It's an unfortunate circumstance that happens all too often in retail: those in leadership positions either micromanage their employees or delegate too much of their responsibilities upon them. There is a delicate balance between asking too much and too little of one's employees and it's sad but very few are capable of hitting that balance.
Having been in management positions myself, I understand that I'm the type to take on more than I should. I am very bad at delegation, which is a fatal flaw in a leader. It shows a distinct lack of trust in one's employees when a manager injects himself or herself into a situation and essentially takes complete control over it instead of delegating to a team he or she believes will get it done. This can influence employees one of two ways. Either they will struggle to rise above it and prove to the micromanager that they didn't need the supervision after all, or they will write it off as impossible and simply let the entire thing fail to prove to the micromanager he or she shouldn't have gotten involved in the first place. As I learned, my need to control all aspects of a given project meant I was constantly taking over projects instead of letting my employees do them and succeed or fail on their own merits. It meant there was very little accountability, as they all learned I'd be there to pick up any slack they left behind in my need to ensure perfection.
As a result, my health began to fail. My relationship with my husband grew increasingly strained. Until one day I realized that my dedication to my job had meant I missed a large portion of my kids early years. My youngest was five before I fully realized what the abusive relationship that I had with my employer was costing me. Make no mistake, here. My employer at the time was in no way innocent of wrongdoing. As a company, they made no effort to hide the fact that everyone was dispensable and they would use their employees until they broke and then throw them away. However, I was complicit in my own mistreatment because not only did I allow my coworkers and fellow managers to take advantage of me, I was allowing my employer to as well.
I left that job and started over at a different company. I was still working retail, but it was far less stressful and by starting over I had very few responsibilities. There was freedom in it; a freedom I embraced wholeheartedly and used to reforge my connections with my family.
On the other hand, there are those who delegate too much. While I take on too much myself, I have worked with those who prefer to go the other route and delegate everything so that they may sit back and do what they want with no consequences. It's sad to think of how many of those I've worked with over the years. Those types of managers are just as bad as ones who micromanage everything, as more often than not they simply set their employees up for failure. Whether it's intentional or not, by delegating everything to everyone else and then sitting back to watch what happens, a manager isn't providing leadership. They're shifting their responsibilities onto others with no regard for whether or not the ones assuming those responsibilities are suited for them, trained for them, or even desirous of them. If I've learned anything working in retail over the years, though, it's that you'll encounter more of the type that delegate than the type that micromanage the higher you go.
My father-in-law has a saying: "You are only promoted to the level of your incompetence."
I always took that to mean that a person would get promoted until they hit a point where they weren't qualified for the job anymore. After this long in retail, however, my perception has somewhat changed. Now I feel it's more a case of people being promoted into positions they are unsuited for, regardless of whether or not someone more qualified happens to be there. And the higher in a company you go, the more out of touch you are with the basic running of it. The ones who suffer the most for your ignorance are the people all the way at the bottom. The stockers, the cashiers, the customer service people who walk your massive stores every single day to make sure products are on shelves and customers are being helped. The custodial staff who make sure everything is clean. The administrative staff who make sure stores are able to open every day, with correct prices on the shelves and appropriate signage up for all those seasonal sales. These are the people who see the tiny details, the minutia of every day in the store, and these are the ones treated the worst. A corporate executive is too zoomed out; interested in the big picture of the company at the expense of the individual customer or store.
Until companies stop asking the little people to shoulder the entire burden of that big picture, things will only get worse.
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