Have you ever considered the possibility that your help is actually more hurtful than truly helpful? In my experience, this is very true. If you give too much of yourself, not only will your crew begin to have expectations of assistance (which always leads to frustration), but they will also never learn the necessary skills of management. It is your responsibility to equip your managers with the most skills necessary to be successful at their jobs, so it’s imperative to help them learn these problem-solving skills which come only from you stepping back and letting them create their own solutions for their own problems.

This may sound a bit anxiety-inducing, but sometimes, you need to not answer your phone. Rather, your goal ought to be that you do not need fear if you turn your phone off for a movie or family event. You want to build a trust in your team that they can handle any situation without you having to always be available to provide guidance or even come into the store and help out. If you’re anything like me, the possibility of that probably has both a huge fear attached to it. But it also has a bit of hope, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it sound nice to be able to relax and not have to worry about your store when you’re away? So long as it can be pulled off, it’s like a dream come true. So let’s find some ways to get to that peace of mind.

Do you want to know how I really do it? Do you really want to know how to be able to wear so many hats and have so many responsibilities at once and still be successful and feel like everything is easy? Do you want to know the real reason I make it look easy? The answer may surprise you.

I don’t believe in “secrets” of the trade – there’s no such thing. Nothing here is secret, just unknown. But if there was something that felt like a secret hack to the trade, it would be this – the notebook.

It’s one of the most frustrating dilemmas in all of restaurant management – what do you do with an employee who has such a great work ethic but has such a bad attitude? How do you manage an employee who has great quality work but complains all the time? How do you deal with the crew member who is reliable but poisons the whole culture? This is such a tricky situation that it will require some thought for each individual situation, but in this post, I plan to tell you how I have been able to work through these situations to retain both a great employee and a positive work environment.

Have you ever hired someone who seemed just untrainable? Or what about hiring someone who seemed great in their interview but seemed to be a different person when they showed up to work for their first day? As a restaurant manager, you already know that interviews can’t always be the best way to judge a candidate, so it’s important to learn what to do when you’ve accidentally made a bad call and hired a not-so-great employee. Setting up a new-hire for success is a skill that must be learned if you want to succeed as a restaurant manager.

Let’s review what we have discussed so far about the three batteries. Each of us has three different types of batteries that we use to get us through our day, our body battery, our mental battery, and our emotional battery. At night, our body battery is replenished through sleep, and our mental battery is recharged as well, so long as we get an adequate quality sleep. We can condition our bodies to not only recover from the day easier but improve our capacity for great work through physical exercise and avoiding technology. Now’s the time to talk about the third battery, the emotional battery.

Everyone’s emotional battery is different. Some people seem to never have their emotional battery depleted at all. Some seem to have their battery completely run out after 10 minutes of being awake. This battery is going to be very specific to you, and you will have to find your own ways to recharge and condition these, but I will try to point you in the right direction so you can discover these.

We’ve all experienced it; we’ve all been there – burnout is a real thing. In this industry, it’s hard to find anyone who isn’t burning the candle at both ends. It seems like an impossible task to try to be the manager your company needs as well as enjoy the ability to relax when you need to take a break. It may seem impossible, but this whole blog is about doing the impossible. So today, let’s talk about how to avoid burnout and keep performing your best, even when your body and mind and heart are at their limits.

You have three batteries – physical, mental, and emotional. In other words, you do this job with your body, your mind, and your heart. As we get tired from being overstressed and under-rested, our batteries get depleted and we start getting that feeling of running on empty, because you are, quite literally, running on empty. Working yourself through a depleted battery is how you get to anger and frustration in the job, and usually, it’s when your job performance starts getting poor and you feel like wanting to quit.