IIRP graduate Beth Alosi applies restorative practices at Ford Motor Company

Fast forward to 2014, and Alosi, who graduated from the IIRP in 2011, has begun her second year as a CEM coach helping nine different Ford and Lincoln dealerships improve customer relations by focusing first on staff relationships in their stores. Said Alosi, “Most consultants come in, make observations and then they’ll prescribe something. We go in, we do an employee engagement survey, we learn about the store. A lot of it is about operating on a philosophy of building relationships based on respect, having trust, and giving people control over things that affect them.

“I begin by asking storeowners, ‘What are your strengths as a leader? What are your challenges? What keeps you up at night?’ I have to find out about their goals to help them develop their own vision of the future. You have to be in a constant process of keeping your mouth shut and allowing the dealers and managers to set the priorities. As a coach, I need to use powerful questions, focusing on asking, not telling.”

Because Alosi doesn’t come in with a preset agenda, the outcomes of the coaching process vary a lot. In one store, department managers began meeting together for the first time. As a result, they’ve started to see how their departments affect one another. Salesmen, for instance, often rush to get in sales before the end of the month so they can get paid, but this leaves the office staff with the extra work of tidying up hastily completed paperwork and makes them look like they aren’t doing their jobs. At any given time, customers and team members can be negatively impacted by competing goals and lack of communication between departments. With managers now talking and meeting, they are moving toward a shared understanding of the overall store operation while developing empathy towards each other. The storeowner has also begun to institute all dealership meetings so information can flow freely and he can articulate his vision for the store to everyone in the company.

…Alosi recently showed up at a store and the general manager (GM) was excited to tell her about what he’d just done. The used car sales manager and the general sales manager, who had shared an office for years, were feuding. Tensions in the office were high and affected everyone. The GM had tried talking to each man individually and telling them to put their problems aside, but nothing got better. Finally, he brought the two men together and addressed the issue head on. He said, “There’s a lot of tension. As soon as one of you walks away the other is bitching. I’m tired of it, and I don’t want to be in the middle. How did this problem get started?” Then he got quiet and let the two men talk.

It turned out that one of the men had lied to the other when asked about something in his personal life. The man who had been lied to couldn’t forgive the other because he felt betrayed. The one who lied said he felt ashamed — that was why he lied — and he apologized for it. The GM commented that people are people and that he hoped the two could now get past this, which, in fact, they did. Two days later, when Alosi arrived, the GM reported that the climate in the office was 100 times better. The men were talking and joking again after six months of mounting tension!

Alosi believes that companies cannot make their targets and obtain the results they want if they neglect the emotional aspect of the workplace. A salesman in one store missed his target for the month. The manager approached him and said, “You’re off track, what’s going on? How can I help you?” He said, “I just found out my daughter’s in a lot of trouble. My head is just not in the game.” The manager responded, “I know what you mean. We want to leave our baggage at the door, but sometimes we can’t. I remember when my dad died and how that affected me. Here’s some strategies I used then to cope at work.” Alosi says the manager could have just fired the salesman, but then he would have lost a resource. Instead he reached out and made a connection. Alosi, and CEM in general, operate on the premise that when you humanize the work environment the positive changes will ultimately improve sales and customer service.

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