Leaders hurt, Leaders heal

I am convinced that after working with so many leaders over the years leaders can hurt a business and heal a business...

What do I mean by this?

Let me tell you a story that happened to me most recently.

Over the weekend I visited an AutoZone location, I had something that I needed to fix on my mini, now I am not an expert in cars and certainly do not frequent these stores very often, and as a woman, it can be quite intimidating as there are never women in these stores, however, this store, in particular, I had an amazing experience.

I was greeted by a young man with a big smile who proceeded to assist me, he even came out to my car to take a look, and as someone who has worked in retail, I was immediately impressed. I would certainly have wanted to hire him in the past. He was great, he made me feel very welcome, not stupid which let's face it in an Auto Zone I had no idea what I was doing. I was totally in my head and had no idea how to navigate this retail location.

After chatting with him and wrapping up my purchase I proceeded to tell him I appreciated his service and commented that he must like his job a lot because he was so helpful. What came next left me inspired to share his story because unfortunately this happens all the time and unfortunately it happens way too often.

He shared that he didn't like his job but he loved cars and talking to customers. He then went on to explain why...

His boss and his boss's boss. I said tell me more...which he did willingly.

Without going into too much detail, it was the same story I've heard many times when calling managers to ask them why their team resigned. Over and over again many people don't feel valued or cared for at work. Feeling like nobody cares at work is kind of soul-destroying, it leaves many people feeling hopeless and eventually, they quit.

The too familiar story of his district manager store visits.

He shared with me that when his District Manager visited their location, he would b-line right for the back room, then proceed to sit on calls all day with no shop floor time, and then when it was time for him to leave, he b-lines right back out to the front door, leaving without providing any coaching or feedback. Which ultimately left the wonderful ASM I met, wondering if he is doing a good job!

This is pretty normal, I've witnessed this far too many times, where District Managers visit a location to complete their admin work and put no focus on the store they are visiting for the day.

Now in this scenario, if the ASM quits most likely the story to the HR team or Regional will be ...he got a better job, he wasn't any good anyway, and other excuses that many leaders make. I can tell you that if he leaves it will be directly related to how he feels about working in a company he feels doesn't care. And it might not be the company's intention, however, each leader that shows up this way is a representative of the company. His District and Store Manager are not aiding in him feeling cared for, in fact in his words " I don't think anyone cares".

Now in my experience, there are a few reasons why District Managers lead this way;

• They do not have the correct training and coaching when they enter into the role and lack constant development while in the role especially if sales are good.
• When they were promoted they got thrown into leading more stores based on their store's results, and now when faced with leading another manager they are not clear on how to approach the manager when they see things not going well, or even more frustrating they don't provide any specific feedback when things are going well, they instead avoid the stores with positive results.
• They think that being in the store but working on other projects is ok because that's what they experienced in the past with their own District Manager.
• They are overwhelmed and not sure how to manage their time.
• They do not know how to train, coach, and direct and they don't ask these two fundamental questions when visiting a store.

What can I teach someone today? and what can I learn from my team today.

There are techniques for having a purposeful store visit which you can learn all about in the RetailU - OnDemand Leadership Training Courses. District Manager Training Course. HERE

The easiest fix to turn around store engagement and customer service is to focus on the managers and the managers of managers.

I was watching a video last week where the interviewer Simon Sinek asked the interviewee if he could describe the day his wife fell in love with him, he went on to ask him what metric he uses to measure this. The man being interviewed looked confused, he couldn't answer it...Simon proceeded to say...of course you can not answer that question your wife fell in love over some time because you kept doing the right thing, and those small things added up to overall positive feelings toward you...and that's kind of like leadership, you can not pinpoint the day that a leader gets it...because much like falling in love, leadership is built up of the small acts daily. I love this analogy as someone who has to convince CEOs of the importance of training and investing in skill development, It can be hard to articulate the ROI of training when it pertains to leadership development.

What we know is this...if a leader stops learning and does not continue to improve themselves their team will only be as good as the level of the leader, and high performers will leave when they do not feel valued. This perpetuates the cycle of turnover. The connection between a leader and their team is essential to a company's success. This can not be underestimated.

This three-step framework has helped thousands of leaders value their team resulting in lowering turnover and improving engagement and results.

Positivity does improve productivity..this is proven time and time again with companies that understand that the experience matters.

How does this relate to leaders hurt, and leaders heal...you are hearing this and maybe rolling your eyes right now saying yeah yeah I know this stuff...

How do Leaders hurt a business? That just sounds weird...

Leaders can hurt the business by hurting their relationships with their team. Seems obvious however for the ASM I met over the weekend it was not. He was ready to quit and say he would never work in retail again, this means that if someone was to ask him outside of his job if they should work for the company he would tell them not to, and he would not advocate to hire people he liked. This is hurting the company's reputation, think about it this way your internal team is far more likely to talk about the company in a positive or negative way than a customer. Because it's easier for them, they have so much more information than a customer and are willing to talk about it passionately when things go wrong.

For healing, leaders can heal a work environment by being present, acknowledging people's feelings, and actively engaging with their teams, especially by hosting skip-level meetings to hear from their direct reports.

In this example, if this manager felt heard and valued, I am sure he would feel completely different and would stay longer working there.

Think about this and ask yourself what's the cost of not treating your leadership development programs like falling in love? What will nurturing their development impact?

And if you want to know how you can get involved in making more leaders aware of this lesson share tag and make a comment on this post so that more people can find this newsletter.

Thank you in advance as always your support means the world to me.

April

CEO and Founder, www.aprilsabral.com & www.retailu.ca

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