Chapter 4: General Managers are Leaders

A. Leadership Basics:
1. The GM Sets the Pace

GMs’ feelings and actions about issues will likely impact hotel staff attitudes
about these same issues.

GMs only personally direct the work of department heads and, perhaps, a few
other staff members.

GMs’ interactions with department heads directly impact how the department heads
interact with their own staff.

Influence

Level of Morale Desired Product & Employee

Service Quality Turnover Rates

+ Skill:

 Conceptual
 Technical
 Administrative
 Interpersonal

+ Conceptual Skills: The ability to collect, interpret, and use information in

a logical way.
+ Interpersonal Skills: The ability to understand and interact well with
people.

+ Administrative Skills: The ability to organize and direct required work

efforts including the development of policies and operating procedures.

+ Technical Skills: The ability to perform hotel management specific

aspects of the job.

2. GMs Manage in Times of Change

+ Traditional:

 Manager-focused work unit

 Manager is dominant
 Emphasis on technical skills
+ Contemporary:

 Team-focused work unit

 Manager is supportive
 Emphasis on employee facilitation skills

3. Developing the Organizational Culture

 Organizational Culture
 Long-Term Plans
 Policies And Procedures
 Operating Plans
 Guest-Focused service
 Core Values
 Vision

4. On-Boarding and Off-Boarding Tactics

 On-boarding
 Recruitment
 Selection
 Orientation
 Induction
 Training
5. Decision-Making
+ Programmed Decision: Routine or repetitive decisions made
after considering policies, procedures, and rules.
+ Nonprogrammed Decision: Decisions that occur infrequently
and require creative and unique decision-making abilities.
+ Factors Affecting Decisions
+ Team Decision-Making

Advantages
 Considering broad range
of information
 Generating more
creative alternatives
 Whole team aware of
issues and problems
 Higher morale
 Easier implementation
Disadvantages
 Possible conflicts
 May be forced to “take
sides” if alternative
opinions are expressed
 Domination by staff
members with strongest
personalities
 Time-consuming
 Not applicable when
fast decisions
necessary
 6. Communication
+ Vertical Communication: Communication between individuals
that flows up and down throughout the organization.
+ Horizontal Communication: Communication between individuals
at the same organizational level.
+ Grapevine: Informal communication that flows
throughout a property.
+ Jargon: Specialized job-related terms
Example: A food server saying “86” to communicate that a
specific menu item is
no longer available.
Poorly
7. Motivation Motivated
Staff

Inconsistent performance for required quality or quantity standards

Guest dissatisfaction

Increased operating costs

More motivated employees leave

 Hotel suffers

- Strategies to motivate employees:

 Follow sound management advice

 Effective orientation
 Train correctly
 Manage a professional hotel
 Supervise as you want to be supervised
 Encourage effective communication
 Manage a friendly hotel
 Help your employees succeed

8. Discipline
- Discipline: Activities reinforcing desired performanceor correcting undesired
performance.

- Steps in a Progressive Discipline Process

 Oral warning (no entry in employee’s record)

 Oral warning (entry in employee’s record)
 Written reprimand
 Suspension for specific number of days
 Discharge

9. The GM and Team Building

- To Be a Good Team Leader, the GM Must:

 Have high standards and expectations

 Support individual members and maintain trusting and respectful relationships
 Practice participative management and solicit input from members
 Demonstrate that own personal goals and individual team member goals should
not be placed before team goals
 Share credit for team successes
 B.GM Interactions:
- GMs never have a daily routine; every day is different.
- Actual daily activities undertaken by a GM vary from day to day and month to
month, as well as from property to property.
- GMs’ daily involvement in guest relations are quite visible.
- GM is on duty eight or more hours daily and is often on call even when not on
the property

1. Employee and Guest Relationships

- Possible Interactions with Employees: Positive Examples

 Daily conversations with long-term staff members

 Learning employees’ suggestions about possible

 operating improvements

 Welcoming new staff members to the team

 Congratulating personnel about significant events in

 their or their families’ lives

 Mentoring younger workers

- Possible Interactions with Employees: Negative Examples

 Disciplining or terminating staff members
 Confronting staff members who are known to be stealing
 Learning about illegal acts committed off-property by staff members
 Assigning work responsibilities to cover “no-show” employees
 Discovering employee “sabotage”Supervising staff members who violate hotel
policies, requirements, and rules
 Comforting an employee whose child has passed away
 Observing an intoxicated employee attempting to come to work
 Explaining to staff members why they did not get promotions they sought

- Possible Interactions with Guests: Positive Examples

 Interacting with frequent guests
 Receiving spontaneous “thank-you notes” from happy guests
 Observing guests celebrate significant family/professional occasions at the hotel
 Providing service/assistance to guests who require it
  Receiving input from guests who genuinely want the hotel to be successfulI
 Interacting with guests as peers at community/professional meetings
 Providing accommodations to guests stranded by adverse travel conditions
 Receiving guest input about hospitable staff members

- Possible Interactions with Guests: Negative Examples

 Interacting with police called to hotel for disturbances and/or illegal guest
activities
 Guest deaths in sleeping rooms or in the hotel’s public spaces
 Dealing with visibly intoxicated guests
 Preventing on-site prostitution
 Preventing guest theft of money, products, and/or services from the hotel
 Preventing property vandalism
 Calming irate guests stranded by adverse travel conditions
 Discovering overt guest room damage