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.

Strife

Self-Doubt. You know what it is. You know what it feels like. You know how it fills your head. When it comes to managing people, it may enter your mind on a routine basis. This is why managing people is so damn hard. Why? Because all people have different personalities, different viewpoints and different beliefs. This can cause strife in your stores and wreak havoc on your team, but it’s needed to accomplish the goal ahead. To make you the best version of you. You as a boss. A leader. A mentor.

Over the years I have had a few characters on my teams that have been an eye roll of why. What does that mean? I am talking about those that for some reason out of nowhere have decided to make your life difficult by pursuing their own agendas. The ones that ride your successful coat tails, absorb everything they can from your teachings and then decide for themselves that they know enough to take over your position. We have all had them.  They judge your every move. They analyze your every decision. They talk behind your back to any who will listen. They build a defense around their crazy and turn strong individuals with potential into a mockery of all your hard work. It’s hard not to take it personal. It’s hard not to want to shake them and ask them what the hell they are doing. As frustrating as it is, you need them. You need them to make you stronger.

Your business becomes your family. You spend a lot of time together. Sometimes more time than those in your personal lives. When this conflict happens, it sends a knife through your heart and causes you to second guess why you spent so much time developing that person. Most have no idea that you know what is going on, but the entire store feels the frustration. Oftentimes, talking to said individual does nothing, but it does give you insight to why it is happening. Usually it is about salary (finding out someone in the same position is making more), entitlement (getting passed over for a position when tenured in role), or uninformed (not understanding where they are in the grander scheme of things.)

Hey, I have been there. That’s why it is important to try and clear the air from the very beginning. Not easy to do, but you have to, or your leadership will be called into question by a superior. Believe me this subject is always reported to someone other than yourself. You will be the last person they come to in fear of upsetting the status quo. Because they don’t want to hear your side of the story. That would make them the bad guy. That’s why it’s important to come to the following conclusion.

It’s time for them to go. No question. No more fighting. You aren’t giving up on them. You just won’t win this one. My answer, help them find a new role. Whether it is in your store or somewhere new. Give them the reigns. If they think they are ready, why hold them back? Sell them to competitors when there is an opening. Push them out and focus on those that want to continue on the current path. No hard feelings.

What about those that want you out and won’t leave? You need to win the battle by proving why you are in the position you are. Why you are the boss. Remember, numbers are everything. How is your business doing? How is your tenure? How are your store visits? What does your shrink look like? What does home office think about you? What type of leader have you proven to be.

To make a long story short…practice what you preach and for goodness sake lead by example. Don’t give them anything to use against you. Retail life is hard. There are a lot of politics involved at the higher levels. People are judged unfairly by first impressions all the time. Fight for your why’s. Strife will never go away, but there are things you can do to make it manageable.

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.

Know Your People Before You Manage Your People

Have you ever been told when starting a new management position or getting promoted that you should just fire everyone and start fresh? Yeah, me too. My response always has been…” we’ll see, let me see what I can do first.” I have always been a believer in the philosophy of know your people before you manage your people. It wasn’t always that way, in fact, I learned it over the years. As I grew, so did my management skills and my management style. Both took on a life of their own. Whether my bosses liked it or not. I don’t think that, nor do I believe that people can’t change. I believe people WANT to be better. I believe people can be whatever they want to be if they have the right tools to get there. Tools can mean training, stronger leadership and positive store environment.

Being a store manager or any level of manager for that matter means you should be an observer first, developer second and then and only then can you decide whether a person fits the mold. If you don’t understand your people, how can you manage them? If you were promoted into the position, you already have a basic grasp of who each person is, how they respond to each other and how they learn. But now they work for you so you need to tread carefully as this adds a new dynamic to the store. If you enter the business as a new manager, especially new to the brand, you have big shoes to fill. There is a lot riding on your shoulders. You were brought in there to assert change, drive results, and breathe life into a store. This is not an easy task and to get there you need the support of your team.

Observing may sound simple enough, but it takes patience and time. You need to sit back and watch each member of your team in a variety of circumstances. You have-to let them make mistakes without interfering. You need to learn how they handle different types of situations. From these observations, you can determine how to develop. I usually observe for about a week. I try to schedule myself different shifts so I can experience the store during different parts of the day and the team interacting with different people. After observing, I like to meet with everyone. It could be all at once during a manager's meeting or what I always liked to do was talk to them randomly one-on-one when it wasn’t planned. The goal is to listen, ask questions and develop a rapport. This will start the process naturally and give you a fresh outlook.

Development comes next. Stay tuned for what I like to call being a chameleon….