The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire, says Dr William Holden, chairman of Sewells, in his latest installment of Sewells' series with AM-online, providing monthly insights into people and performance management to help automotive retail leaders to inspire, motivate and guide their dealership teams more effectively.

Over the last 12 months, we’ve shared with you some key business hints and tips from “Too many leaders, not enough leadership” to “How to strengthen your internal communication effectiveness”.

We hope you’ve enjoyed reading them all and applying the learnings/takeaways … as much as we’ve enjoyed writing and sharing them with you.

We thought long and hard about what this month’s topic should be. This is one of our favourite topics here at Sewells which is motivation and what makes people tick and go ballistic!

So, let’s cut to the quick: how do you embed truly inspirational day to day leadership skills in your managers so they can motivate their teams to perform at levels never seen before?

What better initiative could you introduce in 2024?

What impact would it have on your results? We can tell you - it would be sensational!

How you do it is by recognising five simple, yet powerful, psychological needs that all people have, needs that need to be met in order to feel motivated.

Once your managers master how to fulfil these, day in, day out, with your people, you’ll leave your competitors standing and grow market share, customer loyalty, team spirit.

And you'll grow profits, of course!

How does your organisation rate against the Big 5 needs that set the human soul on fire? Look at the table here and score it ou5 out of 10.

How did you get on? Low or high or somewhere in the middle?

It’s now time for you and your managers to ignite passion and enthusiasm in your people, set their souls on fire and to develop a deep sense of accountability and personal responsibility for exceeding objectives. 

In other words, it's future proofing your dealership/department for years to come!

Remember though, this isn’t a one-off exercise or a case of sprinkling some pixie dust.

It’s a daily doing.

Author: Will Holden, chairman, Sewells Training.