10 Steps to Empowerment 8: Trust

Posted on by tucholskic

Once you’ve defined a person’s responsibilities, delegated enough authority to him, trained him properly, set a high standard,  given him the proper knowledge, and provided appropriate recognition and feedback, the next step is to simply trust this person to do the job.

Is it really that easy?  Of course not!  Trust is a very sticky issue, especially when money is concerned.  But we’re not just dealing with the store’s money.  Our employees bring personal property, such as cellphones and jewelry, with them to work.  Our customers bring money and jewelry, too.  We also have to consider the food within the establishment–that is equal to money for the purposes of a fast food business.

We also trust people with our safety.  Cooking equipment is dangerous.  The grills can scar people and the fryers can burn the store down.  The gas can cause explosions.

For these reasons and more, trust should be earned, never given.  But, it is important to lay a foundation for a good relationship by believing that everyone who comes to work wants to do a good job for you.  If that isn’t the case, it will become apparent soon enough.

Don’t begin by teaching someone how to filter the fryers.  This is a dangerous job.  Begin with smaller tasks.  See how they do with sweeping and mopping, register drawers, and other cooking equipment.  Let them work toward the tasks that have the potential to destroy the restaurant.

What happens when the trust that someone earned is violated?  That has to be taken on a case-by-case basis.  If they set a fryer on fire, perhaps they didn’t know that the fryer has to be off when empty.  No trust violated.  A One Minute Reprimand will do nicely.

Perhaps they wanted to go home early, so they purposely left the fryer on.  That’s a different case altogether.  By the same token, if cash comes up missing from their register, or if employee or customer property is missing, then you may have a situation in which a One Minute Reprimand isn’t going to cut it.

Empowerment

46 thoughts on “10 Steps to Empowerment 8: Trust”

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  3. Trust is definitely important.
    However, as a former director of mine used to tell me, and something i sometimes struggled with, trust is good, but you must follow up with the employee to ensure the task was done, and done properly.Leaving someone in charge at the end of your own workday ( or night) only to come in the next day to see that some unforeseen circumstance caused something not to be accomplished is disheartening.Continued instances of this with the same employee(s) will leave you questioning whether your trust in them is well founded.Always follow up.Some will refer to this as ” micro-managing”.But its necessary to ensure the proper outcome.

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