During
one of my discussions with the young
restaurant steward supervisor, he asked one question on how to motivate staff that are feeling demotivated. I asked him to further explain the situation in order to answer his question. Rudy, the person I am talking about, happens to be a supervisor in the Irish
Restaurant. That day, his manager was involved in a heated argument with the owner of the restaurant. As the situation escalated, the lady owner unfortunately said something terribly hurtful for the manager. Spontaneously the manager declared that she will quit, as she could not accept the
treatment which, according to her, hurt her pride as a professional.
After the incident, the entire staff, all
of which had heard about
the resignation of the Manager
that they love to work with began to feel demotivated and some even expressed their desire to resign as
well. Rudy – as
being the person in the middle – does not want this to happen, because they have built a strong teamwork and are always able to resolve problem
together. Rudy wants to do something to make the team solid again, but how?
I explored further the
background of working relationship between the staff members and the owner, and it was found that there are some practices that are not favorable for the staff, but since there is
no regular meeting to discuss these matters, or company SOP, then the
aspirations from the staff cannot be conveyed to the
owner.
In order to address Rudy’s predicament, I first asked Rudy to tell the team to understand that in every company there is always one person that
behaves unusual. So
where ever we go, we will
possibly face the same situation. Secondly, it is important
that they understand that the teamwork that
they have built for almost a year will vanish in vain, so Rudy need to ask them to be patient because
he will try to talk to the owner. Fortunately, Rudy managed
to obtain the opportunity to discuss how
the staff feels about certain
issues openly but in a polite manner and the owner
finally listened to what need to be done. He then
called everyone, and conducted a general meeting where
all
of the staff members can express what they
think about the
current
operations of the restaurant, and take
note. The meeting happened twice, and most staff was given the chance to speak.
The owner also conducted
a personal meeting with the restaurant
manager, and after some long discussions, the manager decided to stay and not resign. The owner
also changed her behavior and the way she approaches the staffs, so the working atmosphere is now
very conducive. At the end, everybody is happy, some improvement in the working process
has been made, and this was
made possible because Rudy took the initiative to bridge the communication.
I told Rudy that it is
very good that he took the initiative to speak directly with the owner in this
critical situation,
because when a group of people are not comfortable with the working condition, the productivity will
be impacted, and so thus affect the profit negatively.