Restaurant Improvements via Personal Improvement
Posted by estiator at 9 March, at 16 : 55 PM Print
MANAGING FOR SUCCESS
By CONSTANTINE N. KOLITSAS Business Coach
It may be a cliché, but they aren’t clichés by accident: You are only as good as your people. For this reason, large companies put a great deal of time into training, educating, developing, and improving their people. In the restaurant workplace, it seems that this is an area that we neglect because we are busy doing so many other things that need our immediate attention. But don’t be fooled; when you put time into your people, you get results—results that will yield benefits.
If you’re like most restaurant owners, you don’t put any time into your team unless you are addressing a problem—a disciplinary problem, an attitude problem, or a performance problem. And please notice the word “problem” here; it’s used by choice to illustrate the situation for you. We go into these interactions starting from a negative. This is what goes on in the manager’s head and how the team member is perceiving it. The interaction is tainted from the start, with the manager trying to prove a point and the team member going into defense.
“Problems” are best addressed out of context. Of course that doesn’t mean we should ignore things that need to be addressed immediately. But we should be aware of the root causes of issues and address them out of context. And the best time to address those is through one-on-one performance reviews that are scheduled routinely twice a year.
Performance reviews can be as complicated or as simple as you like, and it’s not difficult to draft your own. Remember that the purpose of the review is not to tell a team member they are wonderful or awful, but to help them to improve (even the best employee has room for improvement). And while a “scorecard” that allows you to assess how an employee performs based on a list of behaviors is helpful, the most important piece of the performance review is the Personal Improvement Plan (PIP) that is generated from that scorecard.
The PIP is a valuable tool that allows you to work with the team member to grow and develop. The most well-executed PIPs include quantifiable metrics and goals that both the team member and you can monitor to ensure that the growth and development occurs as desired. Engaged employees will embrace this and use it to help themselves professionally while your negative employees will simply be negative about it as they are about most things. Don’t let that keep you from your task. In fact, use their negativity to illustrate to them how others perceive them.
Remember that the purpose of a review is not to tell a team member they are wonderful or awful, but to help them to improve.
Some examples of scorecard metrics could be: Greets customers in a sincere and welcoming manner; accomplishes side work with pride of ownership; advocates for the guest; does not get flustered when a guest is unreasonable or rude; etc. The scorecard metrics shouldn’t be given a grade or a numeric score but rather a spectrum grade such as “always the case / often the case / sometimes the case / seldom the case.” And it’s best to have the team member self-evaluate ahead of your sit-down, at which point you can compare how the team member perceives their own behaviors with how you (as manager) perceive them.
The PIP, which builds from the scorecard, addresses the root causes of those behaviors and puts goals into place. For example, the following conversation might be appropriate for someone who received a “seldom the case” under “advocates for the guest” metric: “I’d like you to look at every interaction from the guest’s viewpoint. If you are going out to spend your hardearned money to eat, don’t you want your server to check with you after a few bites to make sure that you are enjoying? And if you aren’t enjoying, do you want the server to get defensive about it, or to listen to why you aren’t enjoying your meal and fix it as soon as possible?” From the PIP, the goal of 100% checkbacks at the two-bite mark would be a good goal that you should monitor by watching closely as often as possible.
In most cases, your team members want to do better. But we can’t expect them all to be self-aware and, even when they are, to be able to understand how to improve. It’s your job as manager to get the best from them, and a performance review with a good PIP is a great way to accomplish that.
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.
