People who need people Retailers are lousy at people skills. I say that reluctantly. After all, our industry is unusually friendly, as can be seen at any tour or conference. Snobs are rare, and garden retail gatherings are marked by how many are sharing their experience with others so they can avoid the same mistakes. Yet the more stores I visit, and the more I watch how employees react to owners, the more I'm convinced that most retailers aren't very good bosses. Signs of a bad boss I'm going to take a page from those redneck jokes: You know you're a bad boss when … * You've just hired the most fantastic new manager ever. Well, at least since the last one you hired six months before. And the one you hired two years before that. * Everyone is too afraid that you will blame the messenger to report when something goes wrong, like cashiers stealing from the till or a favorite customer bringing back a huge purchase. * Training new hires is too much of a hassle because there is a new hire every three weeks. * You promote your 22-year-old, new-college-grad daughter to general manager over the manager who has successfully run your store for 10 years. And you gave your child twice the salary the experienced manager earned. * Employees are disciplined in front of their peers instead of in private. * Nobody offers merchandising or product ideas. Ever. * On any given day, at least one employee calls in sick. * You prefer screaming to arranging a meeting to confront an employee. If you recognize yourself, you aren't alone. I visit far more stores where employees are silent than ones where they are engaged with customers and other employees. Years ago, I wrote the silence off to boredom. But I began noticing the employees' expressions as the owner escorted me through the store. Some would look away when the owner boasted about how great he thought staff members were. Others would all but roll their eyes when he talked about how much employees loved working for him. Others still would hunch their shoulders and shut down all expression when their boss talked about how the employee created the displays we were looking at. So I began talking to employees at tours and conferences, assuring them that I wouldn't report back to their boss about what they said. I heard stories about how the owners would undermine a manager's authority with the rest of the employees by regularly reassigning the employees from tasks the manager had set, and not telling the manager what they had done. Or how buyers would be told to make a purchase by one co-owner, only to be chewed out by the other. I have been to stores that do a remarkable job with employees. Most of those stores have regulations in place that they stick to. They have policies, such as every new hire must be trained for five days and mentored for a month. And behavior problems are brought to the employee's attention in writing, and the employee is fired when enough violations pile up. And if a task is assigned to one employee, that employee completes it without interference. So which type of boss are you? Send this article to a friend Enter your e-mail address: Enter your friend's e-mail address: Click the image below to send: © 2007 Branch-Smith Publishing