Why You May Want to Give That Rule Breaker a Reward

He was out of dress code, but she didn't say anything - not yet.

She was a visiting regional manager, so she put her bag in the office and began walking the floor. As she walked the store, she learned that the manager, out of dress code, was helping out for the day. This wasn't his home store; he showed up to lend a hand.

She had to say something about the dress code, but she also wanted to acknowledge his extra effort in going out of his way to help another location.

"You know, your shirt is out of dress code." She said.

"It is?" He replied, now a bit worried. "How so?"

"It has a bad word on it. Can you cover it with tape for today?" She asked.

"Oh, yeah, of course." He said, and he did.

At the end of the day, before she left, she gave him a gift card for helping the store because he didn't typically work there.

On our district training call, she recanted the story.

"I was ready to reprimand this kid for being out of dress code and at the end of the day, I ended up giving him a gift card," she told us.

I laughed out loud. I told her it was one of my favorite things about the training.

This training happened towards the end of the COVID crisis. We were still wearing masks, but restrictions would soon lift. During that time, it was imperative that we, as leaders, adapted and became more flexible than we may have been otherwise.

This evolution is what makes leaders great at what they do.

"This is the way we've always done it" is a recipe for disaster. We know it. But more often than not, we refuse to evolve.

We reprimand someone for a minor infraction.

We go straight to a write-up when a conversation will do.

We're busy, and sometimes we act hasty.

When things get hectic, and you're unsure where to start, ask yourself these three questions.

"Does this need to be said? Does this need to be said by me? Does this need to be said by me now?" - Craig Ferguson

As a leader, these questions are an excellent guide.

Maybe it does need to be said, but not by you. A support leader could address it.

Maybe it does need to be said by you. Sometimes, the gravity of a situation calls for a senior leader's voice.

Does it need to be said by you now? Maybe. You'll know.

We often find ourselves answering these questions without thinking about them as we go about our day. If someone is doing something unsafe, we won't run through the questions; we'll move and speak up.

But when you're a visiting manager walking the sales floor with leaders you don't know well, these questions are a helpful guide.

If you're walking in to close your store and it's clear the opening hasn't gone as you'd liked, begin to ask your opening manager questions to gain insight and run through the three questions to determine where you need to start guiding them back on track.

These questions have helped me step back and look at unique situations. They've been an essential baseline in guiding me where to start.

Leading people is an art.

Sometimes, we need to be direct and act quickly. Other times, we need to slow down and ask more questions. Determining when to do that and with whom sets great leaders apart.

My regional manager could've come in, handed this young manager a write-up, and moved on with her day, but she didn't. She waited. She listened. She asked questions and realized that the fact that he had gone out of his way to help his district was way more important than his t-shirt.

Hey, I’m Kit. I spent two decades leading retail teams and I now write about Leadership, Retail, Web3, and Business.

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