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Attitude Is Everything
One of the most challenging aspects for the hospitality professional is maintaining a positive attitude during service. The true hospitality professional is prepared to put in the effort to maintain a great attitude in the midst of every work situation. For the hospitality professional, product knowledge, service proficiency and attitude development are crucial keys to success.
Work On Your Attitude
Without development, one's attitude is highly likely to become negative, pessimistic, bitter and cynical. Its easy to cultivate a negative attitude without even realizing what's going. Some studies point out that in the U.S., up to 90% of our daily information inputs are negative in tone and content. To put it bluntly negativity, fear and pessimism sells. There are some that maintain that humans are negative, pessimistic, cynical and malicious by nature. The reason so many people are negative is because most of us are lazy and choose the easy route. Being negative, fearful and pessimistic, to some, is the easiest route to take in life. The true hospitality professional will put the effort in to develop the best attitude, the best behaviors and, over time, the best character. The true hospitality professional person can control their emotions, attitudes and always maintains a positive upbeat disposition in the midst of service.
Professionals Are Responsible
No matter what we do in this life, if we are not responsible people we are not good people. The more responsibility we accept in life, the better people we become. What is responsibility? Responsibility is the ability to respond. Very often, average people tend to put the blame for their actions and behaviors on everyone but themselves. When you place blame on others, you are not accepting control over your life. Accept responsibility for everything that happens to you and you will grow to control your life. For the hospitality professional, your ultimate responsibility is knowing what you have to sell, knowing the service standards of your employer and taking responsibility for your attitude before, during and, in real life, after service.
Anything Can Happen and Probably Might
For the hospitality professional the goal, when situations become tense, is to stop looking at problems as problems and start viewing problems as challenges. By changing how you view problems you become better able to strive to overcome them with an attitude of enthusiasm. Anything can happen in hospitality business and we should be prepared for everything and anything. Anything can, and ideally will, happen in a life. If nothing happened to you in your life, you would not have a life. To live without a life of happenings is true misery. The hospitality professional accepts the fact that life is filled with adversity and a good life is when we rise to every challenge.
The Challenge
The Hospitality business is filled with people promoted to management and other leadership positions without a clue of how to professionally and proficiently succeed in their new roles. Restaurant Owners, determine to cut costs, often promote service staffers with little or no management experience. These people may know how to work a spreadsheet, know service and how to sell, but have never learned how to effectively manage people. Often a busy restaurant can expand and grow with incompetent people running the show. How well these places run and the culture developed over time is a very different story. You can tell a big person by how they treat little people. Great managers treat people with respect and in return get more out their staff.
In Summary
The true hospitality professional will take responsibility for their attitude. If you live responsibly and find the benefits in every situation you will become a true professional. If you are someone that people can look to for inspiration, your job becomes a better place to work. Ideally, a more inspired staff, with inspired cuisine creates a truly inspired dining experience.
Marc Hayes is the CEO of The Server Academy, a Washington D.C. based Hospitality Group. A professional manager and server for almost 15 years, Hayes is also a Certified Life Coach and uses Life Coaching Techniques to Train and Retrain Restaurant Manager and Servers. TheServerAcademy.com
