Purgatory In Pink - Store Manager Vow'd Employee Review

Culture from above seems to be the biggest issue. The upper management gets an idea in their head about a person that isn’t meeting the 50% to 60% conversion goal and it feels like the associate put in a black list and feels like the only focus is on the negative. Leading in this way really hurts the morale and causes the team members to underperform. If you treat a person like an under-performer they will become an under-performer. Every time the district leader comes into the store it seems an employee quits right after. Often it’s a better performing employees that is not willing to put up with her toxicity and constant change in expectations. Vow’d needs to accept that the successes don’t just come from great sales people, but great culture, great products and availability to those products. District leadership is caustic, and is hypocritical, ambiguous and deceptive. The district leader would give leaders goals to give associates and once they achieved them those goals were no longer good enough to reward them with a pay increase or promotion. This would cause top talent to distrust the store leaders advocacy for them. The district leader deals with things in a very condescending manner and employees were uncomfortable with the way they talked to management in front them. The leaders are then having to try to generate positive culture in a very different way filtering the negativity that the district brings. If leadership can’t communicate in a positive way their “trusted” leaders begin to feel insecure about themselves enough that they are not able to express themselves in a way that is collaborative and meaningful to the betterment of the brand. Not every leader thrives on negative interventions, some need positive outcomes sandwiched with constructive coaching and proven solutions. The training the district leader would come and do every visit would not result in anything productive. The store leadership was made to feel like it was their inability so they began to accept this way of thinking rather than remembering the successes that they have been able to achieve. Being beaten down all the time is not a way to produce a winner or a change for the positive. With leaderships’ anxious micromanaging and contradictory expectations it’s completely obvious why they run through management. “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Maya Angelou No matter what, as a Christian company the lack of grace, respect and compassion that leadership has is a considerable part of the reason the company isn’t more successful. I’m so disappointed to have worked in this culture knowing that the mission of this brand as a whole was something I was so excited to be able to be a part of. At Vow’d it felt like this was never really a priority to this brand. That being said I believe the store/company will not survive if it continues to have closed minded toxic leadership, poor product management and lack of support to the individual store needs.