Driven to Delight: Delivering World-Class Customer Experience the Mercedes-Benz Way: Delivering World-Class Customer Experience the Mercedes-Benz Way by Joseph Michelli

Author:Joseph Michelli
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 2015-12-07T14:00:00+00:00

Leadership Academy

Many leaders might look at an existing successful program and ask, “How can we make this even better?” However, the leaders at Mercedes-Benz USA look at programs like employee engagement coaching and ask, “How can we make it the ‘best or nothing’?”

Steve Cannon received extensive training on leadership as a cadet at West Point and throughout his military career as a U.S. Army Ranger. Steve knew that coaching might help leaders improve scores on employee surveys but wouldn’t necessarily address the broader issues of leadership philosophy and skill. In fact, during employee engagement coaching sessions, Lior Arussy, president of Strativity, notes, “We were uncovering issues that reflected a lack of leadership development. We had breakdowns occurring with leadership basics like welcoming and orienting new employees to dealerships. As an example, we heard about a situation at a dealership where a new valet began parking cars on his first day of employment, only to be arrested several hours later. The employee hadn’t been to an orientation, nor had he been introduced to anyone else at the dealership. A receptionist saw this ‘stranger’ walking around with Mercedes-Benz keys and driving cars, so she called the police. Clearly, some of the fundamentals of leadership were missing.”

Dianna du Preez, general manager, Mercedes-Benz Academy, was largely responsible for creating the Leadership Academy and explains the thinking behind it: “We understood that leadership is the main driver of a company’s culture. Employee engagement obviously stems from culture, and engaged employees are critical if you want to deliver extraordinary customer experiences. To truly achieve our transformational customer experience goals, we needed to focus more intently on the 4,000-plus leaders in our dealerships and help them broadly develop themselves and their people. Therefore, the Leadership Academy was a very focused initiative unlike anything ever seen in the automotive industry.”

While automobile manufacturers often provide e-learning and other impersonal leadership development tools, Mercedes-Benz wanted to change the nature and level of training for both senior leaders and frontline managers at Mercedes-Benz dealerships. Dianna notes, “We have individuals throughout our dealer network who are highly educated and have substantial levels of leadership understanding and training. But in general, there was a significant lack of understanding concerning the importance of the role that leadership plays in shaping and feeding culture in an organization. Even in a pilot session with our Dealer Board, there was a lot of conversation about the fact that sales managers, service managers, or parts managers are often appointed because they are the best at what they do. The best parts advisor becomes a parts manager. The expectation is that outstanding performers just need to continue doing what they were doing, and they will be able to also manage people and receive a higher salary.” Dianna continues, “Unfortunately, the best salesperson isn’t always the best sales manager. That’s why the curriculum for the Mercedes-Benz Leadership Academy focuses on what it takes to be a successful leader and not on technical responsibilities. We don’t address how to sell more cars or how to sell more parts.

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