MINDSET
LEADERSHIP & ACCOUNTABILITY
Jennifer Jo Cobb is a public speaker, corporate spokesperson and a NASCAR team owner and driver. In addition to racing, she is the founder of Driven2Honor (Driven2Honor.org), a non-profit to recognize the efforts and plights of our female military members. Learn more about Think Realty's Racing Sponsorship and Jennifer Jo Cobb by contacting Dell Hamilton at delltrracing@gmail.com. Our team’s first success came just one race after I instilled our new financial accountability. We had the second-best race in my big-league career: a 12th-place finish at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. I’m the same driver, and my team is the same crew. The difference for all of us was preparation and attention to detail. • Next, a crew member failed to renew his passport and missed a race. He reimbursed me for the cost of his substitute and his plane ticket. Soon, I noticed more of the crew were paying more attention to details, and I felt like my new lead- ership style and clear consequences were yielding real results. The final test was our shipping process. Our truck driver hauls hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment across the country weekly. We used to experience damages to that equipment during transit. This can be due to the drive or it can be caused by improper loading, so I needed someone to be in charge of a load plan. My driver agreed to manage this and to re- place damaged items, and that consequence was enforced a short time later. He accepted the consequence and we all moved on. CONSEQUENCES, RACE TRUCKS & REAL ESTATE One of the biggest things I learned from this experience was something that real estate investors can certainly use in their businesses as well: Establishing consequences and enforcing them professionally in your business improves your chances of success. In NASCAR, penalties are announced publicly. We took the same approach with our team and our new system. This way, the team knew that everyone had consequences, and everyone involved was being held accountable. As the leader of a team, it was my responsibility to make sure we were doing every- thing we could to eliminate mistakes. Even though it involved some difficult conversations, as a leader, I had to be willing to evaluate my own leadership style, identify the issues, and then enforce changes not just on myself, but also on my team. Investors must do the same in order to make sure their investment processes and strategies continue to function efficiently, productively, and with a “win” at the end of the project!
difficult to replace, and, in my case, I really like my team! I believe in them and their abilities to get things right. As the leader of the team, I knew it was up to me to identify the root of our prepara- tion problems and resolve those issues. LEADERSHIP LESSONS APPEAR IN STRANGE PLACES SOMETIMES As I was struggling with this dilemma, I found surprising insight as I was taking a “mental break” with one of my favorite reality television shows, “Below Deck.” The show follows the crew of a private yacht and its wealthy guests who charter the yacht for a few days at a time. At the end of the charter the crew divides the tip and then go out for a night on the town of whatever slice of paradise they are sailing near. Clearly, this is a recipe for some drama, mistakes, and frustration for the yacht’s captain. As I watched the episode, I found myself cringing at the way the captain led her crew. She cussed and yelled and pulled her hair out at the stupidity and incompetence of the crew (sadly, this was very familiar to me). They apologized and owned the mistakes but there were no real consequences. Then, everything basically just hap- pened again. Later, in another episode featuring a different captain (yes, I was marathoning), the captain did not make nearly as big a production when he was angry, but he did make sure his crew understood from the start that mistakes come with pay cuts and, potentially, a one-way plane ticket home. Serious consequences. I decided to establish my own set of crew consequences and see if that change would improve our racing results. But what consequences would shake each team member up while still encouraging them to do their jobs correctly? I created a custom set just for my group based on their jobs and personalities. Here’s what happened: First, I tackled the position of crew chief . The crew chief on a NASCAR team shoulders the responsibility of the race truck being prepared and, as such, is the leader and is paid the most money. I told my crew chief I would deduct $200 for each missed practice from his weekly pay, a proposal to which he readily agreed because, of course, we never anticipate we’ll miss practice! Soon, we missed a practice. This presented me with the oppor- tunity to discuss the entire situation with him and, at the end of that discussion, he offered to be laid off for two weeks without pay. Sounds like a losing proposition for everyone, right? Wrong! The team saved significant money and other team members were positioned to step up and show what they could do in his absence. Everyone worked harder and continues to work harder because the responsibilities belong to them, now, and they also saw I was serious about the consequences.
Redefine Your Leadership StyleWithout Losing YourVision DIFFICULT CHANGES DON’T HAVE TO MEAN LEAVING YOUR TEAM BEHIND.
by Jennifer Jo Cobb
I
n both real estate and racing, leadership style will make or break you. In real estate, the ability to lead translates to the ability to scale and grow your business, implementing new strat- egies and improving your profit margins. In racing, it is much the same. A racing team requires good leadership to reach its goals, which usually involve wins, sponsorships, and high performance. Sometimes, though, being a good leader is not enough. You must lead the right way to meet the needs of your team and meet your goals. I experienced this firsthand this season in racing. At the beginning of this race season, our team had a goal: to finish in the top 20 of every race. We set that goal with high hopes, knowing we had some new resources, including a better engine for the Think Realty-sponsored racing truck, but we found our-
selves struggling to meet that goal we had believed would be fairly straightforward to achieve. As the owner of the team and driver of said truck, let me just say this was very frustrating.
Our issue was clear: We struggled with preparation.
No fewer than five times in the early part of the year, we didn’t get to run our practice laps or experienced a “parts issue” within 10 laps of the start of a race. That does not make for high finishes, as you might imagine. I have to say I started to look questioningly at my team. Were we not the fit we thought we were? I could not accept that as an answer. Being a NASCAR crew member requires a very special skillset. These people are very
84 | think realty magazine :: november 2018
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