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OPINION
LEADERS, MANAGERS AND TEAM PLAYERS Consumer expectations are high, as is staff turnaround – so it pays to ensure every member of the team is pulling together. This month, US bed industry consultant Gordon Hecht reflects on how retailers can get the best from their staff – at every level …
CHANCES ARE, EVERY TEAM MEMBER THAT’S WORKED IN YOUR BUSINESS SINCE 2019 IS A LOYAL EMPLOYEE
By GORDON HECHT gordon.hecht@aol.com
Earlier this year I read a quote from my favourite Canadian retail blogger, Donald Cooper. He stated that in business, “We all get the team that we deserve” – but what does that team look like? The players on your team will reflect how you, as a leader, act, react, and proact to the environment around you. Forward-thinking leaders sharing a dream and a plan create a visionary team and the future leaders for the business. Those leaders build their business and their players concurrently. Angry leaders who flare up at every bump in the road will either create angry players, or worse, frightened players who are unwilling to challenge their leader with new solutions. Leaders who listen create a team that is willing to share the ground-level issues that prevent the organisation from market domination. Absent leaders who just aren’t on site at the retail store create players who are also willing to check out early, or loathe the boss while they toil the retail schedule. Communicative leaders share information about how the business is progressing. Some even share the financial knowledge of how to run a business. They create players who are entrepreneurs. Egotistical leaders who hog the credit for every victory and spread the blame for every failure create players who stop delivering the legendary customer service that makes the business remarkable. You can choose the players on your team, and you can change those players as often as you like. Their actions, and the way they treat your paid-for-inadvance buying public, and each other, will depend on your leadership style. Several years ago, I asked my everlovin’ bride if she knew the difference between leaders and managers. Her explanation was simple and brilliant: “Leaders lead, and managers manage.”
It seems that in many businesses crisis management is the job du jour. I’ll agree that the last two years has thrown every kind of roadblock our way, and we’ve had to dig out of a lot of holes – yet while we’re managing our way out of yesterday’s problems, we’re ignoring tomorrow’s opportunities. Back in the day, IBM had a oneword poster in their offices. The word was THINK. In these days of eating a Grubhub lunch in front of a laptop, and where a coffee break is a lost ritual, many leaders are not providing their managers time to THINK – about how we could do things better, less expensively, attract more shoppers and team players, and exceed expectations. If you saw a store or department manager sitting in a chair staring at the ceiling and asked them what they were doing, and they answered, “I’m thinking,” you’d probably consider that your manager was losing her grip. There’s probably no better time to schedule time out of the four walls of your store. Not work at home, but time to take lunch in a restaurant (no mobile phones please) or shop a competitor, or just walk in the park. Chances are, every team member that’s worked in your business since 2019 is a loyal employee. They’ve had 730 reasons to quit in the last two years, equal to one a day. Be sure to thank and reward them. But you also may have some bad players, or others that just got too comfortable in the 24-month pity party. A key rule of leadership is ‘poor performance that is not addressed becomes company policy’. And any department can have employees who are miserable and make everyone miserable around them. Sure, it’s difficult to hire these days, but your bad player will land up driving your good players to another team. Correct it or clean it out – that’s leadership your team will respect and appreciate
