Creating winning hospitality teams

It should go without saying that when we work in the hospitality industry, our teams are made up of hospitable people. However, as a sector that is renowned for its ‘revolving door’ workforce, recruitment and retention are challenging and we end up making do with ‘arms and legs.’

Experienced trainer Rosemary Bannister, formerly of Intercontinental Hotels, shares some top tips on overcoming this and building successful hospitality teams. 

Building effective teams and delivering customer satisfaction is tough, and the situation is likely to worsen with Brexit’s legislation, nuances and confusion. But it is not all gloom and doom. You can create winning teams of people who enjoy looking after guests at every level across your organisation, however, it is not going to happen by chance.

The world of sport provides some great analogies and ideas for building winning teams, and we’ve been studying a few of them, specifically: tools, goals, training, coaching, attitude and leadership.

Tools (and teamwork)

You can’t play hockey without a stick, rugby without a ball or tennis without a racket. Similarly, your team cannot do its job if it doesn’t have the requisite tools. I’ve seen people hiding cutlery and crockery from other departments so they have enough to do their own job. That’s just ‘not cricket’ is it, but somewhat understandable? Perhaps it’s time for an audit of your kit.

Goals

There’s a mountain of research out there demonstrating that we perform better when we understand the bigger picture and have clear goals to aim for. What are yours? Does your team understand them, feel inspired by them, want to stretch that bit further to achieve them? Or is your team walking in on autopilot, doing what needs to be done and going home? How do you reward them when they’ve done a great job?

Training

What’s the game plan? In his book Bounce Mathew Syed suggests you need to practice your craft for 10,000 hours to become an expert. Help your team to reach the top of its game through commitment to continuous development and training.

Coaching

Engender a ‘winning team’ not just an ‘also ran’ mentality. Once your team has had relevant training, keep it alive and productive through coaching. It’s the one thing that will keep them in the game when their motivation falters and encourage them to go the extra mile for their own and their team’s ‘personal best.

Winning attitude

Your team is only ever as strong as its weakest member – harsh but true. Whilst overall the team should be stronger than the sum of its parts, one ‘bad apple’ can disrupt focus and de-motivate others. Recruit people who want to be there and win. Generally, you can train in the skill, it’s the attitude that counts.

Leadership

Look in the mirror – high performing teams do not happen by accident. In every case that has been studied at the Europe-based Centre for Organizational Research, teams that ‘click’ always have a leader who creates the environment, and establishes the operating principles and values that are conducive to high performance.

Do you work in a management role or have responsibility for hospitality professionals? 

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