Core Values and Leadership

Hospitality Starts From Within

What Kind of Restaurant Will You Lead?

Transcript

Core Values & Leadership

As a manager, there are many decisions you will face on a daily or even hourly basis. Sometimes these decisions will need to be made at lightning-fast speed, followed by equally fast actions. What can help you stay true to what you believe is right in these moments? It's a set of core values.

Having a set of core values that are displayed and instilled in all staff members helps guide you when you're under pressure or unsure about what to do. They are the guiding principles that inform every decision we make. They help us to determine whether or not we are on the right path and help us make decisions that are true to ourselves and our brand.

You can create your own core values for your business, or you can have a look and see if ours connects with you.

Below are the core values that have guided us:

1. We are not entitled to success; we work for it.
2. We think, write, and speak with precision, clarity, and honesty.
3. We empower others by letting them know they have it in them to do better and making sure they have the training and tools to do so.
4. We thank everyone and treat our coworkers with respect.
5. We achieve consistency through the application of constant gentle pressure.
6. We achieve success by practicing good habits.
7. We systemize to simplify.
8. Failure is valuable; we learn from it.
9. We are resourceful.
10. We are grateful for our guests and team members.

Stay true to your core values, and they’ll act as guard rails in your decision-making and actions. As a leader, you must be consistent in your values, modeling the behavior you want to see in your employees.

Hospitality Starts From Within

Hospitality is not something that only applies to guests who walk through your doors. It begins with your coworkers. When we treat each other with respect, acknowledgment, and warmth, our guests feel it in the restaurant's atmosphere. Our attitude towards one another naturally disseminates to your guests because it is revealed in how we behave in the restaurant.

Renowned restaurateur Danny Meyer says that his business is built on “both good service, defined as the technical delivery of a product, and enlightened hospitality, which is how the delivery of that product makes its recipient feel.” This "enlightened hospitality" means taking care of each other first, then the guests, the community, suppliers, and investors. If you haven’t had the opportunity, we highly recommend picking up Danny Meyer’s book, Setting the Table.

Here’s an analogy: Think of every employee and every guest as a bank account. Before you can expect to withdraw, you must make a deposit, right? If there’s nothing in the account, there’s nothing you can retrieve from it. The deposits, in this case, are not just proper training and providing the right tools for the job but also kindness, consistency, and generosity through hospitality. The withdrawals are respect, displays of consistent hospitality, high-quality workmanship from staff, and repeat business from happy guests. Not to mention positive press on social media and word of mouth.

The best hospitality is the kind that anticipates the needs of the team and the guest. This is the kind of hospitality a Synergy Certified Manager is trained to provide. By always paying close attention to the flow of events, potential negative turning points in the dining experience can be avoided. When something goes wrong, intervene. Own up to it, honestly. Let the guest feel heard while you fix the issue. Lastly, thank them for their feedback. We discuss this in more depth in the Practical Floor Management module. In the Greetings and Exceptional Service module, you'll learn the system behind creating consistently great dining experiences through server training. In the Hiring the Right People For the Job module, you’ll learn how to hire the right people to create the best possible work environment.

Hospitality simply means genuinely caring about the experience of others and doing everything in your power to ensure that the experience is meaningful.

What Kind of Restaurant Will You Lead?

How can you know whether your actions and your team's actions will result in the kind of restaurant you envision? What steps can you take to change the way your restaurant is performing? Great restaurants are built on a foundation of systematization, checklists, and accountability measures. That is the foundation, but what they run on are good habits. Following procedure on a day-to-day basis is a decision that you, as a manager, must make and reinforce with your staff. These good habits start with the leadership team. You must empower your staff with the right training, systems, tools, and procedures, then follow up to ensure they stay on the ball. This philosophy is called “empower down and follow up.”

James Clear is an entrepreneur, author, and expert in habit formation. His book Atomic Habits discusses a system that helps you determine what and who you will be through your actions. Every action, positive or negative, is a vote towards who you are becoming. Each action might not say much, but actions add up over time, and it paints a clearer picture. It’s a system that can be applied to you as an individual and to your business. Every action that works within the framework of the established systems is a vote for becoming a successful and long-lasting institution that operates with a smooth consistency. Every action that ignores the framework or skips a checklist or procedure is a vote for chaotic work life at a business with an unsure future and questionable long-term potential for success. The habit of following daily procedures is crucial and will repeatedly tally votes in the former category.

You’ve heard the expression before: if you take care of the pennies, the dollars take care of themselves. The pennies, in this case, are your team’s daily actions that lead to consistent, excellent operations. Consistent, excellent operations lead to the ability to spot-check instead of constantly micromanaging and the freedom to work ON the business rather than IN the business, always putting out fires.