Chah-ley

Good morning... What can I get for you?

Ok... Here's a little story about a partner I hired at my first store as a manager. We'll call him Chah-ley... or Charles for short.

One of the first things I noticed about my "new" store was that I was the only male working there. It wasn't balanced at all. Mostly moms, mostly tenured folks and somewhat entitled to working what they wanted. I knew there needed to be a gender and life experience balance. So I started looking at candidates to balance out the mix. I ran across a fella named Charles... a fitness guru and somewhat bull-headed... but he had something you just can't find all of the time. He had a natural gift for being able to apply great customer service across all demographics. He had an appeal to everyone.

Remember that I said he was bull-headed. When he started with me, I took out the performance review form and had a "setting expectations" conversation. Well, he thought after 6 months, he'd be entitled to a promotion. Now, he was good, but not ready for a Lead Clerk job. He had some things he needed to polish up.

So we sat down for his review... and I had prepared well. I spent the time coming up with examples of behaviors and actions that I would need to see before I would consider him. At his 6-month review, we sat down and had the conversation. He gave me his side, and I gave him mine... they didn't match up. But I told him straight out... You have to fix these things and then enhance these things and you'll be golden.

Now here's the important part... I made good on my promise. He fixed and exceeded all of the things we talked about and I had a Lead Clerk spot open for him. Again... we went through all of the expectations and responsibilities. We also set the bars for "meets expectations" and "exceeds expectations"... just so he knew how to get there and what "getting there" meant.

I'm not sure if you can take any sort of lesson from here but I do know that Starbucks current performance review system doesn't really layout what an "exceeds" is and so it's left up to the individual manager to interpret the performance...

See you tomorrow for your usual...

Pat Nerr...