🌱 Mastering Mental Fitness: Transforming Chaos into Calm for Hospitality Leaders

A 3 min read.

Picture this: It’s a busy Friday night at your restaurant. The kitchen is backed up with orders, guests are waiting in the entryway as you are running behind on their reservations, and there’s a mistake in a large party’s bill that needs your immediate attention. Your stress levels are through the roof. You feel overwhelmed, reactive, and it seems like the chaos will never end. You snap at your staff, your decision-making is impaired, and the whole team feels the tension.

Now imagine the same scenario, but this time, you’ve invested in your mental fitness. You remain calm and composed, effectively communicating with your team, delegating tasks with clarity, and solving problems with a level-headed approach. The kitchen still has a lot of orders, the guests are still waiting for their tables, and there’s still a mistake in the bill, but your response is different. The energy you bring to the situation helps diffuse tension, keeps your team focused, and ensures the night runs smoother despite the challenges. This is what mental fitness looks and feels like.

What is Mental Fitness?

Mental fitness refers to the capacity to respond to life’s challenges with a positive rather than a negative mindset. It’s about strengthening your mind to handle stress, improve decision-making, and maintain emotional balance. Just like physical fitness requires regular exercise, mental fitness involves practices that build resilience, focus, and positivity.

Shirzad Chamine, in his book, Positive Intelligence, introduces the concept of mental fitness through the framework of identifying and managing our inner saboteurs. Saboteurs are the voices in your head that generate negative emotions as you handle life's everyday challenges. They represent the automatic patterns in your mind for how to think, feel, and respond. Your Saboteurs cause all of your stress, anxiety, self-doubt, frustration, restlessness, and unhappiness.

If stress, anxiety, frustration, self-doubt and unhappiness is impacting your performance as a leader-I’ve been there and can help. Let’s connect at christinlmarvin@gmail.com

Saboteurs and Their Impact on Restaurant Leaders

Chamine identifies ten saboteurs, each with a unique way of manifesting in our lives. As a restaurant leader, understanding these saboteurs can help you recognize how they might be affecting your work and your team.

1. The Judge: This is the master saboteur that finds fault with yourself, others, and your circumstances. As a leader, the Judge might make you overly critical of your staff’s mistakes, harsh on yourself for any perceived failures, and constantly dissatisfied with how things are running.

2. The Stickler: This saboteur is a perfectionist, pushing for flawless results. In a restaurant setting, the Stickler can cause you to micromanage your team, become overly stressed about minor details, and create an atmosphere of pressure and anxiety.

3. The Controller: The Controller wants to take charge and control everything. This can lead to you being overbearing, not trusting your team, and causing frustration among your staff due to your need for control.

4. The Hyper-Achiever: This saboteur ties your self-worth to success and achievements. As a restaurant leader, the Hyper-Achiever might drive you to set unrealistic goals, work excessively long hours, and neglect personal well-being and relationships in pursuit of success.

5. The People Pleaser: The Pleaser tries to gain acceptance and affection by helping, pleasing, or rescuing others. In your role, this can lead to overcommitting, resenting your team for not working as hard as you, saying yes to every request, and burning out because you’re trying to keep everyone happy.

6. The Restless: The Restless is constantly in search of greater excitement. As a leader, this can result in you frequently changing plans, being easily distracted, and not following through on long-term strategies, causing instability for your team.

7. The Avoider: The Avoider focuses on avoiding difficult and unpleasant tasks and conversations. This can manifest as procrastination on important decisions, ignoring performance issues with staff, and delaying necessary but uncomfortable conversations.

8. The Victim: The Victim feels emotional and temperamental as a way of gaining attention and affection. As a restaurant leader, this can result in you feeling constantly overwhelmed, complaining about how hard things are, and draining your team’s energy with negativity.

9. The Hyper-Rational: This saboteur values the rational mind over emotions and relationships. You might focus excessively on data and logic, neglecting the emotional needs of your team and failing to connect with them on a personal level.

10. The Hyper-Vigilant: The Hyper-Vigilant is constantly anxious and vigilant, fearing that something will go wrong. In a restaurant setting, this can make you overly cautious, stress out your team with your constant worry, and prevent innovative and bold decisions.

Transforming Your Leadership Through Mental Fitness

By identifying these saboteurs, you can start to counteract their negative influence and strengthen your mental fitness. Here’s how focusing on mental fitness can transform your restaurant leadership:

1. Improved Decision-Making: When you’re mentally fit, you’re able to approach problems with a clear, calm mind. This leads to better decisions that are thought through and not driven by stress or panic.

2. Enhanced Communication: A mentally fit leader communicates more effectively, with empathy and clarity. This helps build stronger relationships with your team and improves overall morale.

3. Stress Management: Mental fitness practices, such as mindfulness and self-awareness, help you manage stress better. You remain composed under pressure, setting a positive tone for your team.

4. Boosted Team Performance: As you become more positive and supportive, your team is likely to mirror this behavior. A positive environment boosts productivity, creativity, and overall performance.

5. Increased Resilience: Mental fitness builds your resilience, helping you bounce back from setbacks quickly. This quality is crucial in the dynamic and often unpredictable world of hospitality.

6. Greater Work-Life Balance: With improved mental fitness, you’re better equipped to set boundaries and manage your time effectively, leading to a healthier work-life balance.

How I Can Help

As a coach trained in mental fitness, I can guide you through the process of identifying and managing your saboteurs. Together, we can develop strategies to enhance your mental fitness, leading to improved leadership skills, a more positive work environment, and a thriving restaurant.

Through one-on-one coaching and leadership workshops, I offer tailored support to help you:

- Identify and counteract your saboteurs: Gain awareness of the negative patterns holding you back and learn practical techniques to overcome them.

- Build mental fitness: Develop habits and practices that strengthen your mental resilience and positivity.

- Improve leadership skills: Enhance your communication, decision-making, and stress management abilities.

- Achieve work-life balance: Learn to set boundaries, manage your time effectively, and maintain a healthy balance between work and personal life.

Investing in your mental fitness is not just about improving your well-being; it’s about creating a positive ripple effect that impacts your entire team and restaurant. Reach out today to start your journey towards becoming a mentally fit and highly effective hospitality leader.

Interested in learning more about mental fitness? Let’s connect at christinlmarvin@gmail.com

P.S. 

For more leadership development, here are some additional resources for you:

1. Tune into the No Hesitations Podcast Episode 32 : How to Lead with Clarity : 5 Strategies for Effective Restaurant Management

2. Contact me for a strategy session about overcoming your biggest challenge at christinlmarvin@gmail.com and start transforming your mindset, your restaurant, and your life today!

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Chamine, Shirzad. Positive intelligence: Why only 20% of teams and individuals achieve their true potential AND HOW YOU can achieve yours. Austin, TX: Greenleaf Book Group Press, 2016. 

🌱 Unlocking Your Restaurant’s Potential: The Power of Intuition

A 2 min read.

Picture this: You're standing in your bustling kitchen during a busy dinner service when suddenly, a gut feeling tells you to check on the new sous chef. Without any obvious reason, you follow that instinct. When you arrive, you find them struggling on the line, nearing the edge of a meltdown or walkout. Your timely intervention not only saves the night but also strengthens your relationship with your team.

Running a restaurant isn’t just about the day-to-day grind; it's about tapping into your inner resources to make decisions that can elevate your business and develop your team. While data and logic are vital, there's another powerful tool at your disposal—your intuition. Learning to harness and trust your intuition can lead to more inspired choices, smoother operations, and a stronger, more cohesive team. Here’s how developing your intuition can make a significant difference in your restaurant.

What Is Intuition?

Intuition is often described as a gut feeling or an inner knowing that guides your decisions without conscious reasoning. It's that quiet voice that tells you to hire a particular person, change a menu item, or address an unseen issue in the dining room before it escalates. Developing this skill can provide you with a competitive edge in the restaurant industry.

If you’d like help developing your leadership skills, let’s connect at christinmarvin.com/contact

Why Intuition Matters

1. Better Decision-Making: Intuition can help you make quicker and more confident decisions, especially in high-pressure situations.

   - Example: During a chaotic service, you might sense that a new dish or cocktail needs to be pulled from the menu for the night. Trusting your gut, you make the call, preventing potential customer dissatisfaction and maintaining the evening's flow.

2. Enhanced Leadership: A leader who trusts their intuition is often seen as more decisive and confident.

   - Example: When a valued team member asks for feedback, your intuition helps you deliver constructive criticism in a way that motivates rather than discourages them. This builds respect and trust within your team.

3. Improved Staff Development: Your intuition can guide you in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of your team members, allowing you to provide better support and opportunities for growth.

   - Example: You have a feeling that one of your servers, bartenders or hosts has management potential. Despite their lack of experience, you start mentoring them, and they quickly prove to be a capable and enthusiastic leader, enhancing your team's overall performance.

How to Develop Your Intuition

Here are some practical steps you can take to tap into your inner knowing:

1. Meditation and Mindfulness: Regularly practicing meditation can quiet your mind, creating space to make it easier to hear your intuitive thoughts. Even 5 minutes a day can make a big difference.

2. Pay Attention to Your Gut Feelings: Start noticing when you have gut feelings and take note of the outcomes when you follow them. This practice can help you become more attuned to your intuitive signals. Start small and practice making gut decisions in your personal life.
3. Reflect on Past Decisions: Think about times when you’ve made decisions based on intuition. What was the result? Reflecting on these instances can build your confidence in trusting your gut.

4. Journal Your Thoughts: Writing down your thoughts and feelings can help you clarify your intuitive hunches. Journaling can be a powerful tool for accessing your inner wisdom.

5. Spend Time in Nature: Nature has a way of grounding us and connecting us to our inner selves. Take regular walks or spend time outdoors to clear your mind and boost your intuition.

6. Seek Silence: In the hustle and bustle of restaurant life, finding moments of silence can be challenging but crucial. Create small pockets of quiet time during your day to listen to your inner voice.

7. Trust Yourself: Building intuition is about building trust in yourself. The more you rely on your intuition, the stronger it will become.

Putting Intuition into Practice

Imagine you’re considering a significant menu change. The data might show that certain items aren’t performing well, but your intuition could tell you that a twist on a classic favorite might just be what your customers crave. Or perhaps you sense that a team member, though struggling now, has great potential if given the right support. Acting on these intuitive insights can lead to breakthroughs that data alone might not predict.

Developing your intuition isn’t about ignoring facts and figures; it's about complimenting them with a deeper, more instinctual understanding of your business and team. By honing this skill, you can make more balanced, inspired decisions that can propel your restaurant to new heights.

Start today by taking small steps to listen to your inner voice. You might be surprised at the clarity and direction it can provide.

Interested in learning more about intuitive leadership? I can help. Let’s connect at christinlmarvin@gmail.com

P.S. 

For more leadership development, here are some additional resources for you:

1. Tune into the No Hesitations Podcast Episode 32 : How to Lead with Clarity : 5 Strategies for Effective Restaurant Management

2. Contact me for a strategy session about overcoming your biggest challenge at christinlmarvin@gmail.com and start transforming your mindset, your restaurant, and your life today!

🌱 The Ultimate Hiring Hack for High Turnover Environments

A 2 min read.

After two decades managing restaurants, I made a significant career shift to join a local ice cream company in Colorado. This company aimed to expand from 6 to 20 locations, a slower pace compared to my previous role with a restaurant group that grew from 6 to 48 locations nationwide. The transition was both manageable and exciting. During my two years in the ice cream industry, one of the most valuable lessons I learned was how to effectively manage turnover in an environment known for its high employee turnover rate.

The ice cream industry experiences an average turnover rate of 120%. Why is this? The majority of employees in ice cream shops are working their first job, so there is a lot to learn. Many get a taste of customer service and decide it’s not for them. However, not all turnover is negative. Within that 120% are stories of employees who leave and come back during the school year or while on summer break from college.

At the company I worked for, our turnover was around 100%. Knowing this, we had an incredible process in place for finding, hiring, and training great talent. Today, I want to share our approach to hiring.

If you are struggling to find and retain great talent, I can help. Let’s chat at christinlmarvin@gmail.com.

Unfortunately, many of our employees, being new to the workforce, were not great at planning ahead with their schedules when it came to managing schoolwork, finals, athletic schedules, or vacations. This lack of planning caused many employees to give managers short notice when they needed to move on or request time off. While we worked to educate employees on respecting their schedules and team, new hires—of which there were many—had to be taught this lesson frequently.

Our solution was to build and maintain a pipeline of talent that managers could pull from immediately if needed. We ensured that every job in the shop was always posted on job boards and our website and that our team reviewed applications daily.

This approach helped our managers become experts at reviewing resumes and conducting brief Zoom, phone, and in-person interviews. It also helped our teams identify strong talent that we could hire at different locations within the company. Another major benefit of this hiring strategy was that we constantly created guests by inviting every single candidate to come by the shop and say hello next time they came in for a scoop of ice cream.

Managing turnover in the ice cream industry can be challenging, but with the right strategies in place, it’s entirely manageable. By building a continuous pipeline of potential hires and engaging with candidates, you can not only fill positions quickly but also create a positive and inviting atmosphere for both employees and customers. Embrace the high turnover rate as an opportunity to refine your hiring process and build a stronger, more adaptable team. Your ice cream shop's success lies in how well you manage these transitions and maintain a welcoming environment for everyone involved.

For more innovative ways to improve your hiring process, tune into this week’s episode of the No Hesitations Podcast, where I chat with the leadership team from Poached Jobs about their approach to thinking differently about hiring and their passion for supporting the industry.

P.S. 

For more leadership development, here are some additional resources for you:

1. Tune into the No Hesitations Podcast Episode 32 : How to Lead with Clarity : 5 Strategies for Effective Restaurant Management

2. Contact me for a strategy session about overcoming your biggest challenge at christinlmarvin@gmail.com and start transforming your mindset, your restaurant, and your life today!

🌱 Unlock the secret to thriving in the restaurant business with essential hospitality

A 2 min read.

In today's rapidly evolving restaurant industry, full-service establishments face a unique set of challenges. Rising costs, staffing shortages, and ever-changing consumer expectations have made it increasingly difficult to maintain the high standards of hospitality that define successful operations. As we navigate these turbulent times, it's crucial to return to the basics of hospitality to differentiate our businesses and ensure lasting success.

Getting Back to the Basics of Hospitality

Danny Meyer, in his seminal book Setting the Table, outlines the foundational principles of hospitality that have guided him to success. Meyer speaks of four essential gifts that every human receives within moments of being born: eye contact, a smile, a hug, and some food. These gifts are more than just niceties; they are the backbone of an exceptional dining experience. In his book, Meyer also reminds us that humans are driven to provide and receive hospitality.

To move from chaos to consistency in your restaurant, let’s start a conversation at christinlmarvin@gmail.com

Here's how you can incorporate these gifts into your restaurant and why they matter:

Eye Contact

   - How: Train your staff to make genuine eye contact with guests when greeting them, taking orders, and checking in during their meal.

   - Why: Eye contact establishes trust and shows that your staff is attentive and engaged. It helps create a personal connection, making guests feel seen and valued.

A Smile

   - How: Encourage your team to greet every guest with a warm and sincere smile, and to maintain a positive demeanor throughout their interactions.

   - Why: A smile is a universal gesture of friendliness and warmth. It instantly makes guests feel welcome and comfortable, enhancing their overall dining experience.

A Hug

   - How: While physical hugs may not always be appropriate or feasible, you can create a "hug-like" atmosphere by offering exceptional service, genuine care, and thoughtful gestures. Think of it as providing a metaphorical hug through your hospitality.

   - Why: A "hug" symbolizes warmth and comfort. By creating a welcoming environment where guests feel embraced and cared for, you foster a sense of belonging and loyalty.

Food

   - How: Offer complimentary bites or samples, such as an amuse-bouche at the start of the meal or a small dessert to end it. Highlight special dishes and share the stories behind them.

   - Why: Sharing food is a fundamental aspect of hospitality. It shows generosity and thoughtfulness, leaving guests with a lasting impression of your restaurant’s warmth and generosity.

The Urgency of Now

In the face of current industry challenges, there has never been a more critical time to focus on these fundamental aspects of hospitality. By returning to these basics, you can create a resilient business that not only survives but thrives. Implementing these principles requires intention, consistency, and leadership.

If you’re ready to elevate your restaurant and lead your team to success, my one-on-one coaching and leadership workshops are designed to help you achieve just that. Together, we can create a customized plan to integrate these gifts into your operations, improve guest satisfaction, and build a thriving, sustainable business.

Don't wait until the challenges overwhelm your passion for hospitality. Contact me today to schedule your first coaching session and start the journey toward excellence. Let's ensure your restaurant not only survives but also prospers in these challenging times.

P.S. 

For more leadership development, here are some additional resources for you:

1. Tune into the No Hesitations Podcast Episode 32 : How to Lead with Clarity : 5 Strategies for Effective Restaurant Management

2. Contact me for a strategy session about overcoming your biggest challenge at christinlmarvin@gmail.com and start transforming your mindset, your restaurant, and your life today!