Leaders authenticity – Back to the floor undercover boss

Stephen Martin the CEO of Clugston’s has just finished 10 days undercover within his construction company on the UK based TV programme Undercover Boss and what a relevation he just had! First of all praise to the man for doing it, as like with any reality based television endeavour, you are only ever a hairs breadth away from looking a complete wally.

But he pulled it off with just the right balance of humility, wit, intelligence, commercial awareness and humanity (his board on the other hand, probably due to editing, looked less alert to the whole concept of the programme).

To quote Steve, “I think every boss really needs to do something like this, but I’m not convinced they want to hear the truth”, how completely true that is, the true ability as Gerry Roche of Heidrick & Struggles would say, is for the executive to be able to ‘feel the clothe and have the merchants touch’ in regards to the human sensitivities of managing human beings.

What was fabulous about this 60 minute programme was the sheer humanity of the people that work within a very hard industry, they may not have MBA’s but by god they can tell the truth through the eyes of those that live the reality of their industry on a daily basis.

• Les Parker the 20 year old temporary worker, still living at home and saving for a deposit. All he wants, is to learn and work hard, this kid just shows the true gumption that exists out there.
• Dick the site manager who’s worked for the business for 36 years, loves the job, the company and the industry. The first time in his life he’s met the boss, just sitting across the table from the ‘boss’ was almost an overwhelming experience for the man.

Steve was touched by all the people he met, in fact you could really sense he’d made a human connection to the numbers on the spreadsheet and as he was touched by them, in turn they were touched by him. Steve isn’t overly polished, he’s no ‘city slicker’, but what he does have as well as the obvious intelligence to run a company was a sense that out there within his business was a human story that went from an intellectual exercise to an emotional connection. Neither he or his business will be quite the same again.

1. Steve realised very quickly that you’ll never get the truth, from people in fear of their job or the position of the person asking them, so in his own way he created a way of connecting to the workforce .
2. He really listened, there was no PR exercise in his actions with the business, he experienced, listen, observed.
3. He quickly translated his observation into tangible changes, that he saw through himself, rather than delegated.
4. Steve quickly aligned his experience of the show, his gut instinct to strategic business drivers.

The Executive Coaching Guru knows a smart cookie when he sees one.