Any hotel manager arriving at a new property for the first time is already going to have a team in place. Regardless of who you are and your experience and success, this is going to present some challenges. For instance, what if the last GM was a micro-manager but you prefer to delegate and oversee. In reality, you may have managers in place that are simply incapable of doing the job without daily guidance. On the other hand, you will undoubtedly have managers that will welcome the change and thrive now that they have a chance to shine.
There is going to be a weeding out process that happens where team members will simply move on or have to be fired for the team to be successful. As the weeks, months, and years, progress, you will be building a team that focuses on both the overall vision of the property as well as the departmental vision. While this style may not be a fit for everyone, I have found it to be significantly useful in the hospitality industry as well as other endeavors.
Identifying the Key Characteristics of Strong Team Members
To build a strong hotel management team, you need to identify the characteristics most important to the industry and you as a leader. For me, they need to be able to fit the culture, they could not have a large ego, and they needed to be honest and humble.
Fitting the Culture
In this industry, it is never about “me” and always about “we.” Virtually every position in the hospitality industry requires an entire team to function as one in order to be a success. In many cases, your team’s success will be integrated into that of another department. For instance, the sales team relies on the front desk and banquet staff to be successful. The front desk needs housekeeping. You get the idea here. If you have “me” oriented staff, they will never be part of the team, period.
No Place for Ego
This even goes for the department head. No one person is bigger than the overall picture. If you have a plan in place that is falling apart around you and a banquet houseman presents something that offers both a way out and a guarantee of customer satisfaction, your ego needs to go in your back pocket and you carry out the plan that has the chance of most success.
Look at the entire hotel as a massive machine with different compartments and each compartment has even more parts. The parts in your compartment must not only work well together, but they also must work well together with the other compartments. Ultimately, the only thing that matters is guest satisfaction, everything else is secondary, including everyone’s ego.
Honesty & Humility
Pride is something… it can turn the most honest person in the world into a liar, which is something that will tear a department and an entire hotel operation right apart. You and everyone in your department must be humble enough to admit a mistake, learn from them, and move on. This is important because as a leader and as a team, you must identify mistakes that were made, why they happened, and learn from them so they do not happen again.
You also need team members that will not act as though a certain job is beneath them. I used to tell my staff that a job description was a suggestion, not the Holy Bible. I held this standard to everyone, including myself. I did this working my way up the ladder and even when I was running the entire F&B operation. Did I like emptying trash cans, rolling tables, or helping to clean a guest room? Absolutely not, but there were times when I needed to do all those things and more to ensure the success of the operation and the function.
There is a saying that leaders lead, but that hardly tells the story. Leaders see a problem, they diagnose it, then they fix it. In simpler words, leaders get things done, period. Their strength is their staff but there are always going to be times when the leader also needs to jump in, so they do it. They don’t whine and they don’t harp on the negative, they just get it done. When things go wrong, they step up and take the blame, but they learn from these mistakes and do everything in their power to make sure it does not happen again. Leaders train their staffs to make themselves more promotable; they don’t hold back out of fear of being replaced. Just like that saying goes… leaders lead.
Does your hotel or hospitality organization need better leaders? If the local talent pool has dried up or simply not meeting your needs, call JDI. Joseph David International is consistently considered one of the top hospitality management recruiters because we work hard to find the ideal fit for your team. For more information about our hotel recruiting services, please click here.