#HospitalityManagement #TeamLeadership #StaffManagement
Hey there, fellow hospitality professionals! 👋 Have any of you experienced the struggle of feeling like you can’t leave your team unsupervised without things falling apart? I need your advice on this one!
I’ve been in my role for about 18 months now, leading a team of about 40 staff during peak times. However, whenever I try to take a day off, I always seem to come back to serious complaints from either the team or customers. It’s like there’s always an issue when I’m not there to oversee things.
I’ve noticed that my senior team members don’t pick up on problems as quickly as I do, and there seems to be a general lack of engagement from some of my more experienced staff members. It’s frustrating because I’ve been able to progress quickly in my career up until this point, but now I feel stuck.
So, here’s the big question: What am I doing wrong? How can I empower my team to perform better even when I’m not there to micromanage? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this matter.
Possible solutions could include:
– Implementing more thorough training programs
– Setting clearer expectations and accountability measures
– Regular check-ins and feedback sessions with team members
– Empowering team members to make decisions autonomously
Looking forward to hearing your insights! Let’s brainstorm together and help each other grow in our roles. 🌟 #TeamManagement #CareerDevelopment #LeadershipTips
My immediate assumption would be that you’re doing too much while you’re around, meaning they don’t get the opportunity to learn to put out fires themselves. Being more hands off may help them learn independence.
Micromanaging? Train your senior team to problem-solve, empower them to take ownership.
If you are anything like me, you advanced quickly regardless of the quality of your team because you jumped in and prevented them from failing, so the overall performance was great but the team quality was not. Unfortunately, the fix is to set clear goals and objectives and then let them fail so they can grow. This makes you look less good and is more painful in the short term, but you will be stuck if you don’t do it.
,, here’s what’s really going on
These people are not stupid and they are not motivated to do anything other than what they are told.
I suspect strongly it’s a pay & benifits issues, simply because of your high turnover rate.
When you have consent turn over, it’s sends a very strong message to other workers.
The message is management could care less if they put forth effort beyond the minimum efforts.
And here’s the thing,,, management is using you as the buffer, you get to deal with the stress while they get the money from running the place cheaply.
You have a choice,, stay and be abused and your body and social life will suffer
Or refuse to be there there punching bag and move onto a better lifestyle mix of employment.
This isn’t your problem, you didn’t create it, you can’t fix this,,,
For a team that size, you should probably shift how you think about the purpose of your job.
Your job isn’t to manage problems or keep things working well… Your job is to make sure your senior staff is doing their jobs, is working well together, has the tools they need, and has your support.
I think a lot of managers don’t realize that… I mean… They/you do a little bit… But not fully. A good way to think about it is that you should almost never be “doing” anything directly. You shouldn’t be talking to junior staff about anything beyond how their day is going (basically) and you shouldn’t be interfacing with end-line customers.
Most importantly, you should almost never (like aim for 95%+ of the time) provide answers to problems.
Instead you should be spending your time interfacing with your bosses… Providing shielding and insights for and about your team. You should be mentoring your senior staff and creating a place for them to talk through issues with junior people. And those 95% of problems… You should be helping your senior staff member think through the problem and letting them make and own their decisions.
Oh and when things go wrong systematically… Like somebody not seeing a developing issue early enough… Don’t treat those as individual failures, treat them as system failures. Ask your senior people, in a debrief, what systems you could have had in place to prevent that from happening again, and then let them find solutions that work for them. Again, your job is mostly to create spaces for them to own things in healthy ways.
If you do that, you’ll find your life as a manager changes a lot… Mostly for the better. Your staff will like you more, your bosses will like you more, and your team will work better.
Meetings with them! If this doesn’t work, put one if them in charge.
Do you have someone in charge when you are out?
You should have levels of management within your organization. If you don’t, who will supervise when you are gone. If you do, as soon as you take a day off and your get back to crap, the supervisor is warned and an ad is put out for another supervisor. Start interviewing. Have the replacement ready.
There’s this saying. Sometimes you have to hang a coyote.
When you live in an area with coyotes and they are killing your animals, all you have to do is kill one and hang it on a fence post. You will be problem free for 2-3 years.
Get rid of the biggest problem, or get rid of the person who is managing the biggest problem along with the biggest problem.