Five Leadership Lessons from Coaching Brittany Hibdon

A tribute to Brittany Hibdon, Dealer Principal at Hibdon Auto Center, one of the best leaders I’ve ever been blessed enough to coach. 

I write this article for the late Brittany Hibdon, dealer principal at Hibdon Auto Center, with great sadness and honor. May your fantastic vision be accomplished as you watch over us with love through the lives of your team and loving family.

Lesson One: Deep Care for Others

After a tough coaching conversation with a manager struggling with a suicidal employee, I made a post on LinkedIn. The post was a video, and I wanted to convey that it’s critical to know our employees personally as a leader. In that way, we can be more mindful of their state of well-being, allowing the leader to challenge the employee when the time is right and supporting them when they need it most. In addition, I suggested those managers uncovering challenges like this seek professional help for their team members. That post received an interesting comment from a dealer principal named “Brittany Hibdon.” The comment simply said, “Impeccable timing.” 

 Out of both curiosity and concern, I reached out to her via direct message on Linkedin. Due to the potentially sensitive nature of the issue, I decided to send a personalized video message asking the question, “What’s the situation that this video helped with?”

She replied almost immediately and thoughtfully, expressing deep concern for someone on her team who had a drinking issue that was causing him to miss work. She was worried his addiction would cause him to harm himself and wanted to meet with him at her dealership. Unfortunately, with his attendance issues, she couldn’t get together with him at the store. Here’s where most managers would give up and fire the person. Not Brittany. She wouldn’t give up on any member of her team that easily. She made three solid attempts at meeting this misguided soul outside of work. As a direct result of her passion for helping him and her effort to show she cared, he became an addiction coach. Now that individual helps others overcome their addictions. The lesson, leadership, is caring deeply enough for those on your team to not give up on them, even when they’ve given up on themselves. When you do this, you create loyal relationships for life. What if opportunities to make a positive impact in people’s lives were why you were given the gift of leadership? That’s the attitude Brittany Hibdon took to the leadership table.

Lesson Two: Lead through reciprocity.

One of Brittany’s managers, who was new to the management role, was Cynthia, a young, hard-charging leader. This manager had a great deal of passion, drive, skill, and high expectations of others. Sounds great, right? Often our greatest strengths cause our most significant weaknesses. Mix hard-charging with passion and a desire to achieve, and sometimes that can come across as abrupt with others. This was causing friction throughout the dealership in the form of communication issues.

On top of that, Brittany felt like an opportunity to help the new manager accept criticism. Cynthia would react emotionally when challenged in specific areas, and as Brittany put it, “Her defensiveness is getting in the way of personal growth.” So, on a Thursday night at about 8 pm, Brittany asked me to facilitate a convo bn her and Cynthia. I was honored to be a part of a challenging discussion to help someone grow. Brittany mapped out her list of expectations with me to ensure the manager would have clarity on what changes needed to be made. When you think of a normal convo like this, you imagine the owner talking down at the manager, demanding their expectations. Not Brittany. She started off the conversation by asking the manager and listening first. Some of the questions Brittany asked were: “What expectations of yours am I not meeting? How else can I be a better leader for you?” As a result of this conversation, the two leaders continued to work together successfully until the end. Brittany attributed the cohesion between her and her manager to the dealership successfully navigating the financial strain caused by the first few months of covid. If you want to be the best possible leader, ask and listen to your employees first. This creates conversational reciprocity before talking. Thanks to these ongoing two-way conversations, Cynthia has grown into a fantastic leader over the last two years. Both of them were blessed to have each other in their lives. She shows calm under pressure, top notch listening skills, and care with firm boundaries.

Lesson Three: Tell brutal truths but stay positive.

One of the reasons Brittany brought me into her dealership was that in her Northern California market, the wildfire called “The Campfire” of 2018 had devastated her market. This was the most destructive fire in California history. As a result, thousands upon thousands of people were homeless or moved out of the area. This had a significantly negative impact on her business, as vehicle inventory and customers were nonexistent. Brittany and her office manager held a meeting. Brittany was devastated to find out that they were running on a shoestring budget due to the months of slow business. Even after canceling all marketing spend, she would need to lay people off if things didn’t turn around immediately. To Brittany, laying people off was not an option. She was determined to work together and find a way to keep everyone on her team employed, so we went to work.

The first question I asked was, “How aware is your team of this situation?” They had no idea the situation was so dire.

Next, I asked, “What’s getting in the way of you letting them in on the state of the business?”

She replied, “I don’t want them to worry.” Compassion was one of her greatest strengths.

Then I asked Brittany, “You’re not fair to yourself to shoulder this entire burden alone. What would they be willing to do to help if they knew?”

She believed her team would do anything it took to ensure everyone could keep their jobs, but more on that later.

We spent the next few days raising the bar on daily activity expectations for each role in the dealership. We created a thorough plan for outbound prospecting, posting on social media that Brittany and her team later called the “Plan of Attract.” This was aimed at creating enough business each week that everyone would get a paycheck and remain on the team. In addition, Brittany prepared her speech for the team. I still have that speech, and reading it reminded me of the positivity, tenacity, care, and spirit she had within her as a leader. Here is a small excerpt:

              “Here’s what this means for each of you. Over the next 7 days, I need your help. I need to turn over every rock to find car deals, use every moment of every shift to work, and work harder than you ever have before. We must sell 16 cars this week, that’s 4 from each of you, with a big assist from David helping wherever he can. David that means shadowing, learning, helping, and getting geared up to sell your own cars asap. Suzanne and Christopher, Cynthia, and I will be discussing what that means for you guys. BDC, this is going to take more focus than ever before. I need to see 200+ phone calls per day, every day, not some days. The last 4 days of last week gave me hope that you guys have all the tools necessary to turn this ship around and get us sailing back in the right direction, but it’s not going to be easy. And I need to be very very clear- if we do not take this seriously and do everything humanly possible to sell more cars. Regardless of the effort, if we do not sell 16 cars this week, we will be downsizing. With fewer sales, we need less staff in every area, every department. 

I love you guys, and it breaks my heart to even think about that. But I’m putting your fate in your own hands. I believe that together we can turn things around and keep the team intact. … So make a decision in your heart, in your mindset, right now, and today if you want to fight for this, let’s do it together and make it happen!”

She knew with certainty success was possible if her team was willing to do what they had never done before. As a result of her transparency and belief that anything was possible, her team rallied around her. It was like a light switch was flipped on. The intensity that the Hibdon Automotive team worked with burned hotter than the campfire itself. Not one person quit her team out of fear. Instead, Brittany and her team succeeded day after day, week after week, and kept everyone who stepped up and wanted to be there on her team. Because Brittany shared the difficult truths, her team knew exactly what needed to be accomplished and why. With pure faith in their leader and positivity, her team believed it was possible to succeed.

Lesson Four: Make Deposits and Use Withdraws

I remember looking at the plan thinking, “In all my years in automotive, I’ve never seen a sales team go from what they are doing now to doing THIS.” In the highly robust plan to work, we had to measure activities by the hour, do weekly results, and do income tracking. Suddenly, people who used to make 50 calls per month needed to start making 100+ a day. They engaged people on social media; every service team member and office team member created and posted great videos. Some that went viral on social media; here’s one of my favorites. Hibdon Automotive does the “Gobble Gobble Turkey Wobble” They were messaging every person who clicked “like” on their posts and inviting them in for service. They were asking every service customer if they wanted to test drive a car. The list of what they did goes on and on. To this day, I have yet to see another leader rally their team to that effect. I’m going to go out on a limb and say asking a car salesperson to 100 x their productivity overnight would fail 99% of the time.

This begs the question, “WHY did it work for Brittany?” and “What caused her team to step up and follow her into battle like they did?”

The answer is the deposits and withdraws, but not in the literal financial sense. The stakes Brittany made were in the culture at her dealership and in each individual on her team. Every day her team has a 9:03 meeting facilitated by a different manager. There are activities or games to get everyone thinking and amped up for the day. Together, they say their “For the people” pledge, which hangs in every room throughout the dealership. This serves as a constant reminder that everything the team does, they do to help their customers. She had us conduct cultural assessment surveys to determine what each employee wants and needs to love their job even more. She blocked out time into her schedule to meet with each person regularly. She bought training for everyone on her team. She invested in herself and everyone on her team in coaching through my companies’ coaching services. She would make work fun every day. She would challenge people to be better and have them all read books. She wanted them to be better, but what her business got out of it was always second. The growth was for their families’ sake. She would ask, listen, care, and have meaningful relationships with every employee and as many of her customers as she could. These are the deposits I am referring to. With all those deposits, she earned the right to take the withdrawals necessary. As a result, Brittany could get her team to do what most managers in the car business would deem as impossible. Invest in your people by making deposits like Brittany did. When the time comes, use withdrawals to raise standards while setting clear expectations to help everyone succeed. 

Lesson Five: See things through to completion

Most people in the car business know that the service department is almost always the fastest pace, most chaotic place in the dealership. While a salesperson may have three to five customer interactions a day, it’s not uncommon for a service advisor or manager to have twenty to fifty. As such, a service manager who doubles as a service advisor has to balance random customer interactions throughout the day with all the management tasks they need to get done. The challenge of low staffing levels causing the service manager to double as a parts runner, shop foreman, tech, and many other roles is a recipe for struggle. Brittany’s high standards, strong emotional intelligence, and a keen awareness of the state of affairs for her leaders and their departments. As such, she noticed her service manager needed help. She asked me to work with her Service Manager on building a routine for success in the form of a flex schedule. That being said, creating an effective routine that is real and can be adhered to is a process that can take days and sometimes weeks. To name a few of the steps (to do it right) requires documentation, prioritization, labeling, sorting, scheduling, delegation, deferring, and deletion of tasks. Almost a mountain to accomplish for someone still running a chaotic service department.

After each coaching conversation, Brittan would follow up with me and want to know what he added to his routine today? What steps did we accomplish? How could she help the manager take off of his plate? Where can she help continue the momentum? We would review, make adjustments, communicate back to the service manager and move forward. Brittany’s persistence, accountability, and follow-through ensured this process was completed to its end. Thus, giving the manager more organization, structure, lowering his stress levels and raising the productivity of everyone in their department.

Being Brittney’s executive coach, son’s mentor, her manager’s leadership coach, and close friend has been one of the most rewarding experiences in my career. More importantly, it has been one of the most fulfilling relationships in my life. I am a better person for those blessings she gave, and I will always be grateful to God for those opportunities. There were hundreds of other leadership lessons that Brittany Hibdon exemplified throughout our years of coaching together that this writing can’t begin to scratch the surface. One last thing I will share about Brittany is the long-lasting impact everyone at Hibdon Auto Center knows she’s had on them. Today while working with Brittany’s leaders to gain clarity around delegating out her responsibilities, the leaders faced a lot of tough decisions. Who would take on each new role? How would we do it without her? What positions would need to be created? How will we hold each other accountable? All the answers we needed came from asking one question, “What would Brittany do?”

This is because she was intentional in everything she did. She communicated her values to everyone around her. And her behaviors were consistent with these core values. So the next time you are faced with a challenge or a difficult decision, think of Brittany and ask yourself, “What would Brittany do?” and you will arrive at the best answer.

Brittany Hibdon, you will be sorely missed. Still, your legacy will live on through the amazing team of leaders you’ve built, your wonderful family, and through me, as your coach, forever. “For the people”!



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