Restoration

I grew up on a sailboat. Pretty sure I was conceived on a sailboat too. Well at least that is what I tell myself. Water means everything to me. I am a Pisces, if you believe in that type of stuff. Many of the characteristics all make sense to me. The biggest one…I'm a dreamer. That is for sure. I have a million ideas and know that someday they will all become reality. At least that is what I keep telling myself. My husband, however, probably wants the reality to set in sooner than later. I am babbling. My father loved his sailboats. We had many. He even bought an old wooden sailboat to restore. It sat in our front yard until it was too far gone to repair. My point? Restoring ourselves is hard. Really hard. It takes a vast amount of courage and belief in your purpose. It takes a strong sense of character and a support system around you that is not afraid to tell you like it is. It takes time.

We go through many transitions in our lives and to those just starting out on your adventure I want to leave you with some advice. Make sense of who you are. Seems pretty generic, I know, but bear with me here. Through the years in my career, I changed my course several times. I often think back to the movie “Sliding Doors” or, in current times, any multi-dimensional narrative out there in movie land. So many options to take. Which ones are the best? How does a person decide that question? Is it financial stability? Career progress? Save a marriage? Health related? How do you make a choice that will affect you for the rest of your life? I wish I knew the right answer, but I can only share my experiences. The answer is... all of the above.

My career has been a roller coaster. All over the place. (Yep, a Pisces). Did I make the right decisions along the way? I left journalism school for business school. Switched degree programs and universities. Why? In looking back, I think it was because of fear. Yes, fear. I was in magazine and book publishing and I didn’t want to move to New York. Idiot!!!! So, I left Journalism and started over in business school. Seems so prosaic now, but it was retail, merchandising and management. Ooooo much more exciting! This restored my faith in having a career. After all, business is everywhere. Stores are everywhere. So many options for a career path;  buying, management, recruiting, operations, merchandising… I was revitalized! Until I wasn’t.

The one thing I know to be true is people need to believe in you. It only takes one to make you feel like crap and self-implode. I had that happen to me at the height of my career. So, I left and started fulfilling one of my crazy dreams. Entrepreneurship. I started my own business. I thought it would be a dream come true. I would be around for the masses who have experienced all that I have. I wanted to ensure they had the support I never had. I wanted to fill a mentor void I so desperately craved. I have, and I continue to do so, but I discovered I needed more along the way to fulfill the needs of others.  MORE KNOWLEDGE! Even after 20 plus years working in retail developing employees to be their best selves and leading many businesses to success, I wanted more. So, I made the decision to advance myself into the world of strategic HR. I have decided that in order to achieve all that I want, I need to know everything there is to start from scratch. I need this to revive a part of me that embraces employee empowerment and development processes.

I never thought it would be so hard starting over. At my age, a Gen Xer, starting over can be a crazy adventure in determination and deprivation. Studying for the PHR exam has been an eye-opening experience. I haven’t taken an exam or studied, for that matter, in 25 years. My brain has had to reach back into long-forgotten memories to figure out how. Through the course of this new adventure, I have learned so much more than I could have ever imagined. I have learned that many of the leaders, I have worked for over the years, should never have had those positions in the first place. I learned we drank too much Kool-Aid. Retail management means you are your own HR department. You learn from experience. Your policies were probably copied and pasted from other companies and your operations are a hatchet job of ifs and probable’s. Perhaps an employment lawyer signed off on your handbooks, but did they? Now I know this truth. I have taken classes and read over 1700 pages of text. I have learned from those in positions of policy and observed from afar just how much is needed out there. 

Now comes the tough part. What do I do with this newfound knowledge? Reinvent myself…again? I think back on the sailboat rotting in my parents’ yard. Am I going to end up like that? A pile of wood with good intentions of becoming something better or will I sail on the waves of Lake Superior with the wind at my back and set a course of discovery? Will I restore the person who had all the conviction to change the world one store at a time? The Pisces in me says I will discover a new land and live up to my potential. I better get to it.

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.

Elephant In The Room

How do we get over the stigmatism of “bad manager”? I have heard so many people say they quit their jobs due to poor management. This makes me so mad because it is easy to be a good manager. Everyone has differing opinions on the matter. What I have heard as reasons for employees leaving good companies is the following:

“They never listened to me.”

“They always scheduled me outside my availability.”

“They never worked on the sales floor.”

“They were always gossiping.”

“They treated me like dirt.”

I am not saying that I was a perfect manager, I had my faults too, but I did respect my people for their hard work. Is it really that hard to hold a conversation with someone nowadays? I am hearing it is. So why do managers struggle? 

Laziness. Yep, I said it!

When employees move up the ranks to become “the boss”, they often forget how they got there and what it was like to fight the battle. It is not leadership to reach the next rung of a ladder and treat your people the way you hated to be treated. Leadership, or should I say, positive leadership, means you need to embrace the good fight and nurture those around you to be the best versions of themselves. It takes a lot of work. You have to pick and choose your battles. Taking a break when you get to the top shouldn’t be in the cards. You should never feel comfortable.

Oftentimes when we are managing our businesses, we put tasks ahead of common sense. What do I mean by that? We always have a typical week that is full of processes, tb’s with upper level management and to do lists that seem never-ending. Why is it that you can’t make your people part of the lists? Seems pretty simple…My favorite part of the day, even when I was on empty from working crazy hours, was my impromptu one-on-ones with my people. They may never have known how much hearing about their day was important to me, but it was always a motivating force that I held close to my heart. It kept me going. 

Running a business is hard. It takes mad skills to not feel like you failed in some way. Why would you ever want to hear that the one thing you truly failed at was your people? It doesn’t matter if your business is hitting double-digit comps or your store is visually inspiring if your people keep leaving! Your people are the most important part. They are the reputation of not only your business in the community, but the brand image and reflection of you as manager or business owner. It is important to address these issues with your team. Usually, you will have a gut feeling. If you have never felt that feeling, then there are other things to address within yourself. No one is the perfect boss. Don’t ever think you are, but you should always inspire to be one.

Sense of Self

To be a strong leader or role model you need to check your ego at the door. A strong sense of self in order to celebrate the successes of those you work with. It seems like a no brainer, but in reality, think of all the people that you have worked for that didn’t have that mentality engrained in their leadership style. It probably became a toxic work place and lacked any one person who stood out as a mentor. Am I right?

Mentors are needed in today’s environment. Recently I have been communicating with an incredible woman that I met on LinkedIn Julie Stonehouse-Daradics. She made the comment:

“Gone are the days when we are impressed with people who are impressed with themselves.”

I bring this topic up in regard to the continued conversation of making your stores or businesses a positive environment where people want to work for you. As a manager it should be a daily goal to make an impact on those around you. I am not saying you have to be a beacon of influence with every word or action, but you should want to set an example of one. Good lord people! Wake up! The society of “me” needs to change. The selfish mentality of “my success”, as opposed to “our success” should be the cornerstone of any successful business and tenured team. The two go hand-in-hand.

If you haven’t yet observed an employee, you trained…train another with their own twist from your coaching, then you have yet to feel a strong sense of self. This epiphany will bring such a sense of accomplishment and confidence to your leadership that you will be driven to see it again and again forcing others to embrace this frame of mind as well. A long-term goal would be to see a pattern within your stores hierarchy.

To get the wheels turning, let’s go back to managing the schedule. I know it seems like a jump from a philosophy to a task, but in reality, you have the power to transform your team into a positive force for overall success. Changing the MY to OUR with something as simple as how they are scheduled. Great leaders see strengths in people before people see it in themselves. This in turn manifests a certain skillset that only a tenured team can understand if tested consistently.

The prior blog post “Building Blocks” was about testing out your teams through scheduling to achieve business success based on the right partnerships. This post continues that example by using those partnerships into a typical week routine to achieve success of tenure and accountability. Sit down with your management team and go over all the tasks that need to be achieved on a weekly basis. Divide them into operations and merchandising. You cannot have a strong business without a routine scheduled around these two responsibilities.

Depending on the size of your business and management team, you should know your employee’s strengths and opportunities. The goal is always how to get the most done in the least amount of time, so the primary focus can be on your customers. Here is where the building blocks fall into place. Schedule to peoples’ passions. This includes support from a sales team. When you have specific people doing things they love, they want to share with others, therefore beginning a mentor program that adds efficiency, bench strength and employees open to more responsibility.

When you have the right people working together at the same times every week to accomplish specific goals, a well-oiled machine ensues. Your store will begin to run by itself so, you as the business leader, can focus on other obligations…EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT! Your primary responsibility! This will not happen overnight. Remember, you have to test it out over a period of time to see what works and what doesn’t. Believe me, it is worth it in the end.

Building Blocks

“Aarrrggghhhhh I have to make the schedule.” I have felt that many times and said it out loud more times than I can count, but making the weekly schedule is more than managing payroll, it can be an art form. Stay with me here. I have always had a love/hate relationship with making schedules. Over the years, I managed to turn scheduling into a science of sales. Sound crazy? Yep, it is, but something I loved about managing my stores. My team might not have liked how long it would take to make the schedules, but I knew they would never really understand.

“Take the availability, hours needed, LY and projected sales and just MAKE the schedule.”

-said everyone always

If only it were that simple! If you think that is the idea, then you have been doing it all wrong! Did you know that making a schedule is the best business tool we, as store managers have to build our business? It is the one place you can manipulate payroll and availability for the better. Still with me??? Here is a little secret to for you…

Your people are the building blocks for a positive sales ledger.

I want you to take some time and really dive into your stores numbers. Analytics were always my favorite part about being a store manager and should be yours as well. For example, studying how that sweater in a certain area of the store did better on a certain type of fixture than it had on the other side of the store folded on a table always made me jump for joy at its results! Why can’t you have the same reaction when it comes to your people? Studying the key performance indicators (KPI) of your sales team is the best thing you can do to understand the dynamics of your business and make your schedule work for you. I am not talking about UPT or ADS necessarily, I am talking about time frames, team and production. Here is an example:

Tuesday nights from 6-9pm were the lowest performing sales generation time frame out of any for the entire week. Why? Was it the store’s traffic? Was it tasking? Was it who was working? Was it events in the area? Was it product flow management?

-The answer is yes to all of these scenarios

Something to consider when making a schedule, is your people’s performance together at the same time during the same shifts. I would always test certain managers with different sales associates. Who was the most productive together? Who had the best customer service? Who was able to get the most accomplished without sales suffering? I know it takes time to test the theory, but once you find the right combination, you no longer have struggling sales. I usually liked to keep a set schedule for those that would succeed together. It made them happy and customers became regulars on those days with that team. A win win!

There is a lot more to this theory, which I will get to next time, but this should give you a beginning and a new procedure to improve your business. If you have any questions, reach out. I am just an email away!

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. 

A Passion

I am not here to throw anyone under the bus, but managers today need to WAKE UP! I am often asked “why do you do the things you do?” Meaning...why did I decide to quit my career and focus entirely on mentoring. The answer is I have a passion for people, processes and a belief that one holds the power to have a positive influence on others. 

I have had a rollercoaster of a career. I loved every position I have held and every person I have met, developed or observed along the way. I have been pushed, challenged and mentally exhausted from the ride. Why???  Working for someone that doesn’t believe in you or share your same passion for people is detrimental. It destroys any chance of growth, inspiration and positive results. Teams need mentoring, leadership, strong belief in purpose and an overall understanding that they will be supported. Only then will anyone see success in themselves, their stores and their people.

I left a job I loved almost a year ago because I felt trapped. I had nowhere to go to communicate frustration and no one I could trust to keep me motivated. Politics play heavy roles in our work life today (not talking about government politics here). People want to work for friends not bosses. Peers not leaders. No wonder why employees feel lost and abandoned. Too many cliques and too many abstract circumstances. No one is around to help navigate through problems. If by some odd chance they are, they lack the courage to help in fear of being coached out of a job for not playing the part of the cultures status quo. It is a sad state of affairs and one we need to continue to shed light on.

I hear from people on a regular basis that they are afraid to voice opinions. They are afraid to challenge and speak up about concerns they may be having. They have ideas about how to make the environment in-store better. They want to help make people more engaged. It really breaks my heart. Trust. Does it even exist anymore? I am not talking about confidants and keeping secrets. I am talking about listening to your employee’s feedback and having the bravery to do something with it.

I was on twitter the other day when @theclopener commented on a post of mine:

                        “Every time an employee gives feedback, a middle manager absorbs

                         its power and grows stronger. But only if they ignore it.”

Think about that for a second. I do not know who @theclopener is or where they work, but I do know the he/she has a point. Many managers take feedback from direct supports, peers or home office on a daily basis. The problem is they keep it inside and either make changes on their own without admitting to the feedback or ignore it completely and go on with their day. Feedback is always positive whether you are getting reprimanded or not. It is there to help you change for the better, make improved decisions, and garner a stronger self-managerial image. It can suck, but you need to think about the feedback itself. It came from somewhere. Usually, it comes from your team.

It is up to you to become the leader you want to be. It isn’t up to anyone else. You define your actions. Your superiors are there help shape those actions. If they aren’t…choose who YOU want to be and where your passion will follow. 

Mantra

Over the years, I have found a saying I learned while working for Gap that has stuck with me. OWN IT. DO IT. DONE. I interpret it as follows:

**Own what you do. Believe that anything is possible,

**Do it to the best of your abilities and challenge yourself to be better.

 **Done. Accomplish your tasks, learn from them and share your experiences with others.

These 5 words have followed me everywhere in my career. I wish I could remember the original mindset taught to me while I was with Gap, but I like to think the it was meant to change along with you and metamorphosis into what you want it to be. I know I have shared the words with many throughout the years.

I often ask people what they say over and over in their minds to keep them going. What do they say to themselves to keep motivated through good times and bad? I have found that many share the same mantra. The value I take from that is that everyone works hard and believes in themselves. A no brainer. Especially when no one else does. The word fighter is something I have heard a lot in my day. I am. I fight for the right to think for myself and support others. This may sound crass and a bit harsh, but I have experienced a lot of haters out there. I never understood why. If my business is successful and my team is tenured and my customers keep coming back, why am I constantly being penalized for standing up for myself, my processes or my teams?

Maybe it was the MY in that last statement. I always loved to try things differently from the rest. After all, I had been managing stores for a very long time and had experienced many different scenarios. Some processes work and others don’t work as well. I personally like the ones that work and work for the better. This attitude often brought on problems with superiors. Again, why? Maybe because it wasn’t what everyone else was doing. Maybe it was because they never believed in me. Maybe it was considered a threat to the status quo. Not sure. I am not saying to be a fighter, but we all have incredible ideas. It is important that we don’t let them disappear because we may not feel comfortable in how others may take that idea. This happens too often and frankly I am sick of it. Aren’t you?

At any given time, we have the innate ability to own our problems, our issues, our behaviors and finally our legacy. We get to own the processes we put in place to lead, to generate strength and to fulfill promises we made to our teams. Our legacy should be to finish with grace, respect and fortitude. This is a mantra I share with all of you. Be you. Embrace new ideas. Don’t be frightened by the idea that you may not be in the right or your idea may fail in action. We learn from experiences and grow from them no matter what the outcome. Own up to you.

Choose Your Own Adventure

One of my favorite book series I loved to read growing up was the "Choose Your Own Adventure" stories by Edward Packard. It opened my mind to variety of scenarios and gave me the ability to explore adventures with different outcomes.

The memory of these books brings to mind, don't laugh, our current state of retail. An interesting observation, right? As managers, we have the ability to choose many different paths each day. Although there are only 24 hours in a day, those 24 hours can have immediate impact on a single course of action. Albeit, employee development, store appearance, customer interactions, operational systems…you get the picture. It is up to you to determine what kind of impact you are going to make.

I know there are many critics out there saying retail is struggling to survive, but I see it prospering everywhere I go, the problem isn’t stores in general, new stores and small businesses open every day, its people. People are the problem. Managers, YOU are choosing the wrong adventure.

I find that there are two types of managers. Those that can and don’t vs. those that do and choose. All managers have the ability to be successful, but something happens along the way that takes a mindset from a passion to lead to a safe mentality. That something, is usually a wrong decision made either by a superior that affected them poorly or a decision made internally that brought on a negative result. The can and don’ts come from this error in judgement. These managers go with a popular decision process. One that will be accepted to maintain a level of consistency. I am not saying that this is wrong or unsuccessful, but it can become comfortable and underwhelming.

The do and choose are the managers that do whatever it takes and choose not to give up on making a difference. We need more of this type in the business world. Managers that choose to stand out in a crowd and go against the grain in terms of process and people are ones that are always looking for that next adventure. They make unpopular decisions, mistakes and end up being put in an outcast category. Oftentimes their paths are rocky, stressful and a battleground of what if’s. What makes this type of manager interesting is that their decisions and mistakes often bring prosperous results, tenured teams and desired organizational strategies.

Unfortunately, these managers never seem to last long in organizations. WHY?? Wouldn’t it be wise to choose the adventure of rocky paths and individuality over the path of knowing the outcome? Wouldn’t it be wise to choose the manager that isn’t afraid of making a mistake? Wouldn’t it make better sense to choose an adventure that changes the mindset and opens the door to new possibilities? Something needs to change. The store environments we walk into today are filled with disgruntled employees, comfortable employees, lost employees and more importantly, employees ignoring customers because YOU choose the wrong approaches in your leadership style every day. Retail isn’t dying. The successful businesses have grown from their mistakes and prospered. The do and choose managers have opened their own stores and are leading the way in making a difference in communities because the can and don'ts have given them no other choice. It's up to you to choose your next adventure. Choose wisely. Your businesses are depending on you to make the right decision.

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. 

The Trifecta

In a horse race, the trifecta is a bet made on the top three finishers. In business, trifecta is a term I use for the perfect management team. Don’t get me wrong…it’s still a bet.  Only in this case, you are betting on the fact people will accomplish, as your partners, what is needed based on their strengths and abilities. If you find the right two assistants (ops and visual) to race with you, a store can accomplish just about anything and everything. It really is beautiful.

It isn’t easy to come by. It takes a strong skillset and time to develop that skillset. It is rare to find someone of strong abilities right from the start. These two managers must embrace your management philosophy, use it to develop others and finally follow through with it when you are away from the store. A seamless transition. This is the hardest part about forming this team because each person has their own ideas and agendas. If one of your assistant managers doesn’t believe in what you are doing, a struggle will happen and its negativity will spread like wild fire down to the part timers that work only one shift a week. A power struggle. I am sure you have all experienced this in some shape, way or form. You must prove to the store that as its leader, your method works. Then you must make them want to learn from you. The only way that is done is by showing your team consistent positive results and proving to them that there is a method to your madness. Leading by example is only the tip of the iceberg.

You think it would be easier to find the perfect team, but nowadays teams change more frequently. People seem to be more interested in the next best thing or are motivated by money and move on to a better paying job. You should always be asking yourself these questions:  How do I keep them from leaving? How do I keep them motivated long enough to see my vision? How do I sell the trifecta to my people if they have never experienced what it’s like? A trifecta in a store is a company’s dream come true. Why? Because no one needs to worry about that store. All the pieces are in place for a stores’ success. With the perfect team comes strong and well-rounded employees ready to take on anything. You’ll experience a tenure that is unheard of in the industry and your store will become a talent pool for open positions. A retail managers dream

I have had the privilege of this experience 3 times in my career. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but when you think about all the parts you need, you understand just how hard it is to find the right fit. My advice to all of you out there…. embrace the people you have. Develop them to feel empowered in decision making. Groom your people to want to be a part of something bigger than comps. It is truly an experience you will never forget and it will help catapult you in a direction you may have never seen yourself because your team believes anything is possible and they want to ensure that the ANYTHING happens.

Bench

Bench is an interesting word used in management. Its definitions from the Dictionary are: a long seat for several persons; the quality and number of the players of a team who are usually used as substitutes…and so on. In any type of retail, it’s your back up to a manager. Any manager. Plain and simple. I recently read a quote that stated, “You are not a leader until you have produced another leader who can produce another leader.” These words should be EVERY manager’s mantra. Especially if you want to call yourself a “successful manager”.

Sure, having a strong business with positive comps is successful. Having a repeat customer is considered successful. Having beautiful window displays that draw in new customers is successful. Having over 10K followers, as a business, on social media is considered successful, but how are your teams?

Over the years, I have been incredibly lucky to work with some amazing and talented individuals. Many have gone on to be pretty special themselves. Nothing has made me prouder than to watch a new hire move up the ladder (this you have heard before). I have prided myself in the ability to observe a passion in someone and exploit it. I value the ability to recognize people’s strengths and push them to be the best version of themselves. This has never come easy. People need to have the desire to become a better, stronger version of themselves and YOU as their manager need to be able to assess these characteristics and develop them. Your sales team may not even know that you are doing this and that makes it even more special when they wake up and determine their own strengths and abilities. You need to be tough, direct and expectant of confrontation. To challenge is to not make friends, but to make leaders.

Asking questions of your team needs to be an ongoing theme in your life as a manager or owner of a small business for that matter. Getting to know your staff through conversation and observation are the key to their development. You need to look for another you. Someone to take your place someday. How are they with customers? Make sure they are scheduled peak hours on the sales floor. How are they with new hires? Schedule them to train on the first day of hire. How are they with store standards? Schedule them to do visual sets. How are they with organizing? Maybe they have a love of shipment processing. What do they want to do with their lives? Why did they take the job? These are just some questions you should be asking. Questions you should know the answers to and schedule accordingly.

In my opnion, managers today are getting lazy. Managers today are selfish. Managers today are missing the point in regards to what leadership is. Managers today are not being trained to make themselves a better leader. Managers today are lost without direction. Managers today are the future of business. So why aren’t they being invested in? Why aren’t your teams a priority? Remember why you were hired in the first place?

Something to think about. During your next TB or store meeting ask the questions. Ask your teams what THEY need. You’ll be surprised to know…it’s just you.