As a restaurant manager, nothing about this line of work takes you by surprise. Nothing, that is, except the fact that even now, as the manager running the show, you still put in 65- to 70-hour workweeks. You can blame the demands of “hands-on” restaurant management, but when the endless time you put in barely keeps the operation on track, and you’ve lost any semblance of life beyond the restaurant’s walls, it’s time for a change. A change to, say, a 45-hour workweek.
Don’t scoff at the idea. You don’t need to spend all hours, day and night, to keep the restaurant running and traffic growing. After all, you’ve already paid your dues to get where you are. Now you should be doing enough managing to eliminate as many as 25 hours from your hectic schedule.
Start by seeing yourself as the true coach of your team. Up until now, you may have been in the roles of both the coach and player. While it’s important to understand the how’s and why’s, beware of taking on a job just because “it’s easier to do it myself.” Not letting your players play eats time out of your schedule, time you should be using to do what you’ve been hired to do: manage.
To get a life, you must coach employees to do daily tasks themselves. Any talk of empowerment is just that — talk — unless you’re able to fine-tune the skills they need to handle those tasks using the following tools:
- Training
- Practice
- Expectations
- Observation
- Analysis
- Feedback and Motivation
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