A Conversation with Georgette Hunter-Franklin, TIA Freight Leadership Lab Instructor
Georgette Hunter-Franklin, Director of Learning and Development at MODE Global, shares her insights on leadership in freight brokerage and what participants can expect from the Freight Leadership Lab.
What does leadership mean to you?
Leadership means getting out of the way and letting other people do their jobs. You remove obstacles. You know how to communicate with the right people at the right time with the right message to get work done.
How do great leaders benefit a brokerage? And conversely, what happens when leadership is lacking?
Having great leaders in your brokerage—and I think this is across industries, but especially in a fast-paced environment—means you can get work done faster. You build better relationships with your teams as well as your customers. Great leadership enables great teams.
If you have a leader that understands their role in coaching and removing obstacles, and when the stuff rolls downhill, it stops with them and they work to solution, that enables the folks on the frontline to get the work done while the leaders right the ship.
On the flip side, when you have people in positions of leadership who don’t have strong leadership capability, it can create a lot of chaos in your brokerage environment. Chaos slows you down. You’re not able to deliver on the promise to your customers. Your culture suffers. People don’t know what to expect. There’s this lack of trust, and when there’s a lack of trust, people don’t feel comfortable making decisions. They’re not empowered to make the decisions they would normally make if they had a great leader. That’s going to slow down your business.
Where does that trust come from?
The first place I think it comes from is when a leader extends trust to the employee. When something goes awry, they coach versus punish. Trust also comes when leaders hold themselves accountable and they hold their employees accountable. When you have leaders who don’t hold everyone accountable, people don’t know what to expect. The trust becomes very shaky. It starts with the leader extending trust to their employees and empowering them to do what’s right for the customer.
How should someone prepare for the Freight Leadership Lab?
If I’m a manager coming into this six-module program with the opportunity to meet new people, learn some new topics, get some hands-on experience, and think about the issues at my own company, I would take a strategic approach.
First, look at which of these six modules you personally need to lean into for your own development needs. Am I going to be put in a situation where I need to lean into profitability and really understand P&L? Am I going to need to coach lots of employees and make fast decisions that will impact my office or company? Take a look at the modules, look at the outcomes, and see where you really want to dial in.
Then have a discussion with your leader. Say, “Here are the modules, here’s where I feel like I need to dial in. Where do you think I need to dial in? You’re making this investment in me to participate in this program—what would most benefit our team based on what you’ve seen?”
The other thing is, I would network like crazy. Find out who’s who in the room. What problems do they have at their brokerage? What are they doing? For those in-person sessions, get really curious and take advantage of having the space and time to develop.
What are you bringing to the table as an instructor?
I’ve got twenty years of experience in leadership development. My background isn’t traditionally freight—I spent many years in technology and some time in oil and gas. What I’ve found is I really thrive when it comes to supporting leaders and their development.
Early on in my career, I had the responsibility to be an operations manager and I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Now I do, and I love to help other developing managers learn how to communicate with their teams, manage up to their leaders, talk with their customers, and influence the people that need to be influenced.
Conflict is one of my favorite topics. In freight, conflict arises daily, right? Every time you’re in conflict with somebody, you really do have an opportunity to build or break trust. It’s not always easy because emotions are involved, but if you can get really good at conflict resolution and being an effective communicator when emotions are high, you can be a huge benefit to your team, your leadership team, and your company.
What do you hope people get out of this course?
There are three things that come to mind.
First, I hope they help make their brokerage more money. I hope as a result of their company investing in them and them investing this time in their own development, they see real ROI in more customers, more revenue, more relationships.
Second, I hope their teams become happier and more productive, because that’s going to lead to a better bottom line. When leaders develop themselves and put in the work, their teams directly benefit from that. A happier team feels more empowered to do the work they need to do.
The last piece is I hope they feel developed—like they’ve grown through the experience in some personal and professional way. Maybe they feel like they’ve made a connection for a lifetime. Maybe they feel more confident navigating conflict or understanding profit and loss statements. Maybe they feel braver when it comes to ethical decision making and leadership, and they have the words and tools they need to lead teams when things get gray.
Who should be attending the Freight Leadership Lab?
I think there are a couple different groups that could really benefit from this program.
The first is a manager who’s already leading a team—maybe a mid-sized team of 10 to 12 folks, maybe 5 folks—and their aspiration is to now lead an organization. Maybe they want to lead a couple offices or a broader team. If they’re already leading a small team, I think they would really benefit.
If they’re already leading a product line and maybe they’re fairly new in that role, but they haven’t gotten exposure in the P&L and some of the other areas, this program will give them the networking so they can ask questions from people who are in roles they want to move into. Our instructor panel is loaded—not just for what they’re sharing as their topics, but their experiences and their careers.
This is a perfect program for someone trying to grow their career in freight brokerage. It’ll give them a different perspective outside of their current organization, and that perspective they can bring back to their organization and become even more valuable. They can apply the lessons learned from Freight Leadership Lab to their teams. The possibilities are endless for what they can bring back to their organizations.
Any final thoughts?
People should come in warm and not cold. What I mean by that is they should actually prepare. They should look at the agenda, they should look at the modules, and really think about what could benefit them the most and dial into that. That preparation will make all the difference in what they get out of this experience.
The Freight Leadership Lab is a comprehensive leadership development program designed for mid-level managers in the freight brokerage industry looking to advance their careers and strengthen their leadership capabilities.
Register for the Freight Leadership Lab Here: Your Future Awaits
