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.

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. 

Be the Position You Want To Be

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?

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.

The Domino Effect

Tenure. It’s an amazing thing. There is nothing in the world like having a team that sticks around. As a manager or business owner, watching your people grow into roles is probably the most rewarding trait of being a successful manager. At least it was for me. Nothing made me prouder than to watch someone grow from a part timer into high level. How this happens is what I like to call the domino effect.

Your store is a breeding ground for amazingness…if you allow it. Some leaders don’t like seeing others succeed. I always found this odd, but I understood it. People fear strength. It’s true. Some managers like to keep people at a certain level to control them. This is a hard fact to consider, but it is something those managers need to recognize with in themselves. This can most certainly lead to losing good people and spread negativity like a cancer through the store. Your business’s environment is what YOU make it.

It all starts out with hiring. Are you hiring the right people? You should be looking for certain traits when interviewing candidates. Traits like motivation and belief in abilities. Starting at the part time level (we will get into interviewing later). When they’re hired, you are constantly observing and recognizing strengths and opportunities. As you adapt your training to match their abilities, you start to see potential. It is when you start noticing that same individual share your training and philosophies with others that the domino effect begins. When people feel empowered, supported and challenged they stick around. It makes the 4-walls more fun to work in. After all, when we spend most of our time in our businesses shouldn’t we WANT to be there? Shouldn’t there be a purpose to why we work long hours? Shouldn’t there be a positive reason to show up to work every day?

Not every person you hire will stick around. It is usually because it wasn’t just for them. Retail is hard. Some will have opportunities doing something else. It’s a free world. There are many choices for everyone, but always ask yourself…did you do everything in your power to make an impact on that person? Maybe you turned a shy seller into a top seller. Maybe you taught someone to become more organized. Maybe you impacted his or her thinking which in turn allowed them to open-up and become a better person. Believe it or not, you have the power to make these things happen. Just don’t ignore the one’s that got away. Look inside yourself and determine the whys.

Do you have any stories, experiences or comments? I would love to hear your thoughts.