I am 21 years old and have spent the past four years of my life as an undergrad student attending Pennsylvania State University in State College, Pennsylvania. I did not come from a family of wealth or money, I was just your average out of state paying, non-financial aid receiving undergrad. In order to pay for gas, groceries and an occasional Café Tea at Café 210, I starting waiting tables.
I’ve worked at several different restaurants and have experienced a vast array of management styles, as I’m sure any one else working in the restaurant industry has. Restaurant managers have a lot of responsibilities, and the ones that they themselves do not take on, are the responsibilities of individuals under their direct supervision. In order to be a restaurant manager, you first have to be a leader, as you are the leader of employees who probably work other jobs, have families, go to school, and all around have other commitments. Restaurant managers are responsible for everything from menu prices to employee morale. This short YouTube video provides a great example of the tasks a restaurant manager is responsible along with the difficulties.
There are many different styles of restaurant managers and I’ve taken the time to coordinate them into categories that I’m upmost positive anyone will appreciate. Below are the following types of restaurant managers:
- The Inappropriate Manager- typical behavior includes; making sex jokes, trying to hook up employees and occasionally taking one back during eat in hours.
- The Strict Manager – typical behavior includes; “this is the nicest restaurant you’ll ever work for”, triple checking your side work, walking around “talking to tables” (aka trying to see if you did anything wrong)
- The Disappearing Manager- typical behavior includes; opening the restaurant, going into the office, coming out during rush hour, doing a lap around, going back into the office, coming out for check outs
- The Overly Involved Manager – typical behavior includes; caring way too much about your personal life, talking way too much about their own boring life, treating work like a social event
- The Chill Respected Manager – typical behavior includes; performing manager duties quietly, walking around with the phone, random outburst of seriousness that everyone seems to listen to
- The Power House Manager – typical behavior includes; talking about being a manager to employees, talking about being a manager to kitchen staff, talking about being a manager to guests, talking about being a manager to rats in dry storage, creating aimless busy work for you to do such as “go dust the salt canisters” or “go hold the bathroom door open for old people”.
- The Five Star Manager- typical behavior includes; reiterating how successful the restaurant is, constantly changing the menu, requiring absurd tasks such as recommending a drink to tables before they even look at the drink menu, staying open later than all other local restaurants, letting customers in at 11:59 PM when we close at midnight.
With all of that said, you can see that there really no “normal” restaurant managers. I will tell you, I’ve worked for just about all of the above. I will also go on to tell you what skills of managers and management strategies, in reference to the skills approach, I think have worked and would be most likely to work the best for restaurants. Looking at the skills approach, it is necessary to have certain individual attributes to be a successful manager.
General Cognitive Ability: general cognitive ability is basically an individual’s intelligence. General cognitive ability, unlike crystalized cognitive ability, cannot be gained by experience, as it is linked to biology (IQ). I think this is an extremely important attribute that all restaurant managers should have. Unfortunately, this does not often happen, as most restaurant managers are individuals without a college education or lack thereof (from personal experience). However, most of the employees are individuals in their 20’s-30’s trying to work their way through school and being bossed around by someone who has very low general cognitive abilities can be difficult.
Crystalized Cognitive Ability: This is the second individual attribute that is based more on a person’s intelligence based on experience rather than biology. This is extremely important in the restaurant industry, especially as a manager. A restaurant manager should come into a new restaurant with loads of previous experience and learning tactics. With that said, I also think it is beneficial for a restaurant manager to be older than most of the employees. A lot of times restaurants will promote from within such as promoting a hostess to a waitress or a waitress to a supervisor. This can cause tension within the organization for many reasons, one of which being age. According to Northouse (2016), crystalized cognitive abilities continuously grow with age and do not taper off into adulthood. These abilities strengthen with age and include “being able to comprehend complex information and learn new skills and information as well as being able to communicate to others in oral and written forms” (Norhouse, 2016; p. 52). These abilities are vital for restaurant managers as they are not only communicating with different types of guests, but different types of employees as well, from wait staff, to bartenders to the kitchen line. Proper communication, both respectful and intelligent is important on many different levels.
Motivation: According to Northouse (2016) there are three central aspects of motivation in order to develop and maintain leadership skills. The first one is a wiliness to take on complex organizational problems. There is nothing worse than a manager coming into a place saying, “well, we have to leave this mess the same, I had nothing to do with it” or “this policy is horrible but we have to follow it”. The second aspect is a wiliness to express dominance and exert their influence. This is certainly true for restaurant managers. I have had managers in the past that let their employees walk all over them, which they will! Of course it is entertaining at times, but for the most part you want a manager that you can respect and that deserves your respect. You want someone who you know will be able to handle things when the place gets hectic and a manager who is supportive and appropriate when dealing with customer dilemmas. The last aspect is a commitment to the social good of the organization. This is important as well in a restaurant manager. If they were not committed to the organization, they would be perfectly happy to manage at any other restaurant, wouldn’t care about the sales, or even the success of the staff. It is necessary for a restaurant manager to care about the satisfaction of guests from the way they are greeted when they walk in the door, the service they receive from the waitstaff and also the tastiness of the meals they are eating.
Personality: Having a certain personality is significant to leadership as it has an impact on the development of leadership skills such as tolerance, ambiguity, curiosity, which all may in turn effect a leaders motivation (Northouse, 2016). Other personality characteristics, in comparison, may be beneficial to the leaders performance within the organization such as adaptability. There is nothing worse than having a boring; strange restaurant manager who is not only awkward talking to you, but makes your guests feel uncomfortable as well. Personality is key to maintaining a good relationship with peers, subordinates, competitors and customers.
In all, restaurant managers are essential to the satisfaction of employees, the success of the restaurant and the experience of the customers. They play an important role in the restaurant business and can really make or break one. You see so many restaurants that go out of business, and one of the central factors was probably bad management that did not have the motivation to make the company successful or the cognitive abilities to sustain the restaurant with furious competition.
Here is a link I found that discusses some of the things to do in order to be a successful restaurant manager:
http://www.themanagersoffice.com/category/restaurant-management-skills/leadership-for-restaurant-managers/
References
Northouse, P.G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los
Angeles: Sage Publications. ISBN 9781483317533
Rashiem Fuquan Page says
I think the key word in your post is “Manager.” As we have learned so far, leadership is not the same as management and vice versa. “leadership is a multi – directional influence relationship and management is a unidirectional authority relationship.” (Rose 1991, as cited in Northouse 2016)
These restaurant managers that you speak about more than likely do not understand that there is a difference between leadership and management. They were most likely trained to be a “manager.” A manager is someone who is efficient in creating organization out of chaos. Northouse (2016) I can honestly say that I didn’t know anything about leadership before taking up my studies in organizational leadership. When I was younger, I always wanted to be the best manager that I could be while was working at Burger Kings. I was trained by a manager to be a manager. If I knew about leadership back then, I probably would have been an effective leader during my Burger King career.