Introduction:

Hey restaurant owners and operators, do you ever feel like your staff is preventing you from attaining the success that you deserve? That’s the topic of today’s blog post. 

I got a great email from a gentleman a couple of weeks ago who literally said, “My restaurant staff is preventing me from succeeding as a manager.” I wrote back a pretty stern remark that read, “Your staff is not holding you back. Your management and leadership skills are.”

Your staff is only as good as you are:

Your staff will always be 80-90% as good as you are. So unless you’re managing at 120%, you will feel like they are letting you down. But it is you who is letting them down. 

The good news is these skills are like anything else and they can be learned. If you’re interested, I have some programs that can help you. But, selling programs is not what I’m doing today. I am here to give you some tools that can help you right now. The reality is that if your staff isn’t performing at the level that you expect them to be, the only person you could look at is yourself. 

You hired them, trained them and created the work environment they’re working in – nobody else did any of this. If you didn’t hire them, well who cares. Your job is to manage them so figure it out. If you didn’t create the environment for them to work in, it’s your job to figure it out. It’s easy to constantly blame other people for all of these other things. Believe me, I hear it all of the time, “Well…I’m not the one who hired them.” My answer: well I don’t care go do your job as a manager! I also hear, “Well I didn’t create all the systems.” My answer: go out and create better systems then!

Sure, there’s bad apples out there. Don’t get me wrong, not every staff member is great and most of the people that you interview probably are not great. I understand that and I know it’s difficult to find help in the restaurant business today. But the reality is there are restaurants out there that are doing this at very high levels. Matter of fact, there’s probably one in your community right now. I guarantee there are hundreds, if not thousands, of them around the country or in the world. 

Chick-Fil-A and In-N-Out for example…you can’t tell me that they have magic pills that they give their employees to make them perform better. Of course not! They have better management and better leadership. If you’re not getting the performance you want out of your employees, get a hold of a mirror and look at yourself. Ask yourself, “Am I the manager or the leader that’s good enough to take these employees where I need them to be and to get the results that we want?” 

If you answer is no, management and leadership are learned skills. I promise you’re not born a great manager or a great leader. You become a great manager by practicing management, reading books, taking classes, attending seminars or by doing it. One day you just have to decide you’re a great leader and then you have to start leading people. You have to practice, and you can’t complain about your people while you’re trying to become a better leader, you just can’t. Just the reality of the world. 

Final thoughts:

For anyone out there who’s wanting to blame their staff, and saying things like, “My staff are all idiots,” I’m suggesting that you just become a better leader and a better manager. 

If you want some help with that, come on over to https://therestaurantboss.com/ where I’ve got hundreds of other free videos as well as some courses that can help you with this. Also, seek out a coach or mentor yourself. Go to Amazon.com and look up management and leadership books. There are phenomenal books out there on the topic it’s a massive industry and a lot of them are great. 

All of the great managers and great leaders have learned that skill. That’s why people follow them and that’s why people do what they ask them to do.