Rehabilitating Bad Behaviors
Posted by estiator at 11 November, at 11 : 52 AM Print
MANAGING FOR SUCCESS
Not every staff member with bad behaviors is a bad employee.
This statement, on the surface, is hard to swallow. If bad behaviors don’t define a bad employee, then what does? For me, a bad attitude and poor discipline are the attributes that steer me away from hiring someone, or that lead me to dismiss someone. If an employee has a good attitude and has the self-discipline required to improve, then bad behaviors are just another challenge to be overcome.
To get a grip on the situation, let’s look at how behaviors are formed to begin with. When it comes to work behaviors (and restaurant work behaviors in particular), these are formed through experience. So, if an employee comes from a restaurant where rules are observed and enforced, he or she will generally come to you with good work behaviors. On the contrary, if he or she has only worked in places where there is little or no structure, then expect to have to do some work to get him or her to the place where you need them to be.
While it’s true that there’s a better chance of employees having good work habits in restaurants where there is a strong owner presence, this is not 100% the case (the staff, after all, will only be as disciplined as the owner). In fact, employees who come from chains will very often be the most disciplined because there are so many policies and procedures they need to continuously follow.
In any case, let’s restate the thesis of this column: Bad behaviors are not indicative of a bad employee. To illustrate, I once had a server who was one of my very best. But she didn’t start out that way. When she first came to us, I called her “The Hurricane.” She would take items out of the refrigerator that she needed, leaving them out when she was done; put forth the minimum effort with side work; show up five minutes late regularly; call out if she was hungover; walk over messes; and rarely pitch in with running food for other servers, even leaving them to run most of her food.
She didn’t intentionally look to take advantage of her fellow servers—she loved them, and they loved her. However, frustration was mounting on their part, and on mine. But I didn’t want to lose her without a fight. Customers liked her, and she was extremely conscientious. It occurred to me then that none of her bad behaviors were calculated or intentional, and that they were simply a product of her prior experiences. And so I took it upon myself to try to fix that.
The first time someone does something wrong, it’s my fault. It means that I didn’t train them properly.
Just days into her employment, I had a sit-down with her, taking the time to point out several of the things that she was doing that were jeopardizing her relationships with her teammates and putting her job at risk. Honesty is the best policy, as the old adage says, and in this case I employed it with full force.
“I think you are a really good server, and we all like working with you,” I told her, “but there are some things you do that need to change immediately if you are going to keep the respect of your peers and your job.” Over the course of the next two weeks, I had several conversations with her, spoon-feeding the many areas of improvement to her little by little so as not to overwhelm and discourage her. I explained to her from our first conversation that the expectations at my restaurant were probably very different than those at her previous restaurants and that I was sure in short time, she would be the great fit that we all anticipated and hoped for. I reinforced that I did not believe the behaviors we were addressing were borne of her disregard for others or desire to cheat the system. I let her know that I felt they were acceptable in her previous restaurants and, as such, it was understandable why she would think that they were acceptable here. But I was also firm that after our conversation, I expected to never have to revisit those specific issues we were addressing.
The first time someone does something wrong, I told her, it’s my fault. It means that I didn’t train her properly. But once we have discussed it, going forward it would be her fault, and she would have responsibility for any consequences. She is still with me and is a model of good behaviors, as are many others that had started off on shaky ground.
Constantine Kolitsas is the president of CNK Consulting, a restaurant consultant and coaching business. he can be reached at 203-947-6234 or at ckolitsas@gmail.com
