"Natural born leaders are few and far between. Self-made leaders are everywhere. - Make it happen." --Jesse Watson
I just saw that on Twitter, and it seemed appropriate to put in a blog about leadership. So I did.
So, I recently had to do a group project in a Hospitality Management class. It wasn't fun, but it was a really great learning experience and I think the purpose of this class is to teach about management, not to be fun. And so I pretty much want to recap the project and all the things I learned from it about leadership. I'll try not to make this boring!
The project was to form a group, pick a group leader, find several employee handbooks from restaurants, and use the best policies from those handbooks to create an ideal employee handbook for our own restaurant. It's a lot harder than it sounds.
We had about 2 months to do this project, and I got in a group right at the beginning with mostly people I knew. Someone volunteered to be group leader, she seemed to know what she was doing, and everything seemed good.
Before long, we all ended up really confused, the group leader was mad at us, we were mad at her, untrue things were said, people were insulted, and a lot of pointless emails were sent out. Some people tried to cooperate, some people tried to prove that they knew everything. It was pretty clear that the group leader wasn't being a very good leader. So I decided she should be fired. The groups were allowed to fire people if the majority of the group voted for it. I contacted a few group members, got enough votes, and sent out the emails letting everyone know she was fired. And then the position of group leader fell to me.
Now, a month before, I would have died if I thought I had to be group leader. But at this point I knew what needed to be done for the project, and I wasn't taking anymore attitudes from anyone who didn't want to cooperate. I spent a few weeks as group leader before finishing the project, and during that time, I learned several important rules for being a good manager.
Communicate
The very first problem we had with our original group was that people weren't sure what they were supposed to be doing. We would all get one email from the group leader saying "This person needs to do this, that person needs to do that, and it needs to be done by this date." Obviously, all of us our college students, meaning all of us are BUSY. When a busy person gets an email on February 1st saying "Have this done by March 31st", they're likely to forget. So as group leader, I made sure to send out reminder emails and text messages often enough for everyone to remember that they're working on a project. The result was that everyone got everything finished in time.
Delegate
Another big problem in our group was that the group leader wanted to pick up everyone's slack if she felt they weren't getting done fast enough. She ended up doing over half the project by herself when she had an extremely busy schedule, which contributed to her getting mad at everyone and ultimately being fired.
In most of the culinary lab classes at my school, we have a chef of the day for each class period who basically assigns cleaning tasks to everyone, and sometimes has other responsibilities depending on the class. The first time I was chef of the day, I was really freaked out that I would have a ton of other stuff to do, and I wouldn't get my product finished. My chef instructor said something to me that I'll probably never forget: "Remember, Violet, the word of the day is 'delegate'." I had so much fun that day telling people what to do.
If you don't delegate, you'll get overloaded, and nothing will get done.
Prioritize
This actually needs to be done before the delegating. You, as the manager, have to decide which tasks need to be done first, and which ones can be done later, skipped if necessary, or done by yourself. In the case of this project, it would have been ridiculous to have everyone editing sections 1-4 of the handbook when sections 5 and 6 had yet to be done, eh?
Know your employees
One of the reasons we originally ran into so many problems is because a lot of the group members didn't know each other. The group leader didn't know most of us very well; she didn't know out work ethic, our strengths and weaknesses, what responsibilities we could handle, etc. We never had a face-to-face meeting as a group, and all the communication was impersonal. Not everyone communicates the same, and not everyone works the same. Since I knew everyone in the group, I was able to delegate the work according to what I knew people would get done in time, and I was able to communicate clearly with everyone. As a manager, you most likely won't be employing a bunch of your friends, so take time to get to know your employees.
Set high goals
Not completely unrealistically high. If you set unrealistic goals, employees will feel that they have no chance of reaching those goals, and they'll give up. For example, the original group leader wanted to have the entire project completed a month early. No one else was up for that. Once I became group leader, I set our goal for one week in advance. Did that happen? No; that was the purpose of setting a goal higher than necessary. People are not perfect and a lot of the time, people don't exactly reach their goals. Set high enough goals that there's room to make mistakes and still end up with a good result; but don't set unrealistic goals.
Always be professional/respectful
No one likes to feel disrespected. Our original group leader made everyone feel that way; she basically insulted us because we didn't meet all of her expectations and do everything exactly as she wanted. Several group members communicated with her professionally and respectfully, always giving her the benefit of a doubt, but she would send back emails like "You're so rude. I have no interest in working with you. I'm kicking you out of the group." In the end, when I emailed her to let her know why she was fired, one of the reasons listed was her unprofessionalism. Most of the group members complained about it, and with just cause. If you want to be a professional, act like one; if you want to get fired, don't.
Compromise
This can be one of the hardest things to do, yet one of the most important. This was a problem I ran into in my experience as group leader. I'm a perfectionist... everything with me has to be absolutely perfect. During this project I had to learn to trust my co-workers' judgement a little. I assigned each group member a section of the handbook to edit, and it was really hard not to just do it all myself, but I found I had a lot less pressure on myself when I allowed them to be responsible for some things.
Be positive
Positive encouragement is a good technique to remember. There are a lot of times when discipline is necessary, but there are also a lot of times when it's not. If your employees don't seem to be getting things done, don't just get mad and punish them; always use a positive approach. Don't make it like "You did something bad so I'm disciplining you"; it should be more of "I'm trying to help you become a better person and employee by getting rid of this negative behavior." Always show your employees that you're willing to work with them to help them improve.
So that's it for now. I've got an early morning, and I need to go to bed.
EDIT:
So, I remembered two things today that I forgot to put in here. And I know no one has read it yet, so I can add them now. This is one of those times when I'm glad no one reads my blog unless I tell them to.
Organize
If you're not organized, you can count on never getting anything done. With this one simple project, I had about 15 different files on my computer that I had to keep organized enough that I could find each one when I needed it and email the right ones to the right people; I had to keep all the different sections of the handbook in the right places and make sure everything got added into the final document; and I had to put the final project in 3 different documents because of formatting. Now, that was pretty easy for me since my computer is way too organized already. Before I went crazy and cleaned up all my folders, I would have to re-download files every time I needed them, and it made things very inconvenient! I would have like 5 copies of the same file. Bad idea. Be organized.
Manage your time well
This is actually a problem I ran into. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of us didn't even work on the project for quite a while. At least, I think I mentioned that earlier. Anyway. Once we fired our group leader we had about 3 weeks left, so we really needed to get working. Did we do that? No, of course not, it was spring break. Did I end up rushing around at the last second getting information from people and worrying that we would never get done in time? Yes. No one needs the added stress, or the unnecessary risk of failure.
I'm really done this time. And I turned in the project today.
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