Coaching Skill Series Kickoff

Welcome back to the show, everybody. I want to kick off something new and exciting as we start to ramp up into the end of the year. Every other week on the show, we're going to run a coaching skill series. So the next six episodes, one skill per episode. So if you're not subscribed and following the show, you're going to want to make sure that you do so that you get these alerts direct to your phone for these coaching skills because they're going to come in very handy for the rest of the year. These are the exact skills that we teach our own coaches at Columbine Hospitality. And I'm going to hand them off to you this holiday season. Why right now? Would you maybe ask? Because we know what's coming, right? This is the most challenging stretch of the year in this industry. And I don't know about you guys listening right now, but we are in a serious period of transition right now with a lot of clients in terms of leadership roles. But stress is really high this time of year, right? Money is still tight for owners and for your staff. And guess expectations are higher than they've ever been, right? Guess expectations are always higher around the holiday season, but this year they're going to be higher than they've ever been. There's just more going on externally than ever before. And people are watching their money. And so when they come into the restaurants, they are expecting it to deliver, right? And they're going to be quick to say something if the experience isn't stellar. You're being asked to carry all of these things and still deliver the strongest end of your push that your restaurants have ever seen. You don't get there by working harder. You get there by leading better. And the fastest way to lead better is to learn how to coach your people instead of just managing them, right? Coaching saves you a ton of energy. Managing is one of the quickest ways to burn yourself out. So every episode is going to give you one skill, one real story from a coaching session that we've been able to work through together, and one small thing that you can do right away when you stop listening to the show. We're going to start with acknowledgement, and I'm going to be honest about why. It's the skill I'm the worst at. So selfishly, I need a reminder here too. When I was taking my coaching courses, we had a checklist of coaching skills that we were trying to hit in each session that we were in the middle of. And every time I finished a session, I'd look down at my list of skills and think, damn it, I forgot to acknowledge this person again. And it kept happening. And eventually I realized it wasn't about the coaching. It was something that I had never really been good at in my career, my entire career as a leader. So it was a really eye-opening moment for me and something that I still have to work on today and figure out when an acknowledgement is going to land, when it makes sense, when it doesn't make sense. And I have to take time to acknowledge myself because it starts there first and foremost. So here's what you're going to walk away with today. One, the difference between a compliment and an acknowledgement and why one gets forgotten by the next shift and the other one sticks. Two, the three moments when acknowledgement does the most work for your team. And three, a simple way to deliver one this week that actually lands. Let's get into it.

Show Mission And Coaching Offers

Welcome to the Restaurant Leadership Podcast, where we coach independent multi-unit restaurant operators to build systems that drive profitability and reclaim time so they can scale with confidence and spend their time and energy where they want to, not where they have to. I'm your host, Kristen Marvin, restaurant coach and author of Multi-unit Mastery. If you are an independent restaurant owner managing multiple locations, you know the chaos that comes with growth. Inconsistent execution across your restaurants. Managers who won't take ownership. Constantly answering questions your team should already know the answers to. You're stuck in your current role when you want to be playing a bigger strategic role as you scale. You don't have the right leaders in place or you keep losing them. And you're not sure how to find great people and actually keep them around. We work with passionate independent restaurant owners who found success with their first few locations and are ready to scale strategically. Our clients aren't looking to just survive expansion. They want to thrive through it. They're committed to developing strong leaders and creating exceptional guest experiences. Through the independent restaurant framework that we teach in multi-unit mastery, we coach independent restaurant groups to move from chaos to confidence by focusing on three pillars: people, process, and profit. You can grab a gifted copy of the book at irfbook.com. On this show, we bring you real coaching conversations, leadership strategies, and the frameworks that you need to lead like a CEO instead of operating like a worn-out manager. And here's the thing: coaching has changed our clients' businesses and can change yours too. If you've never experienced what it's like to have someone in your corner who actually gets the restaurant world, we'd love to connect. We offer one-on-one and group coaching. Head to kristenmarvin.com/slash contact for a complimentary coaching session and let's talk about what's possible for your restaurant group.

Compliments Versus Real Acknowledgement

So let's start with what acknowledgement is not. It's not a compliment. So compliment sounds like, hey, great job today. It's nice, it's pleasant, it's forgotten by the time they clock out. Might feel good in the moment, of course, right? To just be seen for a second. Now here's the next step up. I loved how you handled that table tonight. You saw the problem, you jumped right in, and that recovery landed completely differently because of it. See how much better that is? Because it's very specific. An acknowledgement goes one level deeper. It names the person who it names actually who the person is being, right? So here's an example. What I see in you is someone who refuses to let a guest leave unhappy. That's not about the task. That's about their character, their commitment, their leadership. You're holding up a mirror so that they can see themselves more clearly. And most people never really get that from anyone at work. Right. This takes an extra level of detail of getting to know your team, which is why people work for you in the first place. They're not there because of the money, they're working there because they are working for you. There's a close cousin here with this skill called championing, which is holding a bigger vision for someone than they can currently hold for themselves. And we do this a lot with our clients. When someone can't see what you see in them, you carry it for them until they can see it. So why does this matter?

Why Acknowledgement Changes Everything

There's really three reasons behind it. First, like I said, it makes people feel seen. And people who feel seen trust you. Second, it builds self-awareness and confidence for your team because you're showing them the exact strengths that they've been blowing right past, and the one that you want them repeating over and over and over again, right? And third, and this is one for the operators listening, it makes your hard conversations possible. One of our coaches describes feedback like debits and credits. Every real acknowledgement is a deposit. When you have to give someone tough feedback, you're drawing from an account that you've been funding instead of overdrafting a relationship you've never been in. So when do you use this skill?

Three Moments It Works Best

Here are three moments that we really watch for. Number one, when someone is down on themselves and they can't find the wins, man, we see this one all the time. The sky is falling. You're just, they're just so in it. You can feel the energy. It's like, man, this person just needs to really be picked up right now. They can't see how incredible they are. They're stuck in the gap, you know, right? We talk a lot about the gap in the game, but they're stuck in the gap between where they are and where they think they should be. That's when they need someone to name what's actually true for them. And it's really hard for them to see it sometimes. Two, when something great happened and they're rushing right past it. This one lands real hard with me because I'm a hyperachiever. And when something great happens, I give myself about two seconds to celebrate it. And then I move on to the next thing. We had a really awesome moment happening in the company last week. And I had an opportunity to speak in front of a 125 people, and that was the largest group I'd spoken in front of. And my business partner said to me, Did you take a moment and recognize that with yourself? And I said, Yes, I did. I journaled about it uh and how amazing it felt. So I've but I've had to create a system for myself around how to capture those moments and celebrate them. Um, we move a million miles an hour in this business, right? Something amazing happens. We say, cool, great job, quick i5, whatever, we're on to the next fire to go put out. Stop those people. When you recognize something happened, just stop them for a second. Make them look at the impact. Do you have any real do you do you realize how happy that those guests were? I just want to tell you how you know what an impact you made on this guest. They they pulled me aside personally to say that you were super attentive. You made a general connection with them, a genuine connection with them, excuse me, and you went above and beyond to make sure that their kid was happy or celebrate their anniversary or celebrate their birthday, whatever it is. Share that information with a team. When number three, when they're going through something hard, uh, and nobody has said so. This one, this one also hits. Sometimes the most powerful acknowledgement is not a win at all. It's simply saying, I can see how hard this is for you. We we see this a lot with clients when they open up and they they just need to process something. We've been having a lot of conversations with operators about having a really hard time managing up to their owners. And man, they they unload on us because they don't feel like they can on their owner with their um leadership team. And we just acknowledge, like, I'm sure that was really hard for you to say out loud. You know, we're not validating it, we're not, we're not discounting it. Uh, we're just acknowledging where they're at in that moment and being really present for them.

Make It Specific Then Pause

So, how do you do this? Again, make it really specific, make it true, make it about who they are, not just about what they do. It's easy to say table five was happy, but why? Right? It's easy to say, hey, you had a really great shift today. Why? Again, point out those really specific behaviors so that you can help them create those habits and help them understand and realize where their zone of genius is within your team. It has to be earned though. Acknowledgements have to be earned because people can smell a fake one, right? From across the dining room. I'm sure we've had that in any in many uh instances that we've been in before where somebody maybe is a leadership member is like new to the team and they're trying to, they're trying to form a relationship with you, but it just doesn't land. And you're kind of like, uh, thanks. Okay, you don't really know me, you're not really here a lot. I appreciate what you're trying to do, but it's just not, it just doesn't feel authentic, right? We can feel that and sense that from a million miles away. Then comes the part where I think everybody, almost everybody skips. Once you acknowledge what they've done, shut up and let it land. I have a GM I work with who hates compliments, and it's kind of a running joke between the two of us. The second you say something kind, he says, I hear you, thank you so much. And then he's already moving on. Sometimes he won't make eye contact with me and he'll be like, Yeah, I hear you, but and then like move on to the next topic. So I tell him, hang on a second. I'm gonna make you sit with this for a second because it's I know it's so uncomfortable for him, and that's where growth happens. So give it a few seconds of silence. That silence is where the acknowledgement actually does the real work. And you're gonna see your teammates squirm. I love it when it happens, because it's just a sign that we need more of this in our worlds and in the workspace. So, one last thing. This goes both ways. If it's hard for you to receive acknowledgement, it's gonna be hard for you to give it. So notice that about yourself. This is something I'm really working on too, because I, when somebody says me something, I'm like, oh, thanks, if it's no big deal, or I immediately downplay it. And I've recognized that this is something that I really need to work on for me so that I can recognize the moments in other people and also just relate to them, right?

Holiday Gift And Book Download

So I want to pause real quick before I show you this in action. Because here's the thing about acknowledgement knowing it and doing it at 9 p.m. on a Saturday in the middle of a rush are two very different animals. If you run more than one location or you're building toward it, that gets even harder because you're spread thin, right? And the people who need it to need to hear it the most are in the building you're not standing in, of course, right? So that's why I wrote multi-unit mastery for independent operators that are running more than one location. So grab a copy of that at irfbook.com, stands for independent restaurant frameworkbook.com. And because it's the holiday season, I want to give you a gift as well. Anyone who's listening to the show who downloads a copy of the book gets a coaching session one-on-one with me. Once you download the book, you're gonna find a calendar link to my personal calendar. So bring one real acknowledgement you've been putting off giving, and we'll work through it together. Or bring your biggest challenge, whatever you want to show up with. Show up as you are, let's get some work done, let's have some fun.

Marcus And Acknowledgement In Action

Okay, let me show you what this looks like for real. So I want to tell you about a session I had recently with a young executive chef. I'm gonna call him Marcus so we can keep everything confidential here. He's in his mid-20s, he's super smart, super thoughtful, total sponge. It's just such an incredible pleasure to be working with this person. And we've been working together for about nine months. I told him before his last session to come with a list of questions and a list of wins. And he showed up really powerfully. But here's what I didn't expect. He wasn't really doing it for me, he was doing it for himself. He started rattling off every coaching skill he'd picked up since we began. And he's like, okay, I've got mirroring down, I've got powerful questions down. I want to make sure I'm capturing everything. And I love this because clients come to us and say, you know, here are my pain points. We're struggling with turnover. Um, our leadership team is not working in unison together towards the same goal. Our financials are um suffering because of it. And um our teams, my team's just not as engaged. Like, how do I get them more engaged? When we are working with clients, of course, we're going through and solving these problems and we're implementing the framework, but we're also teaching them how to be coaches underneath. And we're teaching them when opportunities come up to apply these coaching skills. We're not just saying, you know, we're not just coaching them through, okay, let's talk about how you can approach this. We're actually teaching them the skill. And so uh Marcus was just taking notes and um just showing up super powerfully, and it was awesome. So then he started telling me how he was using how he'd been using all these skills in the restaurant with his team. And that's the whole point, right? Um, but our clients come to us and say, like I said, we've got a problem. The team isn't performing. We don't say we're gonna turn you into a great coach, right? That's not what they want. That's not that's not what they're paying us for. But underneath, that's exactly what we're doing, like I said. And so this was just a great example of Marcus here doing it. Now I could have said, way to go, great job. And that's a compliment, right? It would have been nice and it would have evaporated by lunch service. Instead, I said something a little bit closer to this. Like, I told him, Marcus, you're such an incredible student. You've been so thoughtful and so prepared every single time we've met for a coaching session. You always come with a topic, you listen super intently, and you ask really good questions, and you make sure that you're walking away from every single session, knowing exactly how you're gonna take action and apply it at the restaurant. Not only was he doing that, but he was making an effort to teach those skills to his sous chef as well, which I loved. So notice what that is. I'm not praising a list of tasks, I'm not telling him who he's been this whole time. A student. I'm sorry, I am telling him who he's been this whole time, which is a student, right? Someone who prepares, someone who listens, someone who acts. And then I did the part I just told you about. I stopped talking, I gave him space to just receive it. He did, and you could tell it sat really well with him. He was super proud and kind of sat back in his chair for a second and with a grin, and it was an awesome moment. And then I took it one step further, and this is championing him. I told him if you continue down this path of curiosity and learning and constant growth, and you turn around and teach your team the same things, the results are going to be magical for you. Culture, retention, all of it. I wasn't describing who he was in the moment. I was describing who he was becoming and holding that vision until he can hold it himself. Right? We're so in it all the time. We're hard, it's hard to see what the long-term impact of creating these new habits can be. So think about your own people. How many Marcuses do you have? Working hard, showing up prepared, getting better every single week, and hearing nothing but thanks, see you tomorrow. I used to be like that, 110%. It was quick, it was easy, and this is really hard to do when you don't have the energy to give to your people. So here's some homework for you.

24-Hour Homework For Leaders

I want you to do this in the next 24 hours, not sometime this week. This that's how it dies. This is super fresh. So do it, do it today, please. Pick one person on your team, not the loudest one. Think about the person who's been quietly grinding or the one who's down on themselves right now. Step one, write down the acknowledgement before you say it. Two or three sentences. Don't improvise this because you'll default straight back to great job, because you might be nervous or worry you're gonna trip over your words, and none of that matters. Make it specific, make it true, and make it about who they are, not just what they did. Step two, deliver it. Face-to-face is always the best way to deliver this, or a vet a voice memo if you can't. I know some people are touchy about getting messages after work, but if your boss leaves you a voice message, just say, Hey, I know you just left. I wanted to catch you. I just want to acknowledge how awesome you were today and how much you took care of that guest in a very specific way, right? Step three. This is the one that counts. Stop talking. Give it a few seconds to sign to give it a few seconds to land, like we've talked about. If they try to wave it off, say, hang on, I just want you to hear that. What I just said, it's really important. Then notice two things. How did they respond? And how did it feel to say it out loud? Because if it felt awkward, congratulations, you're human and you just found your growing edge. This is a really fun thing to do during staff meetings, too. Uh, going around the room and having people do this for each other is a really, really fun thing to do with your team. I want to know after you do this exercise, what happened?

Write In And Closing Challenge

Come and tell me. I want to know who you acknowledged, what you said, and what you saw on their face. Send me an email. I read every single one that comes through. My email is Kristen at columbinehospitality.com and my name is spelled C H R I S T I N. No E, no A on the end. If you want help putting your own acknowledgement into words, that's what the holiday gift is for. So again, how do you get that? Grab a copy of multi-unit mastery at irfbook.com, and everyone who gets a who downloads a copy gets a free coaching session with me this season as a gift. So the calendar link is waiting for you on the site where you download the book. Bring your person, bring your draft, and let's sharpen it up together. Here's what I'm gonna leave you with. In the next few weeks, you're gonna be tired, stretched thin, short on money and patience, and so is your team. Nobody is going to hand them what they need. So the person, so be the person who sees them. This is the first of six episodes. I'll see you in a couple weeks with the next skill. So until then, go acknowledge someone. And again, if you're not following the show, hit that subscribe button so that this lands straight to your phone when the episode drops on Mondays. Okay. Thanks for listening. And thank you so much for what you do in this industry.

Bye.