Retail Observer

RETAILOBSERVER.COM SEPTEMBER 2026 28 A re you having fun?" This was the CEO's question in the hallway minutes after I'd wrapped a workshop with his leadership team. He asked it casually, the way you'd ask if I'd found parking. "Heck, yeah," I told him, already smiling before I'd thought about it. "I love what I do. I especially love doing it with this team." He smiled, then segued to how the workshop had gone. But the question followed me home, and it's been working on me ever since: What am I carrying into this room? Retailers know the answers to that question better than most industries. Walk any sales floor during a holiday rush and you'll see within thirty seconds which associates are gripping the day like a chore and the ones who're playing it like a game. Customers can tell, too. The energy on the floor is rarely a mystery – it's contagious in either direction, and a manager who's dreading the shift will set the tone even before he unlocks the door. The word "sport" carries two meanings: to compete, and to play. We assume the first will swallow the second as the stakes rise, that a fourth-quarter sales push or a category review will leave no room for delight. The people holding the trophies keep proving otherwise. When Steve Kerr took the head coaching job with the Golden State Warriors, he wrote four words on a whiteboard before the team's morning shoot- around: joy, mindfulness, compassion, competition. Joy came first. Researchers at UC Berkeley later studied the team as a case study in the psychology of a winning culture that was built on those values. The Warriors went on to become one of the most dominant dynasties basketball has seen. There's a clue hiding in the word itself. "Sport" comes from the Old French desporter: des-, away, plus porter, to carry – literally to carry the mind away from whatever was serious. The same root gives us deportment, how you carry yourself in a room. For a hundred years, it simply meant pleasure. Business took the word and split it in two. It kept the competing half and built entire systems around it: quarterly targets, comp reviews, war rooms. The half that started the word got left behind. You can spot the split in any culture and on any retail floor. The stores that outperform quarter-over-quarter aren't usually run by the most serious managers. They're run by the ones who make the floor feel light enough that customers feel welcome, and where selling behaves like helping. Psychologists who study play define it clearly: an activity chosen for its own pleasure, approached with real enthusiasm, done together rather than alone. Play turns out to be both a choice in how people approach the job, and a performance strategy. The research backs up what the best floor managers already sense. One study found that people given the identical assignment produced more original work when the task was framed as play instead of labor. Play at work tracks with less burnout, and with more of what every retailer is chasing: engagement, retention – and, yes, sales. Teams that laugh together score higher on measures of how well they perform together, and none of it works without first prioritizing safety in the room. Nobody will improvise a great customer-save in front of a manager they don't trust, any more than a comedian will improvise for a crowd that's checked-out. That hallway question now follows me into every client engagement. "Are you having fun?" I ask a version of it before I open a strategy session: what will make the next two hours enjoyable, not just productive? The answer changes the room before the agenda does. The CEO's question was never really about fun. It was an invitation, the same one hiding inside the word "sport" since before anyone started keeping score. You get to choose what you carry onto the floor, into the meeting, across the register. You're responsible for that choice, too. Choose it on purpose and better numbers will tend to follow. But the numbers were never the best reason. A better shift, a better quarter, a better life, that's the reason. Your work is where you're spending it. LET'S GET CARRIED AWAY Steven Morris On Brand Steven Morris is a brand, culture and leadership advisor, author, and speaker. Over his 25+ years in business he's worked with 3,000+ business leaders at 250+ global and regional companies. Discover: https://matterco.co RO "

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