Don't Let Your Systems Drive Your Customers Crazy! - Hospitality ...

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