Giving feedback as a hospitality leader
Your Words Are Instruments of Influence (And How to Actually Use Them)
In hospitality, strong leadership is rarely about having all the answers. More often, it comes down to how you communicate when the pressure is on, when standards slip, or when somebody on your team needs honest feedback.
These moments can feel uncomfortable, particularly for newly promoted hospitality managers who may have been promoted because they were excellent at the technical side of their job, but haven't yet had much practice leading people.
And that's where leadership communication becomes so important. The words you use, the assumptions you make and the way you approach a difficult conversation can shape whether somebody becomes defensive or whether they actually hear what you're trying to tell them.
A client recently asked me to run a training session for their newly promoted managers. As always, I asked the managers about the best leader they've ever had. Very rarely do they tell me it was the person with the highest technical output: the chef who made the best beurre blanc, or the manager who built the best spreadsheet.
They nearly always talk about how that person treated them.
Leadership isn't just about your personal output. It's about the impact you have on the people around you.
That's an important shift for new leaders to understand. Being the fastest, most experienced or most technically capable person in the room might have helped you become a manager, but it isn't necessarily what will make you a good one.
Once you're responsible for other people, your success starts to look different. It's less about what you can personally produce, and more about whether the people around you have the knowledge, confidence and support to do their jobs well.
Almost everything you do in leadership happens through a conversation: giving direction, training, correcting mistakes, checking standards. Which makes your words instruments of influence, whether you're using them well or not. In every conversation, you want people to leave knowing what good looks like, and believing they can actually get there.
For hospitality managers, those conversations often happen quickly and in real time. A busy kitchen, restaurant floor, bar or hotel doesn't always give you the luxury of stepping away for half an hour to carefully plan what you're going to say.
That doesn't mean difficult conversations should be avoided. It means leaders need some practical tools they can rely on when those moments arrive.
Learning how to give feedback to hospitality staff clearly and respectfully isn't a "soft" leadership skill. It directly impacts standards, accountability, trust and the confidence of the people you manage.
The "Mise en Place" for Hard Conversations
When someone messes up or underperforms, it's very easy for our brains to jump straight into story-mode without fact-checking:
They're lazy.
They don't care.
They have a bad attitude.
The problem? That’s not always the reality. They're just assumptions we've created in our own heads.
And once we've decided that assumption is true, it starts influencing the conversation before it has even begun.
Instead of talking about what actually happened, we can end up talking to the person as though we've already decided why it happened. That's often where difficult conversations in hospitality start going wrong.
There's a big difference between:
"You're careless."
Versus:
"Yesterday during lunch service, I noticed three containers in your section weren't labelled."
One is a judgement about somebody's character. The other is a conversation about a behaviour that can actually be corrected.
To keep conversations grounded in reality, and out of the realm of personal attack, there's a simple framework: Situation, Behaviour, Impact, followed by two essential asks. This helps you do the thinking before the moment arrives so you don't react on emotion.
Think of it as the mise en place for a difficult conversation.
Just as good preparation makes service easier, doing a little thinking before a feedback conversation helps you stay clear, fair and focused when the moment arrives.
Before you speak, ask yourself: What actually happened? What did I see or hear? Why did it matter? And what do I need to be different next time?
If you can answer those questions without adding assumptions about the person's attitude, motivation or personality, you're already in a much better position to have a useful conversation.
The SBI Framework
The Situation, Behaviour, Impact framework is a simple tool for giving feedback that keeps the focus on what happened rather than who you think somebody is.
For hospitality leaders managing underperformance, mistakes or missed standards, that distinction matters.
Situation: Be specific about when it happened.
(Don't say: "You never label consistently." Say: "Yesterday during lunch service...")
The moment you say 'never' or 'always', you lose them. It feels accusatory, they become defensive, and the connection is gone.
Specificity makes feedback easier to understand and much harder to argue with. You're not presenting a judgement about someone's entire work history. You're discussing one moment that both of you can examine.
Behaviour: What did you actually see? Stick to facts, not opinions.
(Say: "...I noticed three containers in your section weren't labelled." Not: "You're being careless.")
This is often the hardest part because humans naturally interpret behaviour. We see something happen and immediately create meaning around it.
"You didn't complete the close-down checklist" is a behaviour.
"You don't take your job seriously" is an interpretation.
The first gives you something useful to discuss. The second puts the person in a position where they feel they have to defend who they are.
Impact: Explain why it matters. Don't assume they know.
(Say: "That meant the team had to stop to figure out what was usable, and it puts our food safety standards at risk.")
The impact is what connects the task to the bigger picture.
It's easy for managers to assume that everyone automatically understands why a particular standard matters. Sometimes they don't.
Explaining the impact helps people see that the conversation isn't simply about following instructions. It might be about food safety, guest experience, team workload, consistency, compliance or the reputation of the business.
People are far more likely to take ownership of a standard when they understand the reason behind it.
Ask what happened: This turns a lecture into a two-way conversation.
(Ask: "Can you talk me through what happened?")
Maybe they got slammed mid-prep. Maybe nobody ever showed them the system. Sometimes the answer changes everything. Sometimes it doesn't, but at least you asked before you assumed.
This is the part that many managers skip.
When we think we already know why something happened, it's tempting to move straight into correction. But asking first gives you information you didn't have before.
There may be a training gap. The process might be unclear. Two managers may have given conflicting instructions. Or the person may simply have made a mistake.
Asking doesn't remove accountability. It gives you enough context to respond properly.
Ask for what you need: Clear the ambiguity so they know what good looks like.
(Ask: "Going forward, can you label everything as you put it away so we're never guessing?")
This is where good feedback becomes useful.
Pointing out what went wrong isn't enough. The person needs to understand what you want them to do differently next time.
Good hospitality leadership creates clarity. If somebody walks away from a difficult conversation wondering what they're actually supposed to change, the conversation hasn't done its job.
Correct Behaviour. Protect Dignity.
Frameworks like this stop us from jumping from what we've seen to deciding who someone is. They keep us objective, and clear and stop us from sounding like its a personal attack.
And protecting somebody's dignity doesn't mean lowering the standard.
You can be clear that something wasn't acceptable. You can hold somebody accountable. You can explain exactly what needs to change.
You just don't need to attack the person in order to correct the behaviour.
Tough conversations don't need to be cruel conversations.
In fact, avoiding difficult conversations altogether can be just as damaging.
When managers avoid giving feedback because they don't want to upset somebody or create tension, small issues are allowed to become bigger ones. Standards become inconsistent, frustration builds within the team and the employee may never actually know there's a problem.
Giving clear feedback is part of developing people.
The goal isn't to make somebody feel bad about what happened. It's to help them understand what good looks like and give them a fair opportunity to get there.
Difficult Conversations Are Part of Hospitality Leadership
For many emerging hospitality managers, having difficult conversations is one of the biggest adjustments that comes with moving into leadership.
You may suddenly find yourself managing people who were your peers a few months earlier. You might be responsible for correcting somebody who has more technical experience than you. Or you might be dealing with an underperformance issue for the first time and worrying about saying the wrong thing.
These aren't skills people automatically gain when their job title changes.
They need to be learned, practised and supported.
That is why hospitality leadership development needs to include much more than procedures, rosters and operational knowledge. Managers also need practical skills for giving feedback, setting expectations, managing underperformance and having conversations that maintain both standards and trust.
When managers become more confident in these conversations, the effect reaches far beyond that single interaction. Teams get clearer expectations. Problems are addressed earlier. People know where they stand. And managers spend less time carrying frustration around because they're equipped to deal with issues properly.
Before Your Next Feedback Conversation
The next time you're about to correct someone this week, take a two-second pause and ask yourself: “Am I clear about the situation, the behaviour and the impact? Or have I just got a story.”
Then ask yourself a few more questions:
Am I talking about something I actually observed?
Have I explained why it matters?
Have I given them a chance to tell me what happened?
And have I clearly explained what I need from them next time?
Being a hospitality leader doesn't mean avoiding uncomfortable conversations. It means learning how to have them in a way that protects standards, gives people clarity and still allows them to walk away with their dignity intact.
If you're developing new or emerging managers in your hospitality business, difficult conversations are one of the core leadership skills worth actively teaching rather than expecting people to pick up along the way.
My Foundations of Leadership training is designed specifically for new and emerging hospitality managers and covers practical leadership skills including communication, difficult conversations, accountability and developing confidence as a leader.
