An authentic leadership journey
An Authentic Leader’s Progress - Introduction
I was lucky enough to get my first significant leadership role in my mid-20s. It was the job of store manager at a grocery company called Safeway in the UK. I ran a little - but very busy - store on the Kings Road in Chelsea; an affluent part of south-west London much loved by the aristocracy, rock stars and (in those days) American bankers. I managed a team of around a hundred people – and it was a cosmopolitan group. I remember folks from Thailand, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, China, Spain and Portugal, and a few Scots, as well as a smattering of people from Essex and South London. They were a great crew; many of whom had overcome significant adversity to find a way to London to make a new life for themselves and their families. It was a privilege to be their leader.
Of course, I didn’t think about my job as being that of a leader. It said store manager on my badge. I was a manager. I managed things: colleagues, inventory, customers, my boss and ultimately, sales and profits. But I was always curious about my people; I wanted to understand why they were there in that little store, what was important to them and what they needed from me to be able to thrive and be the best they could be; so that our little shop would do better.
Kings Road was my first store, I was a rookie, and expectations were pretty low. But over the course of my first year, results improved. We started to climb the district rankings for all measures except absolute sales (it was a tiny store). We did especially well on employee measurements and difficult to control areas like shrinkage. One day, out of the blue, we had an unannounced visit from our managing director, Pat Kieran, who later wrote to me to say it was the best ‘blind’ store visit he had done for years.
That visit was a heart in the mouth moment. It happened in the middle of the afternoon and I had left the shop floor (where I spent most of my time each day) to sign off the weekly payroll in the basement offices. Mr Kieran (as he was known) was on the sales floor for 20 minutes or so before I heard he was there. And when I did hear, Usain Bolt couldn’t have beaten me up the stairs to the shop floor! By then, he had spent a chunk of time talking to members of the team as they went about their daily jobs of filling shelves, serving customers and supervising the checkout. When I saw him, he had a huge smile on his face. He shook my hand and told me that, ‘This is happy store – well done big fella!’ (I’m five eight and a half on a good day – so ‘big fella’ was Mr Kieran’s way of getting around the fact that he didn’t have a clue who I was). We talked about sales trends and other results, and he put his arm around me, said ‘well done’ and left the store. I was grinning from ear to ear, almost shaking with excitement.
The day of a store manager doesn’t get much better.
My team had done me proud. And I was so proud of them. I went around, thanked everyone and shook their hands as I told them what Mr Kieran had said. It was a great day.
And I never gave it another thought. I just kept on doing what I was doing… But in the following years, I did think deeply about that day. And ‘doing what I was doing’ - initially unconsciously, but later deliberately and very consciously – has taken me on a beautiful journey around the world, to big leadership roles in fantastic, purpose-led companies. A journey where I have had the chance to lead many extraordinary people in countries all over the world; learned so much about myself and what it takes to get the best out of the people who work with you. All in the glorious pursuit of conscious business success through people.
I’m not a guru. I never went to business school. But I have spent years thinking about what it takes to be an authentic leader and how important good leadership is to create a winning culture for business.
In the coming months, in amongst my other posts, I’ll share stories of some of the things I’ve learned along the way. If you are motivated to be the best leader you can be, focused on making a real impact in your business through people, look out for the headline “An Authentic Leader’s Progress”. I hope that these little stories will perhaps provoke or inspire you in a way that supports you on your own very personal leadership journey. People tend to say rather pejoratively these days that ‘feedback is a gift’ –but it really is – so let me know if the stories are helpful and whether you have specific questions.
