FINANCE & ACCOUNTING 32 HOSPITALITY MALDIVES OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2006
HUMAN RESOURCES Bringing Out the Best in People [Part 1] by Chris Longstreet, CHA Recently, we moved our SHM office, and, during the process I came across a book I read in college that I promised I would never throw away or get rid of. The book is entitled Bringing Out the Best in People: How to Enjoy Helping Others Excel by Dr. Alan Loy Mc- Ginnis. “Have you ever wondered at the way certain people bring out the best in others? They seem to know how to get an extra effort from the people they lead. We have all known them – some are teachers or heads of companies, others are baseball managers or mothers. Frequently without good looks or extraordinary intelligence, they seem to possess a knack for inspiring people. And this remarkable skill at the art of motivation makes them highly successful at almost everything they do.” Look back over your career. Who motivated you? Who brought out the best in you? Which managers, which leaders, seemed to bring out the best in the people they served? In his book, Dr. McGinnis outlines twelve rules for bringing out the best in people. These principles can be applied to any team you lead: the front desk, the sales department, housekeeping, servers, the kitchen, or even the management team of your hotel or restaurant. These skills are valuable in creating a motivational environment where your employees want to work and feel the can contribute to the success of your organization. In part one of this three-part article, we look at the first four rules and how we can apply them to the environments in which we work. Rule 1 - Expect The Best From the People You Lead In the musical My Fair Lady, Eliza Doolittle is transformed from an uneducated woman to a sophisticated lady. One of the famous lines of the play, Goethe makes a bold statement about human nature: “Treat a man as he appears to be and you make him worse. But treat a man as if he already were what he potentially could be, and you make him what he should be.” Do you expect the best from the people you lead? Or do you settle for what they give you and find other solutions to improving the service provided to your guests and patrons? In the hospitality classes I teach, we discuss motivational theories and strategies. One theory, the Pygmalion Effect, states that the expectations your employees have of themselves determines how they will perform. If we expect great things as managers, great things will happen. If we accept and expect average performance, average performance is what we will get. By emphasizing the positives and what employees can do, employees will believe in themselves and perform at higher levels. To do this, we must communicate our belief in their skills and abilities. Setting high performance and quality standards and communicating to your team so that they can achieve them will yield positive results. Housekeepers will clean rooms to the cleanliness levels you set. Servers will up-sell menu items because you set the standards and expectations high. Positive expectations can yield positive results. Unfortunately, when people become managers or leaders within an organization, they immediately feel like a police officer and must watch every employee move to make sure standards are being met. This watchdog role is looking for failure and creates an adversarial relationship between management and line employees. Good managers, on the other hand, look for the strengths in employees and discover ways to encourage the skills and abilities of each person. If we expect good things from our employees, in most cases they take great strides in meeting those expectations. If we expect the worse, they will meet those expectations and continue to disappoint us with their performance. Rule 2 – Make a Thorough Study of the Other Person’s Needs One of the more enjoyable parts of teaching at the college level is working with students and helping them discover what excites them about the hospitality industry. When a student makes a true connection with their passion for what they want to do, it is easy to push them to succeed. Their interest level is higher when studying as they develop a passion for what they are studying. The fear of pleasing other people, like parents, disappears and the passion for discovering success becomes so clearly apparent. Whether it be working for a baseball park in the minor leagues, becoming a leader in the housekeeping department, or working toward a vision of owning a restaurant or club, discovering what a student wants makes the educational experience far more motivating for both the student and the instructor. “ The fear of pleasing other people, like parents, disappears and the passion for discovering success becomes so clearly apparent. ” McGinnis says, “Too many leaders ignore this essential early step. They see motivation as mere hype – slapping people on the back and giving rah-rah pep talks. But it is more than hype. A good motivational plan must be as carefully fitted as a designer dress. We must ask a lot of questions about where people have been and where they are going, what they believe, what are their sore spots, what they love and what they hate. In other words, we must make an inquiry into people’s present need systems.”Motivation is therefore situational. It is unique to each person. Sarah, a server, has a different set of needs than Darren, the line cook. Tamyra, the housekeeper, is motivated differently than Gerard, the maintenance engineer. What motivates you is different than what motivates the employees you lead or the person you report to. HOSPITALITY MALDIVES OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2006 33
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