McGrath’s Emerging Leaders Program grabbed the attention of Automotive News Last week. Pat McGrath spoke with Jamie LeReau about the projected growth of the company and Lindsay filled in the details of how the program is broken down to help employees grow into management positions.

What is ‘Emerging Leaders’?

McGrath Family of Dealerships’ Emerging Leaders program works with non-management, yet talented, employees in a class setting to help them grow and develop leadership skills. This program was created after McGrath’s rapidly growing year of 2013, “we probably put some people into leadership positions before they were quite ready,” Pat McGrath said. In August of 2014, the first class was initiated. Twenty employees graduated from the 10-month class in May, of those 11 have taken management jobs up to now.

Growing Company, Growing People

“We’ve grown a lot as a company in the last five years, and this is a way to grow people who aren’t currently managing people but who have potential,” McGrath said referencing the Emerging Leaders Program. At the end of 2015, Pat projects that we will have doubled our number of cars sold compared to 2010 and have over 600 employees! In addition, he mentioned that by 2020 he wants to add two more franchised dealerships and two more used car superstores.

Let’s get to work

How do employees get accepted into the program? They need to contain the willingness to be coached and be a team player, in addition they need a recommendation from a current manager as to why they should be admitted. Once in class, the program is divided into four sections: Customer Service, Communication, Corporate Operations, and Competitive Greatness.

Customer Service: the students learn about building customer loyalty and why that is important to the McGrath Family of Dealerships. This step allows the different members to rotate among the various dealerships McGrath has and view each level of departments to see how they run and brainstorm ways they would improve each area of study.

Communication: this level improves employees openness between co-workers and management. McGrath wants to continue the family environment at each dealership and this step enforces that training and knowledge.

Corporate Operations: culture and business goals is what centers on this section of the program. The emerging leaders tour a locally based national leasing company to get an insiders view of how that company’s culture functions. Lindsay McGrath commented, “We wanted the emerging leaders to learn the cohesiveness and teamwork there. No matter what department they worked in at that company, they all worked together and that is the culture we want to cultivate.”

And our last section is Competitive Greatness: which is taught by guest speakers. One speaker for this year was Tom Brands, a former U.S. Olympic team wrestler and now head coach of the U of I’s Hawkeye wrestling team. “Brands is an extreme of competitive greatness,” Pat McGrath said.

McGrath Family of Dealerships offers opportunities to grow in the company, if you are ready to get with a company that is driven and goal-oriented, Apply Today!