- Leadership is one of the most important and rewarding aspects of human life, but it is also one of the most challenging and demanding. How can we learn to lead effectively and efficiently, and how can we enjoy the process and the results? In this article, we will review the book The Leadership Secrets of Santa Claus by Eric Harvey, which reveals the surprising and valuable lessons that we can learn from the most successful and beloved leader in history.
- If you want to learn more about the book and how it can help you or someone you know who is a leader or aspiring to be one, read on. You will discover some of the secrets of Santa’s leadership style, and how you can apply them to your own workplace. You will also find out how you can get a copy of the book and access more resources from the author.
He has 364 days to strategize and produce, and one day to execute. He depends on a hard-working team of employees whom he needs to convince to relocate to the North Pole. He must re-skill his people annually to build the gifts that are most in demand each year. Yet despite the challenges, Santa Claus loves what he does.
How does Santa pull it off? In this book summary, Eric Harvey offers actionable leadership advice delivered directly from the North Pole.
Table of Contents
Recommendation
Eric Harvey, best-selling author of Walk the Talk and founder of the consultancy of the same name, The Leadership Secrets of Santa Claus offers Santa Claus as a metaphor of terrific leadership. He packs his slight book with insights about how to overcome challenges, and he clearly takes great joy in his metaphor. Santa’s number-one priority is his mission – “delivering high-quality toys to good little girls and boys” – and he makes sure his elves and reindeer understand how they connect to it. Santa shares other leadership tips, such as taking your time when hiring or promoting, listening to your employees, accepting change, confronting problems directly and fulfilling a mission that matters. This advice is all milk and cookies you’ve consumed a thousand times before, but you’ve never had it presented to you by Santa. Harvey’s extended Christmas construct makes his book fun and easy to read. We recommend this stocking stuffer to managers who’d like some basic but always handy personnel pointers – with a dash of holiday spirit.
Take-Aways
- Despite the difficulties of being Santa Claus, he loves his job.
- His mission to deliver toys to good boys and girls is his workshop’s number-one priority. All of the elves and reindeer know how they contribute to that mission.
- Having a diverse workforce provides much-needed different perspectives.
- When you’re hiring or promoting, take the time to find a good fit.
- Make a plan, work through it and maximize your time, money and resources.
- Listen to your employees. Let them make decisions that directly affect them.
- Give recognition when it’s due. Be specific and personal with positive feedback.
- Help employees succeed. Go beyond specific job training to include cross-training in other areas.
- Confront performance problems or other problems directly. Don’t let them fester.
- Every workforce has a range of “stars” – keep them from “falling,” encourage those in the “middle” and recognize and reward your “super stars.”
Summary
Being Santa
Santa Claus faces shifting demands, a challenging production schedule and a hostile work environment. He has to attract talented employees and convince them to relocate to the North Pole. He also must “retool his plant – and retrain his people” annually to build the gifts that are most in demand each year. Despite the challenges, Santa Claus loves what he does.
Build Your Foundation
It all starts with your foundation – your mission. Santa and his workforce are happy and productive because of their mission: “Making spirits bright by building and delivering high-quality toys to good little girls and boys.” North Pole staff members know that mission, and they understand how they contribute to it. Santa posts the mission statement on the workshop’s walls, discusses it in staff meetings and includes it in the elves’ and reindeer’s everyday activities. He knows that good leaders:
- Stay physically and mentally accessible to their employees.
- Listen to their employees’ concerns and are considerate about their needs.
- Give their employees resources for success, including training, tools and feedback.
- Keep their employees informed and “in the loop.”
- Help their employees learn, grow and maintain work-life balance.
- Respect their employees’ time, effort and individual talents.
- Distribute workloads fairly and evenly.
Hiring
Make sure your employees know what’s important and how they contribute to your organization’s success. Know your values and make sure your employees know and share them. Focus on hiring. The more time you spend making sure you sign up the right people on the front end, the more time you’ll save by avoiding personnel issues and high turnover.
“If I’ve learned anything over the many years of wearing this red suit, it’s that leadership is not for the paranoid at heart. Like most managers, I operate in a fish bowl. I’m constantly being watched.”
Once when Santa hired a new reindeer he wasn’t sufficiently diligent about making sure the new reindeer was a good fit. He recalls, “You know Dasher and Dancer, Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid, and Donner and Blitzen. But do you recall the least famous reindeer of all: Misfit? He’s not here anymore.” When Santa hired Misfit, he didn’t perform a thorough background check or test the new reindeer’s commitment. Misfit showed up late, had a bad attitude and didn’t carry his share of the load. Left-side reindeers had to work harder to keep the sleigh from veering to the right side. His behavior even affected the elves. Everyone was miserable. So take it from Santa: Hiring is your most important responsibility.
Promotions
Handle promotions with care. If you know the famous song, you know Rudolph wasn’t always the leader of the sleigh. Donner was the first reindeer leader. He was strong and dependable, but being a steady puller and being lead reindeer take different skills. Donner wasn’t a leader. Santa considered Rudolph, who was not the strongest or fastest, but he had a “knack for getting things done.” Despite the other reindeer teasing him about his nose (they’re a tough bunch until you get to know them), Santa gave Rudolph his shot – and the rest is history.
Diversity
You want a diverse workforce. Most of Santa’s elves are similar. They’ve got the same pointed ears and wear the same green suits. When hiring, Santa sought more of the same, since his elfin workforce always functioned rather well. Then “North Pole politicians” made a new law requiring diversity, and Santa had to hire a variety of toy makers. He realized that having different kinds of elves brought new ideas and different perspectives to the workshop.
Everyday Skills
Being Santa Claus requires planning. He has 364 days to strategize and produce, and one day to execute. Planning means thinking about how to package toys, deliver them to the correct kids and immediately begin thinking about next year. Production and delivery are such massive tasks that the workshop breaks its goals down into smaller chunks and develops a written action plan.
“Involving workers in running the operation – and in making decisions that affect them – is a key strategy for leadership success.”
A few years ago, the elves worked on making “assembly required” toys and including easy, detailed instructions…except that they weren’t. Parents assembled the toys all wrong because they ignored the instructions. Even with well-thought-out plans, sometimes you have to make course corrections. So the elves went back to the drawing board. Now, Santa’s team constantly asks if each goal is still valid or if conditions have changed.
“Making sure that everyone knows what values are important…helping everyone turn those good beliefs into everyday behaviors is how leaders create a great place to work.”
To maximize your time, money, equipment and expertise, Santa says:
- Make “to-do lists,” and do the most important tasks first.
- Start and end meetings on time.
- Save by buying in bulk and shopping for materials, supplies, equipment and services. A few pennies saved here and there add up.
- “Measure twice, cut once.”
- Reduce, reuse, recycle. Invest in extended warranties.
- Allow employees with specific knowledge to make their own decisions.
- Find the right fit: Match workers’ skills and interests with the right job.
- Encourage professional development and ask employees to share their knowledge.
Feedback
Back when the workshop had fewer toys to build and fewer deliveries to make, Santa did a lot of the work himself. He treated the elves respectfully, but he made every production decision. A mechanical assembler that Santa had researched and purchased quit running. Production stopped. The elves were upset that Santa hadn’t asked for their input – they had expected a breakdown. Then the elves fixed the assembler and designed a better inspection process. Now, Santa asks for suggestions for improvement using elf feedback surveys and a “North Pole feedback hotline.”
“Nothing motivates employees more than knowing they’re making a difference. Find ways to make that happen in your workshop.”
Santa is the workshop’s public face, but his elves and reindeer make his output possible. He recognizes their hard work. To share contagious enthusiasm, follow Santa’s “recognition rules:” Make recognition timely, personal and specific. Give it sooner rather than later. Design it to fit employee preferences. Be specific with praise. Make recognition proportional to achievement. The workshop’s positive corporate culture helps it deal with challenges, such as a huge snowfall.
Teaching Success and Sharing Credit
Ian, the workshop’s “Elf In Charge Of Training” (EICOT), helped Santa understand how to teach success. When discussing the benefits of job training, Ian said that to have robust teams, a firm should never stop at just showing people how to “do their jobs.” It should also teach them how to be successful. A vast difference separates those two concepts. North Pole team members need technical skills, such as knowing how to make and package toys, taking off and landing the sleigh, and so on.
“If an action we’re considering doesn’t support our mission, either directly or indirectly, we don’t do it!”
But what could Santa do if the elves weren’t team players or had bad attitudes? One November, about a month before Christmas Eve, two elves had a big conflict with the reindeer. Santa asked them to come to his office for a “Santa intervention.” They discussed what happened and how it affected productivity. Santa reminded them how much they mattered to him and to the workshop’s mission. He taught them the CALM model of handling workplace disputes: Clarify the issue. Address the problem. Listen to the other side. Manage your way to resolution.
“Their feelings of satisfaction and accomplishment must come in different ways – from other sources. As the leader, I play a critical role in making that a reality.”
Leaders must be able to handle constant change. Remember those shiny red wagons? They were the workshop’s most popular toy. The elves loved making wagons and kids loved getting them, but then children lost interest. They wanted video games. Aware that the customer is in charge, Santa gave the elves support and training for a successful transition. He was patient as they learned the ropes. You can’t control change, but you can master your response to it.
“The Business of the Business”
Although Santa’s workshop employs a few business and finance elves, most of the other elves and the reindeer didn’t know anything about the business of the business. Santa decided to teach them. He instituted a basic financial literacy course and led cross-training so employees could learn each other’s jobs. He learned that, “The more employees understand about how the business works, the more likely they are to accept and support change.”
“It didn’t take long to discover that our ‘different’ toy makers came bearing gifts. They brought new skills, perspectives and ideas to the workshop.”
Santa used to take his staff for granted. One day, an elf asked him why elves and reindeer weren’t rewarded for good behavior like the boys and girls who received the toys. That showed Santa the importance of acknowledging great work.
Although he receives great perks – nice letters from children, milk and cookies, and so on – he learned that those add-ons don’t mean a thing without his team. To tell his helpers how much he appreciates them, he schedules individual meetings with every elf and reindeer. He takes a few elves with him on deliveries so they can experience the workshop’s success firsthand.
“Falling Stars” and “Super Stars”
Being a leader includes confronting performance problems, even at the North Pole. Igor, one of the original elves, came in late and took longer breaks. Santa sent out a companywide memo on the importance of arriving on time in the hope that Igor would read it and change his behavior, but he didn’t. Santa sought every excuse to avoid a confrontation. After another elf complained about Igor’s behavior, Santa summoned Igor to his workbench and “unloaded on him.” The conversation didn’t go well. Igor was upset Santa hadn’t talked to him earlier; Santa promised never to let issues slide in the future.
“Think the elves might resent this level of accountability? Well, they don’t. They actually support it. Some even demand it.”
Every workforce has stars. You might have “falling stars” like Igor and bright, ambitious “super stars.” Most employees fall in between. Your “middle stars” are your main workers and your company’s life force. They can become super stars or fall away. To keep your stars from falling:
- Confront problems early.
- Make sure they understand performance expectations.
- Provide the training and resources they need.
- Give them frequent, specific feedback.
- Identify and eliminate obstacles.
- “Teach them how to set, manage and achieve goals.”
- Help them learn. Partner them with mentors.
“I’ve learned that recognizing employees – doing right by those who do right – is one of the best things I can do for my elves and reindeer – and for myself as well.”
Manage super stars by employing the following strategies:
- Allow them to make decisions, solve problems, and develop strategies and procedures.
- Avoid “micromanaging.”
- Encourage them to teach or mentor.
- Celebrate their accomplishments.
- Provide highly specialized training and professional development.
- Be interested in them, professionally and personally.
- Make sure they aren’t doing two jobs; hold their co-workers accountable.
Not Just on Christmas Eve
At the North Pole, everyone believes in doing what’s right and being accountable. Everything they do counts, including how they treat each other, the jokes they tell, the quality of the work they put into toy making, knowing not to use the sleigh for personal business, and the like. Santa’s job as a leader includes being a role model and setting an example, not only on Christmas Eve, but all year round.
Eric Harvey is the author of 25 books, including the bestsellers Walk the Talk and Ethics 4 Everyone. He is the founder and president of the Walk the Talk Company.
Genres
Business Culture, Leadership, Management, Psychology, Self Help, Holiday, Christmas, Personal Development, Motivational Management and Leadership, Business Management, Leadership and Motivation
Table of Contents
Santa’s Helpers,
Introduction,
1. Build a Wonderful Workshop,
2. Choose Your Reindeer Wisely,
3. Make a List and Check It Twice,
4. Listen to the Elves,
5. Say Ho Ho Ho, but Don’t Forget the Snow,
6. Give Them Gifts That Last a Lifetime,
7. Get beyond the Red Wagons,
8. Share the Milk and Cookies,
9. Find Out Who’s Naughty and Nice,
10. Be Good for Goodness Sake,
Closing Thoughts,
Summary Checklist,
Reindeer Food for Thought,
Review
The book is a humorous and practical guide for leaders who want to learn from the example of Santa Claus, the most successful and beloved leader in history. The author, Eric Harvey, is a best-selling author and a coach for business leaders. He reveals the secrets of Santa’s leadership style, such as how to build a wonderful workshop, choose your reindeer wisely, make a list and check it twice, listen to the elves, and be good for goodness sake. He also provides tips and tools to help leaders apply these secrets to their own workplaces, such as how to set clear goals, delegate tasks, give feedback, motivate employees, and create a positive culture. He covers topics such as:
- How to cope with the challenges and pressures of leadership, such as stress, complexity, and uncertainty.
- How to communicate effectively and inspire others to follow your vision and mission.
- How to develop self-awareness, maturity, and values as a leader, and how to model them for others.
- How to create a lasting impact and a legacy as a leader, and how to help others do the same.
The book is a fun and informative read that offers a fresh and original perspective on leadership and human performance. The author writes with clarity and humor, using scientific research, psychological theories, and personal stories to support his claims and suggestions. He writes in an engaging and conversational style, using humor, metaphors, and examples to make his points and make the book more relatable. He does not present Santa as a flawless or unrealistic leader, but rather as a human being with strengths and weaknesses, who nevertheless has a lot to teach us about leadership. He does not treat leadership as a rigid or fixed skill, but rather as a dynamic and flexible one, that can be learned and improved. The book is not only informative, but also inspiring and empowering, as it shows leaders how to use Santa’s secrets as a guide to improve their work and life.