From the #1 Indie Podcast Network for Retail, The Retail Razor: Blade to Greatness retail leadership podcast explores the skills, mindset, and strategies retail executives need to lead successfully in the AI era. Stay Sharp. Lead Boldly. Stay Human.
Missed the last issue?
There are about 280,000 people picking groceries inside US stores right now. In the aisle, with a cart, walking past you while you shop, assembling somebody else’s order. The demand for that work is growing faster than grocers can hire for it, especially at 2 and 3 in the morning, which is exactly when you’d want it done. Are in-store robots the answer grocers have been looking for?
The question I keep avoiding.
I told April Sabral on air that this might be my favorite topic, which is a risky thing to say before your guest starts talking. She then spent 15 minutes making me feel like I should audit my own last three meetings.
April wants leaders to end your meeting by asking the team:
what did you learn from me today?
The question that would tell you the most about your leadership is the one you avoid, and you avoid it for exactly the reason you should be asking it. I remember many times in a past role where I was part of a team that wished our executive leader asked this question at the end of a meeting. He probably wouldn’t have liked the answer.
April was back on the Blade to Greatness podcast this week. If you’re not familiar with her work, she’s a bestselling author (most recently published Positive Accountability for Teams: Building a Culture of Success) and a leadership coach. Our topic was the manager to coach reset that retail really needs right now. Casey Golden framed the timing: this has been a hard sales year, holiday is coming soon, and teams are being judged on numbers the economy is setting for them.
That’s the exact moment leaders default to pushing the to-do list. April’s argument is that the to-do list is what makes everything worse.
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The 80/20 test.
This is April’s simple test, and it costs nothing.
When you leave your next meeting, count you time speaking vs listening. If you didn’t spend 80% of it listening and 20% of it talking, you haven’t made the shift to coaching yet.
I like this test because it forces you to be honest. Most leadership advice is hard to fake. This one gives you an immediate answer, and the answer is usually no.
April’s setup for it is the part I keep repeating in conversations with retail leaders. In a store, we push people to ask customers questions. Listen to what they say. Respond to that. Most retail people do this well. Then we promote them, hand them a team, and the skill vanishes. They start believing the job is telling people what to do all day.
Same person, same building, new title. The questions stop.
April’s fix is simple and intentionally not very glamorous:
Write your questions down before the meeting. Before the huddle, the store visit, the call. Two questions she uses to open are what did you learn yesterday, and what will you try differently today.
Five words instead of “you missed target.”
This is the part I would tape onto the inside of a back office door. In a giant font size.
When someone misses a number, don’t open with the number. If your expectations were clear, they knew before you walked in. You know they know. They know that you know they know. Saying it out loud only tells them you came to lecture. No one wants to be lectured.
Open with this instead: walk me through your process.
Then stop talking and listen for where it broke down.
April calls what comes next coaching the gap, and the point is that you now know where the gap actually is.
You can’t coach a number. You can coach the one step in a sequence where somebody hesitated or strayed.
April walks through exactly how that conversation goes at 11:53 in the episode, including the part where the person starts diagnosing it for you. Worth two minutes.
Her honest caveat: this takes real skill and effort from the leader, and it’s slower. That cost is why most people skip it, even though it’s practically gold.
Store traffic is a Gift. Don’t waste it!
Positivity you can put on a scorecard.
Casey asked the question I wanted to ask, which is how you measure any of this when sales are down for reasons nobody on your team controls.
April’s answer was simple and accountable:
Track turnover.
Track customer reviews.
Track productivity.
Measure them before and after coaching training, and positive leadership stops being a thing you have to defend in a budget meeting.
Then she said the line that made the episode for me, and I am 100% stealing it:
Energy leaves evidence.
April can read it walking into a store. The person in front of her is tense, head down, finishing a task. Nobody has recognized them lately. Nobody has taught them anything lately. The customers standing in that store feel it too. Which is how it lands in your reviews and then in your sales numbers.
Where I landed.
Retail leadership coaching typically gets filed under soft skills, and that filing is why it keeps losing to the to-do list when the sales quarter gets tight.
April’s framing fixes that. Operational consistency comes from systems, growth comes from questions. Keep every system you have. She’s clear those come first.
The coaching sits on top and does a job systems can’t do, which is make the person better than they were yesterday.
If you only run systems, you get a team that executes, stops improving, and leaves for somewhere that develops them. Every exit interview says the same thing. People want to be trained.
ICYMI: April’s Positive Accountability in the AI Era series.
Watch, listen, subscribe.
🎙️Blade to Greatness, Season 2 Episode 11: Retail Leadership Coaching & The 80/20 Rule That Defines It
The full episode with April Sabral is available now. It runs 15 minutes. That’s less time than one exit interview, and considerably cheaper in the long run.
Next episode preview: Steve Worthy returns to address something every retail tech founder needs to hear. He calls it “the accelerator mindset,” and it’s all about how growth really happens in retail businesses.
Your Turn.
Subscribe now and you get the best of each episode in your inbox before you have time to listen. If this one was useful, forward it to the leader on your team who is still reading the to-do list out loud every morning instead of asking a coaching question.
Comment on this newsletter or join the conversation on LinkedIn! Your insights can help shape the topics we explore next!
Until next time… Stay sharp. Lead boldly. Stay human.
Sincerely,
Ricardo Belmar
The Retail Razor: Blade to Greatness
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Blade to Greatness is part of the Retail Razor Podcast Network, alongside The Retail Razor Show, Retail Transformers, and Data Blades. Find us at RetailRazor on LinkedIn, Bluesky, Threads, and Instagram. For a full transcript of this episode, visit our retailrazor.com website!