FOHcus: Change Your Mindset

At various stages throughout the year, restaurant employees from Portland to Pittsburg suffer from the same condition. Like an epidemic, it sweeps the entire industry, taking no prisoners.

It's called complacency. And no, frequent hand washing won't make it go away.

Servers stop doing their sidework. They forget to reset a table between courses, or say goodnight to guests. They pour tepid coffee, or stroll past a dropped lemon wedge ten times before kicking it under a table. They drop dessert menus and saunter away without mentioning the night's special or the fact that a full selection of Single Malts is featured on the back. A busser clears a table, but leaves without crumbing or removing a bread plate that's out of reach. The hostess seats a party of 3 at a table set for 4, and shuffles off without removing the extra place setting. These are the details that drive managers to drink and diners to think twice about coming back.

We could spend the next hour listing ways that front of house employees fall short. We could also brainstorm for another hour various techniques and training strategies to motivate and reward them. But we've all heard that tune. It's played out, predictable, and produces the same results every time: a temporary spike in performance, followed by a sharp dip right back into complacency.

Maybe there’s another way…

I just came across a brilliant blog post written by Peter Winick, an author, speaker, consultant, thought leader 'who leverages the power of internal and external relationships to accelerate growth within emerging and high-potential companies that have powerful intellectual property.' In other words, he works with companies to ensure that their content matches their message. He shares his wisdom working with Fortune 500 companies on his blog. We are lucky to have access to such a pro. Take a look at this:

I believe there are three phases that need to occur for learning to ‘stick':

1) Mindset (beliefs, values, perspectives, disposition)
2) Skill Development
3) Tools (that support development)

If the training only consists of attempting to develop that skill by teaching how to use specific tools in specific situations (i.e.- never make an offer first, clearly articulate the value of your solution, etc.) but doesn’t challenge people to evaluate their mindsets than it will not be as effective as it could be. I’m not saying that developing skills is bad, but I am saying that it is more effective to start with mindsets.

‘Are you changing mindsets or building skills?’ Peter Winick 6/29/10

My guess is that most restaurants operate an inverted model of the one mentioned above. Training usually focuses around repeating desired behavior until it becomes ingrained, and rewarding/punishing accordingly. Open any employee handbook and you will find page after page outlining processes and procedures, points of service, and protocol. Important from an operational perspective, meaningless if the employee is not in the right mindset to execute.

Does your restaurant regularly articulate and reinforce to the staff the vision and raison d'etre of your business? How often are you checking in with your staff, meeting one on one, to gain a sense of their mindset for service? Are you training robots, or are you engaging human beings to serve from the heart? Are you framing your expectations in such a way that a feeling, thinking, reasonable person would understand, or are you snapping off directives and creating situations where your employees are set up to fail? Are you nurturing what's best and wonderful about your restaurant, or are you hyper-focused on the problems (there will always be problems, by the way)?

Where's your mindset?

See You On FohBoh!
Michael Biesemeyer
Manager of Online Communities
FohBoh, Inc.

Tags: fohboh, foodservice, hospitality, media, restaurant, restaurants, social, social media, social networking, waiter

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Comment by Giuseppe De Carlo on June 10, 2011 at 7:17pm: I belive the problem starts at the top, managment is either respected or not, if managment is incompetant, you will have the above problems. Having knowledge and the capacity to show it, working with the waiters and showing them the standards and service you expect, you will get the right results, because everybody respects a person with knowledge. to create a good attitude with people you work with, you must show by example, help them during peak period dont over do it, let them see that you are a part of rhe team, help only when it is necessary. Giuseppe

Comment by Chef Tony on August 13, 2010 at 10:14pm: Michael, I'm motivated to at least mention an interview we have coming out on our show with Dan Pink...
If you don't know him, he is an award winning author, thought leader and very cool guy who talks about our TRUE motivations as humans...very right brain/left brain..anti carrot & stick idea, more about stroking the creative side. Really very cool stuff, and I can't read this post without thinking about what we expect from our staff, versus what kinds of internal motivations the RIGHT hire has built in already. Nurturing, creative people seem to excel as servers, maybe there is something to look at here.

The show will be live on our site (in it's entirety) in probably two weeks. Http://www.WeMeanBiz.tv

Comment by Paul Paz on August 6, 2010 at 1:54pm: Michael...
Good stuff that we can all use. We're not alone as hourly employees giving a damn about the quality of our work environment. It can get tiresome seeming to be "alone" with the quest, but our relentless consistient example is our best tool
Paul

Comment by Joel Lazeski on August 6, 2010 at 12:42pm: Great post! I absolutely agree with your outlook on mindset. I always here about little systems managers have in place to help employees maintain a great mindset during their working hours such as training them how focus on attitudes and telling them what they will get out of having the ideal mindset. To me the most important part of this training and priming is follow up! As you mentioned before having regular meetings and one on one conversation to discuss performance is incredibly important. When I used to manage nights in a high volume restaurant I found the most effective way to manage this was to require all members of the service staff to hand deliver their cash bags to me and at that point I would compliment them on a specific scenario during their night. Just saying good job is fine but reinforcing the things that are above and beyond will put a smile on their face and help you lead your team to that desired mindset... Focusing on the positives and competently dealing with the negatives will help create a great working environment!

Thanks