Episode 30: Motivating During A Pandemic – Shaun Pennington
Listen to our full conversation with Shaun on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
For this podcast series, we spoke with leaders from across the bedding industry to hear what they are doing to support and motivate their teams and themselves during this uncertain time. What are they doing to keep their employees safe? How has their approach to leadership evolved?
For this episode, we spoke with Shaun Pennington, the president of Diamond Mattress. While the pandemic has been a real challenge across the country and the industry, Shaun has found it motivating to look for the silver linings. With the onset of the shutdown, Diamond was able to quickly shift gears to start making PPE for hospitals and shelters. This has allowed the company to keep its doors open and its workers employed over the course of the last few months. Now, as the country starts to slowly move into re-opening, he is optimistic about how his company has adapted to the challenges—and the industry’s ability to bounce back.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, the shutdown, everybody was very nervous about what was going to happen. But all of our team just went right into problem-solving mode. We did some really great planning; we modeled out multiple case scenarios—best case, likely case, worst case. We did re-forecasts of all of our budgets, all of our production numbers. And honestly I think this experience, while it’s been very challenging and for some very tragic, for us, it’s brought our team together.
There’s a lot positivity out there. People have made it through what they thought was one of the worst things that could ever happen, which was a total shut-down, and yet we’re still making it through alive. And I think there’s a lot of optimism and a lot resiliency that I’m seeing and I’m really proud of everyone that I’ve been working with.”
