Self-management skills are important for managers to develop an authentic leadership style and create a meaningful work experience for employees. Managers should focus on self-awareness, being trustworthy and extending trust, accountability, and recognizing their own abilities. They should listen to employees, consider new ideas, and serve employees and guests. Pursuing outside interests, taking vacations, and getting a coach can help managers avoid burnout. Poor self-management likely contributes to common stigmas about long hours, low pay, lack of balance, stress, turnover and blame in operations management.

1. Self-Management
How To Get Out Of Your Own Way

2. What is Self-Management?
Self-management skills:
• Being productive, regardless of the environment
• Communicating efficiently
• Making conscious decisions
• Planning your time
• Considering your health and overall wellness
Taking responsibility for one’s own behavior
and well-being.

3. Activity: Skills Assessment
Your results:
Were they aligned with your own self-concept?
What did you not recognize before?
How can we utilize this awareness as
managers and self-managers moving forward?

4. Self-Awareness
How to develop an authentic leadership style
• Understand your strengths
• Understand what type of tasks you enjoy doing
• Understand where your passions lie
Essential to understanding what kind of leadership
style works for you

5. How to Turn a Weakness into a Strength
• Write down your strengths and
weaknesses
• Focus on your strengths
• Rethink your weaknesses
• Compare the lists against one
another
• Consider any surprises or
mismatches
• Ask the opinions of your team
• Identify your areas for growth

6. What are the most common stigmas surrounding
management, specifically in operations?
• Long shifts (~11+) and long work week (~60+ hours)
• Compensation breakdown is low at such high time commitment
• No work/life balance
• High stress, unpredictable work environment
• High turnover; workers are “a dime a dozen”
• Taking responsibility for others’ failures
Is there truth in this?

7. Common Problems
What are the most common problems you encounter
on a day-to-day basis?
• Organization
• Time management (*** FRC University: Time Management class!)
• Routine (or lack thereof)
• Communication
• Ego/Self-Confidence
• Work/Life balance
• Motivation

8. Opportunity: Organization
Probably one of the most obvious & common issues
• How do we find time for something so boring and mundane?
• Do we even attempt it?
• It takes time and effort to get organized and stay organized
• It can’t be one person’s system – it has to be a system that works
for everyone involved
- The Office (aka the tiny closet with no A/C, tons of wires and a cubby
with your name on it)

9. Opportunity: Time Management
Urgent vs. Important
• Determine deadlines
• Keep a running list
• Get things out of the way
when you feel like they’re
easiest to conquer
Tips:
• Focus on one thing at a time
• Be prepared – set yourself
up for success
• Avoid procrastination

10. Opportunity: Routine
Benefits:
• Time-saving & efficient
• Stress relieving
• Better equipped to handle the unexpected
Routines
What kind of personal routines do you follow?
example: Gym, Breakfast with the kids
What kind of professional routines do you follow?
How much of your day is left up to chance?
How often does something unexpected cause chaos the rest of the day?

11. Opportunity: Routine
How to make a routine possible when it is impossible
Turning a to-do list into a routine:
• Any task that you do on (almost) a daily basis can be incorporated into
a routine
🡪 Best Practice: Morning office work
1. Walkthrough & power up
2. Reconcile labor
3. Reports / P&L
4. Schedule & floor chart
5. Counting the bank & drawers
• Make a point to do things in the most logical order
🡪 If you know the AM Bartender needs her drawer by 10:45, make a
point to get all the office work accomplished by the time you bring her
cash out, and stay out on the floor

12. Opportunity: Communication
• “Check-in” with employees regularly
• Leverage resources (i.e. e-mail, HotSchedules) to keep everyone
in the loop
- A regular ‘newsletter’, weekly line-up notes, etc.
• Use a log or notebook of some sort to stay organized and make
notes on issues or improvements throughout the day, so that
you can follow up later
- This is especially useful to reference for reviews or disciplinary action
• Make regularly scheduled meetings happen
• All staff (bi-annually)
• BOH/FOH (quarterly)
• Manager Meetings (bi-weekly or monthly)

14. Opportunity: Ego
• “The King and I Syndrome”
• Keep your ego in check!
• Be open to new ideas
• Don’t be afraid to ask for help
- Empower your teammates: your management
team, your employees. Investing your time and energy
into encouraging and developing others comes back
positively: you will lift yourself up but elevating your entire
team to the next level.

15. Opportunity: Confidence
To build up self-confidence:
• Offer your help to others frequently
• “How can I help?”
• “Can I do something to help you today?”
• “Can I do X for you, so that you can accomplish X?”
- Peers will start coming to you as an expert on whatever
topic you are proficient in, and you will feel more confident
doing things on your own/taking initiative
To build confidence in others:
• Ask your team to review, and ask for feedback.
- This will make everyone feel empowered, and valued as a
part of a cohesive team.

16. Opportunity: Cohesion
Create and engage in a ‘support group’
• Friends, family outside of work
• Management team
• Get to know each other’s goals
• Ask yourself: how can I help my team reach their goals?
• GM mentality: how can I develop weaknesses? Opportunities to
build confidence, improve skills?

17. • Harmonizing influence
• Look for chances to mediate and resolve minor disputes; point continually
toward the team's higher goals.
• Set an example to team members by being open with employees and sensitive
to their moods and feelings
• Encourage trust and cooperation among employees.
• the relationships team members establish among themselves are every bit as
important as those you establish with them.
• Make sure that you have a clear idea of what you need to accomplish.
• you know what your standards for success are going to be; that you have
established clear time frames; and that team members understand their
responsibilities.
• Be careful to clarify directives
Opportunity: Cohesion

18. Opportunity: Work/Life Balance
• Messy boundaries: sometimes we bring our problems at home to
work with us in the morning, and we take our problems at work
home with us in the evening
• Best Practice: creating separate calendars
Most of the type they automatically sync up – but know how to detach
your work and personal calendars so that you can focus on your time
away from work and vice-versa
Remember: your problems are everyone else’s problems!

19. Opportunity: Work/Life Balance
Consider the consequences of your actions/decisions, and the ripple effect
it is going to have (i.e. how it affects everyone around you)
Executive Chefs: BOH problems end up affecting FOH
• High ticket times
• Incorrect inventory
• Dishwasher is slacking, slow, or unaccounted for
General Manager: FOH problems end up affecting BOH
• Ringing errors
• Slow/no food running
• Host stand not managing door/floor properly
At the end of the day, we blame one another, and it ruins our attitude
towards our teammates and our job

20. Opportunity: Motivation
• Feeling checked out? Burnt out? Spacing out? It’s all a sign
that you need to do something, make a change.
• Get to the bottom of it: why?
• Are you doing all of the “grunt” work?
• Unequal distribution of work?
• Do you have any responsibilities that you actually enjoy?
• Have you taken a vacation in a while?
• Are you understaffed? Overworked?
• No positive feedback?
SPACING OUT (DISINTEREST) -> BURNOUT -> CHECKED OUT

21. Opportunity: Motivation
Take responsibility for your own motivation and
development.
We want to develop you, but we can’t always be right on top
of your progress. Stay hungry. Ask for what you need.
• Opportunities
• Feedback
• Review
• New Challenges/Responsibilities

22. • Be self-aware. Self-awareness is essential to understanding what leadership style works
for you. As you come to understand where your strengths are, what you enjoy doing,
and where your passions are, you are better able to develop an authentic leadership
style. The first person you will lead is yourself!
• Be trustworthy and extend trust to your employees. (This means you must have
good hiring practices!) When you are trustworthy and trust your employees you earn
their loyalty and strengthen your practice.
• Be accountable for yourself. Implement a management team advisory board to help
make sound, strategic decisions. Decide what’s important and do it. Ask your team to
review, and ask for feedback. This will make everyone feel empowered, and valued as a
part of a cohesive team.
• Recognize when you’ve outrun your abilities. When one lawyer I worked with saw
that her skills were not adequate to manage the cash flow of her company, she hired an
accountant and bookkeeper to create meaningful reports for her to review each week.
Creating a Meaningful Work Experience
Source: “10 Tips for Managing Yourself (Self Leadership)” asparker.com

23. • Open yourself to being transformed. Listen – really listen – to employees. Consider
the ideas of your peers. Let go of old notions of leadership (managing via fear, for
example).
• Be a servant leader. Consider it your responsibility to serve employees and guest.
Just thinking this will make you a different person.
• Pursue hobbies and interest outside of work. They ‘ll provide relaxation and may
inspire creative ideas that you can feed back your restaurant.
• Take a vacation. (But first, make sure you leave the practice in good hands!) Too many
people skip vacation time. It along with hobbies and other interests provides relaxation
time. You will find that creativity comes during this down time.
• Get a coach. Coaches are skilled at helping you to understand what works for you,
where what your strengths are and how to move yourself and your practice to the next
level.
Creating a Meaningful Work Experience
Source: “10 Tips for Managing Yourself (Self Leadership)” asparker.com

24. What are the most common stigmas surrounding
management, specifically in operations?
• Long shifts (~11+) and long work week (~60+ hours)
• Compensation breakdown is low at such high time commitment
• No work/life balance
• High stress, unpredictable work environment
• High turnover; workers are “a dime a dozen”
• Taking responsibility for others’ failures
How many of these stigmas likely exist
because of poor self-management skills?

25. Thank you!