How to Resolve Employee Conflict and Restore Team Harmony
What do you do when your crew doesn’t get along with each other - when their resentment no longer is towards you but to each other? How do you deal with a problem like that?
As much as we hate it, one of the hats we wear is therapist. Not only is our responsibility to ensure that everyone does their job, but that everyone is happy and enjoys it. In the restaurant job, we are dealing with so many employees who have been raised in rough situations and rough homes. They often did not have the opportunity to develop strong interpersonal skills, so I want you to think of this as a way to help your employees develop life skills rather than just their job and career skills. When you help your crew grow as a person, they will be even more grateful for you years later.
We spend so much time together, and we all depend on each other to get the job done. That’s why we call ourselves, and sometimes really feel like, a family. The crew spends more time with each other more than they do with their own families. I know you spend more time at work than you do at home. That’s why it’s so difficult to keep our feelings out of the way sometimes, because families do fight. It’s something that’s going to happen here and there, so it’s important for us as managers to develop our interpersonal skills and patience to make up for where the patience lacks in our crew.
If the restaurant is the family, you are the mom or the dad, which means you are responsible for solving these issues. It may feel easier to say “just stop fighting and get your work done!”, but if you really are a parent, you know deeply that these things must be addressed if we are going to reach our common goal of a stress-free work environment. We can’t just keep sweeping our frustrations under the rug – they have to be addressed, and you have to be the moderator and mediator.
In many cases, both sides want you to take their side, but you know in every situation, it’s not always that simple. However, sometimes it is. Each employee wants to be special to you, and you need to make them feel that way without each side feeling like you are favoring the other. If you are too validating to each side, they will feel like you aren’t strong enough to handle the situation and feel betrayed by your lack of leadership and discretion.
So how do we solve a problem like that? For me, my rule has always been to be gentle but honest. Separate yourself from the situation and try to figure out what is truly going on. Understand that much of your info is coming from rumors that are emotionally driven. Instead of seeing what is going on in this particular instance, take into account what you know about the habits of the employees themselves and notice if these personality aspects may be coming into play. It may be an opportunity to call some people out on behavior that has been neglected. If one employee has ego, is that coming out in their accusations? If an employee feels insecure about their performance, are they being overly defensive? When you notice how individual crew members operate, you may be able to see their feelings in a new light.
That being said, once you’ve developed your own personal judgements about the situation, give that judgement to each employee. What I mean is, tell both sides what you really feel about the situation rather than just try to make people happy, because when you just try to make people happy, now you are just sweeping everything under the rug, and you don’t want to be the one to have to clean that mess up later. Go ahead and solve the problem now. Help your employees work through their issues with each other with an honest, stern, and gentle approach. Validate emotions, but do not validate actions.
To tell a personal story about the issue, I once had two employees feeling they both deserved the new assistant manager spot that had just opened up. They were both very good at their job, each had very different strengths and weaknesses. One was very focused and mature but was new and had a closed availability. The other had a lot of seniority and open availability, but she hadn’t mastered the job in the way I wanted her to. My problem was that both employees would be incredible at the job. The resentment began between them as they both fought for my attention to their work. Soon, the resentment became personal, not even relating to the job itself. Two friends who used to support each other now hated each other due to jealousy. My original plan was to not take any responsibility. After all, all I do is run a restaurant, right? I’m not responsible for employee’s emotions, right? Sure, you can think that way, but it will only create immense resentment towards yourself, and now you are even further from a stress-free work environment.
How did I solve the problem? I had to ask myself, who will make the job easier for everyone involved? The real decision was between great shifts and great availability. I chose to reward great work quality. The first employee got the position. Of course, I created a lot of ingratitude from the second. She felt she had been there longer and deserved it out of that respect. So how did I appease her? I told her outright my reasoning for my decision – that work quality is what matters more than seniority. Now, I was sure to sprinkle in as many compliments to her work as I could, ensuring her that I was grateful for her. She needed to know that her work wasn’t going unnoticed. Though at first she was frustrated, she was actually grateful for my strength in not cow-towing to their emotions. It reminded her of the job and what it means to work hard. Because of my honesty and gentleness, she became a better employee after that, focusing on her work quality, and she soon became an excellent employee. Though I had been transferred shortly after this, she had been set up for success and promoted very soon.
Once you manage the emotions of your employees, you have mastered one of the most difficult skills of the restaurant business. Successfully mediating between two fighting siblings is not just a skill, it’s a superpower, and once have the superpower, you become a superhero, a super manager. When you have the confidence to keep employees happy in the most difficult situations, you truly feel successful, and that makes everything worth it.
Go ahead and grab a copy of my Restaurant Manager Sanity Journal!