Five Benefits of Losing Your Star Players

My team is undergoing a tremendous amount of change as several of our long-term, star players are moving on to other opportunities both in and outside the organization. For several years the composition of my team has remained relatively stable but now we’re entering a new phase of growth, which is both scary and exciting. It seems like each day I’m having the old Abbott and Costello “Who’s on first?”conversation with my managers, as we try to sort out who’s going, who’s staying, and how we’re getting our work done.

It’s easy to get discouraged when top performers leave your team. The immediate reaction is often to look at all the challenges that lay ahead — How do we replace the intellectual capital that’s walking out the door? Who is going to cover the work while we hire replacements? Will the new hires be able to match the productivity and contributions of the previous employees? All those questions swirl through your mind as you ponder the endless hours you’re going to have to invest in recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and training new team members.

Rather than being discouraged, I’m energized and looking forward to the future because the long-term benefits outweigh the short-term difficulties. Here’s five benefits I see to losing top performers:

1. It proves you’re doing something right. Huh? Doesn’t it mean that something must be wrong with your leadership or team dynamics if you’re losing your top people? Well, if you’re a toxic leader and your team’s morale and performance is in the tank, then yes, there’s something wrong. But if you’re doing a good job of leading it means you’re hiring the right talent and developing them to high performance. I take a little pride in knowing that other leaders see the immense talent I have on my team and they want to hire them away.

2. Your team is better off for their contributions. The contributions of my star players have helped raise the level of professionalism, productivity, and capability of my team over the last several years. They have redefined what “normal” performance looks like and we’ll be looking to existing team members and our new hires to reach that same level. We are better off for having them on our team and I believe they are better off for having been on our team.

3. It provides a chance for existing team members to step up. Losing valuable contributors is an opportunity for other team members to step up their game, either by moving into higher levels of responsibility or by taking on short-term duties to cover the gap. When you have several high-performers on a team, it’s easy for other valuable team members to get buried on the depth-chart (to use a football metaphor). Losing a star player allows second-team players to step into the limelight and prove their capabilities.

4. You can bring in new blood. Having long-term, high-performers on your team brings stability and continuity. However, stability and continuity can easily become routine and complacency if you aren’t careful. Hiring new people brings fresh perspective, a jolt of energy, and a willingness to try new things you haven’t done before. Teams are living organisms and living entities are always growing and changing. I see this as a new era to bring in a fresh crop of star players that will raise our performance to even higher levels.

5. It facilitates needed change. Bringing in new team members is a great time to address broader changes in your business. You have new people who aren’t conditioned to existing work processes, systems, or ways of running your business. They aren’t yet infected with the “that’s the way we’ve always done it around here”virus that tends to infiltrate groups that stay together for a long time. It’s a time to capitalize on the strengths and ideas of new team members to help you take your business to new heights.

Losing high-performers is never easy but it doesn’t have to be devastating. I’m grateful to have worked with star players that are moving on to other challenges and I’m excited about developing a new wave of top performers that will lead us in the years ahead. It’s time for change…Bring it!

As a restaurant manager for over 20 years, I hated snow days. I was told there had to be enough staff on to cover whatever business came in, but, make sure you meet payroll projections for the end of the week. In other words, you can’t use having little or no sales for one day as a reason to blow your budget.

It doesn’t take a math genius to realize you can’t do both… yes, you can have a skeleton crew on, but that would mean you cut the host or hostess, you call the dishwasher and tell him or her to stay home, you keep two cooks on, because you will be seating guests as they walk in and probably tending bar, because the bartender isn’t going to come in when there won’t be any tips.

So what do you do?

The staff at Twin Peaks in Omaha will go on Facebook and post a picture of the girls outside making a Twin Peaks snow girl or servers posing with winter hats. They get immediate results, hundreds of “likes” within an hour of posting. I’m guessing they did a little more business than the restaurant down the street who trimmed down to 1 or 2 servers. So, we all don’t have pretty girls with skimpy uniforms to photograph in the snow. What can you do to make your restaurant stand out and how can you bring in new guests ?

Applying the core principles of project management to your hiring and training practices is one of the best ways to both attract and retain qualified hospitality staff with a positive attitude. “Plan and execute,” the mantra of accomplished project managers, refers to the second and third phases of traditional, or phase-based project management, which are all about strategy.

Here are some tips to help you create an effective strategy for hiring the best professionals for your establishment.

1. Set clear and precise hiring and retention goals. How many people do you need to build your dream team, and how are their duties divided? Will your team members acquire new skills and responsibilities throughout their tenure at your establishment, or are their roles fixed from the start? Remember, while setting goals, that the hospitality maxim of “hire the smile and train the skills” is only as useful as you make it; and that means defining in words, what a positive employee attitude looks like in practice.

   Bear in mind that it probably won’t look the same for every employee, especially those with very different skills and responsibilities. So don’t just list general personal attributes; place your ideal hires in challenging, position-specific situations and describe their speech and actions.

2. Get organized. Take inventory of the resources at your disposal, including available project-management tools, hiring budget, and time-frame. Schedule plenty of wiggle room for unexpected obstacles: a surplus of qualified applicants, budgetary changes, employee illness, hard-to-reach applicant references, etc. Then, start planning your interview process.

   Be sure to include at least three or four behavior-based questions, such as “Tell me about a time when a stressful situation got the best of you at work,” or “What’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made as a server/front-desk manager/chef/concierge/etc.? How did you remedy the situation?”

3. Use role play. Any major change to your interview process merits a practice session with a team member or fellow hospitality manager, particularly when first adding tough questions, such as those above, to the roster. As your establishment’s representative and manager, you are firmly in charge of the interview dynamic, and deploying forced questions will get you forced answers.

   You may also want to role-play with applicants when posing your challenge questions. Pay attention to the entire person as he or she responds; body language, tone of voice and facial expression are all powerful indicators of attitude.

4. Keep the lines of communication open. Your supervisor, current team members, and even professional competitors can help you refine and revise your hiring process if you keep an open mind and seek out their expertise, experiences and feedback. Meet regularly with front- and back-of-house staff and establish interdepartmental communications protocol, whether via email, project-management tools, or shift-change documentation. Recognize strong employee performances in front of other staff members, and thank employees frequently for their service and loyalty.
5. Initiate new and existing employee training. In any high turnover industry, consistency in quality and kind of services rendered, particularly when integrating new hires, is best established by ongoing employee training sessions and performance incentives. When crafting training sessions, seek your team members’ input. Ask them what “soft skills” comprise a positive attitude and how they recognize those skills in practice. Solicit feedback on the most challenging aspects of customer service in your establishment and consider formalizing, with recognition or award systems, employee best practices.
6. Stay flexible. Seasoned project managers know better than to expect perfection of any person or process. Instead, they find humor and opportunities for personal growth in every possible outcome. If your first round of interviews or new hires is a flop, step back from the experience, make note of where things went wrong (mistakes are usually attributable to inadequate planning or preparation), and revise your strategy accordingly.

Finally, never forget that attitude flows downhill from the top. Staying open to acknowledging and learning from your mistakes will insure that your attitude remains positive and your employees will follow your lead.

This guest post is provided by Ren Lacerda who works with University Alliance on behalf of Michigan State University and University of Florida covering topics on Hospitality Management and Human Resource Management. You can follow Ren on Twitter @RenMarketing.

HR managers and headhunters see huntress of resumes each day from all levels of restaurant managers. They quickly stop looking for the right or perfect resume format. A properly laid out resume does not guarantee that the candidate will be a successful restaurant manager.  The most the resume format can identify is your personal choice.

10 second commercial

The resume should not be a job description. The HR manager knows the restaurant manager’s job description and assumes that if you’ve held the job, you’ve done the tasks. The recruiter wants to see where you’ve been, and your level of experience. They want to know whether your skills have developed a General manager, kitchen manager, etc… But if nothing catches their eye than they will move on.

At the most, you have 30 seconds to capture the recruiters attention. This is probably much shorter later in the day, and may be extremely short Friday afternoon.

Success and Accomplishments

Save the task details for the interview. Your successes will highlight your skill base, strengths, and weaknesses. They want to know the impact your decisions made on the bottom line.

Did you save the restaurant money?

Were you a problem solver?

Are you a team leader/trainer?

Will your skills save the company money/reduce outsourcing?

Did you increase revenue, reduce costs, reduce overturn?

Are you good at marketing and customer retention?

Are you a good organizer, planner?

Are you a good problem solver?

Do not try to be everything for every HR manager. Identify your greatest strength and focus on the skills and experience that show your ability to handle problems, and find solutions in this aspect of the job.

Tips and Advice

Instead of listing:

- tasks – focus on the outcomes

- education – highlight leadership skills

- achievements – recognize awards and acknowledgements

- experience – outline your personal development

It is important to realize that you won’t win every job in the job seeker campaign. It is dangerous to try to be ‘everything to everyone’ and hope to get ‘a bite’. Instead of trying to get ‘a’ job, work to win ‘the job’, your dream job.

Once you’ve developed the skills needed to manage a restaurant, successfully, and develop a strong team who are motivated and goal oriented, it is time to sell your skills.  The restaurant manager’s job requires good communication skills, and the ability to present projects and reports in a way that will sell ideas to the team, management, investors, and to the customers who walk through the doors each day.

The resume is the first place you have to highlight your skills.

Identify Yourself as a Serious Candidate

HR managers are less interested in what you have done for others, or what you have learned. They are interested in seeing what you can do for them. If you’ve followed this blog then you’ve seen multiple places that discuss your personal development. Invest some time in personal development. Listing coaching, courses, and career development steps you’ve successfully completed is a great way to alert HR managers to the fact that you are aggressively and seriously focused on becoming the solution to the restaurant’s problems, not another problem.

Identify Yourself as a Team Leader

The days when managers barked orders and punish poor performance are over. Today’s manager needs to develop their communication skills. They need to be able to motivate and encourage, not push. The stakes are high. The cost of replacing disgruntled employees is staggering. The cost of investing in training, and then having an employee leave because they do not feel empowered, fulfilled, or challenged is immeasurable.

A manager needs to be able to develop their team, encourage and motivate them, and create an environment that encourages longevity.  Even when this is done, the good manager understands that the team’s personalities, boundaries, and personal habits can undermine the team. They learn to identify problems and create solutions that will empower the team, and encourage them.

They understand that the reason to build a strong team is to reduce the loss caused by employee overturn, days off, conflict in the workplace, and resentment directed toward management.

Understanding these is only half the battle. It is important to learn how to condense that information into your resume. It is necessary to understand which skills will make your resume stand out above the crowd.

Give em’ the Pickle …

My very first restaurant job was washing dishes at Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor in Portland, Oregon. At that time Marriott owned the brand, and I was a Marriott employee, but we all “worked for Farrell’s”. Being in Portland we had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Farrell and his wife Mona in for a quick bite. He was, and is an incredible man.

After that I had the pleasure of working for Mr. Farrell at Pacific Coast Restaurants in Portland. He was the CEO and the face of PCR. At every new unit opening [and we had many as the company was growing like gang busters], and two times a year, Mr. Farrell gave his “Pickle Speech”. I saw it countless times, and never grew tired of hearing it.

The basis for the “Pickle Speech” was a guest that was in a Farrell’s and was being charged for a side of pickles by the server. The guest told the server that they always get the pickles, but the server insisted on charging for the side. Well, the guest left, and wrote Mr. Farrell a letter to tell their story. Bottom line … Give em’ the Pickle!

Every business in the world has pickles to give away. Something little to make your customers know you care, and make them customers for life.

As I look back, his wisdom and teachings were so vital to not only me, but thousands of employees that heard the speech, and lived it out in his stores.

At a time when great service is often set aside for profits and cost controls, I reflect on these principles and realize they really cost very little to do. On the flip side, they are very expensive with lost business if you don’t.

What are these four simple principles for giving away Pickles?

1.       Connect with customers and guests. Ask yourself, how I would want to be treated, and then do it!

2.       Anticipate your customer’s needs. Stay one step ahead of them. What are they needing, and put it into place.

3.       Look for ways to delight your customers. Surprise them, and ask how we can exceed their expectations.

4.       Inspire yourself and others. Seeing with your heart. Ask yourself, am I willing to do whatever it takes to make a difference?

So what do giving away pickles have to do with Gecko Hospitality? Plenty! We strive day in and day out to give pickles away. Not only to our clients, but to our candidates as well. A thank you note, a small trinket of thanks, a text or e-mail of encouragement. We want to make a difference in all the folks we come in contact with. You [clients and candidates] are our lifeblood and we value and need you.

Thank you for choosing Gecko Hospitality! Ready for some pickles? 

Kevin Kalstad – Gecko Hospitality

Leadership is a learned skill. The myth of the natural leader halts too many restaurant manager careers and discourages many restaurant professionals from aggressively seeking better jobs in the hospitality industry. In reality, the only true obstacle to becoming a restaurant manger is knowledge. Everyone may be at different stages of the leadership learning curve.

The plugged in leader understands the ‘life force’ behind a strategy and can anticipate what may go wrong, problems they may face, and create exit strategies, or a ‘plan B’. They divert problems before they evolve, and have prepared their team to execute a plan of action at a moment’s notice.

Here are 10 questions that will help you determine whether you are a critical leader and place you on the learning curve.

•           I am/not interested about execution within the group of people I am currently in.

Take the time to answer this honestly. Do you have influence and can guide people to perform better? If you are interested then you make things happen. If you are not interested then things happen around you and you ignore them, or gossip.

•           The organization is efficient.

If everything is good enough then you have no execution plan.  Can you see places where things can be improved. Can you envision and can imagine improvements. Do you have suggestions for improvements in every aspect of your life? Do you walk into a job and achieve more results than your predecessor

•           I enforce consequences of ineffective execution consistently

The problem with enforcement is that it imposes your level of integrity, belief system, and perceptions on another person. It is a self centered form of leadership management which disrespects those who are not fitting into your plan. Once this happens those around you stop believing in your dream. They lose their motivation. The strategy looses synergy and any serendipitous opportunities are lost as the team either abandons their leader, or withdraws inside themselves and stops contributing.

The Critical Leader learns how to motivate and reward good behavior, motivating their actions based on results. This forward moving form of leadership produces results. When a leader focuses on correcting inappropriate behavior they are in fact doing nothing more than trying to solve problems by force.

•           I break projects down into measurable, result focused goals

The final result may be the culmination of several goals. Leaders who fail often try to execute too many goals at one time. Leaders who succeed put all their efforts into achieving results. The successful completion of a goal is merely the symptom of an effective leadership strategy.

Any job in the hospitality industry can lead to a better career. There are very few ‘dead end’ jobs. Everyone is a job seeker at any given time, at any stage of the learning curve. We all have the opportunity to develop leadership skills. Each problem is an opportunity to learn our problem solving and opportunity development skills.

Leadership development is vital, but many people who are just starting fail in their first attempts because they lack the skills and knowledge needed to succeed. Both success, and failure are behavior habits. When a leader fails, they learn, study more, seek help, and try again. Often, people who are just learning to become managers become discouraged. The myth that some people are born leaders, or have a knack for leadership has kept many talented leaders from developing careers as restaurant mangers.

Controlling the elements of failure + Cause and Effect = Success

Many leaders fail because their plan is not congruent, realistic, and effective. The effective leader is willing to watch the day to day aspects of a business and measure their effectiveness based on results. The distant leader makes assumptions and tracks their success and failures – after it is too late.

Successful leaders share some common behaviors.

1. Listening

They have developed the art of listening. You can learn more about a person, problem, or situation by listening to people. Understanding what a person wants, or needs, can often reveal the solution to a seemingly unrelated problem.

2. Identifying Need

One of the easiest ways to gain control of a situation is by learning to identify what someone needs, then creating a solution that meets the needs. There are always multiple solutions to a problem. Finding the solution that meets your boss’ needs is a vital aspect of career development.

3. Finding Opportunities

The opportunities a successful person looks for are those that will meet the needs of their managers. Selling your ideas doesn’t depend on identifying an opportunity. It is more important to ‘sell the idea’ by identifying how it will solve your boss’ needs. For example, more training is necessary to reducing the time between ordering a meal and placing it on a table. This causes a problem for most restaurant mangers because it effects the bottom line, reducing revenue, and making it look like they are a failure.

However, your general manager is only focused on the bottom line and only sees career development as another expense. Selling the idea of training requires outlining the long term cost savings, return on investment (ROI), and how the general manger will be able to present this ROI as his/her personal success.

The hospitality industry is a highly competitive one. Whether you are looking for a job as a Chef, restaurant or general manger, or are carving a niche for yourself in another area of the restaurant industry, job seekers need to learn how to sell their skills to the HR manager.

There are many execution strategies. Most are good but fall short of producing results. This is because they tell people what needs to be done. They don’t tell people how to do it.  The ability to understand and execute a plan is important to selling your skills. The HR manager will not assume that all restaurant managers are able to redesign a restaurant, solve problems within a team, or pull a restaurant out of the red. Candidates need to be able to identify their strengths in their current job, and sell their solutions to current management. Then they need to document their ideas, measure their success, and record the results. These case studies will become a sales tool they can use for landing their next job.

Here are some basic fundamentals necessary in any career development strategy, and plan of execution:

•           Know your resources.

This is an excellent idea. Once a manager can identify their resources they are able to manage them effectively. This is still a backward thinking management strategy. It is designed to identify the results of what has been done in the past, not what can be accomplished in the future.

•           Find how to use resources in ways that open new opportunities.

The hospitality industry is always looking for new opportunities. People who learn how to solve problems, and find opportunities are valuable resources in today’s job market.

•           Look for resources that have been missed by others

•           Do not look for obstacles, problems, and assets but look for opportunities.

•           Include People in your strategy

The narrower your network the easier it is to topple the mountain. Everyone has something to contribute. Some of the greatest breakthroughs have been found when management stops to ask the people on the front lines what they need to do a better job, what complaints do they hear, or what would make the customer happy.

Part of making sure the right people is in the right place hinges on a leader’s ability to listen. People let us know what is important to them, what they need and want, and how to become a better manager in the things they don’t say as much as what they do say.  Learn to listen and to delegate. This training can start long before you ever sit behind a manger’s desk.

•           Effectively expect.

Establish a way to measure the results of execution. Do  not focus entirely on what has happened but learn to measure what is happening. Do not focus on whether a task is being completed, and by whom. Instead, focus on if the task is being done right. What is right? How is that measured?

This involves Strategic Evaluation. This cannot be done without first doing your homework. Again, knowledge is power. Even ‘gut instinct’ and intuition can be a primal part of an execution strategy.

•           Stay in the Real World.

The problem with dreams, goals and expectations is that they are self evident reflections of who we are at the time they are created and executed. They are often based on our personal wants, needs, and perceptions of reality