisive moment hand over a pen along with the contract form. Clients would almost always sign it right away, often without even reading it. If it happened that a client had additional questions, they most often concerned technical matters, which Dorota captured perfectly in the offer – so all Janusz had to do was refer to the documents she had prepared beforehand.
Janusz liked Michał and saw a resemblance to himself in him. This led him to conclude that Michał would make the best head of the sales department – better than Dorota, whom, though he greatly valued her for her precision, her analytical mind, and her detailed, almost meticulous knowledge, he didn’t see as a leader. Wise, level-headed, scrupulous – ideal for difficult, technical clients, but such clients were a decided minority. Most bought from Janusz without even looking at the details of the offer. Janusz was convinced that Michał operated the same way. Arek, in turn, he regarded as a young, still headstrong but promising salesman. And only a salesman – never a sales manager. From Janusz’s perspective, Arek was a cheerful lad who could charm clients rather well and clearly took satisfaction in it.
Will Iza be up to it?
As for Iza, Janusz had expected her to be more go-getting, or at least somewhat like himself – a bit of a bon vivant, effortlessly striking up contacts with people and, without any particular effort, enjoying their liking and trust, as well as an authority built on mutual respect. So it was with unease that he noticed in Iza stress and withdrawal in her dealings with people, and even a tendency to avoid meetings with more than two or three participants. Would Iza be up to running the company with such an approach to people? Would Janusz have to run the business to the end of his life to preserve the style he had introduced, saying goodbye to his dreamed-of retirement?
Discussing the MaxieDISC® report results together
Before discussing the results of the MaxieDISC® analyses together, the consultant held individual meetings with each of the assessed employees. So by the time they met as a team, each of them already knew their own MaxieDISC® profile.
As they began the group discussion of the results, the consultant asked:
– What is the word for „cel” in English?
– Goal! – Arek answered eagerly.
– That’s right. A goal – in football terminology, the net. And who scores the goals?
– The players! – the group answered, almost in unison.
– Not the coach? – the consultant asked provocatively.
The staff began to laugh.
– Exactly – it’s the players who score the goals. And what if the players thought they were also coaches and told everyone else what to do? What effect would that have on the whole team’s game?
– Weeell… a bad… a bad effect…
– There’d be chaos!
– Exactly, chaos. Anything else?
– Disarray. Anarchy.
– Demotivation!
– Yes. And that’s precisely what’s happening here with you. Everyone wants to be the coach. But there’s only one coach. It’s Janusz. And one team captain – appointed by the coach – which is Michał. In sport, if one of the players doesn’t accept this, there’s no place for them on the team.
– You’re telling us about football here, but this is business, work, sales… – Dorota objected.
– You’re right. This is business. And business is a contact sport, as the famous speaker and networker Grzegorz Turniak says. There’s competition, there’s beating the rivals, there’s striving toward a goal. There’s the need for consistency, for training – for constant improvement, for striving to get better and better. Business and sport have a great deal in common. Do you, as salespeople, strive to keep getting better within your team, or do you already act like retired NBA stars – waiting for some director to offer you a role in a film?
The group burst out laughing.
As the meeting went on, the consultant discussed the meaning of the football positions in relation to roles within the company, including in sales.
You can be prepared for any role – as in total football – but there are roles that, to put it colloquially, will suit you better and others less so. What matters is to act rationally, effectively, and with the greatest benefit to the company and to yourselves – to your own development. It’s worth directing your energy where it leads you of its own accord. That way you’ll develop fastest where it comes most easily to you. Systematic development, through achieving one set goal after another in an area aligned with your dominant style, strengthens, inspires, and gives you the energy to step outside your comfort zone and take on challenges beyond it – ones that don’t belong to your dominant styles.
The consultant then asked each member of the sales team to act out a scene of how they saw a colleague. Michał played Dorota, Dorota played Arek, and Arek played Michał. There was a great deal of laughter along the way. Janusz and Iza watched the scenes but didn’t take part in them.
Now you understand how you may be perceived by your colleagues. What is our strong suit, what is the strength of our style, when used to excess – or seen from the perspective of someone with a radically different style – can be perceived as a flaw. Calm and composure, when present in excess, can be read as passivity, sluggishness, indecisiveness, timidity, and conformism. Energy, extraversion, sociability, and directness – as rudeness, nosiness, overstepping boundaries, talkativeness, buffoonery. Precision, thoroughness, control, and substance, in turn – as a lack of imagination, a closed mind, excessive fussiness, emotional coldness, nitpicking over details, or a zeal worthy of a new convert.
You need to be aware of this and pay attention to how you come across, and how you may come across, to your co-workers and to clients. On the pitch, a defender can score a goal, but if they’re not in a good position, they pass the ball to whoever has a better shot. So now I’d like you – now that you know the MaxieDISC® model – to sort your main clients, that is, above all the people you deal with, according to this typology, agreeing on which MaxieDISC® style might be dominant in each of them, the consultant asked.
In this part, Janusz and Iza took part as well. Although Iza didn’t know the company’s clients as well as the people who dealt with them directly, she grasped the model very well and was the most effective at matching the right sales and behavioural strategies to each type.
Results
Applying the MaxieDISC® assessment together with this form of discussion produced remarkable results. The employees got to know one another better and grew closer. Instead of competing, they began to cooperate, handing off to one another – wherever it was also possible language-wise – the clients they got along with less well because of differences in style. The diversity of their own dominant styles turned out to be the team’s greatest asset. Iza, who was excellent at recognising styles, began to develop toward HR and coaching, where her introversion was not a drawback at all but instead gave employees and coachees room to speak, while her logic and thoroughness helped her formulate apt coaching questions.
Janusz no longer had any doubt that his daughter would handle running the company brilliantly.