Turnover. It’s exhausting. Whether it be staff or customers. Having to recruit, train & equip staff or educate and win new customers – avoiding turnover allows us to avoid repeating costly cycles and in todays competitive marketplace – efficiency is key.
Esprit de Corps is the unspoken advantage to building momentum in a competitive marketplace. The French translation is literally ‘spirit of the body’.
A Google Search gives the following:
esprit de corps
/ɛˌspriː də ˈkɔː,French ɛspʀi də kɔʀ/
noun
noun: esprit de corps; plural noun: esprits de corps
- a feeling of pride and mutual loyalty shared by the members of a group.
Common Values:
Personal values, aren’t obvious when we start out in business and in life. I found myself gravitating towards people I respected either professionally or personally and upon reflection it was because they either shared similar values or displayed values that I admired and wanted to cultivate. The same is true in the opposite direction. I found myself avoiding people that perhaps I didn’t respond well to or appreciate their values. I’m not talking about being right or wrong, I’m talking about alignment. Personally, I respected those that took the road less travelled and were able to consciously decided to take what I perceived to be the high road as opposed to the one our instincts or emotions often send us down.
The Inner Circle:
As a business matures, the core of that business build an ‘unspoken bond’ around those common values. A camaraderie develops through shared experiences that display these values. Nothing needs to be said, in fact often nothing is said in these moments. They are simply that. Moments. A feeling of pride around your association together as those that share them tend to display more loyalty and buy into those values, those that do not either move on voluntarily or are asked to move on because it ‘didn’t click’ or ‘gel’. I put these words in quotations because language is inadequate to describe this connection – despite this – I know you get what I mean because you’ve felt it before.
The same extends to our customers and clients. The challenge is often to ensure their experience on the very first experience demonstrates those values early so that loyalty can be earned. This gets challenging when a business grows quickly, volume increases and thus recruiting is required to occur quickly. This is when we settle for experience and skills to fit the role description over attitude and thinking to fit the culture.
Loyalty:
As you build these relationships on unspoken but impossible to ignore bonds within the business, subsequently they are bound to form beyond the business with your partners, suppliers and key stakeholders – that’s when you get momentum. The speed of trust, not second guessing commitment or intent. Not double checking to make sure you understand where they are coming from. Oddly, often times this camaraderie is built during adversity and challenges – these are the opportunities to build loyalty. Both the people in your business and being served by your business intuitively measure your responses and decide whether or not they want to be around for the next hurdle.
Best to consider your responses carefully, particularly when you feel strongly about them.
Guntur
Guntur Reid is a Director at ARG. We are a property partner to many finance and investment strategists throughout the country.
