The Leadership Legacy

Will your leadership leave a legacy?

What tools will help your team reach their full potential?

First in the series: The Leadership Legacy—Lead, Inspire and Make a Difference

By Ron Yudd

Associate turnover, recruiting, retention, training, service excellence, caring attitudes, developing future managers and leaders----just a short list of the concerns and worries in the life of a general manager today. All of these challenges can be grouped under one theme---leadership. This is the real challenge for the general manager today. He/she, in order to truly develop service excellence, must pass on and develop real world leadership skills in the young people within their organization. The day-to-day operational concerns and worries are only overcome by insuring that leadership is nurtured at all levels of the organization.

What does this “nurturing of leadership skills” really mean? Where does leadership come into play when the entrees for the wedding reception are not plated and the mother of the bride is looking for you? Yes---it is about organization, timing, solid communication and special event planning skills but it is also much more----it’s about passing these skills and others on to those that make up your team. It’s about giving to your team before you can expect something in return.

The first step in this process is to understand what real leaders are. Before you can pass on leadership skills to others you must be fully versed in them yourself. Leaders are:

1. Value Driven -They Lead by Living Their Values 

2. Service Based-They Work from A Position of Service to Others

3. Problem Solvers-They Knock Down Roadblocks for Others

4. Selfless-They Deflect Praise from Themselves by Showering Praise on Others

5. Communicators-They Communicate their Vision At Every Opportunity

This is the first checklist to measure how you are doing as a leader within your organization. Understanding this foundation of leadership will help to begin the process of helping your team reach their full potential and ensure your legacy of leadership is in place.

Let’s explore each of the leadership legacy qualities. Value Driven means that the actions one takes are based on the values and beliefs that they profess. They act and react in a way that is true to what they believe in and what they feel is the right thing to do or the right way to behave. There are several simple examples---being on time if you expect others to be on time, wearing the hat when you are helping in the kitchen when you expect others to follow the policy, or providing members and guests with service excellence, if you expect your staff to do the same. If the leader believes that these are important he /she lives them each day while leading the organization.

Service Based means that the effective leader is always in service to others within the organization. He/she acts as a tool giver so others can, not just get the job done, but exceed their own expectations. Making sure that others have the tools to get the job done is a mark of the “service based” leader. Are there enough B+B plates, iced tea-spoons, linen and detailed information about an event available to the team? What knowledge can be passed on to help the team learn how to do things better or easier? The service based leader is always asking the question how can I be of service to my team or how can I help them improve their performance?

The leader as Problem Solver is a simple concept. This leader is always looking for the roadblocks that are getting in the way of the success of their people. They thrive on “eating roadblocks for breakfast”. They invest their time in talking with their team members to find out where the glitches or potential glitches are lurking. They seek problems out and destroy them. They fully enjoy the challenges and victories of problem solving. They base they’re daily success on the number of problems that were solved and the number of roadblocks that were overcome.

Selfless leaders deflect praise away from themselves by ensuring that others receive it. Envision your departing guest that raves about a particular dessert that was part of your buffet that evening. The selfless leader makes sure that the guest knows that the dessert was really the creation of the young up and coming pastry chef and that their comments will be personally passed on to her. The personal praise for the selfless leader comes in knowing that he/she provided the motivation and maybe the culinary direction for this young pastry chef to be able to succeed and blow away the guests.

Leaders as Communicators use every opportunity to talk about their vision of the operation. These leaders are the “reminders” to the staff as to exactly what service excellence and a caring environment mean. They are able to take their vision of what the Club is all about and express in practical, clear and concise language. They also have a consistent message. The vision, let’s say “service excellence” means the same today as it will tomorrow. Everyone in the organization knows where this type of leader stands. Her message is clear, consistent and always part of the day-to-day operation.

These five basic qualities or “tools” of a successful leader must be firmly in place before your work team can begin to reach their full potential. These characteristics must be part of your leadership skills inventory before you can begin to teach and nurture them in your key players. Look at them again and ask yourself how you are doing in each one. Note where you are strongest and where you need to do some self-reflection.

It is interesting to note that successful businesses and successful leaders possess these qualities and work very hard at instilling them in others within the organization. This is where the concept of legacy comes in. Your leadership legacy is what you potentially leave behind in the members of your team. Have they become selfless problem solvers that live their values day-to-day in the work they perform? The best run organizations have these types of people using these types tools at all levels! When we find organizations like this it is also interesting to note that turnover is low, service excellence is high and the staff and members are the happiest. Interesting----everything we want as a general manager!

Next in the series: The Leadership Legacy Foundation-The Three C’s of Leadership