Held Together

I was talking to a friend the other day who kept saying how disconnected everyone is at her company. Home office has no relationship with stores and store management has no relationship with the sales team. She told me that her job title should be “a frayed knot keeping it all together.”

I chuckled when she said this, but as I thought further about what she was actually saying, it got me thinking. How many of these types of employees are out there trying to make sense of unorganized organizations? I’m talking about those employees that will do whatever it takes to calm the storm; dot the i’s and cross the t’s. A person who is willing to sacrifice their own time and standing to right an organization’s course. 

Being the knot can’t be easy. Hierarchies be damned. If your peers or your boss don’t have the vision to see what’s happening, it may look like you’re not a team player or you don’t have patience in the process. Worse yet, people will get used to someone else finishing their projects. It will become routine and soon friction and strife between team members rears its ugly head.

I was sometimes called a rebel in my career. Not because I stood out and defied authority, but because I wasn’t afraid to challenge the system. I always had an eye for efficiency and pushing people in the direction of positive results, (although many didn’t see it that way). A rebel is defined as a person who resists any authority, control or tradition. I define it as someone who makes things happen without constraint to better the environment. 

When I think back on my early retail days, I guess I would now call myself a knot too. I worked with many different types of people from all walks of life. Many had their own agendas and thought no one was really paying attention to their moves and ambitions. I, for one, always saw the big picture and knew what had to be done despite the ass kissers and people pleasers. I dotted their I’s and crossed their t’s because I wanted the store to be successful and its employees to believe in something.

If leadership would have noticed what was being done, perhaps I would have moved up a lot faster as someone they could count on for results, but oftentimes, the knot gets put on the back burner because they are not seen as the driven one.  You see... knots don’t take credit for their work. Some would say that is stupid and because of it, I was passed up many times in my career. I was also put into positions training people with higher salaries and titles than myself and operational roles to clean up messes, it bothered me back then, but now I see what it did for me. It built my reputation and my resume. It pushed me to be a stronger version of myself. It forced me into playing defense and sticking to my belief that I could make a difference without putting my credibility into question. 

Don’t get me wrong, I struggled in the past watching mediocre managers move up ladders, but they proved to not last in their roles. Why? They never had the skillset to accomplish the roles they were promoted into.

They struggled to manage people. They struggled to manage their time. Now, one could say it was the fault of the knot holding everything together that they weren’t able to grow into position and manage their store, but I would like to add, if they were doing what they were hired to do, then the knot would have never existed.

As a person in a leadership role now, I look for the person that encompasses these characteristics because I know who they are to become in the future. Those characteristics take a defining role in my hiring decisions and should be yours too. We have enough ass kissers and people pleasers to last a life time. They are not going anywhere, but the rebel? Give them the opportunity to shine. Believe me, you will not regret it and your business will thank you for it.

How do you know when you have found one? Open your eyes on and off the sales floor! Hiring? Look at the candidates journey. Ask them questions about their responsibilities. Notice their body language when asked about their role on a team or what their supervisor may say about them. Is it a bit awkward? Don’t hold it against them. If the answers aren’t negative, you have a knot. Hire them.

Only As Strong

One thing I know to be true…you are only as strong as those around you.  Your people compliment you, challenge you and more importantly build the stepping stones to your management and leadership style. When managing stores, this is the only constant I have ever wanted to achieve.

Managing can be chaotic and challenging. 

• Why has it been so hard to attract the talent needed to achieve this team dynamic?
• Why is it so hard to fathom the training justifications behind this concept?
• Are managers afraid to find candidates that challenge them? 
• Are managers under too much pressure to fill roles? 
• Are managers putting too much time constraints on training opportunities?

Just a few questions I wish I could answer, but honestly, it isn’t up to me to determine the why’s, only how I did it. It wasn’t an overnight thing. It took a long time for me to trust myself and my ego. Will they turn out better than me? Get promoted faster? Get recognized by people you only dream of noticing you? Ego. Time to get it over it if you want a successful store.

Know what you are missing on your team. I wrote before of the trifecta. The perfect balance of skillset and the beginning of bench strength. You need these things in your stores to be productive. When you realize what’s missing, you need to go out there and find the missing pieces, train them and develop them. Find your you. Find the ones that may have more experience, but lacked a mentor. Find someone who is the opposite of you and learn from their mindset. The point is to not be afraid. Don’t feel rushed. Upper level management may pressure you to find a candidate, but remember, it’s your store. Only you know what works and what doesn’t work.

I have made that mistake before. I relied on upper level management to dictate my needs and the result was a disaster. Never again. I was playing politics and it nearly destroyed my management style and my management team. You also have to remember training takes time. Everyone is different. Sometimes people’s learning abilities are harder to develop. You need to learn patience and self-control. You can’t force people to master what you already know in a short period of time. It is up to you as a manager to determine how to best manage this important time. Remember to look around you. Who is best at ABC? An operations specialist shouldn’t train a new hire on merchandising. A short-tempered key holder should not train anyone on how to use the registers. Someone who processes shipment probably isn’t the best person to train on fitting room selling. I know that this all seems straight forward, but store managers work with what they have. Who is working when. The schedule says… so they do.

This is a failure in utilizing your people’s skills and abilities. It gets you nowhere and takes a toll on your teams’ character and most of all your reputation as a leader. Remember, you are only as strong as those around you. If they aren’t being empowered to grow, you might as well find something else to do. You will experience a turn style of lack luster employees and spend most of your time interviewing prospects instead of developing your teams. You will be fighting a never-ending battle of personalities and time wasters. Don’t fall into that hole. Take the time to find the missing pieces of your vision. 

Longevity

I had the privilege of planning my parents 60th wedding anniversary party with my sister last week. The party planning itself took a few months, but the result was more than I could have ever imagined. Forty-two people came to celebrate my parents and one person had known my father for 75 years. He was the best man in their wedding. WOW! The party itself also made me think about spending 60 years with one person and the kind of dedication, openness and appreciation that requires. The give and take. The adjustments. The trust. Being the person I am and doing what I do, the monumental achievement had me also thinking about my career and what longevity has done for me.

Tenure is a crazy thing today. I never thought I would see people with one year at one company as longevity. I used to call that “job hopping” when looking at resumes and applications, now it is the new norm. I don’t understand why that is and it has forced me to ask some tough internal questions about those companies and most of all the management responsible for those employees. I am not perfect. I had people come and go throughout my career, but I also had some strong employees that stuck with me and the company through thick and thin. Years, in fact.

How? We learned each other’s strengths and opportunities, could finish each other’s sentences and most of all we learned through trial and error how to make our stores successful. This is not something you develop in less than one year. Sure, you can make dramatic changes that increase sales, but maintaining strong momentum over time and creating a positive reputation in the community takes longevity. That my friends is where managing with purpose comes in.

If you are a store manager, district manager or small business owner that has a lot of turn over, you need to ask yourself some hard questions. You can never control pay or payroll for that matter. You can only control your actions. Sure, money can make the world go around and life a little easier, but lack luster environments can make the higher pay scheme a terrible decision to an employee. More importantly, the question you need to ask yourself is: “Why are they looking in the first place?” From there, you need have an honest conversation with that employee. Put pride on the back burner and listen to what he/she has to say. It could be you. Maybe you aren’t the manager you thought you were. Maybe you aren’t providing a challenging environment for them. Maybe your processes need improvement. The point is…learn from them so that the next employee stays and grows with you.

My management philosophy has always been to be a manager that I always wanted. Sounds simple enough, but I took my own complaints and needs and put them to work developing my own style. I took the idea that I didn’t need to be loved, but I needed to be respected. I have high expectations and demand people to do their best at all times. I lead by example and am tough on those that don’t recognize their true potential. Delegation is key and being a chameleon to each employee has never ending possibilities for tenure. Your actions as a leader are the future of your store’s success. The saying, I am paraphrasing here, that people don’t leave companies, they leave people is so true whether you like to think that or not. It is up to you and only you to provide a nurturing environment where your employees can feel empowered and compelled to stay. It is up to you to hire the right people that fit your mind set and the right people who will challenge your mind set. It is up to you to develop a core staff and build a support system that allows everyone to grow and learn something new every day. Find a mantra and stick with it, grow from it and encourage it. Don't rely on a company's culture to keep employees, be a manager that people want to work for.

Growth

What does this word mean to you? To me, there is growth in position and growth in mental abilities. Both are needed in order to have a successful team and business. I am not just referring to your people, but also to you as a leader. Over the years I have watched peers and employees grow into incredible leaders, business owners and vibrant members of the community. I myself have grown tremendously from what I would say was a strange and crazy trip from the years 18-the present. Who I WAS definitely has shaped who I AM. The struggles I went through have helped define who I have become as a manager, a boss and now a business owner.

When I was 23 I was promoted to store manager of my first store. YES…23! I find that to be an unusual fact about my management career (although now that doesn’t seem so weird to others).  I was fresh out of college and my boss left to have a baby. I think back to that person I was at the time. A 90’s club kid. If you don’t know what that means believe me…I shouldn’t have been running a multi-million dollar business, but I did so with determination to be the best store manager I could be. I soaked up all the knowledge and advice I could get.

“Someone believed in me and gave me the opportunity. They knew I could be molded into what they needed me to be and grow into the position they saw for me.”

–Me, at 23, becoming a SM for the first time.

Think about that for a second and ask yourselves, when was the last time you hired someone or promoted someone with this idea in mind? The idea that there was a spark in someone and YOU wanted to develop it so that person could meet their true potential and grow into a manager that you knew they could become. This has now become one of my favorite management style traits. It leads me to the best part of being a manager…developing 

My favorite position on a management team will always be… manager–in-training or key holder or sales/team lead or department manager.  Whatever you want to call it, they all mean the same thing, a developmental managerial role with keys. You have the chance to mold someone into a position that they themselves didn’t know they had in them. It is a position that reflects a spark you, as their leader and mentor, saw in them. It is a position that allows them to explore what type of manager they want to become. It is often the first time they have ever had a lot of responsibility and definitely the first time they have ever managed people. I like to observe how they handle the first day of responsibility and go from there by asking a series of questions in my mind. Will they become power hungry? Will they become an associates’ confidant? Will they embrace a way of thinking and become a leader? How will they handle a tough situation? What type of direction will they give? When will they realize that they are in charge and have to make decisions? It is at that time that spark happens in them. They either love it or hate it. When I see it, I start the development process and steer them in the direction that makes sense to them. There is no forced training plan or process, just an open mind to learn.

The same goes for any person new to a role. Everyone handles their new responsibility differently. It is important not to hinder their growth through trying to get them to learn the way you did. I have talked about being a chameleon before and now it is more important than ever. Your management training abilities have to be on point or you may lose that spark that originally got them there in the first place. No one wants that. No one wants to start over. No one wants to feel like they failed someone. This is how you grow as a manager and into a leader that can respected. An accomplishment that means something. 

Experience Does Matter

Through the years I have heard these words from upper level management or hiring managers “your experience doesn’t necessarily matter, how you adapt to the culture and earn our respect does.” Really? I always struggled with holding my emotions in check when that phrase was uttered. I found it fascinating to hear. Maybe I was too old or not the right look or over qualified or too opinionated or overzealous in decision making. Excuses. That is what they are. Whatever it was, it dampened my passion to be the best I could be and I don’t want it to happen to you. At the end of the day I never had an unsuccessful store or team. That must mean something…right?

I find that people are afraid of experience. They are afraid of people who may know more about topics then they do. I always found the opposite true. Experience is the cornerstone of any successful business.  Why? Because you have experienced several different scenarios at several different levels while trying new approaches through trial and error. Why wouldn’t that be considered a plus or at least a determination to want to know more?

While perusing through applications/resumes for the hiring of certain positions, I always looked to those applicants that had layers to their careers. I never was afraid to talk to them nor intimidated by their level of expertise. I always knew that they may not be affordable, but I would try my hardest to sell them on the company and the culture. Lord knows I have taken some pay cuts to acquire a position I felt passionately about. But not everyone is willing to do the same. It has to make sense and people need to be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. After all you are not only interviewing the candidate, they are interviewing you and the company as well.

I am hoping that through writing about this that somehow, somewhere someone will figure out that experience does matter. Think about it…You are bringing a candidate on board that’s only focus for you would be sales generation and people development. Why wouldn’t you want that? Of course, they would have to learn the ins and outs of the company, but in reality, everything you dream of for an employee is already there. You need to let them run with it and watch them take the lead, grow the business and build a positive reputation with your customer base. Managers need to put their pride on the back burner and focus on the gifts of the people that sit in front of them. I get it… in this day and age, a person needs to fit the culture of the business, but isn’t that something that can be adapted as the employee works day-by-day and side-by-side other employees and customers? Wouldn’t you much rather have a person in place that already gets it? Wouldn’t you then want that person to build you up and make you look good? The next time you are interviewing or writing a performance appraisal, think about the word experience in relation to that person. If you can’t think of scenarios that match their abilities, you aren’t doing your job.