Insights

I thought I’d had a terrible training session. It was the first module of a management development programme with a new client. I walked away thinking I’d completely misjudged the group.  They were quiet. Very quiet.  Nobody was jumping in with answers. There wasn’t the usual chatter or laughter. I couldn’t see the energy I was used to seeing in my training rooms.  I honestly thought I’d failed. Not surprisingly, following a career in hospitality, I was very used to working with outgoing, collaborative, supportive, people-focused colleagues. Let’s face it, if you don’t like people, you probably don’t choose to…

A head chef I worked with had a reputation that travelled faster than the food leaving his kitchen!  He was technically excellent, fast, precise, experienced across high pressure environments and could run a busy service with his eyes shut. From a distance, he looked like exactly the kind of person you want leading a kitchen. But the atmosphere behind the pass told a different story. He shouted, constantly. Not occasional raised voices during a rush, but a steady background of pressure, criticism and sharp instructions that cut through every service. New starters quickly learned to keep their heads down and…

When I started in an HR role in a hotel, a manager had been complaining for months about one team member’s performance. I was told that every week they brought another example and every week the same pattern repeated. Frustration, pressure on the team, and no conversation with the person at the centre of it all. My first question was  when they had actually spoken to the employee, the answer was simple. “I haven’t” This story shows up in different forms across customer facing businesses, but this one came from a hotel restaurant. A senior waiter with years of service…

“It’s just common sense.” I hear that phrase regularly when I’m working with managers. It normally follows a mistake that someone believes should never have happened. A customer wasn’t acknowledged. A team member forgot to complete an important task. A difficult conversation was avoided until the problem became impossible to ignore. The frustration is understandable. When you’ve done a job for years, many decisions become automatic. You stop thinking about them because they have become part of how you work. The danger comes when you assume everyone else sees the situation through the same lens. They don’t. What we often…