Lessons in Leadership: The Value of Position Descriptions

Effective sales management leaders use behavior plus activities to get results. To use standards that produce results, the standards must be written, well-communicated, completely understood, and equally applied. Every sales manager has the perfect tool for these standards at their finger-tips. These tools are position descriptions.

This Lesson in Leadership communicates the importance of position descriptions for the individuals on your sales team.

Managers and employees have more in common than you might think. One of those commonalities is that we all depend on our work to provide an important source of income to support our families and ourselves in a lifestyle we feel is reasonable. Our current job also serves as the vehicle we expect to carry us into an even more rewarding business and financial future.

Good work today … fuels tomorrow.

Most of us work to earn the money needed to take care of our current financial obligations and hopefully pay for any future needs we may uncover. You may also hope that your current position will help to propel you towards some future opportunity within your company. Perhaps you plan to be a sales manager someday. The challenge is that unless you can perform your current role and responsibilities to everyone’s reasonable satisfaction, none of your income needs or future opportunities is likely to be realized. In other words, if you can’t successfully perform the duties of the job you have now, your future dreams and goals begin to run out of fuel.

Conflict is the mother of disaster.

Whenever there is conflict on the job, everyone’s work and life becomes more difficult. Even the simplest task can become arduous when things aren’t running smoothly and responsibilities are not being filled. Have you ever felt like no one at work was on the “same page?” Have you ever wondered why someone doesn’t create some guidelines to help you secure the outcomes you’d like to accomplish on the job? Do you ever ponder why someone doesn’t synchronize the team’s functions, align you more closely with the team vision and provide you the opportunity to clarify the expected results with your manager? Well, in most companies there are such written guidelines. It’s called a “Position description.” This document has also been referred to as a Job Description.

The more detailed the map … the easier the journey.

Plainly put, the position description provides us with the details of our work responsibility and the expectations our company has of us. When managers provide you with a position description, they do so in order to help you understand what specific behaviors and work should be exhibited and accomplished for you to be most successful, productive, and happy in your job. Actually, a position description has several important functions and benefits.

Position Description functions and benefits:

1. It provides managers and employees a common understanding of work expectations.
2. It lists the tasks and behaviors that best promote the results an employee needs to produce on the job.
3. It lists the specific competencies that, when exhibited and enhanced, propel an employee to the next level of opportunity and/or responsibility.
4. It creates an opportunity for managers to help employees achieve greater levels of productivity with less stress, more success, and more abundant future possibilities.

Future opportunity is created by current success.

Whatever you want from the relationship you have with your current employer, it is safe to say that those things can only be logically realized when you become proficient in your current role or position. You must create opportunity by building on hard work and job success. Only after you begin to focus on your own improvement in your current job do the doors of future opportunity open to you.

Your first step in creating more opportunity at work is to clearly define and recognize why you might choose to do the work of your current job.

The good work we produce every day provides each of us with the opportunity to realize the motivation and desired outcomes that inspire us to return to work. In other words, these are our reasons for working. Just like in life, work consists of good days and difficult days.

Challenge is inevitable … winning is an option.

Everyone faces challenge on the job. We face challenges and know you do, too. Some days are better than other days. One good work objective is to get into the best possible position to overcome these struggles and achieve a desirable result with the least amount of stress and confusion.

By continuing to define and focus on the reasons why you choose to work, it can compel you to remain more positive in moments of difficulty and promotes resourcefulness when overcoming challenge.

Also, there is a way to proactively eliminate certain challenges on the job and make the largest number of personal opportunities available. The key is to understand, focus on, and improve your level of competence in your current role or position. The tool that will best serve you in this endeavor is a position description.

Every expectation written in a position description has some level of value to you, the company, the team, or the customer. Defining why you work and then reviewing your position description will help you create more opportunity and improve your levels of competence and motivation at work.