Author: Ken Blanchard

SLII® for Sales: Developing High-Performing Salespeople

/ Ken Blanchard

A high-performing sales force can lift an entire organization to new heights. That’s why it’s so important to give salespeople everything they need to succeed. But too often salespeople are left to struggle on their own. Hoping the problems will resolve on their own, their managers ignore warning signs like inconsistent performance, low motivation, and delayed response times to customers.

Well-meaning sales leaders may try coaching their people to better performance. While coaching is a wonderful tool, this alone is unlikely to develop a successful salesperson, fix the problems of a salesperson who is struggling, or keep a high performing salesperson from jumping ship.

SLII® for Sales teaches leaders to have conversations with salespeople that help underperformers hit sales targets and keep high performers engaged. The program shows managers how to provide each salesperson with the precise leadership style they need to improve or overcome whatever challenge they are facing. Using the Diagnosing and Matching skills from SLII®, sales leaders can address issues and give people the solutions they can’t give themselves.

How SLII® for Sales Works in the Real World

Suppose you are a sales leader, and you’ve just brought a new person onboard your team. Let’s see how you can use SLII® for Sales to develop and nurture your new hire into a high performing member of the team.

The Enthusiastic Beginner. Your new salesperson is a 22-year-old with a friendly personality but little actual sales experience. They have a high commitment to becoming good at sales and they are curious, hopeful, and excited.

A salesperson at this level is an enthusiastic beginner. A directing leadership style is appropriate at this stage. You need to teach your new hire everything about the sales process—from making a sales call to closing the sale—and lay out a step-by-step plan for their self-development, teaching them what experienced salespeople do and letting them practice in low-risk sales situations.

The Disillusioned Learner. Now, suppose your new hire has had a few weeks of sales training. They understand the basics of selling but are finding it more difficult than expected. They’re not quite as excited as they were before. They even look discouraged at times.

At this stage, your salesperson is a disillusioned learner. What’s needed now is a coaching leadership style, which is high on both direction and support. You continue to direct and closely monitor their sales efforts, and you also engage them in two-way conversations. You provide a lot of praise and support at this stage because you want to build their confidence, restore their commitment, and encourage their initiative.

The Capable, But Cautious, Contributor. In time this salesperson learns the day-to-day responsibilities of their position and acquires some good sales skills. They still have some self-doubt and question whether they can sell well without your help.

At this stage, the salesperson is a capable, but cautious, contributor. This is where a supporting leadership style is called for. Since their selling skills are good, they don’t need direction. They need you to listen to their concerns and suggestions and be there to support them. Now is the time to encourage and praise—but rarely direct—their efforts. Help them reach their own sales solutions by asking questions and encouraging risk-taking.

The Self-Reliant Achiever. Eventually, your former new salesperson becomes a key player on your team. Not only have they mastered sales tasks and skills, but they’re also working successfully with some of your most challenging clients. They anticipate problems, are ready with solutions, work successfully on their own, and inspire others.

Congratulations—your salesperson has reached the self-reliant achiever stage. At this level of development, a delegating leadership style is best. Turn over responsibility for day-to-day decision making and problem solving. Empower them and allow them to act independently. Challenge them to continue to grow and cheer them on to even higher levels of success.

As a sales leader, your goal is to develop your salespeople to perform at the highest level possible. SLII® for Sales gives you powerful tools to achieve this goal—and to help lift your organization to unprecedented heights.

Empathy and Accountability—an Unlikely but Vital Combination

/ Ken Blanchard

As a leader, I learned long ago that most people are capable of much more than their manager gives them credit for. If you are a leader who thinks this way, you probably treat your team members well—the way you would want to be treated if you were in their shoes. As you get to know each individual, you may even start to feel that you understand how they think and feel about different things. You are an empathetic leader.

When a leader has empathy for their direct reports, does it mean they will let everyone do their job in whatever way they choose? Of course not. It is the leader’s responsibility to set boundaries by keeping people accountable for their goal achievement, growth, and behavior. In other words, the best leaders not only lead with empathy, they also hold their people accountable. Both elements are critical for success in today’s organizations.

If this sounds familiar, it might be because you’ve heard me say “Servant leadership is the best way to achieve both great relationships and great results.” Being empathetic while instilling accountability in people are leadership skills that can have the same positive outcome. Leaders must hold people accountable for achieving goals, but those who focus only on results will lose their people. Successful leaders are able to create an empathetic environment where people feel seen and heard and also want to perform at a high level.

A key part of leading with empathy is being a good listener. People appreciate a manager who cares about them and what they think. One way for managers to build meaningful connections with their people is to schedule one-on-one meetings where the direct report sets the agenda. There’s no better way to get to know team members as individuals than to set aside time—just 20 to 30 minutes every other week—to chat about anything they wish. It’s a unique opportunity for a manager and a direct report to speak openly with one another without interference or judgment.

When you begin the meeting, eliminate distractions so that you will be present and focused on your team member. Demonstrate curiosity and the desire to help. Open your mind to their ideas and viewpoints. Allow the person time to think before they speak. Also, pay attention to nonverbal clues such as their tone of voice. Practice active listening by restating in your own words what the person said. Or wait until the end of the meeting when you can thoughtfully  summarize the full conversation—so that your direct report knows you empathize and understand their perspectives and experiences. Having regular one-on-one meetings leads to trusting relationships built on empathy, respect, loyalty, and accountability for everyone involved.

Remember that as a manager, the best moments you spend are the ones you invest in your people. Lead with empathy and show them they are valued by listening, letting them know you understand their needs, and always keeping the lines of communication open. They will want to do their best for you and willingly take accountability. When that happens, you’ll know you have a high performing team.

Any Dumb-Ass Can Do It: A New Book by My Friend, Garry Ridge

/ Ken Blanchard

My good friend, Garry Ridge, has a new book out called Any Dumb-Ass Can Do It: Learning Moments from an Everyday CEO of a Multibillion-Dollar Company. I’m not surprised that it’s already a bestseller, because the book is as fun to read as it is informative. You can tell from chapters like “Even the Queen Sits Down to Pee” that Garry doesn’t take himself too seriously. Yet every chapter contains a key message about creating a safe, supportive work culture in which people can thrive. As Garry knows, when people thrive, so does the bottom line.

Don’t Mark My Paper—Help Me Get an A

I met Garry more than 20 years ago when he signed up for the Master of Science in Executive Leadership (MSEL) graduate program that my wife, Margie, and I were teaching at the University of San Diego. He had just arrived in the US from Australia to take over as president of WD-40 Company, and he thought our MSEL program would help him be a more effective leader.

A light bulb went on in Garry’s head when he heard me talk about how during my days as a college professor I used to give out the final exam at the beginning of the course and spend the semester teaching students the answers so they could get an A on the final exam.

“Why don’t we do that in business?” he asked. It made no sense to him why managers stood back and graded people instead of coaching them. So, he set up a “Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A” performance review system at WD-40 Company that coached learners instead of punishing them. The results were spectacular; the company’s annual sales more than tripled. Garry and I wrote a book about it called Helping People Win at Work.

Investing in Leadership Development

Garry continued to implement the leadership practices Blanchard had been teaching for decades, heart-centered strategies for building trust and leading individuals and teams. By the time he retired as CEO of WD-40 Company, it was valued at more than $3 billion, with products selling in 176 countries on every continent. We were lucky to have Garry serve on the Blanchard board of directors, where we benefited from many of his powerful “learning moments”—those flashes of insight that led to better outcomes.

I’ve always said that success is about results and relationships. Garry is a living, breathing example of how a leader of a publicly traded company can succeed while caring about its people. As Garry puts it, “I love my shareholders, but I serve my people. Because if I serve my people, they will delight my customers who will in turn delight my shareholders. The vision-crushing ritual of the pressure of quarterly earnings is no measure of a company’s true, long-term success.”

Garry is no dumb-ass, of course. In fact, Inc. magazine named him as one of the world’s Top 10 Most Admired CEOs. His point is that you don’t have to have super intelligence or a fancy degree to succeed as a leader. But you must have the humility to learn, and you must genuinely care for the people in your organization. When your people thrive, they create raving fan customers who in turn support a healthy bottom line, which delights shareholders. If Garry is a dumb-ass, we need more like him in business!

Margie—The Woman Beside Me

/ Ken Blanchard

In honor of Women’s History Month, I’ve updated this blog post I wrote two years ago about my favorite woman. She is my best friend, my true love, and my brilliant, beautiful wife of nearly 64 years—Margie Blanchard.

The old saying “Behind every successful man is a woman” isn’t true in our case. Margie was never behind me—she has always been right beside me as my partner in life. I wouldn’t be anywhere without Margie. She has been the spark for many of the great events of our lives.

The Beginning

I fell in love with Margie in the summer of 1961. I had just graduated from Cornell and was hanging around town for the summer, mainly to play golf and take a couple of courses to lighten my load for the master’s program I would be starting in the fall. A friend of mine whom we all called “Looper” had been dating Margie, but his father passed away and Looper needed to go home to run the family dairy. He asked me if I would take Margie out once in a while as a favor to him. One day my roommate asked me to have a drink with him and one of Margie’s sorority sisters who was getting married soon. My roommate was going to be best man in their wedding. I said, “Okay, I’ll invite Margie McKee to join us. She’s almost married, too.”

Margie was working that summer as a speech therapist and counselor at a camp for kids with severe speech problems. I picked her up at the camp and we drove eight miles back to town. She spent the entire ride describing her feelings about these special needs children—she was so filled with compassion. She had a real heart for those kids as well as a need to help people. I think I fell in love with Margie on that eight-mile ride. We were married the following June.

My Start as an Author

In the fall of 1966, Margie (pregnant with our daughter, Debbie), our son, Scott, and I arrived at Ohio University. I had landed a job as an assistant to Harry Evarts, dean of the school of business administration. Paul Hersey had just arrived on campus as chairman of the management department, where I began teaching a course at the request of the dean. I discovered that I loved teaching.

I heard Hersey taught a tremendous course on leadership, so in December I went to see him and said, “Paul, I understand you teach a great leadership course. Could I sit in next semester?”

Paul said I was welcome to take his course, but I would have to take it for credit.

I was stunned. I went home and told Margie about the conversation.

“Can you imagine? He won’t let me audit his course. I have a Ph.D. and he doesn’t, and he wants me to take his course for credit!”

Margie said, “That’s all fine, but is he any good?”

“He’s supposed to be fabulous.”

“Then why don’t you get your ego out of the way and take his course?”

After convincing the registrar to let me take Hersey’s undergrad course, I signed up, went to class, wrote all the papers, and found it to be a great experience.

After the course ended, Hersey took me aside and asked me to write a textbook with him, which became the first edition of Management of Organizational Behavior: Utilizing Human Resources. It is still in print, now in its tenth edition.

If it weren’t for Margie’s suggestion, Paul Hersey and I would not have coauthored that book, which popularized the Situational Leadership®* model we created together.

The Birth of The One Minute Manager

In 1980, Margie and I went to a cocktail party for San Diego authors. Also at the party was Spencer Johnson, who had coauthored a series of children’s books called Value Tales with his wife, Ann Donegan. He was in the process of coauthoring a parenting book titled The One Minute Scolding. Margie met Spencer first, hand-carried him over to me, and told us she thought we should meet.

Then Margie said something that would change all our lives: “You two need to write a children’s book for managers. They won’t read anything else.”

The following week, Spencer came to see me speak at a seminar I was giving in town. He sat in the back, laughing, apparently enjoying my presentation. At the end, he came up to me and said “The hell with parenting—let’s write The One Minute Manager®!” And we did.

To date, the book has sold more than fifteen million copies. It wouldn’t have happened without Margie.

The Ken Blanchard Companies® and Beyond

During the ten years Margie spent as president of our company, I was sometimes asked why she was president, not me. I thought it was obvious that she was the one who should be president. That held true: when Margie started her term, we were a five million dollar company. When she left that position, we were a thirty million dollar company. (Margie is the first to say that partnering with her brother, Tom McKee, who joined the company as general manager of operations, was what made the difference.) As a lifelong cheerleader, I was just happy to work beside Margie and Tom and cheer them on.

Margie has always been interested in keeping an eye on business trends. She also believes leaders should keep managing the present separate from planning the future. So when she ended her term as company president, she and Blanchard cofounder Eunice Parisi-Carew created a unique, innovative think tank they named Office of the Future (OOF). With help from Margie’s assistant, Lily Guthrie, OOF studied and reported on emerging trends in leadership, technology, and other workplace issues. OOF’s findings and reports were available to clients and other organizations to assist with planning for the future, and to the media for use in advising the public of trends in the workplace. Margie saw their work and research as both a challenge to Blanchard’s status quo and a stimulus for change that would ensure our company’s continued vitality and success.

Today, Margie is as active and interesting as ever. Because Margie is a lifelong teacher, she has a special place in her heart for Blanchard Institute, our 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that offers free Student Self Leadership training programs for students 14 to 18, with several scholarships available each year for higher education. She also loves to teach courses on career planning to young people in our company. And because Margie is a lifelong learner, when the pandemic began she took up a new hobby of watercolor painting. She’s really good!

Thank you, Margie, for being a wonderful woman and the best partner a man could ever hope to have.

*Situational Leadership® is a registered trademark of Leadership Studies, Inc., dba The Center for Leadership Studies.  

Remembering Don Carew

/ Ken Blanchard

On January 28, 2025, I lost one of my dearest friends and colleagues, Don Carew. Not only was Don one of the original founding associates of our company, but he was also a very special human being. More than anyone I have ever met, Don Carew embodied kindness.

I first met Don at the University of Ohio in 1966, where he was teaching courses in human relations, and I was teaching business leadership. Don introduced himself to me on the sidewalk in front of the student union building, and we became instant friends. I loved Don’s gentle spirit and welcoming personality. We also shared a passion for making a positive difference in people’s lives through leadership. It wasn’t long before Don and his first wife, Jody, became an integral part of my wife Margie’s and my social circle.

Don had profound empathy for others and was a passionate supporter of civil rights and social justice. Back in 1963, he took a group of his students to the March on Washington, D.C., where they heard Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. deliver his historic “I Have a Dream” speech.

It was Don who urged Margie and me to join him at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1970, where he had relocated and become an enormously popular professor. During the years we taught together at UMass, Don and I forged a deep friendship. We led weekend classes together. Don would share his expertise in working with teams and groups, while I would focus on a situational approach to leadership. Eventually we began consulting with external groups.

Margie and I left Amherst and relocated to San Diego in 1976 for a one-year sabbatical that turned into a permanent move. But I continued to teach weekend courses with Don several times a year at the University of Massachusetts.

After Margie and I launched our company in 1979, Don joined us as an associate. He had the intellect to work effectively with the C suite as well as the empathy and respect to connect with frontline workers as they transformed their cultures. I had a wonderful time collaborating with Don and Eunice Parisi-Carew on our bestselling book, The One Minute Manager Builds High Performing Teams. Don’s and Eunice’s expertise in teams and group development was a key factor in our decision to change the original Hersey-Blanchard model and develop SLII®.

I will miss Don’s warm voice and loving presence. His spirit of integrity and inclusiveness lives on in our culture at Blanchard and for that, I am grateful.