Have you heard the old cliché: "People don’t quit a bad job, they quit a bad boss?"
There has never been a more important time for managers, to reflect on how they are as bosses, managers and leaders to create a positive environment and build a committed team.
In the recruitment crisis most sectors are facing today, it's more important than ever to remember the old adage:
People don’t quit a bad job. They quit a bad manager.
So how do you become the best boss you can be so that your team stick with you through thick and thin?
Personal and business success goes hand-in-hand with confidence. Confidence is the foundation of leadership - it’s the fuel that drives us forward. Leaders are role models - so their confidence is contagious, and unfortunately, so is lack of confidence. Here are my tips to build your confidence as a leader.
One of the most challenging things about becoming a manager is building the confidence to give effective feedback to your team. Delivering positive or negative feedback can feel daunting, you might not want to come across as soft and gushing or worry that the receiver won’t like you or that giving feedback may be pointless and unhelpful. But giving feedback is crucial to keeping your team on track, boosting quality and performance, to avoiding or repeating mistakes. So here are my tips on giving feedback.
Every sector I speak to at the moment from hospitality to tech, is finding it harder to recruit than ever before. So as a manager, how do you build a happy, committed and successful team who will stick with you through thick and thin? The short answer is, it’s not just about paying them more!
Inspiring words from Dame Karen Jones, chair of both the Hawksmoor and Mowgli restaurant chains. At the Propel Hospitality Talent and Training Conference she spoke about how Hospitality is the lynch pin of society. We realised how much we missed it during lock down and that the holy grail of hospitality is: The power of the moment of human connection that keeps your customers coming back again and again.
Personal and business success goes hand-in-hand with confidence. Confidence is the foundation of leadership - it’s the fuel that drives us forward. Leaders are role models - so their confidence is contagious, and unfortunately, so is lack of confidence. Here are my tips to build your confidence as a leader.
I’ve long been a fan of the podcast Hospitality Mavericks, so I was really excited to be asked by its host Michael Tingsager, to join him to chat about my work as an executive coach and running leadership development programmes.
We talk about the difference between leadership and management, how to build a strong, happy and engaged team, changing expectations of work life and just some of the challenges facing business leaders today.
I also share my own story of how I moved from hospitality and food & drink branding and communications to become a business coach, and how I build healthy routines and lots of exercise to look after myself.
You can listen to the podcast on all the usual podcast channels from Spotify, Apple, Google, Amazon and below on YouTube.
I highly recommend all the podcasts on Hospitality Mavericks!
Find them all here: Hospitality Mavericks >
Lectures, festival, conference, happening? It's impossible to capture the essence of Do Lectures in one word, or even a few.
A gathering of like-minded people who make a pilgrimage to remote West Wales (in my case almost as far from East to West as it's possible to go in the UK). It's the chance to do things you've never done before - share a tent with complete strangers, drink coffee with the former captain of a US nuclear submarine and practise breathing sitting in a wild flower meadow.
The core of the three day event is a series of talks - the speakers are challenged to tell a story they've never told before. All the most memorable talks for me were the ones I was least expecting - two unbelievable Irish teenagers, Ciara Judge and Émer Hickey, whose school science project to look at improving crop fertilisation and yield went on to win the Google Science Prize and see them named as two of Time magazines most influential teenagers. David Marquet, a former US nuclear submarine captain on turning followers into leaders, CJ Bowrey founder of Sal's Shoes which started with her regret about throwing away her young son's barely worn shoes when so many children in the world are shoeless, she has now coordinated the distribution of over 30,000 pairs of children's shoes from the UK to Africa, Cambodia and Romania.
1. Join the Dots - find the connections in your life, how and why you came from one place to another. Many of the speakers at Do, like me, have had really varied careers, take a moment to notice the connections. And allow yourself space to not know what’s going to happen to create an environment where you can pull through and come out of a bad situation thriving
2. You don't have ideas - ideas have you - follow them and see where it takes you.
3. Don't be afraid of being you - work out what makes you tick, make a list of the good things and follow your curiosity.
4. It's ok not to have a plan - if it feels right - do it.
For other people's attempts to sum up Do Lectures in one word have a look at this video of the 2015 Do Lectures Wales.
Aldeburgh has a new skyline and now can claim two sculptures by internationally important artists (the other Maggie Hambling's Scallop at the other end of the beach). To celebrate their 50th anniversary the Landmark Trust have commissioned Antony Gormley Sculptures by Antony Gormley to create five site specific sculptures for their properties.
In Aldeburgh a figure stands atop the stark Martello Tower built to keep Napoleon out in the early 19th century. His arms crossed and he's staring out to sea. As you approach down a narrow spit, rough sea on one side, the gentle river and boats on the other, he looms above you. Is he guarding our coastline or about to jump?
It's worth the bracing walk to see it (it will only be there until May 2016) - don't drive down there as I saw several people doing - the impact just wouldn't be the same.
Bryn Cocyn Farm is my uncle and aunt's farm in North Wales. It's to Patrick and Joyce that I owe so much of my interest in food and determination to get people to think more about the value of food and where it comes from.
"Have you any idea how much grass went into that butter?"
A story I've told many times is about my aunt telling off my young cousin for playing with butter and making me think for the first time about that anonymous pack of butter you pick off the supermarket shelf without any thought to what it is, where it's come from and the effort that's gone into producing it.
Patrick and Joyce have farmed organically since the 70s and only sell directly to consumers through farmers markets and farm gate sales. Originally they produced lamb and beef but markets have allowed them to develop a more mixed way of farming producing organic vegetables - the most delicious tomatoes you'll ever eat, shiny chard and from their orchard an amazing diversity of apples, some of which are turned into juice.
