Accept that you are now being watched more closely than ever, and earn the role through what your former peers see you do: working the floor, holding yourself to a harder standard than you hold them, admitting mistakes openly and calling for help before the team breaks.
The first promotion in a hotel or a kitchen is usually the hardest. The new room service supervisor or sous chef was on the line last week with the same people they now have to direct, and those people know exactly how good the new leader is. Nothing in the title changes that. What changes is how closely they are watching. The leaders I interviewed were clear that this scrutiny never goes away. It grows with seniority, and the sooner a new leader makes peace with it, the better.
Philip Barnes, then general manager of The Savoy in London, described what it is like to stay in his own hotel: six hundred people know when he goes to breakfast, what he eats, when he goes to the gym and who he has dinner with.
“That’s the kind of scrutiny you are under as a leader, and if you don’t like that, then you’re in the wrong role.” Philip Barnes, then general manager of The Savoy, London
For someone newly promoted among former peers, this is the useful starting point. You will not argue your way into authority. The team will grant it, or withhold it, based on what they see you do, and they are better placed than anyone to judge. Three behaviors carry most of the weight.
The first is to keep doing the work. Enrico Crippa of Piazza Duomo asked me how he could expect his team to sacrifice if he did not get his own hands dirty, and that question applies with special force to a leader whose team remembers them as a colleague. Peter Goossens, then chef and owner of Hof van Cleve, put the same thing another way: the chef has to be visibly more demanding of themselves than of anyone else on the line. That is the only stance from which a former peer can credibly ask more of the people beside them.
The second is to ask for help before the operation breaks. George Cozonis, then general manager of The Plaza Hotel in New York, told me about his first leadership role as a room service supervisor, when more than half his team called out and he tried to absorb the shortfall by working harder rather than calling for backup. The lesson stayed with him.
“I learned that no matter how good you think you and your team may be, you cannot win a war without soldiers. Good intentions only go so far.” George Cozonis, then general manager of The Plaza Hotel, New York
A newly promoted leader often feels that calling for support admits weakness in front of people who used to be equals. Cozonis learned the opposite. He also remembered, from a later role as an assistant restaurant manager, a food and beverage director who walked past his overwhelmed dining room without lifting a finger. Both memories taught him the same thing about being there for your team.
The third is to be the leader who sees people rather than polices them. Taljinder Singh, then general manager of The Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai, learned the standard as an assistant lobby manager by watching his general manager greet returning guests by name. Former peers will feel the difference between a leader who knows them and a leader who is checking up on them. The first produces voluntary effort. The second produces compliance, and compliance is a poor foundation for a career.
Chapter 3, Leading by Example, goes further into the visible disciplines that earn a team’s trust, including the hardest one for any new leader, admitting in front of the team that you got something wrong.