Recognize and Reward Your Team

Recognize and Reward Your Team

You’ll probably feel very good about being the manager and coach of a productive

and successful team. All along, you will be giving your team feedback and pats on

the back. What else can you do? Some suggestions are listed below:

Celebrate and appreciate

Ten Ways To Be a Good Leader

Ten Ways To Be a Good Leader

1. Be enthusiastic

This is your team. If your attitude about teams is negative, then right from the

start you set your team back, and it may not recover.

2. Provide direction

In the Cautious stage, help the team focus on what its goals will be. Ask and

answer questions about expectations. Clarify the members’ roles. Work

together to develop ground rules for how you’ll operate. 

How to lead a team

Are you and your property ready for teams?

You’ve learned that thousands of organizations have work teams. Managers at most

of those organizations would tell you that using a team approach sometimes means

changing the way you work with employees and with your boss.

Many hospitality properties turn to teams to solve problems like the ones

described in the case study at right. If you can identify with the manager in the

case study, consider two questions to prepare yourself for working with your

employees as a team:

• Are you ready to lead a team?

• Is management open to a team approach?

The benefits of hospitality teams

The benefits of hospitality teams

Now that you've seen the objections to hospitality teams, let’s look at the benefits.

Most companies that have work teams like them – and like them a lot. Teams can

benefit guests, the property, employees, and you, the manager. As you read

through the list of benefits below, try to add additional items to each list.

Teams benefit guests.

• Improve the overall quality of guest service

• Keep operations efficient and cost-effective, thereby controlling costs

for guests

Potential problems with hospitality teams

Potential problems with hospitality teams.

Are teams the greatest tool since the television remote control channel-zapper?

Not always. Teams are a different way of doing things, and some managers resist

working with them.

Below are some common objections to teams. Put a check mark next to the

objections you’ve heard or have voiced yourself. Can you think of arguments

against any of the objections below? If so, write them down in the space provided.

Then see the Appendix in this handbook to find out what other managers said in

favor of teams.

“My team took an hour to discuss a decision I could have made in

five minutes.”

“Managing a team is a full-time job in itself; how am I going to find time to

do the rest of my job?”

“A team approach takes employees away from their regular duties.”

“Teams are just a way to get rid of middle management and supervisors.”

“If the team fails, the property suffers and morale plummets.”

What Hospitality Teams Can Do

What Hospitality Teams Can Do

As team members work more successfully together, they are capable of handling

greater responsibility. Hospitality managers at various types of properties have

used teams to:

• Improve guest service in specific areas, eliminating causes of guest

dissatisfaction

• Design or test new procedures, services, and products and make

purchasing recommendations

• Develop or conduct training for individuals or teams

• Recommend employee selection criteria and interview potential employees

and team members

• Set performance goals for their own work areas

• Perform quality assurance inspections

• Coordinate community involvement activities

• Set work and vacation schedules

hospitality teams operate

Hospitality teams operate

Ideally, teams can operate at any level, from line to managerial. They generally

perform one of three functions:

1. Recommend or suggest things. For example, a team of front desk agents

designs a registration process to reduce the guest’s time at the front desk.

2. Make or do things. In a hospitality operation, such teams usually focus

on ways to increase sales, reduce costs, and improve guest satisfaction.

3. Run things. Groups of managers or company officers can be a team,

working cooperatively to accomplish team purposes and goals. For

example, a team of managers is assigned to run a new food and beverage

outlet.

Begin thinking about the types of tasks your employees could perform as a team by

doing the exercise at right.

Five Questions to Ask About Teams

Five Questions to Ask About Teams

Teams are a hot topic today. A recent survey found that over three quarters of all

North American organizations with more than 100 employees have working

groups they identify as teams. But just what is a team?

You’ve probably been part of a team at some time in your life – maybe you played

softball as a child, ran tr

ack, or made the high school debate squad.

When it comes to the workplace, the team concept can get fuzzy. Sometimes

everyone in a company or at a property is talked of as being “part of the team.”

There are formal work groups and informal work groups, committees, task forces,

and meetings of all kinds.

This section of the handbook will answer these basic questions about teams in

the hospitality industry:

1. What is a hospitality team?

2. How do teams operate?

3. Are there potential problems with hospitality teams?

4. What are the benefits of hospitality teams?

5. Are you and your property ready for teams?

Hospitality Leadership Part 7 Attitude

Attitude 

One hospitality manager used novelist Ernest Hemingway’s phrase “grace under

pressure” to describe the kind of attitude a successful leader needs. Grace under

pressure means remaining calm and keeping your head no matter what – whether

you’re facing an irate employee, an intoxicated and surly guest, or a fire; or making

Hospitality Leadership Part 6

Motivation 

There are three “facts of life” about employee motivation in the hospitality

industry: Money, monotony, and “meanies.”

Leadership Part 5

Professional conflict

You may have noticed that professional conflict can sometimes become personal
rather quickly. If you can step in before things get personal, you can keep the conflict from escalating. 

Hospitality Leadership Part 4

Handling Conflict

Some business experts say conflict is good. Like the pain you feel when you’re ill,

they say conflict is a warning that something is wrong and that you’d better do

something about it. If you've ever had to mediate an argument – or maybe even a

fistfight – between two employees, you may feel that saying

Hospitality Leadership Part 3

Hospitality Leadership Part 3

Responsibility

President Harry Truman used to keep a sign with this motto on his desk: “The

buck stops here.” Truman’s motto has been used again and again as the ultimate

standard of responsibility. Within Truman’s vision of responsibility lies a deep

Hospitality Leadership Part 2

Hospitality Leadership Part 2 

Ethics

Can you imagine something like this happening at your property:

A fellow manager storms into your office one afternoon waving a memo in

his hand. “Look at this!” he says angrily. “Yesterday the GM told us there

wouldn't be any layoffs, and here’s a memo from corporate headquarters

Hospitality Leadership Part 1

Hospitality Leadership Part 1

Leadership is vital to your success as a manager in any industry. Studies show that

managers who fail usually do so because of faulty leadership skills. They are

arrogant, cold, betray the trust others put in them, or lack the ability to build an

effective team.