More From Our Leadership Development and Team Building Conference

By Dave Yenglin :

I was fortunate enough to attend this conference along with three other members of the APR team.  I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, as I hadn’t attended any conference of this sort in many years, but immediately boredom came to mind.  It couldn’t have been further from the truth, the speakers for this conference did a wonderful job of presenting the material.

It wasn’t your typical presentation of someone just reading from a booklet what someone else wrote.  They were very good at getting everyone involved and being very interactive, obviously this makes sense given the title of the conference.

One of the first things that I learned from this that I hadn’t really put much stock in before now was that money isn’t always the primary motivation of employees being happy at a certain job.  Sure for a lot of people money is a big motivating factor for working for someone, but you would likely do better without those people on your team with that sole focus.  What I think makes for a great team and a great leader is being able to get people motivated and committed to a vision by way of getting them involved, getting them to be invested, and getting them to feel like what they are doing and what they are contributing is making a difference in the vision.

Most people want to be heard, they want to make a difference they don’t just want to get a paycheck.  When they are making a difference and being heard they are happier employees and more effective employees.  With that, being a great leader means being open and communicating with your team.

Don’t just tell your team what to do and that’s it, explain why you have come to your decision, elicit input or feedback from them to get them on board with a process, possibly improving the process based on that feedback.  People typically don’t like being told what to do all of the time, we already have a mother we don’t need another.

Getting them involved and explaining why things are done the way they are gets them better invested in the process and ultimately the vision of the company.

It feels good knowing that the team at APR has been heavily invested in this way of team building and leadership since the beginning and is just one of many things that makes us different from other collection agencies.