Love Works: 7 Timeless Principles for Effective Leadership - Boost Team Performance & Workplace Harmony

Joel Manby really knows his subject.His first job out of college was as a plant foreman at a GM truck plant in Pontiac, Michigan, where he was exposed to the toxic and adversarial relationship that existed between the UAW membership and the management. Fortunately, he later had the opportunity to serve under the legendary Skip LeFauve during the birth of the revolutionary Saturn automotive experiment, where he witnessed first-hand the transforming power of 'agape' love, trust, kindness, and true respect in the workplace. Joel was able to obtain a unique perpective of Saturn because he left Saturn "corporate" after the launch of the first car to run (and partially own) four Saturn retail outlets. He had already seen the effect of Skip LeFauve's strong belief in kindness and trust instilled in the corporate leaders, field organization, and UAW plant workers at Saturn's plant in Spring Hill, TN, who were enthused about their jobs. Such "soft" concepts were considered heresy in the hard-boiled world of automotive management. But after he moved to the dealership level where "the rubber hit the road", literally, he witnessed the same kindness and enthusiasm. The dealership owners believed in the mission and were kind and respectful to their sales and service team members who in turn treated the final customer well.But did organization-wide love, trust, and kindness actually WORK?Well, judge for yourself. Within only short four years after launch, the Saturn brand:* was number two in overall retail sales in America.* was number one in dealer satisfaction according to the main arbiter, J.D. Power and Associates.* had the highest resale value (percent of sticker price) of ANY car in ANY class.* had the highest customer-retention rate in the automobile industry, and* had the highest sales per retailer of any brand in the industry.But the statistic that meant the most to Joel - and that has the most to do with his contention that leading with love is the best way to run any organization - was that Saturn was number one in overall customer satisfaction. And not just for small cars, but for THE ENTIRE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY. This was remarkable for several reasons. First, Saturn's sales and delivery process out-scored high-priced luxury brands such as Infiniti, Lexus, and Mercedes-Benz. In fact, Saturn surpassed the previous highest score J.D. Power had EVER RECORDED. Second, more than 90 percent of Saturn owners were "very satisfied" with the way their cars were sold and delivered, because the vast majority of American car buyers found the auto industry's usual "hard-sell" process highly distasteful. Saturn buyers began to demand the same treatment from other brands, and soon "Saturnizing" became a verb that other companies attempted, with varying degrees of success.I highly recommend Love Works. I would also like to suggest two other business books that reinforce Joel's viewpoint on leadership: 1) Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends, and 2) Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow. I would also recommend Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, as further proof of the power that comes from being a heretical leader, as evidenced by the successful leadership of Joel Manby and the late Skip LeFauve, and their valiant battle against the entrenched status quo of GM mediocrity.