Interview Story - Mentor / Leadership

When I was a sales manager at a Chicago television sales firm, I recognized one weakness of a 7-person office was that when one person was out, work often had to wait upon their return. Further, if someone got sick, we were very weak in the back-up arena.

To strengthen our small team, I led an initiative to learn each other’s jobs well enough to cover any absences.

First. I thought everyone (including me) should be crossed-trained to do their assistant’s job and each other’s job. Second, we needed to answer everyone else’s phone if that person could not grab it in three rings, and address the needs of that caller. While this was initially met with resistance, I was determined to move forward. Individual team members co-ordinated “ride-alongs” to learn other’s assignments. Then, we were tasked with specific deliverables from these other roles.

Quite quickly the culture of the office changed. We found a mutual respect for each other’s work and the value they contributed. If this were the only benefit, it would have been worth it.

Then the company decided to switch computer systems and over a thousand contracts had to be manually inputted into the new system. This resulted in many offices complaining about the unreasonable burden this was causing. Some fell way behind in sending new orders, much less actually converting existing contracts to the new system.

The Chicago office handled this quite easily. With seven people on task doing a little each day, we became the first office completely switched to the new system without a hiccup. Everyone in the office was immensely proud of the accomplishment, and we were recognized nationally for accomplishing the task.

And an extra bonus came out of the cross-training: our customers recognized that they could talk to anyone about an issue. We were all capable of handling any situation. There was no need to wait for the rep who was out on calls. When a customer had a problem, they felt heard by our team. They trusted that when we did hand off the problem to be worked on, the other team member would follow through. This reflected on us internally, and externally with our customer base, and because of it, we were viewed as the strongest office in the company.