We Keep Promoting the Wrong People

In this week's CX Passport, The One With the Answers in the Field, April Sabral and I got into something that shows up in retail… but isn’t limited to retail at all.

That’s obvious. And yet, we do it constantly.

Retail does it because results are visible. Your store hits plan… you get promoted. You exceed KPIs… you get more responsibility.

But leading one store well and leading ten stores well are not the same job. Leading yourself to results and leading others to results are not the same skill.

I’ve been on both sides of that.

There were moments in my career where people would have followed me into the next thing. And there were moments where the honest answer would have been… no.

I cringe to tell this story, but I recall a time when I was a project manager for one portion of a sizeable system implementation. I arrived as an individual contributor but then was promoted to project manager. Team morale was a bit low so I “decided” to give folks encouragement.

Awkwardly sharing a half-baked theme of how what we were doing would save lives… technically true… but QUITE the emotional stretch… I could see the literal and metaphorical eye-rolls from the team.

I had no idea how to motivate a team, and it showed.

Thankfully, that was quite some time ago, and I’ve learned… but I’ll never forget that moment.

Driving performance through your own effort is very different than influencing performance through someone else’s.

April talked about how companies invest heavily in product training… operations training… how to open and close the store.

But not nearly enough in:

• How to coach
• How to hold someone accountable without creating resentment
• How to communicate in a way that builds commitment instead of compliance

And that gap shows up directly in the customer experience.

A store manager who doesn’t know how to develop people can still push tasks. They can enforce process. They can hit short-term metrics.

But if the team feels unsupported… unclear… or disconnected, the experience flattens out. You get execution without energy.

It’s easy to promote results. It’s harder to develop leaders.

But if customer experience is truly created in the moments between employees and customers, then leadership capability is not a “nice to have.” It’s infrastructure.

And infrastructure is either built intentionally… or it cracks under pressure.

Your Turn:​
Think about the last promotion decision you saw… or made. Was it based on results… or readiness to lead?

Put those tray tables up and buckle those seat belts. Let’s go!

-Rick

P.S. If you know someone who might benefit from this week’s newsletter, please feel free to forward this to them. Or they can sign up here.

What’s on tap this week?…

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Host - Rick Denton Rick believes the best meals are served outside and require a passport

🎤🎞️The One With the Answers in the Field – April Sabral E251🎧 Listen on any Pod app

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