Global growth through better teamwork

The benefits of an individualized approach

In 2019, Quirarte became the first of the company’s executive leaders to travel to Greensboro, North Carolina, for the on-site portions of the Mastering Leadership Dynamics™ program. It proved to be a very different experience than what he was used to.

At other leadership development workshops Quirarte attended, little of the training came directly from an expert. “All the training I got in the past was from someone that got trained by someone else to give the training,” he says. “They needed a mass scale with a lot of people.” That diluted the effectiveness of those sessions in a way he didn’t realize at the time.

At Truist Leadership Institute, he found the focus was on impact to participants, not volume of employees served. “They [the program facilitators] were true professionals with a lot of experience and a lot of background on the subject matter,” he says. “You can tell that immediately, in the way they manage themselves and the way they manage the group.”

Quirarte says he came out of the program with a much better understanding of himself as a leader and with tools to be more aware of how he reacts in different situations. He also developed the knowledge he needed to control the direction of his leadership day to day, rather than letting his emotions or fear of failure take over.

“It helped me understand others,” he says. “It was a very nice set of tools to really understand other people that I’m leading and what are the things that I could do to lead better, to make them also be better leaders.”

Quirarte reported what he learned back to Dubin and the other leaders at Beaver Manufacturing. “Through the great experience that I had, I think it was clear for us that we needed to make something for our team,” Quirarte says. Shortly afterward, Dubin called the Leadership Institute and began planning an offsite team-building session for a cross section of just over a dozen leaders from the company.

Exceeding the goals and defining a purpose

Executive Consultant Chris Smith facilitated Beaver Manufacturing’s team-building sessions, which took place in January 2020. “I can remember having a conversation with Mike about the fact that they were going to rent a bus and drive up here together,” says Smith. Dubin specifically wanted to have the teambuilding participants spend several hours on the road together, rather than travel separately. “That stuck with me because it was a sign that he really wanted to accelerate team cohesion.”

The team-building was successful yet hard work. “I was excited about the idea of pulling people away and collaborating in a different form like we did. We were looking for improvements in communication and breaking down silos,” Dubin says. “We did break down barriers a good bit—doing some bonding, doing some understanding of each other, trying to figure out how to understand how we operate as individuals and how we operate as a team—and that wasn’t all pretty, by the way.” But the program paid off in unexpected ways.

The sessions resulted in Dubin, Quirarte, and the other leaders drafting the company’s formal purpose—a first in the company’s 50-year history.

As well, Dubin says, “We redefined our mission and vision to better fit what we’re doing and how we’re operating.”

They also committed to share with more employees the overall strategy for the company; to establish rules for more effective meetings; and to build comfort with more frequent and useful feedback among one another. “One of the big things for us is making sure that we have the hard conversations,” Dubin says, “and that we’re more open and honest with people about what’s going on.”

Quirarte explains that the company’s aspirations are at a new level as a result of their experience with Truist Leadership Institute. “I think we’re looking ahead at the next 50 years of the company being much more diverse in what we do, how we approach things, looking for new opportunities, looking for new business,” he says.

Putting learning into practice

After the company’s leaders left Greensboro, their work continued. They needed to practice what they were aiming for, not just talk and meet—or worse, lose focus on it altogether.

Since the close of the training, the group has met every three months to keep momentum going. In those follow-ups, the leaders check in on efforts to make changes to the culture and communication issues highlighted at the team-building.

For example, one tactic to build empathy between office staff and manufacturing floor employees had the office staff take one- to two-hour turns operating the yarn treating, spinning, and winding machines. Another initiative focused on increasing peer-to-peer encouragement with tokens that team members could award one another for small, positive acts that made a difference for customers or one another. Tokens are displayed on the “Beaver Board,” and each month’s top token-getter receives recognition and a small gift.

One fundamental shift is people starting with the assumption that everyone wants the best for the company. “We’re not letting any lack of communication create problems,” Quirarte explains. Improving communication can be as simple as backtracking when there’s a tense exchange: Let’s regroup here. Tell me what you’re thinking. Tell me what’s important to you.

Truist Leadership Institute’s Smith commends the Beaver Manufacturing leadership team for understanding the connection between team-building and their company’s success. “Team cohesion is so important, because in times of high change and high uncertainty, there’s going to be a lot of stress. And when there’s a lot of stress, we are more likely to come at each other sideways. And we’re going to be less able to manage ourselves through conflict. But if we get to know each other well, and we spend time together, then, when stress does happen, we assume positive intent,” Smith explains.

“It certainly helped us in terms of dealing with very difficult situations and figuring out how to get through them,” Dubin confirms. “You have a better understanding of what you’re doing as a company, what you’re trying to accomplish, and also understanding individuals and how they operate a little bit better.”

The road ahead

Between April 2020 and December 2020, Truist Leadership Institute and Beaver Manufacturing continued to stay connected via 1:1 executive coaching sessions.

“Every time I was losing my mind, I would speak with Chris to not lose my mind. That’s the simple way of putting it,” Dubin says.

Smith says every leader can benefit from having an objective, outside sounding board—especially a CEO who is steering an international expansion during a pandemic. “Part of what Mike’s got to do is figure out, ‘How do I step into this space of not just running a domestic organization, but now I’m running two countries, Mexico and U.S. And we’ve just added a third,” Smith says. “And that’s going to challenge us, because we’re moving into unknown territory.”

Thankfully, the Intercord merger is proving to have been the right move, and all of the company’s customers stayed with the combined company through the pandemic. “Things are still tough,” Dubin says. “Labor in Germany and the U.S. is very tough. There’s still a lot of things to deal with, but even more so I would say we have great opportunities.”

To help capitalize on those opportunities, Dubin says Beaver Manufacturing leaders will be back to Truist Leadership Institute in the future for more sessions at what he praises as the “fantastic facility” in Greensboro. “I think that’s the way you have to do it. It really brings your organization together in a way that would be difficult to do in another setting,” Dubin concludes.

4 key takeaways

Although Beaver Manufacturing Company Inc. is in a specialized industry, lessons from its leadership development and team-building journey apply to any growing company.

1. Use the power of transparency. The executive team shares key strategic plans with mid-level managers, and invites them to periodic innovation brainstorms. Thus, they get more support on their initiatives, and the company benefits from a larger, more diverse pool of ideas for future endeavors.
2. Be persistent. The company didn’t immediately reach its goal of production capacity in Europe. It took more than one attempt. And if the acquisition of Germany’s Intercord hadn’t worked out, the executive team was ready with a list of other ideas to try in Europe, such as reclaiming brownfields.
3. Think past your career timeline. Executives at Beaver talk about plans for the company’s next 50 years, which is beyond when they’ll retire. But setting their sights so far ahead signals their commitment to building something strong enough to provide value to customers and employees they haven’t even met yet.
4. Try new things. In the past five years, executives headed into new territory—such as holding professionally facilitated team-building sessions.