It’s not easy being Santa Claus. You may not know this, but Santa has two roles that people rarely associate with him; Santa the Manager and Santa the Leader. After all, he is running a business and he is the boss. There are workers to lead, letters to read, processes to manage, stuff to buy, stuff to make, standards to maintain, new technologies to adopt, skills to develop, elf problems to solve and so on. Every busy dentist can empathize with Santa.
No it’s not easy being Santa Claus, but it’s important to realize that people depend on him, and need his leadership. So I asked Santa, “What’s your secret? Is it magic?” He responded by saying it’s not magic, but he was willing to share his secrets for leading others and getting big things done all year around. Here are the Leadership Secrets of Santa Claus. There are 8 Secrets in all.
First, Build a Wonderful Workshop
Santa manages to run a productive and happy workplace, despite the intense pressures and challenges that he faces. He keeps everyone on track and motivated through an unwavering and uncompromising focus on THE MISSION. As the leader, he has taken several steps to establish and maintain that focus. First, make sure that all the elves know what our mission is and why it’s important. (Incidentally, his mission is making spirits bright by building and delivering high quality toys to good little girls and boys) Ask any member of the North Pole team and they can quote the mission and explain its significance.
Second, he spends time with individual employees, discussing how their respective jobs specifically link with and contribute to the accomplishment of the mission.
Finally, he made the mission a core component of the decision making and work planning processes. With all of the team members he has, he realizes that is easy to lose sight of why they are there. He makes the mission the main thing.
He also knows that you can’t focus on the mission without focusing on the folks that make your mission happen. The two go hand in hand. You manage things and lead people. Common sense suggests that it’s the people who are at the core of all leadership activities.
Good leaders turn good intentions into predicable behaviors. Sometimes that takes abandoning a few old behaviors and adopting new ones. Here are some of the behaviors that Santa adopted:
• Be accessible, physically and mentally to employees who would like my attention
• Be considerate of staff members’ needs
• Provide employees with the training, tools, resources and feedback required for success
Keep employees in the information loop
• Demonstrate respect for team member’s time and talents, as well as respect them as individuals
• Solicit and listen to staff member ideas and concerns.
These are the things that Santa does to focus on the workers who compromise his workshop. Then it’s important to lead them in the right direction. Santa does this by letting his values guide him. There are six core values this guide Santa and they are:
1. Respect
2. Integrity
3. Quality
4. Customer service
5. Responsibility
6. Teamwork.
These are more than just words, they are blueprints that he follows. Making sure that everyone knows what values are important and then helping everyone turn those good beliefs into everyday behaviors is how leaders create a great place to work.
Secret # 2 – Choose Your Reindeer Wisely
Over the centuries Santa has had many challenges to overcome, for example one year he had two reindeer come down with the flu right after Prancer pulled the plug, retired and took off for Florida. That left Santa with a 33% delivery staff reduction, with no immediate replacements. That year was very tough for Santa and placed an extra load on the rest of the reindeer. By the end of the year, all of the other reindeer were ticked and Santa was tired. But there was no time to rest because it takes almost a year to train new team members. Santa had to post the position and start reviewing reindeer resumes.
If you think your job is tough, try recruiting new employees for the North Pole. So he took the easy route and did a cursory resume review, conducted a quick pro-forma interview and grabbed the first warm body that appeared halfway decent. He didn’t probe to determine if the reindeer was committed to responsibilities like teamwork, dependability and customer service, nor did he tests his flying skills or do a background check. He also didn’t involve any of the other reindeer in the selection process.
After a short period of putting his best hoof forward, the problems began. The new reindeer would carry less and less of his share of the load, he would show up late and then display a poor attitude when Santa called him on it, and the less he would work would force the rest of the crew to work even harder. Santa had to spend too much time watching this misfit reindeer, training and retraining him, while handling complaints from the rest of the staff. Pretty soon it began to bring the rest of the team down. Santa had no choice but to let the misfit go.
What Santa learned from that experience was, because it is employees who make the mission happen, staffing is the single most important responsibility of the leader. The time that is spent on hiring the right way is minimal compared to the time one would spend in dealing with the wrong employee. Invest in hiring the right employee in the right way in the beginning. Hire for success and keep the good ones.
The third leadership secret is to make a List and Check It Twice
Santa knows that his success and resulting reputation for excellence is the direct result of clearly defined goals combined with well thought out plans to accomplish those goals. Everyone has goals, including Santa, and because buy in and commitment is important to achieving objectives, Santa makes sure that everyone on his team has input in the goal setting process. And because nobody has a perfect memory, he makes sure that they have written action plans.
He develops the action plans by answering six questions for each goal
1. What needs to be accomplished?
2. Why does it need to be done (How does it contribute to our overall mission)?
3. When does it need to be accomplished?
4. Where are we now in relation to this goal?
5. Who will be involved in accomplishing this?
6. How will it be accomplished (What specific steps and activities are involved and what resources are required)?
Goal setting, planning your work and then working your plan, not only leads to effectiveness, it also fosters efficiency and helps to minimize waste. Because resources are so important, Santa goes beyond merely relying on goal action plans to ensure efficiency. He makes a list and checks it twice. The following are excerpts from the list:
• Making the most of time. Priorities tasks to the most important things first
• Start and end meetings on time and issue agendas in advance
• Teach time management skills and techniques
• Make the most of money
• Shop for the best prices on materials, supplies, equipment and services
• Use email to reduce postage and long distance charges
• Make the most of materials and equipment – measure twice, cut once
• Reuse and recycle whenever possible
• Be religious about preventive maintenance of equipment and invest in extended warranties
• Make the most of employee talent and expertise
• Involve the people with the knowledge in the decisions.
• Enhance employee expertise through training developmental assignments
• Encourage employees to share their knowledge with others.
Secret number four – Listen to the Elves
As the challenges have grown with each new season, more and more Santa must rely on teamwork, collaboration and the contributions of each member of the workshop team. Ensuring that those things happen requires effective leadership, which involves taking the time to listen to the team. For example, one year Santa received the following letter which he has offered to share with you as a leadership lesson:
Dear Santa
Thank you for being such a great boss. We know it isn’t easy being you – with all the pressures and responsibilities that you have. We also know that we’re not always the easiest bunch to deal with. But with all that you have going on, and with all that we sometimes throw your way, you still manage to remain considerate and understanding. You show us, by your behaviors, that you realize it’s challenging for all of us in the workshop too. That makes us appreciate you even more.
It’s great when you ask us about the problems, challenges and obstacles that we face in filling our orders and meeting deadlines. You really listen – showing us that our feelings are important…that we are important.
The thing we appreciate most is when you ask what you can do to make things easier and better for us, and better for the workshop – and then you DO those that are reasonable and appropriate.
Thank you, Santa, for making the effort to see things through our eyes…for walking in these smaller, yet none-the-less important shoes. Your feet may not fit in them, but your heart definitely does.
Signed – The Elves
It’s not easy being a leader. Your job comes with many challenges and responsibilities, as you well know. But it is an important and necessary job. And it can be a rewarding one – if you do it right. Helping you do that is what the Leadership Secrets of Santa Claus is all about
There’s no question that employees are depending on you, just as you depend on them. Don’t let them down. Those are the greatest gifts that you can give to your people, your organization and yourself. Most importantly, never forget that getting big things done all year long isn’t about magic, it’s about leadership.
Happy Holidays and Happy All Days.
