October 3, 2018 Organizational Behaviour Discussion Post 5

Within the past two years, I have experienced situations where I was highly motived to perform well but performed poorly. This happened while I was expediting in the kitchen at my former job. As the kitchen expediter, I was in charge of managing all of the server bills, calling orders to the various cook stations, plating finished food, arranging all the dishes strategically, and sending them out to the proper guests via service staff. Multi-tasking, menu proficiency, strong communication skills and poise under pressure are all necessary characteristics of this position. I have been doing it for many years and usually find it very enjoyable. However, there have been times that although I had strong motivation and skills to succeed, service was poor, failed or unsatisfactory. The most recent time this occurred, I recall being highly motivated because going into a busy service feels similar to getting pumped to play a competitive sport- you've prepared all day, you are ready for action and excited to get moving. I generally experience that type of hype every time I am getting ready for a busy service so it is familiar to me. It's always disappointing when it falls flat, and occasionally when I performed poorly it was solely my fault/responsibility. However, most times when I have experienced poor performance when motivated (because when I am motivated I generally perform well) there are outside factors influencing the outcome. For instance, teamwork is paramount in a busy kitchen, similar to on a sports team-- everyone needs to be in sync and communicating well. If one part of our machine is malfunctioning, for instance, if someone isn't feeling well, is hungover (all too common in the industry), is absent or just isn't on their A-game, that can affect everyone's performance, even if we are otherwise motivated. Lack of communication from front-of-house (servers) throw a wrench in the success of our service and contribute to poor performance. As well, harsh working conditions have also contributed to poor performance at times. When you are working in a small space that is 40 degrees Celcius in the summer and tensions are high, you can feel very overcome and hindered. To further break down my points, sometimes lack of proper training for kitchen staff and/or service staff is to blame for influencing poor performance. If people had more effective professional communication skills, stronger work ethic, and a better understanding of restaurant industry dynamics, the margin or error can be minimized and therefore performance maintained. A complaint I always (quietly) had in my former job was that many people were hired based on attractiveness, (unethical and unlawful, I realize) and many staff were unqualified for the positions they were in, including our general manager. Without strong leadership, better training programs, goals and accountability, and stronger management, those types of performance disappointments were unfortunately quite common. I learned a lot from this experience-- which is why I am attending college for business management. I was fed up with working in businesses with weak management and wanted to be able to be a part of the solution to that problem. What I have been learning since I started school in this class, as well as in my human resource management class, is that many of my own intuitive philosphies about motivation were correct, and now I am honing my skills as an effective manager so that when I re-enter the workforce I am credible and confident in my ability to properly lead people to high performance.