Retailer PetSmart’s LEAD (Leadership Excellence Assessment & Development) program specifically targets its store and distribution manager development as the company feels this manager population is pivotal in influencing the business and connecting and caring for its customers or “pet parents.” It is the store managers’ responsibility to provide solutions and nurture the connection between the lives of people and pets. Therefore, these managers require strong interpersonal skills to allow them to influence, lead, and coach others, as well as themselves.
As such, PetSmart focuses on concepts that emphasize self-leadership as a fundamental start to leadership development. From self-leadership, the retailer focuses on how leaders can provide caring and collaborative leadership to their associates through individual development and building a true team environment. Following these lessons, store managers are shown how they can apply what they’ve learned to achieve outstanding business results by way of caring for customers. PetSmart also recently started to integrate philanthropic leadership lesson components into its leadership programs.
Program Details
The LEAD program is a five-day leadership development program for which participants travel to company headquarters and are exposed to content deeply rooted in PetSmart’s leadership competency model and a multitude of foundational leadership concepts, such as Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Model, delegation, change management, developing individuals to build high-performing teams, and getting business results. Senior leadership team members are involved in the program to deliver messaging and serve on panel discussions on leadership lessons. Multiple team activities are facilitated to inspire creative thought in exemplifying and applying leadership lessons taught.
Post-program, store managers are encouraged to continue to nurture the peer relationships they built during the duration of the training to sustain learning. In addition, PetSmart employs rigorous evaluation methodology to measure the program, including program satisfaction, behavioral application, and business results.
Results
Typically, PetSmart puts more than 200 participants a year through this leadership development program and has yielded a penetration rate of 56 percent with 800-plus participants graduating from this program. Specifically, for the LEAD program, PetSmart conducts program satisfaction surveys (Level 1), behavioral application surveys to both participants and their managers (Level 3), and business outcome analysis (Level 4) where it looks at behavioral performance (e.g., leadership competency ratings) and operational performance improvements (e.g., sales, audit scores, etc.). Program satisfaction ratings have yielded incremental improvements each subsequent year, from 4.78 to 4.90 (on a 5-point scale). Perceptions of behavioral application have yielded incremental improvements each subsequent year, from 4.44 to 4.48 (on a 5-point scale), specifically regarding application of LEAD concepts effectively enhancing job performance. LEAD graduates continue to outperform non-LEAD graduates in both behavioral (leadership competency ratings) and business performance (performance on PetSmart’s store operational scorecard, which is an index of sales, audit scores, customer satisfaction, associate turnover, etc,). Level 4 results indicate that LEAD participants yielded a 5 percent increase in both operational and behavioral performance.
