by Tracy Lynn Richards

Created on: October 31, 2009

Management is definitely not for everyone. It takes an extreme amount of discipline, organizational skills, and good judgment to be successful. As a manager it is your responsibility to recruit new talent, hire them, train them, and coach or counsel them as needed. You always have to be thinking that the people under you are going to be the ones representing you and your company in your absence. This is one of the most important things about being a manager. Demonstrating good leadership and a positive attitude is always a must. Especially when you are dealing with the public face to face on a daily basis. Your body language and how you present yourself are of the utmost importance. You must be able to emotionally detach yourself from all personal issues and be ready to serve your guest at all times.

As a leader of a team you must have a take charge attitude and set the examples for your associates so they have clear expectations of what is expected of them. I personally have always said that you are only as good as your worst trained associate. In other words you get out of people what you put into them. It is also important to have a clear model of service set in place. For example a customer journey broke down into enter, browse, try-on, checkout, and walk out if you are in retail like I was for 12 years. Stop drop and service was always my mission and duty. As a manger you must realize that customers are the back bone of our business and why you have a job.

You have to be a great multi tasker to be a manager too. There are countless duties to be performed. There are reports to be filled out, emails to attend to, price changes that need done, promotions that need changed, schedules that need done, shipments that need processed, phone calls to be made, daily to do lists that need filled out, stocking, house keeping, maintenance checks, loss prevention, floor control, training of associates, and of course the big one- sales to be made! And that's just the tip of the ice burg. As you can imagine time management is key in this profession, otherwise you will always be playing catch up. You have to be diligent and intentional in everything you do.

You may ask yourself if you have what it takes. Some things you might also want to consider are that managers make a lot of sacrifices. They are compensated well because of this known fact. You might not have ever realized what a big responsibility being a manger is unless you have been one before or know one personally. When people call off it is your responsibility to cover their shift. When the busy weekends come you need to be there to ensure your customers the best service. When the holidays roll around there is no vacation or sick time allowed to be taken because of what are referred to as black out dates. Also around busy seasons you are required to work 6 day work weeks instead of 5. To make it simple, if having a full social calendar and spending lots of time with loved ones is important to you, then management would most definitely not be your cup of tea.

However, if you are hard working, single or with out small children in the home, ambitious, dependable, organized, logical, self motivated, people and goal oriented, enthusiastic, a natural born leader, have a can do attitude, and aren't afraid of hard work and setting and meeting goals and expectations then management may be just the thing you are looking for. You can make a great deal of money, especially if bonuses are involved. You have to be willing to make sacrifices and put yourself into your position and success can be yours!

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