75: How your People-Pleaser Leadership is Holding you Back (Encore)

Are you leading your restaurant, or is it leading you?

If you’ve ever felt like your leadership style is stretched too thin—trying to keep everyone happy while running a successful business—this episode is for you. I’m Christin Marvin, and today we’re diving into the people pleaser mindset and how it might be holding you back as a leader.

✔️ How childhood patterns shape your leadership approach
✔️ Why balancing accountability with empathy is the key to a thriving team
✔️ How to redefine job roles and performance expectations for long-term success

A special shoutout to our sponsor, Restaurant Technologies. Running a kitchen is chaotic enough—your cooking oil management shouldn’t add to the stress. Their Total Oil Management system helps restaurants automate oil handling, ensuring consistency, safety, and efficiency. Less waste, less hassle, and more time to focus on what truly matters—your team and guests. Visit Restaurant Technologies to learn how they can help streamline your operations!

And if you’re ready to take your leadership to the next level, let’s talk. Book a one-on-one coaching session with me to refine your management style, reduce stress, and build a team that thrives. Visit christinmarvin.com/contact to get started.

#TotalOilManagement #RestaurantTechnologies #LeadershipInRestaurants #HospitalitySuccess

More from Christin:

Grab your free copy of my audiobook, The Hospitality Leader's Roadmap: Move from Ordinary to Extraordinary at christinmarvin.com/audio

Curious about one-on-one coaching or leadership workshops? Click this link to schedule a 15 minute strategy session.

Podcast Production: https://www.lconnorvoice.com/

Chapters

• 0:08 Leadership Saboteurs in Hospitality Industry
• 6:06 Leadership Challenges in Hospitality Industry
• 15:07 Leadership, Turnover, and Institutional Knowledge
• 20:22 Effective Communication and Growth Opportunities

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Are you a people pleaser? Is your people pleaser leadership style getting in the way of having tough conversations with your team or leading you to resent them? If so, stick around. In today's episode, I will teach you how leading with a people pleaser mindset in the hospitality industry can help you be successful and teach you how it's holding you back. I'm also going to give you three tips on how you can start changing your leadership style to one that's more productive. That will lead to a more efficient restaurant and impact your overall mental health and well-being.

Speaker 1: 0:49

Welcome to the Restaurant Leadership Podcast, the show where restaurant leaders learn tools, tactics and habits from the world's greatest operators. I'm your host, kristen Marvin, with Solutions by Kristen. I've spent the last two decades in the restaurant industry and now partner with restaurant owners to develop their leaders and scale their businesses through powerful one-on-one coaching, group coaching and leadership workshops. This show is complete with episodes around coaching, leadership development and interviews with powerful industry leaders. You can now engage with me on the show and share topics you'd like to hear about leadership, lessons you want to learn and any feedback you have. Simply click the link at the top of the show notes and I will give you a shout out on a future episode. Thanks so for listening and I look forward to connecting.

Speaker 1: 1:47

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Speaker 1: 3:39

In the hospitality leadership workshops I've recently held, I often delve into the topic of saboteurs. Now, saboteurs are, if you're not familiar. They are the thoughts that hinder our path to becoming more successful leaders. But, more importantly, they are the thoughts that cause all of our stress, all of our anxiety, all of our depression and resentment. These thoughts are saboteurs I talk a lot about and have learned from my work studying positive intelligence and what I call mental fitness. But I have learned that these thoughts were formed during childhood in order to protect us from something. It doesn't matter what background you grew up in, if you had a healthy childhood, if you had a traumatic childhood, if you were an only child like myself, if you had a lot of siblings. All of these thoughts were formed and we all have these saboteurs. The hard thing about them is subconsciously. A lot of us don't know that they're there and we keep these thoughts with us as adults, although we no longer need them to protect us from anything. But they still have an impact on the way that we form relationships, on the way that we show up as leaders and the way that we make decisions. There are nine of these saboteurs in total. One is the controller, another is the avoider, there's the victim, there's the hyper rational, there's the hyper achiever, which is my number one hyper vigilant, the stickler or the perfectionist and the restless. But the one prevalent saboteur that continually emerges, especially within the hospitality industry and a lot of the clients that I work with, is the people pleaser. People pleasing leaders often seek acceptance and approval by constantly assisting their teammates, pleasing other people or offering a lot of compliments. People pleasers genuinely believe that putting others' needs ahead of their own is the true mark of being a good person. Unfortunately, though, this style, this leadership style, frequently leads to feelings of resentment, as these leaders sense that they're being taken advantage of.

Speaker 1: 6:06

Now I think back to the early days in my management career, and a prime example of this was working really hard. I've always been a really hands-on leader in the restaurant industry, but there were times early in my career where I would find myself working so hard, running around the dining room, running from the kitchen out to the front of the house and back, and I would stop for a second to get a drink of water or just take a breath and look around and realize that I was working harder than some of the teammates in the room Right and I'm sure some of you have been there too so that was a really good check-in for me and realization that I was probably spending a lot of time and energy where I didn't need to be, and it took me some time to understand how to really perfect that, because I've always wanted to be hands-on. I love being in the grit with the team. I love the volume and the buzz and the pace that you get from the industry, but I had to learn that I could still work and be hands-on and interact with the guests and interact with the team and do what I love. But if I noticed that somebody wasn't working or doing something that they needed to or there was an area that needed to be tended to, I learned to delegate over the years and learn how to find that balance. But it is definitely a journey that takes time and a lot of practice.

Speaker 1: 7:24

I personally, as a leader, have often faced challenges with managing people pleasers, because I find that their teams really are. They love each other right, like people pleasers are. They want to make people happy, they want to serve people. They love making an impact right. It's so common for so many of us in the industry. We believe that we were put on this earth to serve, and that's why we've chosen the industry that we've chosen, and so these leaders and their teams have been great. They're happy, they're content, right, they get along with each other, but I have found in my experience that they often lack development, and a number of high-performing individuals that these teams could have had, or these leaders could have had, due to the lack of coaching supervised, would rather prioritize being the nice guy or the nice girl or the nice manager, however you want to say it, rather than holding their teams accountable.

Speaker 1: 8:41

And that dynamic really has had a strain on my professional relationships, and those have been some of the toughest relationships that I've had in the course of my career, and some of the people that I've really, really struggled to manage, and I really I'll talk about this in a second but I wish I would have had these tools and resources that I know of now, with these saboteurs, so that I could have taught people how to become more self-aware and how to manage these things, which is what I get to do today, which is great, we know, though, any of us that are, you know any of you that are listening and work in the business. It's the restaurant business is changing every single day, which is what I love and what made me crazy about it, but that means that there's ample room for opportunity with every single shift right. People pleaser managers, though, hesitate to provide that coaching or recognize those moments or implement those new systems, because they feel like it might discomfort their teams and they don't want to put too much pressure on them. They fear that if they push too hard, that they're going to jeopardize their relationships with their teammates. And so this, really that you know that fear of discomfort for them and for the team potentially really holds them back from making the necessary changes that they need to for their business. Hey there, podcast friends, I hope you're enjoying these impactful conversations and leadership insights I'm bringing you each week.

Speaker 1: 10:05

Before we dive back into today's episode, I want to take a moment and reach out and ask a small favor. That would go a long way in supporting the show. If you've been loving the content I'm providing, please take a moment to leave a rating and review. Wherever you listen to your podcasts, not only does it make my day, but it also plays a pivotal role in helping the show grow. Your reviews boost my visibility, attract new listeners and encourage exciting guests to join me on the mic. So if you want to be part of my show's growth journey, hit that review button and let me know what you think. Thanks a million for being awesome listeners.

Speaker 1: 10:45

So, like I said earlier, I wish that I really would have had the tools and knowledge around saboteurs that I have today and had access to the resources back then, because I could have supported these managers in such a different way. I unfortunately ended up firing these people. These are managers that I worked with and it was frustrating for me because I truly had felt like I had done everything that I could do in my skill set. I was very clear with the expectations. I told them where they weren't meeting those expectations, but I couldn't figure out what the underlying issue was as to why they couldn't coach their team or they were choosing not to coach their team. I would have conversations with them about players that needed coaching, needed development. We'd come up with a plan and I can't remember if we ever talked about okay, let's talk about how this coaching session is going to go? How can I set you up for success here? What do you need in order to prepare? And so a lot of the time those conversations wouldn't have taken place or didn't happen, or I was told that they had, which obviously just impacted the relationship even further.

Speaker 1: 12:01

So again, if I'd had known about the saboteur and especially the people pleaser tendencies, the thoughts, the feelings, the original survival functions of the people pleasers and why they were formed, I could have helped these managers understand that they know well A. I could have helped them understand how to recognize these people pleaser thoughts when they would show up in their mind. I could have helped them understand how those thoughts were informing their decisions around their team, how they were managing their team, how they were showing up. And then I could have helped them understand and know and have the empowerment that they could make the decision as to whether they wanted to listen to that thought and have it impact the next move that they were going to make with their team, or if they wanted to try something different and get a little bit uncomfortable and start growing and changing their mindset. I think that with those tools I would have been able to offer much more valuable guidance on how those leaders could make necessary adjustments and thereby setting them on a path to future success, which unfortunately didn't happen that way.

Speaker 1: 13:08

So anyway, today I wanted to share with you some of the detrimental impacts that having a people-pleasing leadership style can have within the restaurant business, from high employee turnover to burnout. I'll shed some light on how this approach can ultimately drain your business's resources and hinderered success. So here are several of the ways in which prioritizing others' needs at the expense of your own can have adverse effects on your business. The first one is reduced accountability for leadership. So in a people-pleasing leadership environment, leaders, like I said earlier, may avoid making tough decisions or implementing necessary changes to improve the restaurant's operations. One area I really found this to be true was that people pleaser leaders tended to hang on to low performing people much, much, much longer than they needed to, and it really impacted every aspect of the business the teamwork, the productivity, the sales, the guest experience all of it just because they were fearful of having a tough conversation the stagnation, basically because these leaders would not have these tough conversations. What that can result in is stagnation and resistance to change, which negatively impacts the restaurant's competitiveness and profitability. And you're working in an environment where you have a chain restaurant environment, where you have multiple locations that are all operating under the same umbrella. Right, it's really easy to compare apples to apples and see how this leadership style is really showing up. This also can lead to employees being really frustrated with the lack of problem solving and then ultimately start looking for other jobs because they feel like they're not being supported by their leaders. So their leaders are great at listening to their problems, but they're not great at implementing solutions to those problems.

Speaker 1: 15:07

The second one is the high cost of turnover. So employees who work for people pleasers can become really dependent on the leaders, which causes the leader to burn out. Right, the more tough conversations that the leaders are avoiding, the more that they are just doing the work to compensate for those lower performing employees. Right, it makes sense. We know that employee turnover is, especially in the restaurant industry, is notoriously expensive. It costs around $5,000 to replace an hourly employee and around $14,000 for a manager. That cost includes recruitment costs, training expenses, the loss of productivity during a transition period with new hires are brought up to speed, which is usually 90 days. Right, we know that before 90 days of an employee being with you. You should not expect them to add any value to your organization. It takes 90 days or 12 weeks for someone to be comfortable in their position, especially in a management role.

Speaker 1: 16:07

A high turnover rate also contributes to a less experienced staff, potentially leading to a decrease in the quality of service and customer satisfaction. Right, we know that when there's a brand new server on the floor, it impacts all the other servers, it impacts the side work, it impacts the teamwork You've got more mistakes going back to the kitchen so it impacts the heart of the house that your comps are higher and it impacts the guest experience and it can be a distraction for you, right, if you're having to do more table touches or go into recovery mode a little bit more than you normally would if you had an experienced team. Okay, the third point here is the loss of institutional knowledge. So when you have high employee turnover, it means that you're losing experienced teammates, knowledgeable staff members who really understand the intricacies of your restaurant's operation and your guests and all of your guests' preferences right, of your restaurant's operation and your guests and all of your guests' preferences right. This loss of knowledge can lead to increased inefficiencies, errors, like I mentioned earlier, and potentially decreased guest satisfaction, depending on how you're hiring, what level of talent you're bringing in and your training program.

Speaker 1: 17:16

While leadership in the restaurant business should prioritize employee well-being and satisfaction, a people-pleasing mentality can have significant negative consequences. Like I said, it can lead to higher turnover, which in turn costs the business money due to recruitment costs, training costs and operational inefficiencies. Striking a balance between accommodating employees and maintaining accountability and efficiency is so crucial for long-term success in the restaurant business. Shifting your leadership style from being a people pleaser to someone who empowers their team can be absolutely transformative for your restaurant business. I'm going to offer you three tips now to help you make this shift.

Speaker 1: 18:03

The first tip is to clarify expectations. I love this one because it's just black and white the facts. You take all the emotion and the personal aspect out of it. Begin by clearly identifying and defining your expectations for a teammate's performance and behavior. Defining your expectations for a teammate's performance and behavior Establish. Do this by establishing well-defined job roles, responsibilities and performance metrics. This is essential. Make sure that you communicate these expectations openly and ensure that your team fully understands them. I can't stress this enough because when the time comes for you to have a coaching session with this employee, whether it's to celebrate the work that they're doing, to just check in on how they're feeling about the job or give them some good feels or talk about areas that they need improvement.

Speaker 1: 18:54

That job description and those job expectations and that role is beautiful. It's a beautiful tool for you. Again, it strips away all the emotion. It's black and white. The employee's seen it before. They've agreed to it before they signed on for the job. Hopefully you've looked through it. You can come back together and say let's review where we started in the beginning and check in on where we are. Here's where you're doing great. Here's a couple of areas I'd love for you to focus on. Chances are those employees. When you start talking and having that conversation, they know what they're doing well and they also know what they need to focus on. And again, they've got something tangible that they can look at. They're hearing you, you're aligned on the role. They can walk away confidently, feeling like they have clear direction and next steps on where they need to improve, which is absolutely beautiful. Direction and next steps on where they need to improve, which is absolutely beautiful. That's where development happens, right.

Speaker 1: 19:45

Hi, everybody, we're taking a quick break to offer you an exciting opportunity. If you're a restaurant owner or manager looking to enhance your leadership skills, I invite you to join my 12-day leadership challenge. In just 12 days, you'll receive a guided packet with actionable strategies to transform your leadership in less than five minutes a day. Join the challenge and the community and grab your copy at kristinmarvincom. Slash 12 days. Now let's get back to the show.

Speaker 1: 20:22

The second tip is to encourage open communication. So foster a culture of open and honest communication within your restaurant. You can do this by encouraging teammates to express their ideas, concerns and their feedback without fear or retribution. You don't need to necessarily immediately respond to those concerns or questions or feedback. You can always say I appreciate this, I hear you, let me sleep on it and we'll go from there right. Sometimes it takes time to process. Sometimes we take that feedback very personally I know I've been there and sometimes employees don't necessarily expect you to take action. Sometimes they just need to be heard, and so simply just saying I hear you, thank you for sharing this with me, can sometimes be enough, depending on what the issue or the concern is.

Speaker 1: 21:13

It's really awesome if you can hold regular team meetings or one-on-ones to provide a platform for sharing thoughts and insights. I will say that, in my experience, holding monthly meetings was an absolutely wonderful way to build open communication, foster teamwork, and I will say that there were times in my career when I chose not to do that, when I was too stressed out or something was going on major in the restaurant, and not having those meetings impacted the relationships that I had with my team, and that was a huge mistake and something that I really, really regret. I was fearful of what feedback was going to come my way, which is also why I chose not to have those meetings. So learn from me and hold those regular team meetings Actively listen to your employees, take their input seriously and incorporate valuable feedback into your decision-making process and, importantly, make sure that you're following up with the feedback that you're getting about what you're doing.

Speaker 1: 22:18

The worst thing that you can do is to take feedback, say that you're gonna do something about it and then let that feedback fall on deaf ears. If you do that, your staff will stop providing feedback and all that work that you've done to create this beautiful culture of open communication and empowerment and teamwork will start to diminish. So, even if you don't have something solid, let people know and follow up with them and say hey, we've heard you, we understand this, we're going to put it on the list. This is what we're working on right now, but we understand that this is something that needs to be addressed and we promise that we're going to get to it and then make sure that you follow through on that. The third tip is to provide growth opportunities. It and then make sure that you follow through on that. The third tip is to provide growth opportunities. Empower your team by investing in their growth and development. What do I mean by that? What does that look like? Offer opportunities for training, for skill building and for career advancement within your restaurant. There are so many wonderful opportunities to cross-train. If employees come to you in the the hiring process or when they when they've been employed, and they say I need a growth plan, what does development look like for me? You've got so many roles and responsibilities that you can train them on in the restaurant right the front door how to be a busser, how to be a food runner, how to be a bartender, how to be a server, how to be a supervisor, how to be a manager. Spending time in the heart of the house working through all the positions. There are so many things and if someone comes to you and says, I want to be a manager, I want to grow with this company, the best way to set them up for success is to have them training in all those positions so that they can jump in and help out whenever possible. They know what to hire for in those positions, they know how to develop those people in those positions as well and it's really going to help set their confidence level up for success and help them grow. And sometimes I find employees these days don't necessarily want to hear about all of those steps or they're not interested because they think that being a manager is really easy and they want to move up fairly quickly. But if you can clearly outline a path for them and a plan and something that they can own and you can own and stick to it, it will really really help their development and your accountability of their growth and increasing employee retention. The additional thing that I would offer here is to recognize and reward outstanding performance through promotions or increased responsibilities. Again, cross-training someone teaches them and shows them that you trust them, you trust their judgment, you appreciate their work ethic. They're doing a good job for you and you want to continue to invest in them. So making a shift from being a people pleaser to an empowering leader, and one that is a wonderful coach, can really take time and effort, but the benefits that it will have on your restaurant and your team morale and your sense of well-being and mental health and work-life balance are so worth it. Imagine and think about all of that stress and anxiety that you're carrying around with you by knowing that there's a problem seeing things operationally that are inefficient or not going well in your restaurant and not having those conversations that you need to, because there is something standing in your way. It's not something that's standing in the employee's way. It's something that you need to work with and get over in your leadership, and we know that when you get really uncomfortable and you start to lean in something that feels different than what you've been doing, that's where growth happens as a leader. So super, super important, making this shift creates a more positive work environment, reduces turnover and ultimately contributes to the overall success of your restaurant. So I hope that for any of you listening out there that are people pleasers that you've had some moments of insight. This is helping you a little bit with your self-awareness, understanding how being a people pleaser can really help you succeed, which is building great relationships right, creating a really positive environment for your team all the time but also understanding how it's holding you back and there's, you know. I hope that you're finding and seeing that there are some easy, tangible tips that you can take away from this episode today in order to enhance your leadership and take it to the next level. If you are interested in learning more about the saboteurs all nine of them in their entirety feel free to shoot me an email or contact me. You can email me at kristinlmarvin at gmailcom, or visit my website at kristinmarvincom. Slash contact and simply enter. You know I want the assessment in my email and I will happily email you a free saboteur assessment that I often use with clients that will give you a more in-depth look into each of the nine saboteurs and how they were formed and the impact that they're having on yourself and your relationship, so that you can start to understand and recognize those thoughts as they're coming up and then, from there, decide how you want to make decisions in your life based on those thoughts as they're coming up and then, from there, decide how you want to make decisions in your life based on those thoughts as they're appearing. Thank you so much for listening. This week I am going to produce more episodes around these saboteurs, and I also offer a lot of information about these in my leadership workshops and as well on my LinkedIn page. If you want to connect with me there at Kristen-Marvin, be sure to share this podcast with any leaders you know in the restaurant industry and check out my step-by-step guide on how to retain your employees at KristenMarvincom. Thanks so much, everybody. We'll talk to you next week.