As a fellow asm; my approach would be taking it to the dm if you’ve already had a conversation about it. Obviously that is if you have a good working relationship/ regularly have meetings with them.

My reasoning for approaching the dm is simply, your current sm isn’t encompassing the missions and values by your statement; they don’t need to lead with empathy. It’s quite literally our job to do so

The partner experience is a big deal right now in the company. So you unfortunately have to be direct with the SM and and call them out in the moment. I appreciate your concern as an ASM who could just hide knowing you’ll be gone soon! That’s very nice to see. But you have to challenge the SM and yourself to have this tough conversation that coaching isn’t about being a jerk. They won’t be with the company long if they treat people with no respect and don’t attempt to understand where they might be coming from. I’m a SSV looking to promote so I get the difficulty here. But know that your partners have your back and them looking to you is a great thing and means you’ll make a great leader. Best of luck!

You should bring it up again but maybe bring out the field ops guide and go over the SM approach with them. They are your peer and there’s nothing wrong with coaching them. Plus this will be a good story to tell when you go to interview for SM. They will never be able to build a foundation with their team unless they develop soft skills and I’m speaking from experience because I am currently working on my soft skills.

My opinion might not matter as much to you as an ssv but leaders like that make people quit and shoot themselves in the foot having to constantly rebuild the store after hemorrhaging staff. Your baristas and shifts are already stretched plenty thin as it is—corporate staffing standards expect everyone on the floor to be performing like 1yr plus partners on their A game every day, and it’s incredibly hard already, and to be frank a lot of SMs and ASMs simply don’t know what it’s like— it’s not necessarily y’all’s fault but because y’all have to do admin and stuff y’all usually overlap with an ssv and so y’all aren’t as likely to see how the store runs when it’s, for example, one shift and two baristas who’ve not even hit two months with the company and nobody else to help. It’s not a realistic expectation to think your baristas and shifts will be able to take on board harsh coaching when they’re already fighting overwhelm and burnout.

That doesn’t mean you or your SM have to sugarcoat things. But for me to be able to effectively coach my baristas I have to keep it impersonal and assume the best from them—that is to say, I know they’re trying and I know there was a reason why they thought they should do whatever they just did, but we’re meant to do this because XYZ. Point back to the what/what/why corporate-y version of this with your SM if you have to. Like, “I know you were trying to help Cindy on bar just now and I appreciate that but I need you to chat with people at the window for our customer connections” hits way different from “why aren’t you listening to me? I told you to do X.” I don’t hold back from being direct with my baristas but before I go into coaching mode I ask why they just did X to avoid misunderstanding what I think I saw, and if it was something I have to coach I acknowledge their thinking even as I correct.

I’m so glad you see this as a problem because my area has (former) SMs who said they were dictators and their stores are in disarray from treating people like crap until they quit. Like even if an SM doesn’t care about other people, it doesn’t help their own self interest to be harsh and become the last straw that drives off the people who cared and tried.

Talk to the DM if the SM doesn't change, as it can turn into an ethics & compliance thing reeeeeally quick.