TRAINING 48 How to create a successful bar team Mary-Jane Flanagan, Training Director, learnpurple One of my favourite bars is London-based chain B@1. Why? Because they know how to create a great team, ensure it’s successful and replicate the formula across all of their bars. I know when walking in I’ll be greeted with a warm hello and met with service which feels personal; this is why I return time and time again. So how can you too create a successful bar team which oozes personality, promotes your brand and achieves results? Here is our five step plan: ➔ 1 Know where you are now Before you can consider success you need to know where you currently stand. Review comment cards, feedback on social forums, performance appraisals, finances, ask your people either face-to-face or through an employee opinion survey (for companies with up to 100 people you can receive one of these free at www.learnpurple.com) and measure where you are against where you want to be. 2 4 Communicate, communicate and communicate It’s simple – communicating effectively is vital to success. Keep everyone informed and make sure it is two-way so people feel they are able to ask questions, make suggestions and shout about successes. Remember that people take in information very differently – seeing, hearing and experiencing. Understand what works best for your individuals and communicate accordingly. Use preshift teambriefs to set the agenda for the day (goals, competitions, VIPs best practice) and use after-shift debriefs to break down lessons learnt, congratulations, commiserations and how to move forward. 5 Be a true leader Leaders with successful teams walk the talk, therefore so should you. Inspire your people by reminding them of the vision and what happens when success is achieved. Get your hands dirty and work with them to achieve. Invest in development time, think about team bonding exercises and ways to continually motivate those around you, use praise to reinforce great behaviours and show others the meaning of excellence. You should be excited by the prospect of success – let that show! ● Gain the competitive advantage learnpurple helps organisations to engage, develop and retain the talent needed to grow and prosper. It’s book ‘Purple your People: the secrets to inspired, happy, more profitable people’ is available for pre-order from www.amazon.co.uk. For more information, please visit www.learnpurple.com or phone 0207 836 699 Main image: ©www.istockphoto.com Create a vision As leadership guru Stephen Covey once said, “begin with the end in mind”. Work with your people to imagine what a highly successful team looks like, acts like, feels like and establish actions that you want to put in place following this creative session. Visualisation is a highly powerful tool and one which has proven results (just look at successful sporting heroes who use this method). Get your Mary-Jane team to define what Flanagan the vision means to them and outline core values associated with it. Then regularly communicate this to all. 3 Set shared goals Once you know what your ‘perfect’ team looks like and how it lives up to the agreed values, you need to next set your goals for the coming months. Here think about the next level rather than the absolute ideal – walk before you run! Make sure any goals set for the team are SMARTER (specific, measurable, achieveable, realistic, timed, engaging, reviewed) and that as a leader you’re living and breathing these values; acting as a role model to embed core behaviours.