A Restaurant Owner’s Job Is to be a Leader
To be successful in the restaurant business takes strong leadership. And the reality is restaurant leadership doesn’t come naturally to everyone.
In this post I reviewed why a restaurant owner must work on their business rather than in it, outlining three parts of a restaurant owner’s job. They are:
- Working on budgets and the numbers
- Growing your restaurant
- Leading the team
Restaurant leadership and leading the team
Most of us are not born leaders. Years ago I created something called the Restaurant Owner Matrix. It defines where we fall as operators when it comes to personalities and restaurant leadership traits, such as crazy makers, pencil pushers, social workers and the ultimate, a head coach.
Crazy makers are emotion driven decision makers. These are the people who are often a victim in their business, where things are out of control, the tail wags the dog when it comes to management and the business is in complete chaos on a day-to-day basis.
The pencil pusher is a numbers driven decision maker. These are the people who love the numbers and systems, but sometimes hate people. They often have very little patience and run their business from their office through security cameras.
The social worker is a people driven decision maker. These are the people who care more about their image, the image of the restaurant and that customers get the best experience possible. Unfortunately, they don’t often pay attention to the numbers.
No matter where you fall in terms of restaurant leadership, if you have systems in place for everything you do in your business, your systems allow you to overcome your weaknesses. It makes the crazy maker change their company culture. It forces the pencil pusher to communicate. It forces the social worker to look at the numbers. Ultimately it makes sure no matter where you fall based on your characteristics that you become a head coach. A head coach is a systems driven decision maker who leads people. Systems in place equal the foundation to great leadership.
Once you become a head coach, a major responsibility is to hold your team accountable to using these systems on a daily basis.
Read more about the other two parts of a restaurant owner’s job:
To read more about the importance of leadership in running your restaurant, read our free special report, Breaking Away from the Insanity: How to easily take control of your restaurant and make more money. Download it here.
