Speak up and listen, connect with your colleagues and make a great first impression.
Macy’s CEO Tony Spring shared these three career pieces of advice, drawn from more than forty years of working in department stores, during the latest episode of the “How Leaders Lead with David Novak” podcast.
Before you get the top job at Macy’s in February 2024, Spring spent approximately 35 years at Bloomingdale’s, climbing the corporate ladder from retail intern in 1987 to CEO between 2014 and 2023.
Here are four key lessons he learned along the way:
Listen and learn
Don’t get started, Spring said in the podcast.
“I’ll cut your legs off,” he joked. “Lie on the floor and listen.”
“A honeymoon only comes once,” Spring continued. “You want to learn. This is your time. No one expects anything. In fact, you have the clearest view when you enter the company.”
New employees don’t know enough about their employers to have the right answers, but they bring a new perspective because they see “things we don’t see anymore,” he added.
Spring has made listening a priority for itself. “I read every customer letter I receive,” he says said during an earnings call last fall.
Show your heart
Spring said that early in his career he planned to keep his head down, get things done and outdo everyone around him.
But he remembered one of his bosses telling him that people could see his shirt, his jacket and his glasses, but “only you can show them your heart.”
These words remind us, Spring said, that “smiling, laughing, sharing stories, being interested in what their lives are about, is the smallest and simplest thing I can do, and can do.” make the biggest difference in how people feel at work.”
Clean the parking lot
Spring recalled that when he showed up for his first day of work at Burger King at the age of 16, he looked… clean the parking lot.
The future Fortune 500 CEO didn’t find out why until after he was done. His team explained to him that the parking lot was “the customer’s first impression, and everyone who works in this restaurant should understand how important that first impression is.”
Spring said the second thing he learned was that “although it seemed like a lot of fun working in the fryer, it gets very hot.”
“Get out of the fry station as quickly as possible and learn how to work the drive-thru,” he joked.
Stay humble
Spring said that “modesty is not the lack of confidence or competence.”
He said that as CEO he found it valuable to have his employees call him by his first name and see him wear jeans. He makes a point of talking to them about their families and acknowledging when “something special or something terrible happens in their lives.”
Spring said he sees Macy’s as a “big family” whose members “take care of each other.”
“And when we do that, we become even more concerned about the consumer,” he said.
