Motivational Management Prime Aim 3

All employees have the skills and ability to deliver on those expectations.

Fine, all your employees know and understand exactly what is expected of them, but that does not mean they will be able to do it.  Experiential learning, or as we understand it, throwing someone in at the deep end, is not the best way to deliver great customer service.  Training is essential in order to ensure that employees are able to deliver what they know and understand.  We are constantly told that training is motivational.  It certainly can raise an employee’s self-confidence.  If they know and understand a process and also know how to do it, that is all they need in order to carry out their duties with real confidence.  That has got to be motivational.  Again think about your first days in a new job, were you given a very short induction and then left to work beside another employee, who treated you like a total idiot?  How did you feel?  Did you work well, or were you a bit de-motivated?  How much better would it have been if you had received a short training session demonstrating exactly how to carry out your expected duties?  

That said, there is a little sting in the tail of this third prime aim.  It lists skills and ability.  What is the difference?  We consider skills to be physical attributes that can be learnt – how to serve plates, how to use the reception booking system or how to make a bed.  Skills can be improved by training with another person.  Abilities are more behavioural, like some customer service skills – smiling at customers, listening properly to customer requests or being a real team player.  These can be very important requirements for our industry, but can we train people to them?  The answer is not easily – behavioural change can only come from within a person, you can help people to change themselves, but you cannot train them to change.  The ability to communicate well with customers, and to really want to please others is essential for delivering great customer service.  There is a legend surrounding a well-known Hotel Manager in London in the nineteen fifties, who interviewed all the new employees for his hotel.  He interviewed candidates for about half an hour, asking them a series of questions.  Half way through the interview he would, apparently accidentally, knock a pencil off his desk.  If the candidate rushed to pick up the pencil and give it back to him, they got the job, if they ignored the pencil and carried on with the interview as if nothing happened, they did not get the job.  The Hotel Manager was finding out if the applicant had the behavioural pattern of wanting to please other people.  This can be called recruitment for attitude, not aptitude. 

What has this got to do with Motivational Management?  I would argue that it is your job as a supervisor or manager to only employ individuals who have the correct behavioural makeup to be able to deliver customer service, if they are being employed to face the public.  If you employ someone who finds it difficult to communicate, and then put them into a position where they meet the public, they will be totally de-motivated and you will not be doing your job properly. 

These principles sounds good, but how do I actually do this? 

Look at Workshops associated with this Prime Aim

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