Shut up and listen, connect with your coworkers, and make a stellar first impression.
Macy’s CEO Tony Spring shared those three pieces of career advice, drawn from around four decades of working in department stores, during the latest episode of the “How Leaders Lead with David Novak” podcast.
Before taking the top job at Macy’s in February 2024, Spring spent around 35 years at Bloomingdale’s, climbing the corporate ladder from a store trainee in 1987 to CEO between 2014 and 2023.
Here are four key lessons he learned along the way:
Listen and learn
Don’t hit the ground running, Spring said on the podcast.
“I’ll cut your legs off,” he joked. “Hit the ground listening.”
“Honeymoons come once,” Spring continued. “You want to learn. This is your time. No one’s expecting anything. You actually have the clearest view when you come into the company.”
New employees don’t know enough about their employer to have the right answers, but they bring a fresh perspective as they “see things that we’ve stopped seeing,” he added.
Spring has made listening a priority for himself. “I read every customer note I receive,” he 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 outwork everyone around him.
But he recalled 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.”
Those words are a reminder, Spring said, that “smiling, laughing, sharing some stories, being interested about what their lives are all about, is the smallest and simplest thing I can do, and can make the biggest difference in how people feel at work.”
Clean the parking lot
Spring recalled that when he turned up for his first day of work at Burger King at age 16, he was dispatched to clean the parking lot.
The future Fortune 500 CEO only found out why after he was done. His team explained to him that the parking lot was “the customer’s first impression, and everyone who works at this restaurant has to understand how important that first impression is.”
Spring said the second thing he learned was that “even though it looked like a lot of fun to work the fryer, it gets very hot.”
“Get out of the fry station as quickly as possible, learn how to work the drive-thru,” he quipped.
Stay humble
Spring said that “humility is not the absence of confidence or competence.”
He said that as a CEO, he’s found it valuable to let his workers call him by his first name and see him wearing 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 that he sees Macy’s as a “big family” whose members “care about each other.”
“And if we do that, then we’re going to care even more about the consumer,” he said.
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