How can you help your team advance in the hospitality industry?

1. Lead by example. 2. Have training programs to keep your team updated on industry trends. 3. Give your team responsibilities and decision-making opportunities. 4. Cross-train your team in various roles within the hospitality business. 4. Create a positive and inclusive work culture. 5. Establish clear, measurable goals for both individual team members and the team as a whole. 7. Prioritize customer satisfaction and encourage your team to go above and beyond to exceed customer expectations. 8. Keep yourself and your team informed about the latest trends, technologies, and best practices in the hospitality industry. 9. Regularly provide constructive feedback to your team members. 10. Recognize and reward exceptional performance.

I find that most businesses are still stuck in the obsolete model of prioritizing customer satisfaction over employee satisfaction and, despite their efforts to make their teams advance, it just keeps falling back into the same cycle of lack of engagement and productivity. Because their eyes are still on the money. So the first thing I find businesses need to focus on is changing their own mentality towards employees and stop thinking of them as a liability and more as an asset. When you turn your efforts towards genuinely helping your people grow and be satisfied, your people will do the same for your customers and you will all rise together.

Training is time consuming and heavy on your resources as manager. To train your team you need to first devote the time to structure the training, come up with the content and delivery. Next you need to remove team members from your operations as well as either yourself or expert within your team to deliver the training. Training is easy to dismiss however, its lack is not only evident but has rippling effect impacting negatively guest satisfaction, team member satisfaction and confidence and ultimately you as a manager in compounding stress. Important lesson is that time invested in training your team consistently and over long term period helps them as well as you develop and ensure sustainable operations in the long run.

We need to empower and delegate our team members, it is the only way forward that makes our business sustainable. Having experienced the shockwaves caused by world wide pandemic, we can see how vulnerable we are to outside events. We must foster, nurture and develop not only the passion but confidence of our teams. Only by allowing them to share in portion of our responsiblity and teaching them that this is the main role of managers - adopting responsibility and ownership - is the way forward. Assign small tasks, progress to long term innitiatives or reporting and communication with team or guests. In case of mistakes, devote time to break them apart and suggest better course going forward. Ideally your team will run without you.

Teamwork makes the dream work. If your team feel valued and empowered, they will likely be motivated to perform better. Besides, nurturing a positive work environment in which people are constantly encouraged, appreciated and respected will significantly improve their performance. And above all,avoid micromanaging.

Company culture is a huge aspect of a successful team. If you make your team feel valued and like peers, the results will speak for themselves. A good culture will have people happy to come in to work and want to achieve their best.

Leading by example to me means that not only you communicate but demonstrate the values you expect of your team. You are first to arrive and last to leave. You communicate clearly your vision and, you offer methods or suggestions on how to achieve these. Alternatively facilitating forum for discussion. Ego has little place in the team environment as dynamic and as taxing on the individual. Especially considering how young and open our most imporant team members - our line team members - are. Hospitality industry is changing, we need to recognise this, we need to embrace it and look for new ways forward as the old customs will no longer work and neither they should. The view of our teams as "human resources" is outdated and wrong.

I have experienced that due to the dynamic and demanding nature of our business, we oftentimes do not consider if a person is a good fit for management position. What I mean by this? Being top perfomer or highly skilled in technical aspects of understanding your hotel system is important, but doesn't automatically mean that you are fit for position within management structure. We need to remember this and bring attention of our talented team members to this fact. Understanding how targets and how to reach them is important and so is your day to day operations. It is reality however, that management position requires entirely new set of skills, competences and even perspective and this is not talked about nearly often enough.

To propel your team forward in the hospitality industry, clarity and feedback are key for aligning everyone with their roles. Invest in training, mentorship, and celebrate successes to strengthen team bonds. Empower individuals through task delegation, fostering a sense of ownership. Cultivate a positive work culture that encourages collaboration. Inspire career exploration and lead by example to fuel individual and collective excellence. Consider cross-training and regular feedback sessions for adaptability. These strategies, drawn from personal experience, have proven vital in advancing teams in the dynamic hospitality sector.