3 48 How to create a successful bar team

TRAINING
48
How to create a successful bar team
Mary-Jane Flanagan,
Training Director,
learnpurple
One of my favourite bars
is London-based chain
B@1. Why? Because
they know how to create
a great team, ensure it’s successful and
replicate the formula across all of their
bars. I know when walking in I’ll be
greeted with a warm hello and met
with service which feels personal; this
is why I return time and time again.
So how can you too create a successful
bar team which oozes personality, promotes your brand and achieves results?
Here is our five step plan:
➔
1
Know where you are now
Before you can consider success
you need to know where you
currently stand. Review comment
cards, feedback on social forums, performance appraisals, finances, ask your
people either face-to-face or through
an employee opinion survey (for companies with up to 100 people you can
receive one of these free at
www.learnpurple.com) and measure
where you are against where you
want to be.
2
4
Communicate, communicate and communicate
It’s simple – communicating
effectively is vital to success. Keep
everyone informed and make sure
it is two-way so people feel they are
able to ask questions, make suggestions and shout about successes. Remember that people take in information very differently – seeing, hearing
and experiencing. Understand what
works best for your individuals and
communicate accordingly. Use preshift teambriefs to set the agenda for
the day (goals, competitions, VIPs
best practice) and use after-shift
debriefs to break down lessons learnt,
congratulations, commiserations and
how to move forward.
5
Be a true leader
Leaders with successful teams
walk the talk, therefore so
should you. Inspire your people
by reminding them of the vision and what happens when
success is achieved. Get your
hands dirty and work with
them to achieve. Invest
in development time,
think about team bonding exercises and ways
to continually motivate
those around you, use
praise to reinforce great
behaviours and show
others the meaning of
excellence. You should be
excited by the prospect of
success – let that show! ●
Gain the competitive advantage
learnpurple helps organisations to
engage, develop and retain the talent
needed to grow and prosper. It’s book
‘Purple your People: the secrets to
inspired, happy, more profitable people’
is available for pre-order from
www.amazon.co.uk. For more information, please visit
www.learnpurple.com or phone 0207 836 699
Main image: ©www.istockphoto.com
Create a vision
As leadership guru Stephen
Covey once said, “begin with
the end in mind”. Work with your
people to imagine what a highly
successful team looks like, acts
like, feels like and establish
actions that you want to
put in place following this
creative session. Visualisation is a highly powerful
tool and one which has
proven results (just look
at successful sporting
heroes who use this
method). Get your Mary-Jane
team to define what Flanagan
the vision means to
them and outline core
values associated with
it. Then regularly communicate this to all.
3
Set shared goals
Once you know what your
‘perfect’ team looks like and
how it lives up to the agreed values,
you need to next set your goals for
the coming months. Here think
about the next level rather than the
absolute ideal – walk before you run!
Make sure any goals set for the team
are SMARTER (specific, measurable, achieveable, realistic, timed,
engaging, reviewed) and that as a
leader you’re living and breathing
these values; acting as a role model to
embed core behaviours.