Leadership - Management Speaker
Garrison Wynn, CSP

What is the definition of leadership?
Someone following someone because they want to and not because they have to.

Management and Leadership Articles

“Helping people develop their own brilliance is much more effective than giving them yours” -Garrison Wynn

Management and Leadership Keynotes

The Truth About Leadership Success: Turning talent into performance
This informative, entertaining program combines’s relationship building with no-fluff
research and “Beyond best practices leadership” to deliver real solutions that turn talent
into performance. This interactive session covers a lot of ground and provides easily
implemented, innovative solutions that your people can use right away.

Participants will learn:

  • How to be right without making people wrong
  • The truth about trust: Listening like a leader
  • Bad-for-business body language: How leaders betray their words
  • How to avoid robbing people of their uniqueness
  • How to get people to listen to you: Developing buy-in and loyalty
  • How to get highly creative/difficult people to agree with you
  • How to be more approachable and comfortable in your leadership role
  • Being the best vs. being consistently chosen: The truth about likable leadership styles
  • Managing expectations and emotions
  • Dealing with the resistance to change
  • How to repair relationship damage fast: Action creates opportunity
  • Understanding your contributions: The true value of what you do

Highlights of management and leadership keynotes

What do top-producing managers do that consistently creates success?

We combined the largest management survey ever conducted (80,000 managers, 400 companies, and over 1,000,000 employees, completed in the year 2000 by The Gallup Institute) with the Wynn Solutions' study of hundreds of top-producing sales managers (including managing directors for wire houses, bank distribution channels, and regional broker dealers).

When dealing with ego-driven top producers, it is important to recognize their expertise and not heavily criticize their ideas.

“If you criticize people’s ideas, they will almost never use yours, regardless of how good your ideas are.”

Talent and sensitivity are traits often found together in top producers. The key to being an effective sales manager is being flexible enough to attract and keep the phenomenal players.     

In order to position yourself to turn talent into performance, you have to make sure your people are willing to do more than the minimum.

They have to like your leadership style and feel they are the key factor in client satisfaction. 

“If you make your people feel important, you and your leadership style will be important to them.”

The signature of great leadership is when people follow your direction because they want to, not because they have to.

Great leaders realize that everybody knows something they don’t. They know that the moment they think they have all the answers and see no value in the input of others, wisdom leaves them.  

The truth about trust

Effective leaders understand that trust is built on the foundation of compassion and competence. Do your people know you truly care about them and their clients, and do they believe you can actually help them succeed? If they do, they will trust you.

The fastest, most effective way to do this is to make sure they feel heard. It’s more than just listening. When people feel truly heard and cared for, they will trust you. You must have a detectable level of concern/compassion and clearly explain the value of what you have to offer. Your people will naturally pass this on to their clients.

In five years of going through survey results and interviewing top producers, we discovered this was the platform on which success was built. We were hoping to find a magic bullet or something more complex. We did find more complex approaches, but only from those who were not top-producing sales managers.

Great leaders focus on not robbing people of their uniqueness.

If you tell someone you know exactly how they feel and walk in with the answer, you may create your own resistance. Some sales people need a lot of attention because we keep showing them how they are not special, so they have to continually prove it to us.

Let them know you understand their situation is important, and give them examples of how you have helped others overcome “similar” issues in the past by giving them options.

Focus on being effective, not just right.

Making people wrong was the leading cause for top producers to stop producing or look for other opportunities. We found top sales managers would say things such as, “I disagree, but I am willing to listen.”

Take the time to make people feel heard.

Focus on how people feel about what they are saying, regardless of what you think about what they are saying. Top sales managers make sure they connect with their people one-on-one. It is a neurological fact that if someone feels heard, they are much more likely to choose your input over that of others.

Top leaders can get great results even if there is a personality conflict.

Dealing with people you don’t like

“Turning talent into performance from those you don’t care for will define your greatness as a leader.”

Top sales managers spend most of their time with their most productive people.

Although it is important to give new people training and attention, if you spend a lot of time with those who do not produce, you can develop culture of mediocrity.

Great managers hire for talent, not just experience, intelligence, and skill.

They look for the natural, reoccurring patterns that can be productively applied.

“A successful sales force is driven by people, not vision. You can have great vision, only to see where your people cannot take you.”

Great sales managers define the right outcomes, not just the steps.  

The key to success is getting better at what you already do well.

Great leaders maximize their strengths and minimize their weakness. They do the same for their people. If you want help someone improve a weakness, point out the value of their strengths first and then discuss their weaknesses.

Change is not the problem. Resistance to change is the problem.

Great leaders make change work by proving to their top producers how the change is at least as good, if not better, than the old way and then having them spread it through the organization. They also effectively interpret and support corporate mandates and prevent quick negative morale shifts.

“Action and adaptability create opportunity.”

Partnerships

Top managing directors forge great teams and focus on finding the right fit—pairing junior and senior brokers together and defining roles, a workable split, and a growth plan. They recognize the need for these partners to be different, to maximize each other's strengths, and to minimize each other's weaknesses. 

The foundation and future of a company will always turn on the talent and performance of its people. Great managers prove that getting great results comes directly from turning talent into performance.

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