Hospitality Management Series: Service-Based Leadership Transforms Your Operation
By Ed Rehkopf
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About this ebook
45 easy-to-read articles describing and explaining Service-Based Leadership - a powerful style of leadership that will transform any hospitality or service operation.
Ed Rehkopf
Ed Rehkopf is a retired hospitality veteran. During his long and varied career, he has managed two historic university-owned hotels, managed at a four-star desert resort, directed operations for a regional hotel chain, opened two golf and country clubs, worked in golf course development, and launched an operations resource website for the hospitality industry.
Read more from Ed Rehkopf
12 Leadership Tips to Improve Your Operations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quick Reads: The Librarian's Tale Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQuality and Service In Private Clubs - What Every Manager Needs to Know Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHospitality Management Series: The Quest for Remarkable Service Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/514 Food and Beverage Tips to Improve Your Operations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Oral History - The Importance of a Club Operations Plan Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStaff Development and Disciplinary Guides Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPersonal Productivity and Organization Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsComprehensive Club Training - Meeting the Promise of Quality and Service Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBenchmarking Operations - The Key to Understanding and Improving Your Club Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsControlling Payroll Cost - Critical Disciplines for Club Profitability Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEmployee Empowerment – Transforming Your Club’s Service Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQuick Reads: Small Comforts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsContinual Process Improvement - An Essential Discipline of Successful Clubs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReadings In Leadership and Management I Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReadings In Leadership and Management 3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQuick Reads: Kindred Spirits Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhy I Want an A-player for My Club Controller Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReadings In Leadership and Management 4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQuick Reads: Pax Profundis and Puttering Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings14 Finance and Accounting Tips to Improve Your Operations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPerformance Management - An Essential Discipline of Success Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQuick Reads: Seeing Red Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFive Human Resource Best Practices for Private Clubs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsService Based Leadership - The Foundation of Successful Club Operations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTools to Beat Budget - A Proven Program for Club Performance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQuick Reads: The Night Train Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRemarkable Service Infrastructure - An Overarching Plan for Club Excellence Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReadings In Leadership and Management 5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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Hospitality Management Series - Ed Rehkopf
Hospitality Management Series:
Service-Based Leadership Transforms Your Operation
Ed Rehkopf
Published by Ed Rehkopf at Smashwords
Copyright 2012 Ed Rehkopf
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Table of Contents
The Absolute Importance of Leadership
Authority, Responsibility, Accountability
Constituencies
Two Important Leadership Lessons
A Few Observations on Leadership
Personal Responsibility and the Will to Lead
Owning Your Failures and Recognizing the Limits of Your Influence
Good Leadership – It’s Just Common Sense
Service-Based Leadership
Becoming a Service-Based Leader
Leadership and Relationships
Building Strong Relationships
Charisma and Trust
Consistency and Common Decency
Ego-Driven Failure
Our Need to Serve
The Hierarchy of Service
Morale Matters
Adding Value to Your Organization
Organizational Leadership
Creating a Lasting Organizational Culture
Leadership and the Bully Pulpit
The Ultimate Value of People
Leadership: Respect, Not Like!
Leading Change
Do the Right Thing
How to Get the Best from Your Service Team
The 100/0 Principle
Projecting Confidence
Value Your People
Consequences
The Soft Stuff
Overcoming Obstacles
Problems as Opportunities to Lead
Passively Creating a Hostile Work Environment
Give Them More than Just a Paycheck
The Importance of Consistent Organization-Wide Leadership
Empowering Employees
Service-Based Leadership and Employee Empowerment
Necessities for Employee Empowerment
The Many Ways to Kill
Employee Empowerment
Leadership Growth and Adaptation
The Enemies of Effective Leadership
Principles of Employee Relations
A Leader’s Code of Ethics
In Conclusion
The Absolute Importance of Leadership?
Strong, stable, and consistent leadership is the single most important requirement for successful hospitality operations. While there are many styles of leadership suited to any industry or endeavor, experience over many years makes it clear that a service-based approach to leadership works best in the service industry with its often young, mixed gender, and multi-ethnic workforce. This style of leadership has as its primary motivation service to others – to customers, to the owners of the business, and to the employees.
This leadership style differs from others in its focus on serving the needs of employees to provide them with the proper tools, training, resources, motivation, and empowerment to serve the company’s customers. In simplest terms, when employees are served by their leaders, they will better serve customers, who by their continuing patronage serve the company’s bottom line. An understanding of the importance of this style of leadership can be inferred from the simple question,
How can employees provide quality service if they are not properly served by the leadership, engagement, and example of their managers?
While it is recognized that the general manager must be a strong leader, it is also critical that the organization’s subordinate managers and supervisors are also trained to be strong service-based leaders. While some degree of a leader’s skill-set seems to be inborn, such as personality and an analytic mind, and others, such as confidence, judgment, and basic communication abilities, are developed early in life, the great majority of a leader’s skills are attitudinal and can be learned.
But to expect that managers with varying backgrounds, education, and experiences will have a common understanding of what constitutes effective leadership is naïve in the extreme. Unless junior managers are systematically trained to develop the skills which have to do with building and sustaining meaningful work relationships with their constituencies, particularly employees, their leadership development will be hindered and haphazard. This results in the general manager’s vision and message of service not being communicated consistently or faithfully to line employees. Instead of having a cohesive team dedicated to a common purpose and acting in a concerted way to further the aims of the enterprise, the company is a collection of tribes who don’t necessarily approach the mission or their jobs in the same way or with the same attitude.
Without leadership consistency, employees get a mixed service message, and their morale, engagement, and commitment will vary from manager to manager and department to department. It’s really quite simple – If your management team does not provide consistent:
> Vision, values, and example,
> Communication and engagement,
> Training, resources, support, and
> Regard for and treatment of employees,
You’ll never gain consistency of employee commitment, contribution, and performance.
But the good news is that successful leadership skills can be taught and learned. Warren G. Bennis, widely regarded as a pioneer in the field of contemporary leadership studies, has said, The most dangerous myth is that leaders are born – that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.
Given the primary importance of leadership in any successful venture, it should never be left to chance. Even if confident of your own leadership abilities, do yourself and your managers a favor by promoting a consistent, company-wide conception and application of leadership. When consistently reinforced by your leadership and example, it will have a dramatic impact on their performance, as well as that of the enterprise.
Authority, Responsibility, Accountability
Authority,
Responsibility,
and Accountability
are three terms that are used frequently in connection with positions of leadership. What exactly do these terms mean and how are they related?
Authority is defined as a power or right, delegated or given.
In this sense, the person or company that hires a leader vests him with the authority to manage or direct a particular operation. It is expected that this individual will exercise the full scope of his authority to properly, profitably, and professionally manage the operation.
Responsibility is defined as a particular burden of obligation upon a person who is responsible.
Responsible is defined as answerable or accountable, as for something within one’s power or control.
Therefore, a leader is responsible and has responsibility for the operation for which she has been given authority.
Accountability is defined as subject to the obligation to report, explain, or justify something; answerable.
A leader is answerable for the performance of the operation for which he has authority and is responsible.
Authority may be delegated to subordinates. For example, a general manager may delegate the authority to collect delinquent accounts to the controller. The controller then has the right to perform tasks associated with collection, such as sending past due notices, charging finance charges on delinquent accounts, and recommending bad debt write-off for seriously overdue accounts. However, even though the general manager delegated the authority, she still has the responsibility to ensure that collections are done properly. As the saying goes, You can delegate authority, but not responsibility.
Even when you delegate, you are ultimately responsible for your organization’s performance.
As a leader, you are accountable for those functions and tasks that have been delegated to you. Likewise, should you delegate any functions or tasks to subordinates, you must ensure that they are held accountable for properly performing them. This requires that you properly explain your expectations to subordinates.
This is most easily done when performance parameters are objective, say telling an advertising executive she must retain her major accounts or else she’ll be replaced. More often, performance parameters are more complex and involve subjective evaluations. Regardless of the difficulties in defining these parameters, it must be done. Otherwise, there is no way to hold a subordinate accountable for results. It is for this reason