We've got an extra-special guest on this week's episode of The Produce Retail Podcast — longtime sales director and manager Dave Dunkak, who also happens to be the dad of host Ashley Nickle! Dave is in a different industry, but he has extensive experience navigating some of the key challenges that many in produce retail face: Along with developing people, Dave has for many years had P&L responsibility, so he’s very well-versed in balancing the long-term goals of building a team and a business with the short-term goals of beating last year’s sales numbers. As regular listeners will know by now, Ashley recently surveyed 200 produce managers for the new State of the Produce Manager report, and one of the areas of interest among that group was more training in people management and leadership. With those topics in mind, in this episode Ashley and Dave discuss attributes of strong managers; the critical discipline of holding team members accountable; how to maximize your time developing the team and prioritize with whom you spend that time; how to lead career path discussions with your team members; balancing work time and family time; empowering team members and how important that is to retention; making the difficult decision to transition people off the team when necessary; and value of a good old-fashioned phone call. Enjoy!

For inquiries about the full State of the Produce Manager report, please reach out to Ashley Nickle at ashley@nicklegrowthstrategies.com or on LinkedIn.