Hey Square Readers,
Weโre continuing our discussion of Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara, and so far weโve started with an opening discussion of your own experiences with exceptional hospitality, and brainstorming how to provide it to your customers. Today weโre talking about creating that culture internally first, and empowering those who work with you.
A big piece of this book is actually leadership development. The author explains that giving your customers a great experience really starts with first creating a positive culture within your business of kindness, caring, and trust. If you have a partner or employees, enabling and empowering them is key because you canโt provide great service if youโre having organizational or staff issues. He says that if you want to treat your customers well, then you first need to treat your team well, by having logistics down and a great employee culture.
The author says that this starts by hiring the right people for your business; not settling for anything less than someone who could become a top contributor on your team. Next, itโs training them to internalize your businessโ mission; taking time to communicate with them in order to inform, inspire, connect, and provide positive reinforcing feedback & praise. Then getting to know their strengths, and assigning them roles accordingly. With that, you can demonstrate trust in them by giving them responsibility and ownership over elements of the business, which they can transform to provide an exceptional customer experience. You worked to hire the best people, now trust their judgment and expertise to help you run your business.
So letโs take these concepts and look inward at your own businesses. Share your reflection to these questions in the comments, and donโt forget to respond to other membersโ messages with your thoughts too!
Weโd love to hear your answer in the comments:
- How can you train your employees to: 1) internalize the impact your business can have on customersโ lives, and 2) give your customers a deeper level of hospitality?
- What work and responsibilities, areas of your business can you give ownership over to your team, in service of providing an exceptional customer experience?
- What is holding you back from giving your employees more control?
- How can you systematize giving more positive feedback to your team on a regular basis?
Feel free to share any other thoughts you have about this book. We canโt wait to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
Donโt forget to:
Happy reading,
Pesso
For me a lot of this is unscheduled, I make sure to include staff when we are getting praise from customers (as the boss and "star" of the show, customers generally come to me), and I also try and pass on all praise as quickly as possible. One of the reasons we have seen some success at the hotel is that staff are happy and attentive, something which is sometimes problematic for our competitors. If the staff are being praised, they feel better about all of us trying tha touch more.
Probably the biggest thing stopping me giving control is after 7 years, we have never been scared to try something, so for staff who are here 3-6 months, sometimes they want us to try things that we have done before. I try and not stop staff (especially my young manager) from still trying these things, as you don't want them to be scared to try things, but also don't like setting them up for failure. My biggest problem for staff is that they have to be jack of all trades, and some struggle with that amount of info. We aren't busy/big enough to have specific roles, everyone has to be across all aspects, so it's hard for them to remain competent at things they may only do twice a year! A staff member who left recently, I asked her for feedback on how it was in the new job, and she said we were both more relaxed due to our family and friends atmosphere, but also more stressful, as the new job she has about 3 jobs compared to our 12.
I struggle with this, as I find systemising praise completely disingenuous, but am trying to get better at it. As above, sharing praise and good reviews, passing on good comments as soon as possible. I am actually having a staff meeting today, as I have been visiting competitors venues recently, and our baseline is so much better, so want to pass that on.
The meeting went well! Albeit, it's two staff that have worked for me for 3+ years, so to a degree they have heard it before, and a 19 year old kid who whilst good, was watching tv behind me for the meeting haha.
Yeah we are big enough for 5 more staff for 2 weeks, 3 for 8 weeks (albeit in seperate 4 week periods), the right amount of staff for 12 weeks, 2 to many staff for 8 weeks, and the business is unprofitable for the rest of the year so have littlest amount of staff. It's seasonable, so we go alright for the whole year, but makes it hard staffing. We have 8 staff in our peak, and with days off and everything, it means everyone has to do everything, to deal with days off and sick days etc. Because of our remote location, we can't have Part Time staff, but also have to promise people a certain amount of work (ie 3-6 months) so can't get more for the period we need them. The balance of enough staff and timing and not to many is the most difficult thing I deal with probably haha.
