Gina Doyle Interview on Improving Manager Skills - Essay Example

Interview of a Manager of Table of Contents Introduction 3 The Interview with Gina Doyle 3 Summary of Key findings 6 Reference 7 Introduction Organizational success can only be ensured with the right managerial skills. The role of a manager is imperative to proper running of all the organizational activities. Apart from managing the operational processes, a manager is also responsible for overseeing his subordinates (Zwilling, 2013). He makes sure that all of his subordinates are motivated and voluntarily engaged to their jobs. This as a result leads to improved individual performance of the subordinates, thereby positively influencing the overall performance of the entire organization. Although a manager and a leader has different definitions of their traits and activities, but the modern managers must possess good leadership skills in order to motivate their subordinates and drive them to work harder and make them engaged to the organizational goals. This report highlights the result of the interview with Gina Doyle, the general manager of Lawrys The Prime Rib at California. The report includes Doyle’s response to the interview questions, which is followed by the overall take away from the interview on how to be a better manager. The Interview with Gina Doyle This section contains the information collected from Gina Doyle on her career, position and her managerial skills. Gina Doyle currently holds the position of the general manager of Lawry’s prime ribs in Beverly Hills. She is the first female general manger in the history of Lawry’s. She overtook the position of Todd Johnson, who was the previous general manager of the restaurant. Doyle has been holding the post of general manager from February 2013, which makes almost two years of her service. Doyle mentioned that she has incorporated new ways of management starting from building up close relationship with her subordinates and making certain changes in the operational process. Her predecessor Johnson usually followed traditional and orthodox methods of management. Thus after her arrival, the employees had high expectations from her to change things around and provide a more work friendly environment. She has certainly tried her best to meet the expectations of her employees. She started to build a close relationship with the employees, so that they can easily communicate with her without any fear or hesitation. She mentioned that the key to motivating the subordinates is to create a perception among them that they can work without fear and with personal freedom. In order to achieve that started to interact with the employees in a friendly manner, to make them believe that they can approach her at anytime with any issues or suggestions. Moreover, she has made small changes in the regulations for the employees, to let them enjoy a proper work lifer balance. She has introduced new perks and privileges to motivate the employees and make them feel like a part of a family. She has created a sense of belongingness among the employees, which drives them to voluntarily participate in organizational welfare. Being a general manager involves dealing with a lot of challenges and stressful issues. Doyle pointed out that she often faces the challenge of maintaining consistency of service quality. This is a major challenge in services business. The quality of service is mostly dependent on the employee’s stress level. Thus the service quality tends to go down by the end of the day, as most of them gets tired and burnt out. This is one of the major challenges to face every day. Another challenge she faces is creating diversification. With the rapid growth in the restaurant business industry, maintaining a unique image is imperative to creating a competitive advantage. Therefore, Doyle has decided that she will create a new brand positioning by greatly improving the service quality and value addition for the customers. Often times she faces pressure from the higher management when the foot-fall goes down, but she does not let her subordinates to worry about the situation, because she believes that the staffs can only work at their fullest potential when they are free from stress. Doyle stated that although her role is quite challenging there are not other aspects that would make her dislike her work. However, she mentioned that on days that include corporate meetings, she is compelled to stay at her office till late at nights, which sometimes become a big hassle for a mother of a two year old like her. She stated that being a manager she has made herself as flexible as possible so that she can attend to all the issues whenever necessary. Although this puts a lot of toll at her personal life but she somehow tries to balance both ends quite efficiently. The best thing about Doyle’s job is that it is dynamic in nature. She mentioned that her job role includes a lot of activities and she never gets bored with it. Moreover, being a fairly workaholic person, she enjoys taking challenges and making her mark at the organization. She mentioned that there is a healthy competition of performance between all the Lawry’s restaurant outlets, which greatly drives her to give out her best. Moreover, she likes the existing organizational culture that allows her to have her own freedom of decision making and using her own ways to deal with situations. She also pointed out that she has built up a good relationship with her seniors; particularly the board members and the CEO. This as a result allows her to freely communicate with them regarding any issues. The most motivating thing about Doyle’s job is her team of subordinates. She mentioned that her team is the best team among all the Lawry’s branches. The subordinates are quite loyal and faithful to her and she can easily rely on them with any given responsibilities. Furthermore, owing to the close relationship with the subordinates, they often efficiently fill up her absence which has made her greatly attached to her team. This sense of attachment and belongingness within the organization is the best thing for Doyle. According to Doyle, the major difference between any other average managers and top performing managers boils down to two factors, the ability to multitask and being appreciated by the subordinates. Most of the managers although have higher knowledge and expertise are unable to perform multi tasking. Doyle, over the entire career has come across several managers who failed to handle multiple issues although they belonged to higher educational background and had several years of expertise. She pointed out that the ability of multitasking is something that needs to be developed over time and is a vital skill in every top performing manager. Moreover a manager should possess the ability to motivate his subordinates. Most of the managers try to exert force and power of authority over their subordinates to get the work done, which is certainly not a favorable thing to do. This result in high levels of employee dissatisfaction, low performance level and even it can lead to high attrition level and reduce brand image of a firm. A manager must understand that happy employees are productive employees, so exerting pressure to get a work done may yield temporary results, but it will eventually decrease the motivation level of the employees. Thus having a positive influence over the subordinates is imperative to improved performance of the employees. Doyle mentioned that the skills and abilities that have made her a better manager did not come from books. She has emphasized the importance on field experience over book knowledge’s. Books only provide theories which in most cases cannot be implemented in real life scenarios. All the challenges that she has ever faced in her career has been solved by brain storming and guidance from superiors. Thus it is quite important to have a close relationship with the superiors as it allows an individual to get proper guidance. Doyle always had good communication skills, which allowed her to gather knowledge from her superiors thereby allowing her to develop her managerial skills faster than others. Moreover, over time she has developed good leadership qualities which have allowed her to improve the performance of her subordinates. Her leadership qualities have always been appreciated by other managers and she has always been a favorite boss to her subordinates. Doyle was not good at handling more than one task at a time, but she realized that in order to be more efficient, a manager needs to be able to do multitasking. Therefore, she developed this skill over time, which enabled her to be more productive and appreciated in the organization. Although Doyle is quite efficient and a reputed manager in the organization but she also has made some serious mistakes in her career. She mentioned that the introduction of some of the new food items was a huge mistake, and it has put negative impact on the customers’ preference. Before offering a new product or experience, a manager must make all the necessary calculations of its success. Doyle admitted that those food items were introduced without considering the current consumption pattern of the customers and was severely rejected by them. However, she mentioned that from all the mistakes she has done, she has also learnt a lot. Therefore, Doyle was never afraid to try out new things in fear of making mistakes. Although this practice was greatly criticized by others, Doyle constantly improved herself by learning from her mistakes. Summary of Key findings Despite having a very busy schedule, Doyle has found time for me to give an interview, this suggests that she is capable of focusing on multiple activities at once. The managers are the driving force of an organization, who needs to ensure that all the activities are being performed as designed, who makes all the major decisions and are responsible for the outcome and at the same time are responsible for managing their subordinates (Beck and Harter, 2014). In order to be a successful manager, one must have all of these necessary skills, otherwise he will eventually face a lot of issues which will lead to decrease in organizational performance. The primary objective of a manager should be to take care of the long term organizational goals. Managers with myopic visions, who often tend to focus on short term goals, use their power of authority over the subordinates. This as a result may provide short term results but it also puts several negative effects in the organization which increases over time and leads to drastic downfall of the firm. Thus a manager must choose to progress in a gradual manner, rather than in a fast pace by meeting short term objectives. Going by the long term organizational goals may not produce immediate results but it reduces the operational risk of the organization. The gradual progress also reduces the work load from the employees thereby increasing their level of job satisfaction (Hill, 1992). A manager must develop certain leadership qualities. This allows him to efficiently manage his subordinates, improve their performance and increase their motivational level. This can be achieved by developing a close relationship with them and praising for their good performance. Moreover, instead of scolding or punishing for committing a mistake the manager should offer guidance so that the same mistake is not repeated in the future. Managers with authoritative personality are often looked at with fear and as result reduce the organizational communication. A manager should have a friendly nature and keep good communication with his subordinates. This as a result will allow the manager to provide proper guidance and skills improvement of the employees. A manager must also be responsible for the motivation of the subordinates (Adair, 2010). He must always keep the employees motivated by giving them appreciations and incentives. He should ensure that the work environment is healthy for the employees, which will allow the employees to improve their performance. Creating a clear sense of accountability will give the subordinates a clear insight about their importance in achieving organizational goal. This as a result will make the employees aware of their importance in the organization and thereby increasing their motivational level. The decision making should be done based on organizational productivity and not predefined rules. This suggests that a manager needs to be flexible enough to make necessary changes wherever and whenever required. Thus, by following these practices a manager can eventually improve himself and contribute to sustainable organizational growth (Brooks, 2009). Reference Adair, J. (2010). Strategic Leadership: How to Think and Plan Strategically and Provide Direction. (5th ed.). London: Kogan Page. Beck, R and Harter, J. (2014) Why Good Managers Are So Rare. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2014/03/why-good-managers-are-so-rare Brooks, I. (2009). Organizational behaviour. Individuals, group and organization, London: Pearson education Hill, L. A. (1992). Becoming a Manager: Mastery of a New Identity. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Zwilling, M. (2013) 10 Traits That Make an Ideal Manager. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/10-attributes-of-that-rare-ideal-manager-at-work-2013-1?IR=T Read More