Need Directions...Start Here!

Who says you can't be the hero in your own retail leadership journey? I remember the days of feeling overlooked in the bustling world of retail, unsure how to break through the noise. Now, as your guide, I'll take you through the valleys and peaks of leadership in the retail space. This heartfelt session is designed to acknowledge your fears and aspirations as we explore the often ignored yet remarkable adaptability and problem-solving capabilities that retail leaders possess. Equipped with insights from my upcoming book "The Approachable Leader," we'll delve into the 'SMILE framework' and why emotional intelligence is your secret weapon in the retail battlefield.

Have you ever felt stuck between your present role and the future you're yearning for? You're not alone. This episode is a treasure trove of strategies and advice for those ready to carve out their own path, be it climbing the ladder within your current organization or venturing into new opportunities altogether. We talk about creating a personal vision that's as unique as you are, along with initiating a self-assessment that's as honest as it is enlightening. The journey to becoming an authentic leader, unshackled by competition and comparison, starts with recognizing your innate talents and transforming them into action.

Finally, consider this your personal invitation to join a community of like-minded retail leaders eager to develop and refine their leadership skills. It's about becoming the leader you've envisioned, defined by your aspirations, not others' expectations. I'm here to support and advocate for your growth in an industry that's ripe for change. By connecting with us and tapping into our resources, you're taking the first crucial step towards your leadership goals. So, thanks for listening to Retail Leadership with Steve Worthy, where every moment is an opportunity to shape your destiny.

Chapters

• 0:00 Closing the Gap
• 15:57 Championing Retail Leadership
• 28:14 Decoding Leadership Skills for Advancement
• 38:10 Start Here for Retail Leadership Development

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:51

So I'm going to start this episode off with a very bold statement. Here it is. I know you. I know you. I know you are not getting the leadership attention that you need. I know some of you may have some fears about your future. What's next? You need a plan, whether it's with your current company or it's with a different company.

Speaker 1: 1:15

Some of the things that you may be fearing about is that you don't know if you have the requisite skills to move to the next level. Here's the other thing. I know you have different challenges that you are facing every day and you're not sure about your own level of aspirations and making sure that your level of leadership aligns with those aspirations. But here's the other thing that I know that's most important about you you need someone to talk to. You can't talk to your peers. You know why Because they're going through the same thing that you're going through. Here's the other part that you can't do. You can't really talk to your boss because either they think that you're going to leave or they may think that and feel that you are disgruntled. You're stuck. You're stuck in this place of.

Speaker 1: 2:05

I want to go somewhere, I want to grow, I want to do different things, but you're not particularly sure where to start. So you're going to start here. Here's how I know you. It's because I've experienced all of those things, I've lived through all of those things and now I coach senior retailers through all of these experiences. This podcast, this podcast, this episode, it's called Start here. It's because I wanted to make sure that I gave you an opportunity, a place for you to start, because everybody, before you get to where it is that you want to go to, you have to start somewhere. So we're going to start here. Let's go.

Speaker 2: 2:49

Welcome to Retail Leadership with Steve Worthy, where we go well beyond the corporate playbook to unpack major opportunities, hidden challenges and critical issues that senior retail leaders face every day. If you're ready to get the insights you need to elevate the impact you have on your team, increase the profitability of your stores and level up your retail career, then keep listening, my friend, because I see a lot more success in your future. So let's get started right now.

Speaker 1: 3:24

So often. When I started this podcast and we've been doing it for a while now one of the first questions that a lot of people may ask is that they say which episode should I start with? And it's a great question. It's a great question and typically I would probably send them to what I call the episode the Law of Connections, which is one of my most popular ones. Also, ted Lasso's leadership lessons has been great. And or I've sent them to the new market, new leader right, because that's an episode that a lot of leaders have and will be experiencing. But I wanted to provide you with this podcast because it's going to be a fundamental perspective of what retail leadership would see worthy and, of course, our company, worthy Retail, all the different things that we kind of do and we focus in on, but also the idea is to really provide you with a centralized place to gain deep insight and knowledge about retail leadership. The goal, of course, is we're going to be talking later on in our North Star section about one behavior and one thought and one action, things that we want you to take, things that we want you to do as a result of this podcast. So super excited to kind of move forward with you on this.

Speaker 1: 4:53

Here's the thing when I say I know you, I know you. I know we talked about some maybe some not really negative things, but we spoke a little bit about kind of your current state, maybe some of the fears and things that you may be grappling with, right. But here's the one thing you know you, as a retail leader, you are the most capable leader in the world, bar none, bar none. Your ability to adapt, overcome is outmatched, regardless of the industry. And I've dealt with a lot of people in other industries tech, you know, it, gas, telecommunications, supply chain finance, you name it. I've dealt with, I've coached, I've helped write business plans that help other people start businesses in all of those different areas. But I always come back to retail leaders because I firmly believe you are the best and the most capable in the world. But here's the other thing I know you want to change. You may be frustrated, right. You may lack some of the progress that you think you need or that you feel that you need and that you're deserving. Your company isn't providing that for you, right, you have the power inside of you that you want to make the change. You have the wherewithal. Right, you have the perspective, right. You've been kind of thinking about it, right.

Speaker 1: 6:15

One of the things I see a lot as I coach retail leaders is that there's a problem. There may be a problem, but they're not particularly sure what that problem is. And I know that sounds sort of elusive, right, but it's so true. We all have something inside of us that we're really trying to figure out and move forward in, but we don't really know what that is, and part of this podcast is to help you kind of understand what some of those things are.

Speaker 1: 6:46

The biggest issue that we see, that we see is the gap the gap. I have a very simple coaching philosophy. It's based on the gap analysis and really what it does. It talks about your current state, where you are to where it is that you want to be. Right. So you have your current state and where it is that you want to be, but what's in between is that gap. That is the most critical part, other than understanding and identifying where you currently stand. That gap is the most critical part and, as a leader, that gap is a chasm because you are lacking some of the leadership training and skills. From a corporate standpoint, they're not providing you any of that right? I'll use myself as an example. One of the things I realized was that I had to invest in myself If I wanted to go to the next level or I wanted to get to move to my next best. I actually had to invest in myself and when I was able to do that, I was able to bring those skills that I learned outside of my company and bring them back into the company and actually leverage my position and also my team even more so.

Speaker 1: 8:02

This gap is a real issue. We see it at all levels. We see it at all levels Whether you are a C-invarsed president all the way down to store manager. We see this gap right. While the measure of the gap or the actual kind of tenets of that gap are going to be different because of the different levels and the different perspectives and the different problems that you are trying to solve. That gap is still in existence, right.

Speaker 1: 8:27

The issue that we see all of those is from a corporate company, political, you know, cultural standpoint, and we try to talk about the things that we want to do. We try to talk about the things that we want to see in our own self and our own leadership and advance in ourselves, but we get stuck. We get stuck in the context that we can't really talk about it. We can't really talk about it, can't talk to you, peers. Once again, you can't talk to your boss, so you need an external person to actually come in and help you with those and help you kind of sort of let your hair now so that you can really speak candidly about where it is that you are and what it is that you want to be. Period. I was a lot to say about this one. You know, this podcast started out where we realized that there was a massive can I say a massive gap, if you will, within the podcast fear you know there was. There's a ton of podcasts that talk about the industry, you know, at large, and there's also podcasts that talk about leadership. They talk about retail leadership and they may talk about it in the context of where it's going and what that person did and things along that line.

Speaker 1: 9:58

I am a retail leader advocate. I am a retail leader advocate. We are championing the plight of the retail leader. We are trying to create a common language right To create some type of standardization of understanding what true retail leadership is, because it is not telecommunications leadership, it is not financial leadership. Our industry is unique unto itself, and so we need our own voice. We need our own advocacy around what it is that we need so that we can move forward. So this gap is in existence.

Speaker 1: 10:37

The current state of retail is right now.

Speaker 1: 10:41

It's all. Here's the thing. The current state of the retail industry is that the retail industry is in the forefront, when the retail leader needs to be in the forefront, right? Whether you go to any conference, what you hear on the stage is about assortment tech, check, check out, of course, retail theft in stocks, logistics and, of course, the customer. These are all at 40,000 foot views, all at 40,000 foot views, but we need a conversation that's at about the 1,000 foot view for senior leaders. And while we talk about all these things, how is that going to impact that actual leader? What do they need to understand? How do they need to actually take these big ideas and then crystallize them down into actionable tactical and strategic steps, right?

Speaker 1: 11:36

Oh, hold on for a second. I can't even forget about AI, right? Ai is all the rage. What does that mean for you as a senior retail leader? How do you actually understand and incorporate and embrace AI into your role as a leader. Here's the thing we're already utilizing it, right, from a personal standpoint, whether it's Siri, virtual meetings, our health and wellness, our wearable technology, all of these things. All of these things, we're utilizing all of them, right, so we're already utilizing it. But what does AI mean for you?

Speaker 1: 12:18

So in our community called the campus, we created a generative AI for retail leaders, right, and it's in our learning lab and what it is?

Speaker 1: 12:28

It's a one-hour intensive, deep dive into generative AI definitions, perspective, some of the actual AI tools that are out there.

Speaker 1: 12:38

But, more importantly, what does it mean for you as a leader? And then, what's the application of that? How do you actually utilize to have conversations, like with your team, but more importantly, also with your boss and your boss's boss, right? The goal of our learning labs inside of our community is to build up your business acumen in such a way that we go deep into one specific topic, not a whole bunch of different modules. We go specific into a topic and you come back, excuse me, and you come out of that learning with information, insight, but also actionable things for you to do as well. So the core issue that we are seeing within the industry is once again identifying and closing that gap. How do we address it for retail leaders at every level, bridging those leadership gaps with tangible ways like offering tools, offering real-life scenarios none of this stuff that you actually don't really think about or that you don't really see when you are sitting down in front of, like an LMS type of setup as well, too.

Speaker 2: 15:08

You're listening to retail leadership with Steve Worthy.

Speaker 1: 15:12

So I wanna move into the last part. Well, second to last part, we still have the North Star to come. I wanna talk about a couple of these unspoken challenges that you are facing. Right, because the biggest thing that invokes change is to actually talk about it. If we sit there and actually think that none of these things exist or that people are actually truly going to address them, we are fooling ourselves. We are truly, truly fooling ourselves. So let me start with a couple of them. I think I have like four, maybe four or five, that I really wanna make sure that we cover it and go over.

Speaker 1: 15:57

I wanna talk about championing the retail leader, and I think I spoke just briefly about it, about being an advocate of the retail leader is helping them understand their unique strengths, helping them understand that they are unmatched in their adaptability and problem-solving capabilities. Right, they are just truly unmatched, and I don't think the retail leader gets enough, gets enough respect in the pantheon, if you will, of leadership. It just doesn't. The ability to influence change on an entire team as a retail leader is, once again, unmatched in any other industry. At its core, the unspoken issues of retail leaders has to refer to the challenges, the concerns the problems that exist within retail leadership, things that a lot of people don't want to address and, as a retail leader, you are still invoking change while you are still not getting your needs met, while you are still dealing with problems that you haven't had the ability to actually identify or even get a resolution for yet. So we have to make sure that first unspoken challenge is championing the retail leader within the retail industry, and I don't mean it in the context of just sitting there at a conference and talking about the ideas of leadership right, not the ideas of leadership we're talking about. How do we actually take those ideas and move them into action? How do we actually help people create a valued opinion of themselves, their team and their industry? How do we help people understand, in a very in depth perspective, data literacy and all of the data that they are seeing on their phones, whether all the KPIs, but then what's the decision making process around once you receive that data? These are a lot of the things that a lot of leaders want to have addressed, but they are not being addressed. They're not being addressed.

Speaker 1: 18:23

Let's talk about the second one Emotional intelligence deficiency, and here's the thing. I don't mean it in the context that you are deficient in your emotional intelligence. I mean in the context of how do we help leaders focus on operational skills, but from an emotional intelligence standpoint that actually provides valuable insight to who they are and how they respond in certain situations. Some will refer to this as self awareness. We talk about it in my upcoming book, the Approachable Leader. We utilize the smile framework. S stands for self awareness, m stands for mindful listening, I is inspires trust, the L is lead by example and the E is effective empathy. I'm going to be doing an entire episode on that one. All of those probably individually, but you'll definitely be able to understand a lot more of that as you read the book when the book comes out. But how do we help leaders understand emotional intelligence at a deeper level? At a deeper level Because when we start to think about leaders and where it is that they want to go, a lot of leaders are smarter than you give them credit for. They are beyond the corporate talking points. They are beyond the corporate banters and the platitudes and all of that stuff. They see through that more so than you can imagine. So we have to make sure that we are addressing the emotional intelligence perspective around retail leaders.

Speaker 1: 20:24

Number three is to make sure that we have realistic developmental, growth and career pathways in place. We have to be able to do that. There are a couple of companies that are actually out there doing it really well, but a lot of them are not doing it well. We have created these unconventional pathways to the next level. Where I've seen it, where I wanted to promote somebody within the company, I was probably maybe 12 months into being with this company and my boss would say, well, no, they need to do X, y and Z before they move to the next level. I'm like I don't think they do. I don't think they do. I think they have the capability right now to actually not do those roles and actually move forward. No, no, no, no, they got to do those two roles. Everybody's had to do those two roles. They need to do those two roles. Can I tell you what? That's why you lose people. That's why people leave. That's when you lose people.

Speaker 1: 21:33

We have to get away from those unconventional pathways and really create a more structured perspective and realistic plan for people to understand where it is that they want to go. Can I just say this too as a retailer, you have to understand this. Sometimes those conversations are going to be hard. Those conversations are going to be not what you anticipate. Those conversations are going to be. You think you are here and in reality you are here. You have to be able to take it with a grain of salt. Let me go to the flip side of that, to the person, to the leader who's providing that information, who's providing that feedback. You have to make sure that your feedback and that your perspective on this leader is not from a knee jerk response and from a knee jerk perspective. It has to be vetted, it has to be well thought out, there has to be a track record. You have to provide concrete information in order and examples in order to actually prove your point. Just because you're the leader over them doesn't give you the ability to just say whatever it is that you want to say within their life and who they are. You have to have really concrete perspectives for that. The unconventional career path is number three that we have to get away from. Number four and I got two, I got this one and we're going to talk about make a move. Number four the emphasis on business acumen. I briefly touched upon this one when I was talking about data literacy. But there's another point that I want to make sure that we talk about around business acumen. It's around data literacy, but it's also around having and generating a valued opinion. I'm going to tell a story that actually illustrates both.

Speaker 1: 23:38

As a store manager, I remember getting visits in whether it was corporate or regional visits or whatever it may be and they would come to my store and we were rocked to visit out. We'd crush it and they would move on. Then they would go to let's just call them Jim. They would go to Jim's store and they would stay for hours at Jim's store. They would stay for hours. I'm like is Jim in trouble? Is Jim getting fired? This was my first couple of times they did that. They would leave my store, they would go to Jim's and they would stay for hours. Man, this is something's wrong. I remember talking to my boss about it. I said, jim, okay, I know you guys spent four or five hours in the store. I said, no, no, no, no, jim's fine.

Speaker 1: 24:27

Jim has a different perspective. I said, okay, what is this perspective? Jim provides valuable information to merchants and corporate and all this other stuff. I said, okay, you know what? I need to know this. I went over to Jim's store and I spent the day with him. We just started talking about all the different aspects and different things like that. Here's why I did that. For a person like myself undergrad and accounting I understand business, how business works, how money works, all those different things inside and out. I get it. Then, going to grad school have a very higher level perspective of business strategy, operations and different things like that. The thing that I didn't realize at that point was that how important it was for me to be able to share a lot of that information and my knowledge with my team in a different way, compared to how I share that knowledge with my boss and my boss's boss or merchants or even the CEO. Listen to me. After that day, he unleashed a bear because I didn't realize at that point in time how important it was for me to be able to articulate my opinion around data around myself, around my team and around the marketplace. When I talk about business acumen number four around the business acumen, you need to have a valued opinion around data literacy, and also that opinion has to be around who you are, your team and your marketplace, because when you're actually able to do that, you actually make yourself more valuable to your team, but also to the company, and you start to stand out head and shoulders above everybody else Once again. Within our community, we have a learning lab called Data Literacy. It's actually a three-part series, and we talk about it from a retention standpoint how to identify the right data. And then the last piece is how do you actually formulate an opinion on the data for your team and be able to communicate that in such a way? Make sure you connect with us in the community called the campus. We'll definitely leave a link for that.

Speaker 1: 26:58

The last area of unspoken challenges that I want to talk about and then we're going to move directly into the North Star is this idea around make a move. I'm going to be doing a completely separate series on this, but the make a move is our framework where we help leaders understand when it's time to either make a move up on or out of the organization. That is, that has to be the most difficult decision that a leader can make identifying when it's time to actually move up on or out. But here's the other part, here's the underpinning of that. Do you have the requisite skills for any one of those? Do you have the requisite skills? What I see often in the coaching process is that a lot of people want to make the move, whether it's up. Let's just say it's up Because they've been in with the company for so long, because they've been able to do this and they've been able to do that. But I'm telling you this that old saying of what got you there won't keep you here.

Speaker 1: 28:15

Or when you go to the next level, what you were able to accomplish is completely different. At the next level, how do you actually translate your leadership skills from one level to the next? And there are steps that you need to take. There is a what we call a decoding process, meaning that within retail namely within retail, there are so many labels that have been placed upon you. There's so many labels. High potential meets expectation doesn't meet expectations. You're going to be the next senior vice president. You're not going to be the next senior vice president. Hey, you're ready for the promotion. You're not ready for the promotion, all these different things. And within that, you don't really know where you stand Right, unless you're with a company that actually has really good processes for communicating that, but most companies don't.

Speaker 1: 29:07

So how do you understand and diagnose when it's time to make a move up on the road of the organization? Right, the framework that we have that we help people with. It's a decoding process and I know this sounds kind of like you know, like a military, but it's so true. You have to decode where you are, who you are and what it is that you want to do. Right, remember that framework that I talked to you about, that gap analysis of understanding the current state to where it is that you want to be. It's the same thing. The decoding piece is like I don't know, steve, where it is that I stand, one with myself, my vision that I want to have for myself, where it is that I want to go Right, money that I want to make, a role that I want to make, all these different things. And then, once we were able to do that now let's devise a plan, let's create a perspective on what it is that you truly want to do, and once we have that plan, let's go ahead and deploy it.

Speaker 1: 30:11

There are certain steps, from from trying to learn to stand out online to increasing your online presence, to being being able to create content that positions you as an expert, whether it's inside your company or you are wanting to attract other people, you know another, another, another company's. There is a strategy that we help leaders implement so that they can be able to move forward, but, more importantly, move forward in confidence, and ideally, the goal is for them to either land that next job, increase their leadership quotient right when they, where they currently are right and feel feel much better about themselves, or they can either make a move on to another organization, or a lot of a move to that's actually has a bigger responsibilities, or they may want to make a move out. Make a move out, do I? Actually? How, how do my current skills transfer to another company, to another industry? Right, we have to be able to help you understand all of those aspects of the, the idea around making a move within yourself as a, as a, as a retail leader. All right, so we just covered, you know, some of the unspoken pieces and challenges that retail leaders face.

Speaker 1: 31:27

Let's move into, let's move into guess what? The North Star. Let's go so our North Star. The North Star is what we consider. I think I can. I can say I love everything I talk about, but the North Star is really what I consider like one of the the best parts of the of the podcast, because we provide you with a behavior, or a thought, and and really then an, an action, something that you need to really do as a result of listening to everything that we just spoke about. So let's talk about briefly the behavior. The behavior you have to have a vision for yourself, right? Here's what happens. Here's what happens.

Speaker 1: 32:13

People allow their leadership journey to happen to them, right? You fall into retail and you typically you know if you stay long enough, you may get promoted. If you stay long enough, again, you may get promoted again. But does that really? Does that you really taking charge of your leadership, or are you just allowing your leadership on the journey to happen to you? Don't allow things to happen to you? And by rethinking your relationship with success and even the vision for yourself, first and foremost, right, that helps you with alignment, that helps you move forward and that helps you move to this next part, around the around North Star, which is your, your, your thought life, 예요, your current experience, cool, cool, all right, wow, cool, well done. So did you get introduced? Yeah, I do reframe your current experience.

Speaker 1: 33:11

The tendency is that when we think about where it is that we want to go. We spend the majority of our time thinking about where it is that we want to go. I coach I don't know how many people who have said they wanted to go to the next level. But when we move into the decoding process and the reframing of their experience, they realize that I don't want to go to the next level. Or the reason why I wanted to go to the next level is because they saw their peer go to the next level. Now it's saying that they don't want to go to the next level, but they're rationing now behind it, which, when you don't want to do something for your own sake, or you want to do something to kind of keep up with the Joneses, it takes on a completely different perspective. You start to think about yourself, you start to think about the things that you currently know completely differently. You start to think about them as it compares to that other person. Can I tell you this? Can I tell you this? Authenticity has no competition. Authenticity has no competition. It just doesn't when you are your authentic self, who you are understanding, who you are, your ability to move to the next level or to even stay where you are and be the best leader that you possibly can be. As a retail leader, there is no competition. So let's reframe your current experience under the guise of understanding that, when we figure out who your authentic self is, there is no competition.

Speaker 1: 34:43

The last thing, the last aspect of the North Star, is action Is action. Our model for 2024 and beyond and beyond, is that action beats intention. Action beats intention. Let's be clear. It's about the right action, but we can intend to do something all day long, which is another reason why I don't like resolutions, annual resolutions Because 90% I think it's even higher than that 90% of people who make their resolutions at the beginning of the year, within a month they stop doing them. It's about action. A lot of people want to move to the next level and they think that it's just gonna happen through osmosis, but they don't want to do any work and then they get pissed off when the person who is actually put in the work moves past them. I'm just being honest with you. I'm just being honest with you. Growth doesn't happen in a vacuum.

Speaker 1: 35:43

Whether you are trying to find, redefine or identify your current leadership path, the first step is to get clarity of where you are. The first step is to get clarity. Can I just give you a quick example, when we're gonna close it up, before you take a trip right, how many of you have taken a trip? Before you take a trip, you pinpoint where you are. You pinpoint where you are. I'm gonna be going to this point in time in this year. I'm gonna be going to Vegas and March, or something like that. Right, and you're trying to book a flight. What is the first thing that they ask you for? Like, where are you? Where are you? I'm in Atlanta, okay. So where do you want to go? Right, it is just the rudimentary function of understanding where it is that you want to go. You have to understand where you are, that you can't even move forward without doing that.

Speaker 1: 36:37

But everybody wants to jump to the destination, they want to jump to the final outcome and then when they either either they don't get to that final outcome or they get to that final outcome and they may not even be ready for it. So the first step, the first step, is to get clarity. Get clarity. Connect with us, get a clarity call. Make you sure that we help you understand where you currently are within your leadership journey. We take one problem that you have identified and we break it down in that process that I just spoke about, where we help you decode, devise and deploy a plan. So make sure you get clarity. You're a capable leader. You're a capable leader, but you may be frustrated, you may feel held back by corporate politics or you're unsure about what's your best next, your best next solution, your best next leadership goal, whatever it is, I hope, these unspoken challenges that we have spoken about but, more importantly, you're gonna hear more about these as we continue on with other episodes that they have provided you with just a measure of understanding that we know you, I understand what you're going through, but, more importantly, we have solutions to help you move to the next level.

Speaker 1: 37:59

I've witnessed so many different leaders struggle, struggle. They struggle in silence. You don't have to struggle in silence. We are here. This podcast is here.

Speaker 1: 38:10

This episode is called Start here, because we want you to start here, to start to realize who you are, to start to realize that you're capable, that you are the best leader in the world. Your ability to adapt and influence change is by far the best in any industry and I just want you to know that I am your advocate. I'm here to help support you as a retail leader so that you can move to where it is, from where you are to where it is that you wanna be. But more importantly, but more importantly, you become the leader that you've always wanted to be, not the leader that others expect you to be. All right, this has been Retail Leadership with Steve Worthy. Make sure you connect with us, book a clarity call or even learn more about our campus so that you can learn a little bit more about yourself, so that you can move forward. Thank you for being here. Really appreciate you. Have a great day and God bless.