We know the cliché, leaders lead by example.
Don’t be confused, when your Team sees you rolling up your sleeves it is no doubt a culture strengthening act. We see it all the time in our industry. The leader helping strip rooms, being an extra set of hands at the front desk or helping serve at a banquet. For most of us, getting our hands dirty is second nature and is an established prerequisite to being a hotel manager.
HOWEVER, If a leader is in the trenches too often, the opposite effect will occur.
To those wondering, when is too often? Well the truth is, it’s not so much with how often but rather why. Why is it the Leader is needing to step into operations?
Let’s look at some positive culture reinforcing reasons first.
- Your hotel is going through a surprise busy time or an extraordinarily short term busy time.
- You’re contributing to bond with and further coach your Team.
- You’re doing it to learn more about how your department functions and experience what your Team Members experience.
Now let’s look at some reasons that can have a negative impact.
- A trend of continued short staffing issues over a season. Causes of this may be poor recruitment strategies, poor scheduling or sick calls within the hotel.
- A Leader taking on too many shifts to save front line costs while the hotel is not in a financially dire situation.
- A Leader falling back on front line shifts because Leadership/Managerial duties take them out of their comfort zone.
Can we see the difference between these two categories?
The positive categories all have tangible benefits. The Team sees the Leader as willing, supportive and understanding of their roles. In this scenario, the Leader begins to be seen as a knowledgeable, hard working human being as opposed to an out of touch boss.
The negative examples paint a much different picture. They show incompetence and selfishness. Going further they lead to important hotel initiatives, processes and goals not being accomplished. In many cases these over contributing managers will actually lead to stressed out Teams, the exact opposite of what they hoped to accomplish.
So what do we do about this as Leaders in our hotel?
- Remember to continually reflect and analyze the difference between Important and Urgent tasks. Remember that as a Leader, your Important tasks need to significantly outweigh your urgent ones. Too many urgent tasks means you have larger problems to solve.
- If you find yourself in a hotel that is in constant chaos and turmoil. Take a breath and start dissecting. There’s no culture and problem that cannot be fixed.
- If you see the signs of a Leader working too often over the course of a year, realize there is probably a management skill/coaching issue here rather than a staffing issue at play.
Remember you are there to Support your Team, not Be your Team.
