Introduction:

Hey restaurant owners and operators! There is no amount of talent that can make up for bad coaching. You may have a very talented staff or you may not, you may have some people on your team who are fantastic but are not performing at their optimum level. A lot of times this comes from bad coaching. 

I’m not a huge football fan, but I have a lot of friends who watch a lot of football and say the 49’ers should’ve won the Super Bowl last year. It wasn’t the talent on the field, but the poor coaching and poor decisions that led to them eventually not winning the game. 

A story I love to tell is about 3 or 4 years ago I got a phone call from a prospective client that needed my help. He told me that he had just opened up a restaurant and they were really struggling. He said his number one challenge was people, and that he was having a really hard time with his talent.

He went on to tell me that when he was building his restaurant, it’s in the same center as a Chick-Fil-A and most of his staff were people that he hired away from there for either full time or part time work. He would eat at that Chick-Fil-A all the time and these people were amazing, they took great care of him, they cared about their jobs and they were great employees.

You might have already connected the dots here but I always find it interesting that he could sit there and tell me on the phone that the problem he was having was his staff, when the staff worked at Chick-Fil-A and they were great. But now that they work for him they’re coming in late, they’re not doing their job, they’re not taking care of guests right, they’re not doing the things they are supposed to be doing when they’re supposed to be doing it. And so I say again – no amount of talent can make up for bad coaching.

How to make-up for Bad Coaching?

So the first thing you need to do is ask: Are you as good of a coach as you think you are? Are you even playing the role of a coach or are you just showing up to work and telling people what to do? That’s not what a coach does. A coach develops, leads and teaches people how to be better. A coach sees the strength and weaknesses of their people then pulls out those strengths. A coach develops talent.

So how do you know if you’re being a good coach or if you’re not a good enough coach your team? First of all, there’s no coach in the world that can’t get better as a coach. Great coaches know that they could always be doing a better job for their team. Great teachers are students first, great coaches are always learning. 

1) So the first step is to admit that wherever you are on your journey as a coach, you have room to improve. If you’ve been doing this for 25 years, you have room to improve. If you’ve never done it, you have a ton of room to improve. No matter where you are in your journey as a coach you have room to improve.

2) Study your successes and study your failures. You have had bad nights in the restaurant but you’ve also had great nights. Study those. What can you learn from them? How did you show up as a leader differently on the good nights than the bad nights? How did your team react when you treated them differently? 

3) Study other coaches’ successes and failures. Read books and attend seminars. You could learn from football coaches, piano, soccer and business coaches. 

4) Fail faster. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes trying new things but do it as fast as possible. Don’t delay failure by sitting here doing your research. Just go fail! Make a mistake, but learn from it. 

5) Always be open and honest with yourself. Be open and honest about your successes and your failures. If you lie to yourself and tell you how great you are, it’s not going to help anybody.

What I really want for you to take from this today is that no matter how much talent you have or how much talent is hidden inside of your staff, without great coaching that talent will never have a chance to shine. Without great coaching there can be no talent and there can be no success, at least not the success of the levels that you desire and you deserve. I hope you enjoy this week’s video and I look forward to bringing you another one just like this. Have a wonderful day!