The 51 Percent Solution

What kind of person serves on a Guest Services team?

Danny Meyer, founder and co-owner of eleven successful restaurants in New Youk City, writes the following about his staff:

The idea of someone giving 110 percent is about as realistic as working to achieve the twenty-six hour day. At our restaurants, we are hoping to develop 100 percent employees whose skills are divided 51-49 between emotional hospitality and technical excellence. These are 51 percenters.

A 51 percenter has five core emotional skills. If your team has these skills, you can be champions at the team sport of hospitality. They are:

• Optimistic warmth - genuine kindness, thoughtfulness, and a sense that the glass is always at least half full
• Intelligence - not just "smarts", but rather an insatiable curiosity to lean for the sake of learning
• Work ethic - a natural tendency to do something as well as it can possibly be done
• Empathy - an awareness of, care for, and connection to how others feel and how your actions make others feel
• Self-awareness and integrity - an understanding of what makes you tick and a natural inclination to be accountable for doing the right thing with honesty and superb judgement

Your Guest Services team may not operate under the same pressures as the staff in a highly regarded restaurant. But if the CEO of a restaurant recognizes that the human beings who animate his restaurants have far more impact on whether they succeed than the food, the decor, or the location, I would say that is a lesson worth learning - and applying - at your church.

Hospitality is a dialogue. How's the conversation coming at your church?