"Hospitality is the "Power of Human Connection" - Dame Karen Jones

Inspiring words from Dame Karen Jones, chair of both the Hawksmoor and Mowgli restaurant chains, senior independent director at Deliveroo and who founded casual dining chain Café Rouge in 1989. During the Pandemic, she worked closely with ministers and was the only hospitality representative on the government's Build Back Better business council. She was made a dame in the Queen's Birthday Honours List 2022 for her services to business and the hospitality industry.

People are at the heart of every hospitality business.

Karen Jones spoke at the Propel Hospitality Talent & Training Conference on Tuesday she said:

Hospitality is the lynch pin of society. We realised how much we missed it during lock down.

She reminded us that the holy grail of hospitality is:

The power of the moment of human connection that keeps your customers coming back again and again.

When asked about what attracted her to working in hospitality she said it was the

• Excitement hospitality can give

• The pleasure of looking after people

• Lovely colleagues who are fun, high energy, innovative and entrepreneurial

She went on to talk about that elusive "hospitality gene" found in people who just get the excitement and buzz of hospitality and love the pleasure of looking after people. The million dollar question is: is the hospitality gene innate or can you teach it? Karen Jones believes that you can. An employer needs to explain what hospitality is all about - the hard technical skills and soft communication skills can be learned later.

The Importance of Culture

Culture is hard to define she said, it’s more complex than “your people just doing the right things when people are looking.”

Culture is that feeling it gives you.

She defined CULTURE as the 'feeling it gives you' built on 4 pillars:

1. Being clear about the culture you want to create and knowing and communicating your values.

2. Genuinely caring about your people. Remember everyone is different: different backgrounds, different outlooks and with different ambitions. Culture is about trying to weld them into a whole through daily decisions that strengthen not weaken the culture.

3. Not expecting people to do things in their work life that they wouldn’t do in their personal life

4. Always delivering on what you say you will.

How to define your Values to build Culture

Karen Jones emphasised that your values have to be what you genuinely believe in. Values should be driven by the business founders or leaders, not outsourced to a consultant. Create a Mission and Vision statement that communicates your purpose and values. This is the time for leaders to be quite direct - your team need something to hang their hat on.

Keep your values simple and easy to articulate. If you can't remember them or say them clearly, they're too long and complicated. Use the one-sentence test! Can you say what you stand for in one simple sentence?

You know your values have caught fire when people start using them and talking about them. Then they start to drive behaviours.

4 Crucial Factors to Retaining Employees

Building on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Karen Jones identified four blocks to retention, without these things you will never get people to stay in your business.

1. PAY - You can’t do a good job if you are worrying about how you are going to pay the rent.

2. SAFETY & SECURITY - If I do well will I be secure?

3. WORK LIFE BALANCE - long hours and low pay are the worst things. Our cognitive ability is affected by stress and the main causes of stress are fair pay and scheduling.

4. CAREER ADVANCEMENT - how do I get my foot on the next rung of the ladder?

How does Hospitality improve diversity, inclusion and equality?

Asma Khan, owner of Darjeeling Express and star of Netflix’s Chef’s Table, has written widely about her experience of starting her restaurant. She says she believed it would never be possible to run a business in a world that she described as "an all white, all male club." She said, if she had a daughter, she would seriously discourage her from a career in hospitality, where kitchens are all too often "a toxic testosterone-fuelled environment."

This last point obviously resonated strongly for me after my then 17-year old daughter announced that she wanted to be a chef. We talked seriously about what a tough career choice that was, especially for woman. We talked about how life as a chef almost completely incompatible with being a mother and how the majority of kitchens remain a very male and macho environment. Needless to say, like all good teenagers, she listened to my advice and chose to ignore me!

At the Propel Hospitality Talent and Training Conference in London on Tuesday 3 October, Asma Khan moved me to tears as she spoke, as she has done before when talking about her incredible work establishing a cafe in a refugee camp in northern Iraq employing traumatised Yazidi women.

This time she spoke about how she still feels like an outsider in the world of hospitality, but she’s learned to see it as an advantage. She talked about how food not only has the power to bring us together, but is also a cause of division. She said in India “Food is main way people are divided” by religion and caste. At her restaurant Khan employs women from all backgrounds, religions and ages and abilities. Everyone is welcome and everyone is equal “We put our religion and our caste at the door, we celebrate every festival. We are a team.

A diverse team gives you strength

Asma Khan believes that you strengthen your team by having a diverse team and urged all businesses build a diverse workplace.

Hiring a diverse team is key to inspiring the next generation in hospitality.

Her advice:

• Understand you are a team

• Be empathetic and let people know that they matter

• Offer flexible work and reduce the hours

Darjeeling Express is a model of what a diverse workplace can be.

However, the reality of diversity in the hospitality sector is different as demonstrated by Be Inclusive Hospitality's 2023 Inside Hospitality Report , a comprehensive account of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in hospitality through a race lens and whic includes 3,120 views and experiences captured encompass all backgrounds, genders, ages, jobs, and lengths of service.

The report says 1 in 3 respondents report personal experiences of discrimination at work and that only 16% of hospitality workers believe it’s an inclusive and diverse industry.

I was honoured to host a crucial discussion in The Restaurant Show with:

• Lorraine Copes Be Inclusive Hospitality award-winning social entrepreneur, hospitality consultant and life coach. Lorraine has two decades as an executive director for brands including Gordon Ramsay Restaurants and Corbin & King, but felt compelled to form Be Inclusive Hospitality CIC in 2020 due to the consistent lack of representation of people of colour in positions of influence and the supply chain. This social enterprise now holds the prime position of igniting much-needed conversations and delivering initiatives to advance change within the hospitality, food, and drink sectors.

• Mecca Ibrahim co-founder of Women In The Food Industry, a Community Interest Company for conversation, insight, stories, resources & community support as women in food face obstacles of inequality & inclusion.

• Chris Todd Head of Talent JKS Restaurants a former chef who now oversees all recruitment and talent initiatives across JKS’s portfolio of 22 restaurants including Trishna, Gymkhana, Kitchen Table, Sabor and Lyle’s; Hoppers, BAO, Brigadiers.

We agreed that more needs to be done to change the perception of working in Hospitality. The sector has improved but we need to blow our own trumpet more to shout over the stereotypes portrayed in TV shows like Boiling Point and The Bear. Education is key. We need to get young children interested in food and hospitality and work with parents, schools and colleges to show it’s an amazing career for life, not just a stop-gap.

Mastering Performance Management: 10 Tips to giving feedback

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, worry about being critical and being disliked, or just giving feedback that is unhelpful and demotivating.

FEEDBACK CREATES A CULTURE WHERE PEOPLE FEEL VALUED

In hospitality, people are our greatest asset and so, of course, their performance and attitude are central to the customer experience and business success. Giving regular feedback creates a virtuous circle of development and improvement.

So giving feedback is crucial to keeping your team on track, boosting quality and performance, to avoiding or repeating mistakes, and giving people the opportunity to grow and develop. When delivered well it can be inspiring and motivating. Creating a culture at work where feedback is a regular habit will strengthen relationships and boost retention. A feedback culture helps employees feel valued and heard, promotes accountability and encourages people to take an active role in their own development.

Feedback can be formal and planned as part of a one-to-one conversation or regular performance review or it can be informal and ad hoc, but remember that the quality of the feedback is more important than the frequency.

HOW TO DELIVER EFFECTIVE FEEDBACK

There’s a huge difference in impact between giving feedback badly or well. Badly delivered feedback can sound judgemental, vague or intangible, and saved up until it becomes irrelevant, an irritation or a resentment.

Phrases like “Why didn’t you do that?”, “Why did that happen?”, “You never do this”, “You should do that” or worst of all “If I were you…” (Nobody likes a know-all!) This will create a defensive response and people will tune out and switch off.

TOP 10 TIPS FOR DELIVERING EFFECTIVE FEEDBACK

1. SPECIFIC AND UNBIASED

The sweet spot is to deliver feedback (and I’m talking about both positive and negative feedback here) that is specific, unbiased and descriptive. A useful way to remember this is with the acronym: AID - which stands for:

• Action

• Impact

• Direction.

Start by objectively describing the action, what did or didn’t happen, explain the impact of that and then explore together how to move forward, make sure it doesn’t happen again or make it even better next time. Rather than making assumptions use phrases like “I noticed” or “I believe”. e.g.

“When the handover to the next team shift wasn’t done, I noticed the impact was that this task got forgotten.”

2. FEED FORWARD NOT BACK

There’s a popular concept called “feed forward” which focuses not on what has happened in the past, you can’t change the past and focus instead on the future. It’s more effective to help people learn to be right than to prove that they were wrong and that people will respond much more positively, listening better and coming up with their own ideas for improvement. You can use examples and give suggestions and encouragement for improvement.

3. MAKE IT A DIALOGUE

Next, make a feedback discussion a conversation - a dialogue, not a monologue. Ask people what they felt or observed was the impact, use questions to raise their awareness and ask them how they think they could do better next time. This will show your commitment to helping the person improve, grow and develop.

4. IN THE MOMENT

Make feedback immediate, don’t save it up until it becomes an issue or resentment. Suppose you have a process of performance appraisals or reviews. In that case, it can be tempting to hold back until the next one, but giving feedback should be part of your everyday management of your staff - a continuous loop: agree on next steps and objectives, monitor and support, review and reward.

5. IN THE RIGHT SETTING

You’ve probably heard the phrase “Praise in public and criticise in private’. Public praise in front of peers and colleagues adds more weight to the praise, reinforces positive performance and encourages others to emulate. But if you have more critical feedback to give, it’s kinder to find a private place to talk and you are less likely to provoke a defensive response.

6. DELIVERED THOUGHTFULLY

Be aware of your words and your thoughts. Remember that communication happens on different levels - what you mean to say, what you actually say, what the receiver hears and how they interpret it. When giving feedback try to be a fair witness, an observer - so even if you think someone is stupid or lazy, you need to describe their behaviour and its actions on the rest of the team or your customers. Leave your personal opinions and judgment at the door.

7. DEALING WITH CHALLENGING SITUATIONS

And what if you have a more serious issue to deal with and are dreading a difficult conversation?

This is the time to not respond in haste or anger, take some to calm down, reflect and prepare for the conversation and be clear what you want to get out of it. Ask the person for a meeting and give them some time to prepare too. It may be helpful to ask someone else to sit in the meeting - e.g. someone from HR or operations. Make it clear that you are trying to find a way to move forward and find solutions together. Make sure that the meeting is noted for future reference and share it with them afterwards.

During the conversation try to regulate your emotions, getting angry will not help, describe the issue and its impact, be factual and specific. Avoid playing ‘You Tennis’ where you make the feedback very personal “You did that…”, “you are always late” and turn it into personal observations such as “I noticed that this happened and it had this impact” or “I’m aware that when you arrive late it means we’re behind all day.”

Then open up the conversation giving the recipient time to tell it from their perspective, listen and pause, before clarifying and summarising. Use phrases like “How do you feel about this?” Or “Is this a fair representation of what happened?”

8. PROBLEM SOLVE TOGETHER

Then move into problem-solving together, asking questions to mutually agree next steps and finally suggest a follow-up meeting. You can be clear about your exceptions and what improvement looks like.

In serious cases, it’s essential to make clear the consequences of continued performance or behaviour issues. This doesn’t mean threatening that they will lose their job, but could include a formal warning or losing a bonus.

9. FORMAL AND INFORMAL, REGULAR AND AD HOC

The practice of regular formal performance reviews once or twice a year is evolving. Any manager who has had to deliver these for a team will know how time-consuming they can be and the temptation to save up difficult subjects until they are long overdue discussions. Employees can dread these formal meetings and find them demotivating. As a result, many businesses are moving away from them towards less formal, more regular performance conversations.

If your company still has a process of formal appraisals, the same principles as giving informal feedback. It should be a dialogue, not a monologue. The discussion must be fair, specific, consistent and forward-looking apply. Use specific examples to illustrate both the positive and negative such as customer feedback or information from colleagues.

10. ASK QUESTIONS

A vital part of any appraisal conversation is to start by asking the employee how they think they are getting on and explore their aspirations what skills (hard or soft) they want to develop and what are their future aspirations.

Together you should agree on future goals and targets that are aligned with the company’s values and overall objectives, this way staff feel they have a role to play in the vision and ambition of the business. These objectives should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Record them on paper or digitally then you can review progress regularly.

If you can create an environment where feedback is regular and a two-way conversation, you will create a culture where people feel motivated, supported and inspired to keep learning and growing.

Why should anyone be led by you?

Have you heard the old cliché:

"People don’t quit a bad job, they quit a bad boss?"

Perhaps you can think of a time when you’ve left a job purely because you didn’t get on with your manager? 

Leaders I speak to in every sector say that recruiting and retaining talent is currently the biggest barrier to growth. So 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. 

We fall into management

Managing a team of people is something that we often fall into. We get promoted because of our skill or ability, and suddenly we are responsible for other people. You need them to respect you, listen to you and be loyal to you, but it isn’t always easy. 

Here are my tips for being a better leader and understanding the difference between leadership and management. 

SELF-AWARENESS

Developing your leadership ability begins with some self-reflection and self-awareness of how your behaviour impacts those around you? What sort of boss are you - are you an inspiring leader or hands-on manager? Do you have rapport and trust with your team? Are you able to empower and energise your team? Are you consistent and able to keep your cool under pressure? 

It can be valuable to reflect on the best managers you’ve had or even the most inspirational teachers? How did it make you feel and how did it impact your commitment? I imagine the ones you remember inspired and motivated you, you will have felt they listened to and valued and as a result, you felt more committed and focussed. 

SHARE A VISION & INSPIRE

A leader needs to look beyond the day-to-day and ‘dream great dreams” Imagine your vision is to create a wildflower meadow and you have a team of people to do the hard work. A manager would give a specific list of instructions and tasks to each person - ask them to drill the soil, to plant the seeds in a specific way and to water it precisely. While a leader will share his vision of a beautiful colourful meadow, rich in biodiversity and ask the team how you can work together collectively to make that dream a reality. Which do you think is the most inspiring, motivating and going to get the best results? 

A manager’s job is to set operational objectives and standards, but as a leader it’s your role to communicate the vision, the big picture, and share a purpose and values in a way that will appeal to your team and that will motivate them to get out of bed in the morning. Make sure that even people with the most mundane jobs, can see how their role is key to achieving that vision. 

BUILD TRUST & RAPPORT

How strong are your relationships with your team, do they trust you and do you trust them? Without that individuals are only working for themselves and not for the team. Building rapport begins with growing your emotional intelligence, being able to see the whole person not just the worker, making time for one-to-one catch-ups and checking in on people’s wellbeing as well as just everyday tasks. 

Practice deep listening and paying attention to non-verbal communication as well as the words that are being said, sometimes the words coming out of someone’s mouth don’t match what their body language might be telling you. 

Are you able to keep your cool under pressure? How consistent and reliable are you? There’s nothing more tricky than tiptoeing on eggshells around your manager because you don’t know what mood they’re bringing to work that day. We’re all human and sometimes things can get too much, so if you do lose it sometimes, apologise, admit you were wrong and accept accountability for your mistakes. Demonstrating vulnerability is key to building trust. 

EMPOWER & ENABLE

To what extent do you give your employees autonomy and consult with them for their ideas and input? Give your employees the opportunity to contribute creatively, to solve challenges or own a project. Treat them as responsible adults, giving them agency to decide how they carry out their work (where possible) and to make a meaningful contribution to the business. This creates an environment where people feel that they are contributing to the greater good and will go over and above. 

SHOW APPRECIATION

It’s human nature to want to feel valued and appreciated. Feeling undervalued is one of the most frequently given reasons for leaving a job. While people who feel appreciated are more loyal and committed. Yet, we’re too often wrapped up in just getting the job done to remember to stop and thank people for their contributions. 

So as a leader, think about how you recognise people’s contribution, from small thank yous for getting a task done, to giving feedback to support people with their personal development or celebrating successes over a team drink. 

WHEN TO LEAD & WHEN TO MANAGE 

There is no right or wrong here, there’s a time and a place for both management and leadership. A good leader will be able to adapt depending on the person, the task, the context and the urgency. If you have a new starter with little experience or none of the technical skills required for the job, then you will need to be more manager, giving clear instructions and checking in on progress. In an urgent situation, for example, dealing with a difficult customer, again you may need to step in and manage the situation more closely. But when you are dealing with someone who is highly committed, whether or not they have the experience or skill, you can step back to a more supportive, coaching role, ask for their ideas and help them develop their skills. This gives them the chance to feel they are making a valuable contribution, to feel that they are being challenged and to grow their experience and confidence. 

Less experienced managers usually find themselves more at the directive managerial end of the spectrum, telling, showing, instructing, and often admit to micromanaging because it’s easier and quicker, but this is the fast track to creating low morale and unengaged teams. 

If you do one thing after reading this piece

Set aside a bit of time to reflect on how you show up at work, how your leadership approach impacts the people around you, why would anyone want to be led by you, what are your strengths and what do you perhaps need to work on?

If you are interested in exploring how these ideas apply to your experience and role, please get in touch about one-to-one coaching or my leadership development workshops.

Polly Robinson is an Executive Coach and Leadership Development Facilitator specialising in Working with leaders in hospitality.

Lead with Resilience

Happy staff create happy customers and that starts with a happy you.

Today we’re all under so much pressure at work and at home. Many teams I work with are short-staffed and those who are there are having to work harder and longer. But there’s only so long we can keep this up and eventually we start to run on empty, like a car running out of petrol - it doesn’t do us any good in the short or long term.

As a leader, it’s down to you to create an environment that fosters a positive attitude towards managing stress, prioritising our wellbeing and encourages a healthy work-life balance (or LIFE-WORK in that order).
Start by focussing on your own wellbeing, and then support your team.

It’s vital to start with yourself

Just as on an airplane we’re instructed to put our own oxygen mask on first. If you are starting to feel resentful, find yourself starting to complain to friends or family and keep coming back to the same issues, and if it’s starting to affect you out of work, it’s time to pause, shift your perspective and set some boundaries.

1. Firstly pause, recognise and accept how you are feeling. You can’t choose your emotions but you can choose how to respond to them. Try shifting your perspective, in moments of stress our perceptions can be warped and it’s easy to feel like the world is turning against you. Our brains are hard-wired to overreact in stressful situations.

2. Ask yourself in a month from now how much will this matter - and what about in a year?

3. Imagine you are a fly on the wall or a bird in the sky, what do you see from up there? Is anything clearer?

4. Focus on what you can control and influence and try not to get stuck on things that are out of your control, this reduces your feeling of overwhelm and frustration and enables you to be more proactive and effective. These steps will help you to build resilience and the ability to cope with and bounce back from adversity.

Your team’s wellbeing

When it comes to your staff, invest time in their wellbeing and create a supportive environment that considers the whole person and treats them as individuals. What are the things that make them want to come to work, or what might be the obstacles to them wanting to come in, is there anything you can do to make work more of fun and fulfilling for people?

1. On a day-to-day basis encourage positive relationships between colleagues and foster a supportive atmosphere where people are kind to each other. Doing nice things for other people releases oxytocin which makes you feel good about yourself. Encourage people to take their breaks and to get outside if they can, and to leave on time.

2. Proactively monitor people’s workload. Make sure that work is clearly defined, is well-matched to their abilities and that deadlines are acceptable. There’s a sweet spot where we are experiencing a moderate or higher level of pressure (this will be different for different people) and we are alert, stimulated, energetic, focused, and decisive. Not enough pressure we feel bored, apathetic, and frustrated and this can lead to low morale and underperforming. Too much pressure causes stress, and anxiety, can make us irritable and exhausted and eventually lead to burnout.

3. Strive for flexibility and forward planning - providing rotas as far ahead as possible, allowing people to swap shifts within reason, and make it acceptable to take sick leave for mental health challenges.

4. Finally, foster a culture where people can come and talk to you and share their problems inside or outside work. Listen and be respectful and ask them what they need from you, whether that’s more support or training, time-off (for mental or physical health) or sign-posting to professional advice.

Lead with Emotional Intelligence

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?

Remember your favourite boss?

It can be valuable to reflect on the best managers you’ve had or even the most inspirational teachers? How did it make you feel and how did it impact your commitment? I imagine the ones you remember inspired and motivated you, you will have felt they listened to and valued and as a result, you felt more committed and focussed.

Becoming a better boss and developing your leadership ability begins with some self-reflection and self-awareness of how your behaviour impacts those around you?

This is emotional intelligence or EQ.

This includes:

1. Self-awareness – knowing your strengths, weaknesses, drivers, triggers and values

2. Self-regulation – being able to control your impulses and moods

3. Empathy – understanding others’ emotions

4. Social Skills – building rapport with others

A leader with high emotional intelligence shows up as:

• Calm

• Encouraging

• Open-minded

• Flexible

• Cooperative

• Reliable

All qualities we’d like to see in our boss. While someone with low emotional intelligence shows up at work as:

• Stubborn

• Short-tempered

• Inconsistent

• Impulsive

• Bitter

• Demanding

Can you keep your cool?

Are you able to keep your cool under pressure? How consistent and reliable are you?
There is nothing more tricky than tiptoeing on eggshells around a manager because you don’t know what mood they’re in today.
Working on your self-regulation - in other words being able to maintain a consistent mood, even under pressure, builds trust and respect from your team.

Why does Emotional Intelligence matter:

EQ accounts for 90% of the factors that separate top-performing leaders from their peers. (Goleman, Business Psychologist)

Teams with members who exhibit high EQ demonstrate greater collaboration and productivity. (Journal of Applied Psychology)

Self-aware individuals tend to be more proactive in managing their emotions, leading to higher job satisfaction and overall wellbeing. (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology)

Leaders who demonstrate empathy have more engaged and committed teams. (Center for Creative Leadership)

Stifling emotions can lead to stress, burnout, and reduced productivity.

Lead with Confidence

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.

If you don’t first believe in yourself, you shouldn’t expect your team to believe in you, so when you find yourself managing a team or running a business, how can you build self-confidence that will boost your presence and impact.

Many people admit to experiencing Imposter Syndrome - that fear that we don’t deserve or haven’t got the experience to be in the management position we are in and that at any moment we’re going to be found out. We’re in good company - some of the most well-known business leaders have admitted to feeling like a fraud. Imposter Syndrome is most common in women but affects men too and can cause low self-esteem, anxiety, perfectionism, procrastination, fear of delegating, and to working extra hard to compensate for what we feel we’re lacking.

Here are my tips to build your confidence as a leader.

1. The first step is to building self-confidence and overcoming imposter syndrome is to build self-awareness and self-belief — acknowledge your strengths, be aware of your emotions, values and motivations, and any triggers. We tend to be our own harshest critic so listen to your inner voice and the stories it might be telling you from your past, don’t dwell on past failures or self-doubts, instead reframe them, and look for the lessons learned and towards the future.

2. Ask for feedback - it’s one of the best ways to grow and build self-awareness. Ask colleagues, friends and family and be prepared to listen, reflect and then act on it. If you face criticism, stay calm, clarify anything you don’t understand, acknowledge the truthful elements and work on what needs to change.

3. Accept compliments - there’s a curious, and perhaps very British, tendency to shrug off compliments and to be self-depreciating but start to take the positives on board. Pat yourself on the back and remember it for a day when you might need a boost. Similarly speaking to others positively and praising them will boost your mood as well as theirs.

4. Build your trust in others and learn to ask for help. It’s ok to admit that you can’t pull it all off by yourself so don’t be afraid to ask for help or advice, whether that’s delegating tasks, bringing in an expert or reading a book or going on a course to learn something new.

5. Let go of perfectionism - it can cause anxiety, unnecessary stress, or not delegating. Try to find a sweet spot and accept when good is good enough.

6. Be brave - recognise you can't always stay within your comfort zone and that personal and business growth involves embracing challenging experiences. If you find this hard then focus on the end goal, try mental rehearsals for difficult situations, and push yourself forward.

7. Use your body - when you hold a confident posture, standing straight, shoulders back, and breathing deeply, you not only LOOK but also FEEL more confident. Adopting a ‘power pose’ even if you’re not really feeling it will give you a boost

8. Look after yourself - when you’re feeling under pressure, pause to ground yourself, breathe. Set boundaries and accept it’s ok to say no sometimes.

9. Celebrate success - sometimes we’re so busy in the day-to-day that we don’t pause to reflect or acknowledge what we’ve achieved individually or as a team. Taking a moment to recognise the positives, however small, or to notice our role in achieving success is key to building confidence.

10. Be curious - no one can teach you to be more confident, it comes through experience and believing that you will get better through practice. So ask yourself what have I learned through this experience, what did I contribute, what can I take from this and what could I do differently next time? If you have time, write it down to look back on in the future.

Finally a much-quoted mantra from American writer and lecturer Dale Carnegie:

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”

How to Give Feedback

How to Give Feedback

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, it can provide an opportunity for people to grow and develop and when delivered well it can be inspiring and motivating.

There’s a huge difference in impact between giving feedback badly and well. Badly delivered feedback can sound judgemental, vague or intangible, focussed on the past and saved up until it becomes an irritation or resentment. Words like “Why didn’t you”, “You never do this”, “You should do that” or worst of all “If I were you…” (Nobody likes a know-all!) This will create a defensive response, people will tune out and switch off.

Good Feedback is:

• Descriptive

• Specific

• Actionable

• Balanced

• Forward-looking

• Continuous

• Regular and consistent

• Delivered in a Private space (if possible)

Descriptive&objective

The sweet spot is to deliver feedback (and I’m talking about both positive and negative feedback here) that is specific and descriptive giving examples - “When you do this, the result/impact was …” . Rather than making assumptions use phrases like “I noticed” or “I believe”.

forward looking

Then explore the ‘what next’ and make it actionable. There’s a popular concept called “FEED-FORWARD” which suggests that it’s more effective to help people to learn to be right than to prove that they were wrong and that people will respond much more positively, listening better and coming up with their own ideas for improvement.

Two-way

Next, turn it into a conversation, ask people what they felt or observed was the impact, use questions to raise their awareness and ask them how they think they could do better next time. This will show your commitment to helping the person improve, grow and develop.

Immediate

Make feedback immediate, don’t save up those feedback conversations. If you have a process of performance appraisals or reviews, it can be tempting to hold back until the next one, but it should be part of the everyday management of your staff. Feedback should be a continuous loop, agree actions and objectives, monitor and support, review and reward.

Private

You’ve probably heard the phrase “Praise in public and criticise in private’. Public praise in front of peers and colleagues adds more weight to the praise, reinforces positive performance and encourages others to emulate. But if you have more critical feedback to give, it’s kinder to find a private place to talk and you are less likely to provoke a defensive response.

tough conversations

And what if you have a more serious issue to deal with and are dreading a difficult conversation? This is the time to not respond in haste or anger, take some to calm down, reflect and prepare for the conversation and be clear what you want to get out of it. Ask the person for a meeting and give them some time to prepare too. During the conversation try to regulate your emotions, getting angry will not help, describe the issue and its impact, be factual and specific. Then open up the conversation giving the recipient time to tell it from their perspective, listen and pause, before clarifying and summarising. Then move into problem solving together, asking questions to mutually agree next steps and finally suggest a follow up meeting.

If you can create an environment where feedback is regular and a two-way conversation, you will create a culture where people feel motivated, supported and inspired to keep learning and growing. 

How to Build a Happy and Engaged Team

How to build a happy and engaged team?

There’s an oft-cited phrase that people don’t quit a bad job, they quit a bad manager. So how can you be the best leader you can be, so that people will stick with you through thick and thin?

Every sector I speak to at the moment from hospitality to tech, from plumbing to law, is finding it harder to recruit than ever before. It’s a job-seekers market with plenty of opportunities for people looking for something new. So the challenge for business leaders is to create an environment where your staff want to stay with you, who will go over and above to achieve the business objectives and don’t disappear when the going gets tough.

When your team feel engaged, inspired and valued, they will be much more willing to go above and beyond to create the best possible experience for your customers.

So as a manager, how do you build a happy, committed and successful team?

The short answer is, it’s not just about paying them more!

Building an engaged team begins with creating a connection and a community and a culture around a common purpose and values. This creates a sense of belonging and commitment.  

Culture

Culture is that mysterious thing, that is hard to put into words and you can only really understand by experiencing it. You can break it down into the things you can see or have written down, in retail this includes things such as the uniform you might wear, the shop design (formal, informal, contemporary, traditional) and any written policies and manuals - but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The juicy bit is beneath the surface - the way you behave with each other, how you talk to customers, any rituals and routines you have - how you greet each other at the start of the day, how you communicate (formal meetings or casual chats) and any ceremonies you have - going out for a drink to celebrate or publicly rewarding staff for a significant achievement.

Facets of employee engagement

Beyond culture and community, there are several key facets of employee engagement. I suggest reviewing each of these - what do you do well, where are the gaps, is there anything that could be tweaked?

1. Do you have a positive culture? Are the purpose, values and aspirations of the business clearly communicated to everyone? How good is communication between management and staff

2. Do people feel that staff are making a valuable contribution, do they have a manageable workload?

3. Do your staff get recognition for what they do?

4. Do they have the right balance of support, autonomy and challenge?

5. Do people have the right resources and training to do their job? 

6. Do people have the right work-life balance for them and how do you support people’s wellbeing? Of course, people have different needs and expectations and flexibility isn’t always possible in a retail environment, but be mindful of what else people have going on in their lives - whether it’s school runs, relatives to care for or exams to revise for.

7. What rewards do you offer? Of course, competitive pay and benefits come into it and security of income is important, especially in the current economic climate. Do you also offer incentives for higher performance although this doesn’t have to be a financial bonus, it could be a small gift for making a difference to a customer, or a voucher to spend with you (a bonus as it encourages them to get familiar with your products too).

8. What opportunities do you offer for personal growth and development? How do you support your staff to be the best they can be? This might be skills training for the job or mentoring from a colleague to develop soft skills, it might be just giving informal feedback to encourage them to push themselves forward or it could be knowing that there are opportunities for promotion.

Running through these questions will help you to identify any potential improvements you can make, but if you really want to know how engaged your team are, and what more they need - ask them. This could be through informal chats or perhaps a short questionnaire which can be completed anonymously. This gives people the opportunity to show what they appreciate and voice any concerns. If you can respond to these and you’ll show you care about your people and they’ll reciprocate with their commitment.

When to lead and when to manage

Think back to the most inspiring managers you’ve had in your life, or even the most inspirational teachers. How did it make you feel and how did it impact your commitment on the job or the subject?

I imagine the leaders you remember inspired and motivated you, you will have felt they listened to and valued and as a result, you felt more committed and focussed.

Now reflect on what kind of a leader you are. Are you an inspiring leader or hands-on manager?

Let’s explore the difference between leadership and management.

What’s the share purpose?

Imagine your vision is to create a wild flower meadow and you have a team of people to do the hard work. A manager would give a specific list of instructions and tasks to each person - ask them to drill the soil, to plant the seeds in a specific way and to water it precisely. While a leader will share his vision of a beautiful colourful meadow, rich in biodiversity and ask the team how you can work together collectively to make that dream a reality. Which do you think will get the best results?

A manager’s job is to set operational objectives and standards, but as a leader it’s your role to communicate the vision, the big picture, and share a purpose and values in a way that will appeal to your team and that will motivate them to get out of bed in the morning.

If your ambition is to offer the best most memorable customer experience or to create the most delicious quality cakes, what difference is that going to make to people, how are you going to do it and why should anyone believe you? In the corporate world this usually means creating and communicating mission, vision and purpose statements - what we do, why we do it and what we want to be known for; and communicating your values - then how do we do it?

Your Mission & Vision

You don’t need the carefully crafted statements you might see from big brands like Wholefoods or Waitrose, but do take time to answer those questions and share the results with your employees.

Another important quality of a good leader is to empower and enable staff, consulting with them, seeking and valuing their input and encouraging them to stretch and grow. 

There is no right or wrong here, there’s a time and a place for both management and leadership. A good leader will be able to adapt depending on the person, the task, the context and the urgency. If you have a new starter with little experience or none of the technical skills required for the job, then you will need to be more manager, giving clear instructions and checking in on progress. In an urgent situation, for example dealing with a difficult customer, again you many need to step in and manage the situation more closely. But when you are dealing with someone who is highly committed, whether or not they have the experience of skill, you can step back to a more supportive, coaching role, ask for their ideas and help them develop their skills. 

Many of the managers I work with find themselves more at the directive managerial end of the spectrum, telling, showing, instructing, and often admit to micromanaging because it’s easier and quicker, but this is the fast track to creating low morale and unengaged teams.

So to develop more committed staff who will help you build a successful business, start to build a partnership with them, share your vision, encourage shared ownership of the big picture, be transparent in communication, trust, listen and value their views, foster collaboration and together you will see great results.