FLICK, MANN BRING DYNAMIC PERSPECTIVES TO LEADERSHIP

Tom Flick spent parts of four seasons as an NFL quarterback, going eye to eye with middle linebackers such as Hall of Famer Jack Lambert of the Pittsburgh Steelers. He also threw touchdown passes to Hall of Famer Charlie Joiner and Pro Bowler Wes Chandler.

That career helped Flick for his next calling as a speaker on leadership and motivation.

But don’t expect too many football war stories when Flick speaks to NSGA’s Management Conference and Team Dealer Summit, May 21–23, in Nashville, Tennessee.

“When I first started, I really kind of kept my football career at bay,” he said. “I don’t tell a lot of third-and-10 stories or go back and say, ‘It was great back then and let me tell you about my football career.’ I’ll use some football analogies that really might make crystal clear sense. But typically it’s kind of self-deprecating humor. I don’t look like a football player anymore. I’ll poke fun at myself. I don’t take myself seriously, but I take the information pretty darn seriously.”

Flick is one of two speakers bringing decades of experience on leadership to NSGA. Dan Mann is an author and speaker whose new book is titled “Leading Change: How to Achieve Superior Results with Gentle Pressure Relentlessly Applied.”

Like Flick, Mann is a dynamic speaker who tailors his presentations to his audience. Conference attendees will hear talks aimed specifically at them and their unique needs.

“I’ve seen speakers who have a boilerplate presentation that they’ve put a pretty good power point to, and they’ve got their jokes lined up,” said Mann, who works with many sporting goods retailers. “I’ve not really enjoyed that kind of presentation for myself. My first thought is, ‘How can I make this as custom and one of a kind as possible?’ Of course, I do have certain themes that I tend to reside in and things that I think are important. If I have a new audience, my thought is, ‘How do I match what I’m going to chat about to this unique audience?’

“It begins with a bit of discovery of who the audience is and what their pain points are — what are they facing right now? And how do I craft both the topic and the metaphors and the stories to their world? So a bit of discovery is how I try to go about doing that.”

Flick and Mann will be speaking before NSGA members from different-sized companies, from small to very large. The needs and challenges facing all of them have much in common.

“At the retail level, there’s an awful lot of common ground; it’s a question of scale,” Mann said. “If I were to go out to the largest of the sporting-goods retailers and the smallest of the sporting-goods retailers, they’re going to say things that are really similar. They’re going to say, ‘You just cannot find good people, just cannot keep good people, nobody wants to work anymore, how do I increase commitment among my leadership group, how do I tell my compelling story and make it unique, how do I compete against my own brand, my own vendors, online?’

“So there’s a series of pain points that I think they’re all facing. At the management level, ‘How do I get my sales team to behave in the most precise way for maximizing the transaction as well as giving a great customer experience?’ Training is one thing. But then developing a process and skills so people repeat that and are consistent with it are the same.

“So if I’m a $3 million retailer or if I’m a $30 million retailer or a $300 million retailer, I probably have those same questions and challenges. Just smaller levels or larger levels.”

Flick frames these challenges as boiling down to the important distinction between “management” and “leadership.”

“There are some universals,” he said. “I speak about leadership. When I use the term, many people will think title or position in the organization. The distinction between leadership and management is gigantic. It is very significant because we have leaders that are managing when they should be leading. These two words are so distinctly different. They take you to two different places.

“Management is basically budgeting, planning, staffing, controlling, problem solving. It has given us the modern-day corporation. It’s awesome. Leadership is vision, strategy, communicating that vision and strategy, motivating action, inspiring people, getting buy-in. Management is more of a defensive posture, where leadership is more of an offensive posture.

“You’ve got leadership that’s proactive, and management is really kind of defensive and reactive. Offense is leadership, which is energizing. You play defense in management. It’s draining. I’ve never heard any announcer in my life say, ‘The offense is exhausted. They’re scoring touchdown after touchdown after touchdown.’ That’s the same way in life.”

Another issue facing NSGA members and their employees is burnout.

“This has been a perennial problem,” Mann said. “I find that people face burnout when maybe the job itself doesn’t really match their ideology in terms of their life goals or what they’re trying to do. I hear people talk about a work-life balance as if work and life are separate things. So, ‘I’m going to work and I’m going to sell my soul and I’m not going to have any fun today, and then I’m going to go home and have my life where I have fun and I’m really fulfilled.’

“I think that when we hire badly and we put people in the roles that are just looking for a job, they’re just looking to earn a paycheck, they’re just looking to calculate the benefit they’re getting, the financial benefit or what insurances that they have. That’s a financial equation versus my life, where I pursue my passions. Boy, that is recipe for burnout because it’s very hard to maintain that.”

Flick’s presentations often center on “aiming for the heart.” That’s particularly important with issues such as burnout.

“What I encourage leaders to do is to really get down to the level of the folks they’re hiring and really get engaged with them and start to build a relationship with them because when people enjoy who they’re working with and are given responsibility as well, it allows them to have skin in the game and ownership,” he said. “The biggest challenge I find, interestingly, when I go work with these organizations is they end up making it an intellectual exercise. So we talk about ROI and metrics and analytics and strategy, which is really important.

“But for the person sitting in the seat, they’re human beings, so we need to engage their heart as much as their head. Research says that feelings are more influential than thought when it comes to effecting change and changing behavior. So we need to engage the head and the heart.”

For both Mann and Flick, their roads to successful speakers/presenters have been lifelong journeys. Mann started with a men’s clothing retailer, moved up the ranks and found his calling in training and team building.

“I’m very passionate about it as life’s work,” he said. “Life’s work is something that, ‘If I can do this work, I’m helping others. And if they will invest in themselves to develop others, and they’re good at that — they coach, train, teach and inspire — then, everywhere they go, they’re going to be successful,’ whether it’s in the retail world, the manufacturing world.”

As for Flick, it’s been fulfilling one dream after another in life.

“You have a dream as a kid and you achieve it,” he said. “Then it comes to an end. When I finished [playing football], there was a period of about a year where I wasn’t sure what I needed to do or wanted to do. I felt a calling. I’m not taking you on a spiritual journey, but I felt the Lord saying, ‘This is what I built you for, that football was the precursor to what you’re made for.’ An interesting backdrop to the story is I’m pretty much shy and quiet. When I get up on stage, I just feel like this where I was meant to be, and this is where God gave me the skills and tools to be.

“I don’t know if I share this much in my talks, but I took the disciplines I learned in football and applied them to business, and they made the jump very easily. So I just hustled. I was a hustler. I just worked hard. I scrapped for things. I was competitive. And I had a deep desire to learn. You don’t get to the ranks of the NFL if you’re not interested in learning. So I just kept digging into things.”

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