Leadership and management are two different things, but do you need to be a good leader to be a good manager? Either way, good hospitality requires both in abundance as Hotelier discovers…
Hotelier visited a property last month and the front of house service we received was superb. Unfortunately, the maintenance of the lobby bathrooms was nothing short of a disgrace. It didn’t add up — how could one element be functioning well and something as major as the cleanliness of the bathrooms be overlooked?
It turned out the hotel had no general manager, and its reputation was beginning to suffer. While this displays a need for management, does it require leadership? What does each entail and can anyone be trained to become a leader or manager?
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A GOOD MANAGER
Being a good manager, according to Rami Sayess, regional vice president for Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts and GM of Four Seasons Hotel Doha, requires “a high level of ethics and a clear understanding of what the team is looking to accomplish”.
“It’s about getting the balance right between confidence and humility so that you manage your team while recognising and encouraging individual contributions and ideas that benefit the end result,” he says.
Lynne Bellinger, managing director UAE for Purple Cubed, believes a good manager is someone who first and foremost is an expert in their field.
“A manager should follow standards and drive the processes through their people in order to deliver the vision set by the leaders, so they need to be good at doing the day-to-day stuff whilst managing their people,” she says.
Management is a craft, a set of tools and methods used to get a job done well, according to Klaus Miserra, director of management consulting at Grow.ME.
“The key attribute for a manager is to be versatile in his or her use of these tools and methods in order to achieve results for the business,” he continues. “At the same time, a good manager strives to get the job done efficiently through effective teamwork.”
An example of this and of good reactive management is given by Gary Dodds, vice president HR, Marriott International, Middle East & Africa. He recalls a case in which a HR director noticed that the room service guest satisfaction survey had dropped successively over three months.
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