What makes a successful retail leader?

It is undeniable that the retail industry has gone through a rollercoaster of a year; footfall has mostly stayed low despite business owners’ attempts at luring customers to the high street and an unprecedented rise in the cost of living has made consumer discretionary spending more discerning. Under these circumstances, retailers specialising in anything and everything are doing what it takes in order to survive and thrive.

When it comes to the major retailers that are still posting stellar financial results, they have one thing in common that has kept them at the forefront of shoppers’ minds, and that has been creative, motivated and inspiring business leaders in management positions steering their focus.

One such person is Bridget Lea who is the current managing director of commercial trading and strategy at EE. As an accomplished female business leader with over 25 years of experience, she is the driving force behind the firm’s omni-channel strategy for the ‘new EE’, which is set to launch this year.

In Lea’s own words, her role is to create “incredible experiences” for customers across all channels, as well as making buying “simple, seamless and enjoyable”.

“It’s not just about buying in the moment, but very much about building a trusted relationship with customers over time,” she elaborates. “A huge part of the role is creating the strategies to do that, but I am also responsible for all of those frontline teams across the contact centre, retail and digital as well. I help create an environment where they can be at their best for our customers every day.”

Lea works on these strategies with her many teams, which she has described as “incredibly hard working with exceptional people skills”. Although they are already equipped with the skills for the job, Lea explains she is there to make sure that the bigger objectives are clear and that they are all working towards one goal. Throughout all of the motivation, energy, and sense of community, she also recognises that they need to be rewarded and recognised when they do a great job.

It’s clear to see that Lea has a lot of experience with people and the kind of work that occupies her time day-to-day, but what you don’t see when you are confronted with her many accomplishments (such as being listed as one of the top 10 finalists in the Power 50: Mobile Industry Awards), is the journey and roles she has had to maintain to get to where she is now.

If you were to ask her how it all began, she’d tell you she “fell into retail, as most people do”, but that undermines the fact that she had quite a unique, or “unconventional” as she called it, start to her career.

“I was a teenage mum of two girls living on an estate in Manchester and I realised I needed to get a job and earn some money for myself, so I went and worked in a filing clerk role at the Co-op head office in Manchester City Centre for a couple of days a week,” she recalls.

“Because I was good at it, they gave me the graduate trainees to look after and help settle into the business. I didn’t really know what a graduate trainee was back in the day, but I thought they had a pretty cool job and were getting to do really interesting work.”

From there, Lea realised that she’d love to do more of the work in their remit, but without a degree it made progressing more difficult. She eventually got a degree in IT, as a key passion point and once finished, Lea went on to work at M&S on its graduate scheme.

“It wasn’t necessarily luck that I ended up in the industry, but I was just looking for a great brand to work for. I absolutely loved retail from the first moment that I joined; I’ve always been very passionate about customers,” she says. “It was brilliant being able to create great experiences even from being very junior. I was at M&S when they were really leading the way in showcasing what brilliant service and experiences meant for customers.”

As she entered retail as a graduate trainee, Lea says this path came with certain advantages because it’s a given that you would, in time, move into a leadership role. Though she recommends this route for anyone interested in a managerial role in retail, she notes that it’s not necessarily for everyone. Lea also endorses looking into apprenticeships, and if you are already in a retail position, to talk to your line manager about your aspirations and what you see yourself doing for the company in the future.

“Don’t be afraid to move sideways before moving upwards in your career,” she also advises.

During her storied career, Lea has also strived to put together diverse teams, whether that’s to do with ethnicity, gender or socio-economic backgrounds. As a black woman, Lea is currently working with the organisation 10,000 Black Interns to help further the company’s diversity. Having brought in eight in 2021, EE now plans to bring in an additional 40 interns from the programme in the coming year. Lea believes that diversity isn’t just good for society at large, but also pivotal to the success of an industry like retail where the consumer needs to relate to what you’re selling.

“There can be a tendency to recruit people that are like you. They’ve got a similar background, they laugh at the same jokes, they know the same people, and that’s something we all have to be careful of doing. The best teams that I have worked in are where we’ve got diversity of thought and diversity of background, so we can create a team where we are so diverse that we are able to truly represent the needs of our customers across the UK,” she notes. “And this means all of our customers and not just a segment of them. I think the biggest thing we can all do is make sure that we’re recruiting people that are diverse and aren’t just the same as us.”

Having been around retail for the past 25 years, Lea has experienced a time in the industry when there was no Sunday trading and no online shopping. Because of this, the high street was very different to what she sees now. Lea described it’s former state as competitive and bustling, with lots of independent retailers as well as big brands.

Unfortunately, a lot of that has changed over the years in what critics have dubbed as ‘the death of the high street’. As Lea recalls the time when shopping was a past time for her and her daughters, she adds that the growth of digital and online shopping has made retail more needs-based and utilitarian. 

However, Lea believes that everyone in the industry can still learn from the retail practices of 25 years ago, as she describes how it was centred around ultimately giving great customer experiences. She says: “I think retailers back then created more theatre, more experience in what they were trying to give to customers. Moving from that functional mindset that retailers have been in to a more inspirational one and a creative one, I think it’s very important for us to get customers back to shopping on the high street and not online all of the time.”

It seems the takeaway from this should be that the hallmark of a great team leader is their ability to create environments where each one of their team members has a voice. Since taking up her role at EE post Covid, her primary focus has been on developing the right types of channels for a world where “digital is still growing” with her sights over the next few years on showcasing the sector’s “strong future”. It will be interesting to see what she and her team have in mind.