At a Glance
Matt Schroeder, now President of Truck Equipment Inc., started his career in special education. Though he wasn’t naturally inclined toward engineering and building like his father and brother, he helped the family business during summers off from teaching.
Like most entrepreneurial parents, Matt’s parents wanted him to come on board and eventually take over the business. After some consideration, Matt decided to make a big career change and joined the fold, starting by selling trailers at Truck Equipment Inc.
The Challenge
As he continued to learn the business and transitioned into more responsibility, he was presented with the opportunity to become president of the company. During this time, he faced many sleepless nights doubting himself. He questioned what people would think as he had no formal education or experience in finance or business administration.
The Solution
In order to build his leadership skills, he sought out leadership training and coaching by reaching out to Joe Kiedinger of Dignify for guidance. Dignify gave him the tools and the knowledge he needed to understand himself as a leader and to lead his team.
The Results
Over the course of two years, Dignify systematically deployed Dignify technology and training to vastly improve communication, strategic planning and cohesion among their team.
Dignify in Action
“‘A couple of months ago, one of our painters did a shotty job painting one of our new builds. Our service manager, came to me all fired up and said we needed to bring this guy in and write him up. Sensing the tension rising, I told my Service Manager, “Let’s try something different.”
I brought the service manager and painter together and sat them down with their Dignify Snapshots and photos of the bad paint job. I asked the painter, “You have STRONG-WILLED: I’ll make this happen, and INDEPENDENT: I’ll take care of this in your Top 5. Does the quality of your work in these photos reflect that?”
Our painter looked at the photos for a few moments, grimaced, then looked us both in the eyes and said, “You are right, this is not the kind of work that I take pride in. This will not happen again.” He went back to work and we haven’t had a problem since.
That meeting could have been another contentious shouting match and instead, we had a productive conversation and got to the root cause without the drama because we spoke to this guy’s dignity.'”
– Matt Schroeder