There are different ways to lead teams—perhaps as many ways as there are leaders. And a given leader might manage with a different style in a different set of circumstances. While there isn’t a single accepted way to lead or manage, the “right” way should be defined as the one that works to achieve the goals of the organization. A retail operation generally seeks to increase profits while controlling costs, so a leadership or management approach that delivers on those goals would obviously be the best for the operation.

Once upon a time, many if not most businesses were run in a “command and control” style. That is, the business leader (CEO, VP, regional manager, shift supervisor) issued orders or directives, and his or her direct reports executed on those orders. The style emerged from military organizations, where tight discipline was and is crucial to the survival as well as the success of the organization. Members of a military unit, down to the individual soldier, understand the need for such a structure and style of leadership almost without question.

How Tight a Ship?

But outside the military, command and control tends to wear on team members, eroding their commitment to the organization. In retail settings in particular, especially ones that employ millennial workers who seek deeper engagement and feel a need to offer ideas and be heard, command and control—when used exclusively—will quickly alienate employees and likely result in disengaged, uncommitted workers and increased turnover.

Not surprisingly, many retail businesses are rapidly adopting an “interested engagement” management style. Interested engagement is a leadership approach that emphasizes getting to know and understand individual employees, training and developing workers sufficiently for all the tasks they will face on the job, and frequently and formally recognizing their job successes. The engagement approach also emphasizes teamwork over hierarchy, customer focus to ensure a single, unified team direction, and employee support via coaching. Perhaps most importantly, the engagement style encourages the practice of both listening to and acting upon employee feedback. 

Management via interested engagement very frequently results in more committed teams of frontline workers who feel valued as individuals by their employer, who are more inclined to work harder toward company objectives, who trust that their ideas are heard and considered, and who are more likely to remain with the company longer.

All Engagement, All the Time?

Fine. But aren’t there times when command and control is still a necessary, if temporary, approach, even in the world of retail? The answer is yes. Consider product recalls, for instance. It wouldn’t make sense for a manager to ponder suggestions, weigh options, or allow team members to self-select tasks when the health and safety of customers might be on the line and time is critical. A manager during a recall would need the flexibility to issue directives, delegate systematically, discourage dissent, emphasize speed, and absolutely minimize risk.

Clearly, a combination of the two styles still has a place in today’s retail business. Day to day, the engagement leader should inspire team members, listen to their ideas about new and innovative approaches to tasks, and seek to treat individual employees as colleagues. But brushfires occur, and the skilled manager or supervisor will have established a rapport, a level of trust with frontline workers, that will enable the manager to step in and take command—judiciously—when circumstances require. In such cases, the leader’s decisiveness will often deepen the level of respect between the leader and the team.

Even the professional military recognizes that if leaders always have to issue orders, they have probably lost the ability to lead.