Essential criticism: Leadership

My experience as a bartender

Bartending is difficult position which usually comes with unusual schedules and a lot of demands from the employers. I've been working myself as a bartender for the bigger part of my adult life and these years will probably be my last as I am nearing the end of my studies. I wanted to share in this post about my experience with the countless leaders I've worked with and give my point of view of good leading in the catering industry using an example of the X and Y theory of McGregor (1960).

This theory regards the X manager, which is results driven, demands rather than asks, has little interests in human issues, does not listen to suggestions for improvement, sees criticism as threatening, holds responsibility but holds subordinates accountable for failures and believes the pessimistic assumption that people have a dislike of work and will do a lot to avoid it. On the other side, the theory Y manager, which is based on the optimistic approach that people actually like working under suitable conditions and believes that people want to learn and seek responsibility while participating in decision making and problem solving. People's creativity can be used to solve problems and improve the organisation's performance (Browaeys, 2022). 

My current employer is unfortunately a theory X manager and focuses on making sure everybody listens to her demands regarding what's actually good for the brand. Considering the catering industry, the 'little man', which are the employees who are working on the floor (bartenders, waiters and service workers) have the most input considering real life experience as they are encountering daily those issues. Listening to their input would undoubtedly be very crucial for the success of the business. Unfortunately, my current manager has little to no interest in listening to any input of the floor personnel which I think hurts the business and the personnel's morale. On the other side, another manager at the same bar I work at, has a more theory Y manager approach. He came up with a genius way, I think, to keep the employees' morale high while getting their input at the same time. Assigning 'managers' to every aspect of the bar, no matter how smal scale it is. From head of bar to a plant manager. My responsibility for example is the coffee we serve. Making sure to give trainings to personnel and that the coffee-machine is well cleaned and set to the right amounts of coffee beans. This little responsibility gives me a feeling I contribute to the company while making sure I do my best to use my input to better that part of the business. That way, the company keeps evolving and at the same time is keeping the working culture relationship driven.

Future takes

My future takes in this is being able to identify the manager's approach in my example with the X and Y theory helped me realise the approach I prefer and best perform in. Every company has of course a different method for approaching problems and a different organisation culture. Some prefer X managers and they have less work to do and they just follow orders which they believe in as their manager is superior to them. I don't think there is right and wrong in this aspect as both types of managing could be beneficial but identifying the key aspects of different theories and learning your personal take in this, I think, is very powerful if applied properly in one's career. And as students, I think this is a crucial part for us as we are still developing our careers and ourselves and trying to find our way in the corporate world.

References

- Browaeys, M. (2022, October 8). Understanding Cross-Cultural Management. PEARSON.