How to Lose a Great Team Member (The Right Way)

Obviously being a chef is also being a mentor. It’s a chef’s responsibility to teach people new skills and develop their teams’ abilities. This isn’t easy, and for the rookie working their way up the kitchen ladder, the chef’s willingness to be patient and provide room to grow helps develop real confidence.

It isn’t easy for the chef either, because for a time it involves some failure on the cook’s end (burning things, being slow, not really understanding the bigger picture, etc), but that’s part of learning, and the best leader understands that time end attention will close the gap. Plant and water the right seeds and they grow. This is working in constructive kitchens.

You either develop or replace. As a leader, the strength of your own character determines which road you choose as a strategy. Only an asshole wants to fire people all the time, and those people generally are also perpetually hiring out of need, so they tend to get what they focus on.

But in every great kitchen, there comes a time when the best people….leave you. They move away, take larger positions, or they simply want to experience new things. This is never personal and always an opportunity.

Of course, you want to put off for as long as possible because keeping a team together is a hallmark of a great leader (and constant turnover the flag of a bad one), but when the time does come, the best leaders understand that great relationships go beyond business.

Know what people do for you

Great people often do unseen work after they integrate themselves into the business and culture over time. They gradually take on a tremendous amount of responsibility outside of their job descriptions, know sensitive information and have influence over results and social dynamics that you may not always see, that’s why they’re great.

So, it’s important to be in tune with the systems and flow of your restaurant and have your best people teach those around them, so that when the hard day comes where your protégé graduates to great new things, you’re not scrambling trying to glue the pieces back together.

Mentor your whole team

In a restaurant, everyone’s a key player, and in the long run, it takes time to tell who’s going to be with you for the long haul, and who will excel. The dishwasher could very well be your Chef de Cuisine down the road, and your rockstar line cook could shit-out after six months.

The point is that a chef’s biggest priority is developing each person and maintaining a relationship with the whole team. If you’re in tune, generally someone on your team will recommend a friend to work on your roster, but likely won’t offer that referral if they don’t know you that well.

Second, if you’re in tune with everyone, when someone leaves, everyone knows how to cover the bases, keeping the leader out of the shit. Most importantly, the better you know you’re team, the better you can give them more of what they need to grow, which benefits them and you.

So don’t just focus on your “best people” at the time, because you can never be 100% certain that you’re not overlooking someone else’s potential.

Provide time and space for people to learn, fail and prepare.

So many chefs in the hospitality industry are promoted too soon and with too little training. And because of the stresses and complexity of the position, they often become demoralized or burn out before they can even approach a stride (this is backed up with restaurant turnover rate data).

The upside to sending off a graduate of your restaurant is that you probably have someone that you want to promote waiting and ready, and the opportunity for them is a huge career step. Whenever possible, it’s always best to promote someone into a position that they’ve been slowly introduced to in a controlled environment.

Of course, your sous chef may not fully understand the weight of responsibility the executive chef is accountable for, but if you’ve mentored properly, you’ve probably at least shown them the pathway and maybe some of the metrics. Give them a chance to do the order, or develop and cost a dish, let them speak in pre-meal, teach them inventory, give them some rope.

Whatever position they’re in, give them more of what’s coming, so that they can feel the pressure and learn when it’s less risky to fail, and you have the time and space to guide them before you need them to perform in real time.

Succession planning is part of culture

Having someone to promote is the best-case scenario, and it takes years of work to get to that point. It’s the ideal, and it’s earned. When you care about your people, the revolving door is slower. Not too many people go in or out. The team is stable and it’s a great feeling.

When someone leaves, it’s rare and they’re celebrated. This is where opportunity comes from and is always best when you’ve worked hard to establish great operations and culture around your best players. Being able to shift the schedule is much better than having to fill it.

But succession planning isn’t only having someone to promote like finding a warm body to keep things from spiraling out of control. Succession planning is taking control, ahead of time, and having the relationship with someone already in place where you can promote them and guide them through inevitable learning curves.

And that never stops, because as you’re always developing the people around that person to potentially step into that role. It’s not to threaten anyone’s job, it’s to prepare the whole team for everyone’s benefit. The culture you create with everyone else around the person you promote is just as important as the promoting the person.

Be a mentor for life.

It’s a professional honor to help open new doors and mentor your people through new and challenging professional experiences, even after they leave you. Be willing to pick up the phone and talk this person through new challenges they’re facing, even though it has nothing to do with you. Strong people don’t need hand holding, so when and if this person calls, pick up the phone and guide the next generation.

Conclusion

There are many dedicated leaders out there who mentor great teams, but if you investigate the turnover rate data, most of the hospitality industry doesn’t have a succession plan, for a multitude of reasons. This puts them into fight or flight mode, shooting from the hip and hoping for the best.

This isn’t to say that the dive bar down the street is going to have an air-tight succession plan, but if you employ anyone at all and you hope to be successful, then this is crucial for your business and your mental wellbeing.

The experience of working with someone for many years, and watching them grow, achieving great things together and being a strong team, is the absolute best part of working in hospitality. It’s an honor to get to the point when you can have someone leave you, and strangely, you’re proud that they did.