"This is what's going to make Dale Jr. listen" - Kelley Earnhardt shares color-coded approach to managing JR Motorsports

Kelley Earnhardt recently discussed the management style at JR Motorsports. She explained the color-coded approach for the same, which has worked well for the team.

Earnhardt is currently the CEO of JR Motorsports, a NASCAR team whose foundation was laid by her father Dale Earnhardt. The team is currently co-owned by Kelley and her brother, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Managing a team at a large scale is not an easy task, and while discussing this with veteran driver Kenny Wallace, she talked about the management style the team follows.

She revealed that they follow MBS (Management by Strengths). A part of this management technique is to assign a color to all the employees which denotes their temperament traits. By assigning these colors on a positive and negative scale, it becomes easier to tackle a team of large people.

Kelley Earnhardt also explained it by taking her brother Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s example. She mentioned that if there is some issue with him (considering that he is blue), then someone with another particular color might be able to talk to him better.

"So like Dale is a blue if I'm not mistaken," she said (at 1:06:10). "So that is 'structure' and so what you do is you put your graphs up and it tells you 'hey Kelley, if you've got a problem with Dale Jr., I don't need to go in as a red because Dale Jr.'s a blue. I need to go in this way and talk to Dale Jr."

"This is what's going to make Dale Jr. listen and respond. He's not going to respond if I go in with my red tendencies because he's not a red," she explained.

According to Kelley Earnhardt, JR Motorsports adopted this management style after merging with Hendrick Motorsports in 2007.

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Kelley Earnhardt explains her relationship with Rick Hendrick: "He’s just a great father figure"

The merger between JR Motorsports and Hendrick Motorsports happened after Dale Earnhardt Jr. moved to HMS. However, their family association dates back a long time.

Kelley Earnhardt revealed that her grandfather, Robert G., moved to North Carolina with Rick Hendrick to pursue racing. She added that Hendrick was like a father figure to her, keeping high regard for her grandfather. Hendrick also helped him out at the time of illness when he suffered from a stroke.

"My granddaddy was an employee over there until he passed in 1994. And so Mr. Hendrick has always held a high regard for my grandfather. When my grandfather had a stroke, that's kind of where I met Mr. Hendrick. I was in the hospital, cutting my granddaddy's toenails as a college student, and Mr. Hendrick came to visit," Kelley Earnhardt described [1:02:05].

"Mr. Hendrick was always talked about in very high regard to my family, for my grandfather, and to my mom. So that relationship existed there. And that's why us going to race there made sense to us in our minds. He's just a great father figure. We hang up the phone with, 'I love you.' I can call him for business or personal. I can call him to complain about Dale, whatever I want to do," she said.

JR Motorsports currently runs its charters in the NASCAR Xfinity Series and the Late Model Stock Cars. The team also marked its presence briefly in the Camping World Truck Series and has been speculated to make its way into the Cup Series.