This week on “Mind Your Own Business” pushing back the plate Have you ever watched an episode of “Hell’s Kitchen” where you have Gordon Ramsay standing at the pass.
Behind him, you have a bustling kitchen, loads of chefs frantically working away, giving the plates of food ready, processing the orders and what you will notice is when a plate of food is prepared, it gets placed on the pass. Before Gordon Ramsay puts it on the waiter’s tray, he looks at the plate, and he inspects it; he makes sure that everything is cooked as it should make sure that everything is on the plate and if that plate of food is not up to standard, he pushes back the plate.
He says to the person, that’s not good enough, do it again; well, to be honest with you, he doesn’t say it quite as politely as that, but the point is that he does not accept mediocrely he wants the best, and he wants consistency.
So how about you? How good are you at pushing back the plate in your business? How good are you at insisting that your people consistently do their best work? Do you buy excuses? Do you let people off the hook? Do you turn a blind eye when you know you shouldn’t?
If you want a fantastic business, if you want a business that’s going to be truly great in its field, you need a high-performance team, and that high-performance team is developed through continuous feedback; your team needs you to provide them with constant feedback; your team needs you to hold high standards and to value consistency.
It doesn’t matter how comfortable you are in delivering feedback; it doesn’t matter if it makes you anxious, it doesn’t matter if you don’t enjoy doing it; all that matters is that your team need feedback from you and if your team are consistently not performing – push back the plate if someone doesn’t do their best work – push back the plate if you know that somebody can do better – push back the plate and consistently push back that plate.
Until your team members rise to the challenge until your team members can produce excellent quality consistently, great businesses are developed through hard work through feedback, through all of these important things, and it is your job as the leader to lean in.
How comfortable you are how okay you are with delivering feedback – it doesn’t matter; you just need to crack on and do it, if you want your people to be excellent.
If you’re looking for more small business tips, then we’d like to see you every week on “Mind Your Own Business,”
Marco Soares is an award-winning business coach in Sussex and is available if you’d like help implementing these tactics.
