Be the Position You Want To Be

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The biggest issue we have as managers is having the people in place who are ready for the next level, but they have no place to go. Am I right? At least in my experience, I have had incredible employees ready for the next step with no promotion in the near future. I guess I was lucky. Lucky, to have tenured teams, but it was always hard to watch them sit in the same position over time with nowhere to go.  I always told them to “be the position you want to have and adopt it as a daily state of mind.” It is never easy to have that kind of strength without push back from the employee saying that if “I am doing the position, why can’t I get paid for that position?” Good question…BUT the answer is always because the position doesn’t exist. “Stay with me here. Be patient. It WILL happen.”

Sometimes you have people in position that think they are ready for the next step, but in reality, they are not quite there yet. You have to ask yourself the following questions when reacting to their request:

  1. Are they a respected leader in the store? Do employees come to them with questions? Are   they answering these questions correctly?
  2. Are they leading by example in regard to policy, operations, and process efficiencies?
  3. Can they answer questions that a higher-level manager usually answers without a higher-level manager interfering?
  4. Are they self-sufficient or do they need to be given daily direction?
  5. Have they instilled a work ethic among employees that others what to mirror?
  6. Has the store incorporated processes that this person has envisioned in regard to their division of responsibility
  7. How is their customer service? How do they react under pressure? Do customers love to see them in the store when they shop?
  8. Lastly, are they getting noticed by district or regional level managers? Are your superiors asking about them in touch bases.

If you are able to answer any of these questions with undeniable evidence and your store has been generating positive sales with their help, then they are ready. Now the advanced training and development begins. It is now up to you to keep them challenged. You don’t want to lose them to another retailer. I recommend sitting down with them and the person who has the position they want and having a conversation about needs and wants. Then as a team develop a training plan to get them to the next level. The best part about this philosophy is that the person in the current position, with your guidance, does the training. It pushes both employees to be better and encourages a teamwork and empowering environment.

This is what keeps people. People don’t necessarily leave stores because they are unhappy, they leave because they aren’t challenged by their leaders. They become bored and stagnant and want to move on to bigger and better things. You don’t want that. Your store needs a core staff to continue to be successful. Customers want to see familiar faces. My advice to all of you out there with a person(s) up to the challenge…Do whatever it takes to keep them. Money is never an option. Especially in this retail environment. You have to make them see that and still want to be a part of your team. You need to be creative and push yourself to be better. You need to be a leader everyone wants to work for. This fact takes patience, accountability, strong communication and delegation. It also takes a mentality that your people may be more capable than you ever imagined and reach a level that inspires you. The end result is to watch people grow and to be proud of what you have accomplished in regard to your stores’ business. After all, isn’t that why we do this?