For Jason Lippert, president and CEO of Lippert, having a guiding light as the leader of a multibillion-dollar company is fairly simple.
“For me, faith is first and foremost. My faith sets the foundation – the tone – for how I try to live and lead,” Lippert says.
In addition to that foundation, the company shares five leader qualities and five core values that set expectations and guidance for all leaders at Lippert.
“Those five leader qualities and our five core values really drive what we expect good leadership to look like,” he says.
Among those core values and leadership qualities is the idea of “servant leadership” – this term was used for the first time by Robert K. Greenleaf in a 1970 essay, according to Forbes, and is defined as a leader who’s “main goal and responsibility is to provide service to their people. … In servant leadership, the leader ensures that the followers are growing in all areas – their profession, knowledge, autonomy and even their health and physical development.”
This is a responsibility Lippert takes to heart.
“The sad fact in the country is that 88% of working Americans feel like they work for a company that doesn’t care about them,” Lippert says. “At least that’s what the surveys say. That tells you that most cultures are bad. For most companies we acquire, the leadership means well, there’s just no real formal working culture or values. So what we do is go in and say, look, we’ve got our core values. If you’re a leader, we’ve got leader qualities that you have to adhere to … we base our culture around those values and our expectation is that you live up to those things. We’re going live up to them, we expect you to live up to them, and if you do, you can stay here and grow and develop.”
Actively Listening
One of the leadership qualities that Lippert prides itself on as a company is good communication. The president and CEO says part of good communication is listening.
Researchers estimate people only remember 25% to 50% of what we hear, according to a Forbes article. “Active listening makes you influential because you are leaning into the person and trying to understand, build trust and empathize before developing solutions and recommendations,” Forbes says.
Lippert puts this into practice often.
“I go to a plant once a week and sit in front of our frontline leaders … just taking time to cast a little bit of vision and answer questions about the company. We’re obviously on a culture journey, so they ask a lot of questions about what’s next and what are we really trying to accomplish? We share growth and development plans, go around the room and talk about what we’re all working on, not only as leaders but as human beings – how we’re trying to get better.”
Being intentional about making sure leaders carve out time to engage team members at a different level than they’ve ever been engaged with is an important goal, Lippert says.
“Tell me what’s not going well. Tell me what we can change. Tell me how we can be better. And then if we listen and capture a few of those things and actually act on those things, then that translates into the team members saying ‘they really do care. They listen to my ideas.’
“When you do that kind of stuff, it’s not the typical experience people get at companies. So they say, ‘I’ve worked at a lot of companies – I’ve never been treated this way. I’ve never felt the values before. I’ve never been listened to before. They’ve never taken any of my ideas, let alone wanted any of my ideas. I’m going to stay at this company because they do all those things.’
Finding the right team members who buy into the company’s core values and want to grow as high-quality leaders, is of ultimate importance. Empowering people to make decisions and holding them accountable to those core values is a part of the equation, too.
“A lot of businesses have core values,” Lippert says. “The problem is they just don’t enforce it or they don’t hold people accountable. The leaders are first and foremost – they’re held to the core values. Because if they’re not following the core values, it’s highly likely their people won’t follow the core values.
“So, holding leadership accountable to our core values and our leader qualities are the most important thing. And then it’s making sure we’re getting team members in that are reporting into those leaders that are inspired by the values, or they’re aligned to the values and they’re willing to follow suit and live out the values at work every day.”
Lippert explains that if team members want to aspire to be a leader, they have a clear picture of what the company says a good leader does.
“Most people get promoted to leadership because they’re generally good people. They show up to work every day. They’ve got a hard work ethic, they care about people. But at the end of the day, none of those things really qualify you to be a leader. So, what does leadership look like? It’s these five things – you’ve got to be working on these five things.”
Finding Direction as a Leader
There’s a reason why many books and articles exist on the daily habits of leaders. Most people have heard of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey, which has appeared on numerous best-seller lists.
Lippert says he starts each day with prayer time and listening to “Daily Hope,” a podcast by Rick Warren, a pastor who wrote the popular book “The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth am I Here for?”
“It’s a 15-minute podcast every morning. And then I sit in the Bible for 15 minutes. I have a routine to keep me grounded. That’s how I lead myself, ultimately.”
Another habit Lippert believes in is writing down your goals.
“What we say around here is if people are growing personally and professionally, they actually have a written plan. From our frontline team members who are making parts – the requirement is you have a written growth and development plan.”
Lippert has created a culture and leadership department with Adam Kronk as chief culture and leadership development officer and a team of 29 people.
“I’ve never had anybody tell me that a company with no written personal and professional growth plan would be better than a company that has everybody working on their own personal and professional growth journey,” Lippert says.
“We try to encourage people into it. We don’t say, ‘look, this is the rule.’ We say, ‘this is going to be better for your life and it’ll make life better for you here. You’ll be happier with yourself and ultimately, it’ll help your family better.
“We encourage people to do it and eventually they get hungry for it because they start learning how to grow and develop as a human being.”
The Culture Shift
In a 2019 Glassdoor survey of 5,000 people from the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany, 77% of respondents said they consider a company’s culture before applying for a job. According to Forbes, “companies with a robust culture have up to a 72% higher employee engagement than those whose culture are misaligned or need improvement.”
It was 11 years ago when the culture improvement efforts began at Lippert.
“Culture is a journey that never ends. So there’s always something to work on. There’s always an area (that could) be better,” Lippert says. “We’re literally working on new things all the time.”
Prior to the shift as a company, Lippert says the RV business was more cutthroat.
“It was just win at all cost. We’d run over people to just win business and do whatever it took to win more customers and grow,” he says.
“For me, my personal life was a little bit of a disaster and I was doing a lot of praying at the time and asked God to help me with my life.”
Instead of focusing just on acquiring more businesses and increasing stock prices and profits, Lippert says he was looking also at what his purpose was.
“The answer was like, hey, you’ve got thousands of people that (you) are responsible for, their family members,” he says. “Ultimately, what are we going to do with that? The culture journey became ‘how do we steward our people in life?’ If they stay here longer, the business gets stronger versus people coming and going all the time.
“One of our benefits of that was that, over time, over the last 10 years, our attrition has gone from 125% down to below 30%,” Lippert says. “When people stay at the business longer, the business just gets better. Nobody argues that.”
Showing that the company cares and means what they say, makes their team members want to stick around, Lippert says.
“They leave because the culture’s bad or the leadership is bad. They don’t want to get beat down for 40 hours a week their entire life – they get sick of it and they leave.
“So, when you treat them well, the opposite happens and all of a sudden you get this great momentum in the business. That translates into efficiency, quality, safety, innovation, and those are all things that make a business run really, really well.”
How to Make the Shift
When deciding to implement a culture change, one thing the company focused on was how they use their words, Lippert says.
“We kind of decided that words matter. So, we stopped using words like boss and supervisor and manager – employees, even. Employees is kind of sterile. It doesn’t really inspire you as part of a company to be better,” Lippert says. “Nobody likes to be bossed or managed or supervised. So we just stopped using words that had negative implications. We call people family around here – we say team members and it’s just the way we talk to people. I think it is a little bit different and we’re very intentional and conscious about it.”
Another element is putting into action what the company says it’s going to do – Lippert says the company’s core values are not just lip-service.
“They want the opposite of those things. So values is a system that helps keep all that in check. What we’ve found, bringing people on, there’s always a little bit of skepticism – maybe even a little sarcasm: ‘I’ve been at companies that talk about that and they don’t do it.’ But we say, don’t throw stones. Follow us, and as long as we do what we say we’re going do, come along. If we step out of line, raise your hand and hold us accountable. We’re going to do the right things. We’re going to do them consistently … It doesn’t take long for people to realize, oh, ‘I’ve been watching them – they’re doing what they say they’re doing.’”