(Note: This is part five of an ongoing series regarding what does and does not motivate servers.  It is based on research provided in part one.  I highly recommend visiting that post to gain proper perspective on this one. The second part dealt with how money fails to motivate servers.  The third part showed how lack of money destroys motivation.  Part four addressed autonomy as the first motivator.  Tomorrow, I will wrap it up by discussing the final motivator, purpose.)

I hope everyone had a great Fourth of July.   One of the benefits of being in the business as long as I have is getting invited to the best cookouts.  Nothing like a few chefs putting together a meal.  I live in one of the greatest BBQ cities in the world, but yesterday I had the best ribs this city has ever seen.  Brined and then marinated for days in advance.  These ribs were treated with TLC that would never be possible to replicate in a restaurant.  The Executive Chef at one of the best Italian restaurants in town makes the best ribs in the city.  Moral of the story: you can’t buy the best ribs in town.

More importantly, you can’t pay to have the best ribs in town made.  A chef who cooks for a living and spends as much time cooking as sleeping made his finest meal for free.  Money did not motivate the extra effort.  He decided what he wanted to cook and he was cooking for his friends.  In the lexicon of this series, that translates to “autonomy” and “purpose.”  The interesting part to me is that as we all praised his ribs, he talked about how he would make them better next time.  Even as a professional certified chef, he was thinking of ways to improve.  The term for that is “mastery.”

Mastery for the purposes of this post is not perfection, but constantly striving for improvement.  Serving is not something that can be perfected.  Even the greatest servers in the world are still looking for ways to improve.  This is how they became one of the world’s greatest servers.  The key to mastery is constantly striving to improve.  Servers who recognize this find far more fulfillment, challenge, and reward in the job.  Managers who are able to instill this mindset in their staff are rewarded with highly motivated and productive employees.

Here are some tips on encouraging the pursuit of mastery amongst your staff.

Read the full post at The Manager’s Office

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