Our leadership is overloaded and inconsistent

The head chef cooks best, the restaurant manager serves best. Nobody has ever talked with them about leading: giving feedback, owning the rota, resolving conflict, deciding. They do it the way they experienced it themselves.

Treat leadership as a skill in its own right: define together what a leader does in this house, and build it deliberately — through sparring, short formats, reflection in daily work. Not a seminar, a process.

Holiday, orders, complaints, discounts: every decision is carried upwards. The boss is the bottleneck — and the department heads learn not to decide.

Put a decision framework per department in writing: what the head decides alone, what after consultation, what not at all. Then consistently accept that decisions turn out differently from how you would have made them.

Every department has its own culture, shaped by its head. What is normal in the kitchen would be unthinkable in service. The team compares, and comparison creates a sense of unfairness.

A weekly leadership meeting with a fixed agenda: occupancy, team, open points, one shared decision. A few common leadership rules that apply to every department. Not many — the same ones.

Department heads are rostered a hundred percent on shift. Conversations, planning, onboarding happen 'on the side' — which means not at all. Overload is the logical result, not a question of character.

Write leadership time into the rota: hours per week that are not on the floor but for the team. What is not scheduled does not happen in a hotel.