Your Team Isn't the Problem: The Hard Truth About Hospitality Leadership

I remember walking into a venue in East London a few years ago; it was a site with a decent reputation, a solid concept, and a queue that stretched around the corner on Saturday mornings. Yet, before I had even managed to hang my coat in the cramped back office, the owner was already listing his grievances. He told me, with a weary frustration that I have heard many times before, that his team was the problem. He described them as slow, disengaged, and lacking in pride. He felt he had tried everything; he had shouted, he had pleaded, and he had even considered clearing the deck and starting again from scratch.

I spent the next week simply watching. I sat in on their morning briefings; I stood in the corner during the frantic midday rush; I read their rotas and their somewhat sparse training records. Most importantly, I spoke to the team when the owner wasn't looking. I asked them quiet questions about how they felt their shifts went and what they found most difficult.

By the end of that week, the picture was entirely different. The team wasn't the problem; they were actually a group of quite capable, albeit exhausted, people who were desperately trying to do their jobs in a vacuum of leadership. The problem wasn't their lack of will; it was the lack of anything solid to hold onto.

The Most Uncomfortable Truth in Management

In my thirty years in this industry, I have found that poor team performance is almost always a leadership failure wearing a staffing costume. It is a hard truth to hear, especially when you are the one working sixteen hour days and pouring your life into the business; however, if you can sit with that discomfort for a moment, it is actually the most encouraging news you could receive. If the problem is leadership, then the problem is within your control. You cannot always change a person’s fundamental character, but you can change the environment in which they work.

When we talk about leadership failure in independent hospitality, we are rarely talking about the caricatures you see on television. It isn't always a shouty chef or a cruel owner. Usually, the failure is much quieter and far more insidious. It is an absence of clarity. It is the "watch what I do and pick it up" method of training that leaves new starters guessing and old hands making up their own rules. It is a slow drift where standards are never written down, so they are never consistently enforced.

The Vacuum and the Ringleader

When a leader fails to set the tone, the team will always set it for themselves. In every dysfunctional venue I have ever worked with, there is usually a ringleader. This is often one of the most experienced staff members, someone who has been there since day one or knows the menu better than the owner. In the absence of a clear structure from the top, this person becomes the de facto manager.

The tone they set is rarely the one the owner intended. They decide which shortcuts are acceptable; they decide who gets the good shifts; and they decide how much effort is actually required to keep the peace. This is how a toxic culture takes root. It doesn't happen in a single afternoon; it happens through a series of small, ignored moments where a standard was missed and nobody corrected it. Good people, the ones who actually want to do a professional job, eventually get tired of the chaos and leave quietly. What you are left with is a team that has either stopped caring or has decided that the current level of dysfunction suits them just fine.

Why Training Alone is Not the Answer

When an owner finally realises that something is wrong, their first instinct is often to book a training session. They want someone to come in and teach the staff how to sell more wine or how to improve their table service. While training is essential, dropping it into a broken culture is like planting seeds in concrete. The knowledge might land on the surface, but it will never take root.

Before you can train effectively, you must provide the team with a reason to care. I have always believed that people need to understand the "why" behind the "what". If you tell a commis chef that a plate must be a certain temperature, it is a task. If you explain that a cold plate ruins the guest's experience and ensures they never return, it becomes a standard. When people understand how their specific role contributes to the survival of the business, they begin to hold those standards themselves.

Furthermore, people need genuine ownership. The response to a disengaged team is often micromanagement, yet I have found that the opposite is frequently more effective. If you give a member of your team real responsibility, perhaps over the coffee programme or the onboarding of new staff, they will almost always rise to meet it. People shrink when they feel they are being watched; they grow when they feel they are being trusted.

The Framework of Stability

To fix a team that has drifted, you need more than just a pep talk; you need a framework. This is the part where we move from the romantic idea of hospitality to the practical reality of running a business that works.

Firstly, you must have clear standards that are written down. These are often called Standard Operating Procedures, but do not let the jargon put you off. They are simply the documented answers to the question, "How do we do things here?" Without them, every shift is a roll of the dice. SOPs do not stifle creativity; they provide the safety net that allows your team to be creative without fear of getting the basics wrong.

Secondly, you need a system of feedback that makes performance visible. People want to know how they are doing. In the absence of formal reviews or even brief, regular one-to-ones, staff will either assume the worst or stop caring entirely. This is not about HR bureaucracy; it is about basic human decency. Recognising a job well done is just as important as correcting a mistake. In my experience, most struggling venues have an inverted ratio of correction to recognition. If you only speak to your team when something goes wrong, do not be surprised when they stop wanting to speak to you.

Finally, you must build a layer of management that does not rely solely on your presence. If the business only functions at its best when you are in the room, then you do not have a business; you have a very demanding job. Successful expansion depends on your ability to transfer your knowledge into systems that others can manage.

The Challenge of Scaling

Everything I have described becomes even more critical when you consider opening a second or third site. Most independent hospitality businesses fail to scale not because the food isn't good, but because the culture doesn't travel. At your first venue, you were likely the culture. You were there every day, holding the line and setting the pace.

When you open a second door, you cannot be in two places at once. If your standards exist only in your head as institutional memory, they will evaporate the moment you walk out the door. To grow, you must make your culture transferable. You must systematise the training, the reviews, and the management structures before you even think about signing a second lease. The businesses that scale well are the ones that built their infrastructure at site one, rather than trying to figure it out at site two after the wheels have already started to come off.

A Final Note on Leadership

The teams I have helped turn around over the decades were, almost without exception, relieved when we started implementing these changes. They weren't lazy or incompetent; they were simply waiting for someone to lead them. They wanted the service to go well; they wanted the guests to be happy; and they wanted to feel like they were part of something professional.

If you are currently feeling that your team is your biggest problem, I encourage you to look a little closer at what you have given them to work with. It is a difficult reflection, certainly; however, it is the only one that leads to a business that can eventually run without you carrying every single plate.

The team was never really the problem; the structure was. Fix the structure, and you will be amazed at how quickly the team follows.