The customer is always right…right? No. That is not true. It is a lie. Here is where we get to go. This fabled statement is not an entire truth since a customer could absolutely be lying about something to get something else in return. Maybe something at no cost. So are they right? NO. Stanley Marcus of Neiman Marcus fame said and what I think is one of the most prolific statements ever made about retail, and I paraphrase, “the customer is not always right; however they are still the customer.” Therein the truth lies. A relative lie precipitates a truth.
That is our next post. The previous one dealt with the truths in retail and this one looks at its lies. The mendacity of retail.
Now, how would you define a lie? Why would someone knowingly lie? We were taught as children, “tell the truth” and do not forget what every parent has said “I will never be angry if you tell me the truth.” And then we begin to navigate, as children, about the art of “truth”. Fast forward to now being a store manager and you are looking into the eyes of a team member, what is your truth or what is your not so truth? What about their ability to tell or not tell the truth? What do you as manager get to navigate?
For example, you have a sales rep who says “Hey, sorry boss, I was late because there was some pretty intense traffic. Sorry.” And what if that was not the truth? You have heard it from your team. You have heard it all. You have heard it was my kids, the customer wasn’t ready to buy, I was busy and couldn’t get to it, the dog ate my homework and the sun was in my eyes. At what point do you separate the sense from the nonsense?
So here is my first line item regarding mendacity, have you established accountability? Have you clarified what is and what is not acceptable? Do lies have a place in your conversations or are they just merely slight, little mis-truths helping everyone to just get along (trick question)? God forbid you hold Todd accountable, risk him quitting and then you have to live short-staffed. Does the lie you are willing to accept sit lower than making sure you have coverage? You see the lies we embrace now are not what we grew up with. We were instructed that if we told the truth, mom and dad wouldn’t be angry and we would deal with the accountability of the issue. As we have grown, we see the lie was/is…necessary and should not bring us all down, and as managers we balance the issue with what we will be OK dealing with. We have settled with degrees of truth and lies. We have settled in with phrases like “well, as long as…” or “but, it really didn’t…” and “did we still achieve…”
So where do the lies live? We have already shared lies live or die within a defined and real accountability in a job. The next “aha” must be the leader who allows them to exist or not. If you know you are working with someone who would lie about their tardiness, what else might they lie about? At what point do you let truth be a condition of employment? I believe, just as in child rearing, people need to know their boundaries. They need to know to what extent, poor performance or non-compliance is allowed. And, wait for it, to what extent it must also be coached and developed. It is one thing to be caught in a lie, it is squarely another to learn from it and be taught a better way. One says you did wrong, period. The other says I am invested in making sure you make a better decision next time. You matter to me that much. Too tree-huggy? I will always ere on the side of helping someone to be better tomorrow. Always.
Another consideration may be that the lie is not really a lie. Maybe the other way to explore it is that it…is…not all the truth (or facts). As managers, we must ensure things get done and we simply do not have all the facts. We do ‘em ‘cuz we are told to do so. Do you ask questions? Do you try and figure it out or just go with the flow? Perhaps it it may have been you were told by your team, “hey, that is not what you said earlier or what they said?” And you had to…what exactly? Make stuff up?
People lie. Why? Who knows? You have lied. Why? Who knows? Our team…well you know the pattern. There are truths, “-isms” in retail and there are lies. Or is it a lack of complete truth? So my proverbial what to do then:
Define it for your team. Give them the why. Give them what they need to embrace when you ask them to “get it done” in retail.
Own your job as manager; which means you have to tell them, in some occasions, you do not have the answer. Or that you have the answer, and the truth will sting a little. I have lived that very recently.
Don’t just do without asking. Do not just make it up as you go. There is a difference between being improvisational and being false leader. Integrity and trust is at stake.
Retail isn’t easy. It isn’t always transparent. It involves people and that can get messy. It means we have to do stuff we may not want to really do. It means we will have to face the mirror. What will you see?
Cheers