1.2 Introduction
This textbook is first and foremost about leadership. The principles and practices shared here are applicable to leadership in any situation. The purpose of leadership is to guide and direct the deployment of available resources in a unified way, accomplish a defined objective, elevate employee engagement, and improve organizational performance. In addition, leaders strive to answer essential questions like the following:
What can I do to make myself, another individual, or a team perform better?
What can I do to learn faster?
How can I make it more likely for an individual to achieve a personal goal?
How can I make it more likely to reach a team goal or accomplish a strategic initiative?
What resources are available to help solve a problem or accomplish our purpose?
The answers to these and other questions motivate the direction of the chapters that follow.
Next, this is a textbook about leadership in a sales environment. Selling is fundamentally essential to preserve and promote our way of life. It has been said that nothing happens until someone sells something. Sales fuels our economy. The act of selling creates jobs in every sector and industry of our economy. The effects of a profitable business spill over to benefit the surrounding community. For example, more than 20 studies nationwide—from Syracuse, NY, to Pleasanton, CA—found that local retail stores circulate an average of 47.7% of their revenues to the local economy. Local restaurants return an average of 64.9%.1 Sales leadership matters because it is the primary driver of economic success.
Furthermore, because sales is competitive, the quality of leadership has a significant impact on the success of any given sales team. For all these reasons, a textbook on sales leadership is critical. This textbook applies the principles of leadership to a selling environment.
Finally, this textbook provides a model for the practical application of leadership principles. It is not enough to discuss the principles of leadership—this textbook will empower leaders to act. The Griffin Hill method and technology demonstrate a practical approach to leadership. The method, tools, and technology enable leaders to use performance-enhancing principles supported by the scientific literature. This textbook empowers students to apply and use the principles of leadership. It is not intended simply as a discussion about ideas. Using Griffin Hill methods to model leadership principles provides a practical application framework for the student to begin using leadership principles immediately.
Far from being a distraction to the value of this text as a resource for learning leadership principles, using Griffin Hill methods and technology to model these principles enriches the learning power. Absent a methodology to demonstrate the principles, the text would be a banal recitation of ideas. Modeling the application of principles enhances learning and speed to adoption.