Human Skills

In Chapter 1, The Supervisor as Manager, a topic discusses is Human Skills. It is introduced, as “The skill of handling people successfully is really the core of the supervisor’s job. Such skill has several ingredients and it is not achieved overnight." In this section, the three ingredients are: attitude, sensitivity, and self-awareness. As a supervisor these together promote efficiency in the workplace, encouragement to those we are leading and effective means of communicated with one another. Over my externship, I could identify how the sous chef possess these three ingredients and use them to better one another and every chef de partie, commis chef and externs.

The first ingredient, realizing that we are human beings, is relative in this situation. We are familiar with the term “robots” in the food service industry. We sometimes feel as though day after day, we come in, working for the instructing chef, and continue to produce the same plates, fabricate the same proteins, or set-up and breakdown our stations as "robots", we have to understand the beauty in having another day to produce those same plate better, faster, harder, and stronger. We are human beings with human emotions. Were also the key factors in making a restaurant function, and without our hands and minds working in a synchronized manner, under the supervision and instruction of our chef and are solely responsible for production.

The second ingredient, sensitivity, is severely important to having our subordinates effectively work and efficiently produce during the day. We have to cater to the people that we are supervising in the sense that if day after day yelling doesn’t allow the garde manger chef to work properly, with a clear and focused attitude and instead it distracts him from his work, then we have to “cater” to that chef and motivate him effectively.

The last and final ingredient to humanistic skills is self-awareness. This final component encompasses the three components included in the humanistic skill set discussed in the chapter. One can understand the first two but unless one can be completely self-aware, in my opinion, the supervisor is set-up for ineffective leadership. This is an area that I feel I’m the weakest in. I know that being irrational and clouded by emotion, my self-awareness is lost. How I come across to others, being overwhelmed by assuming much of the responsibility for the days production rests on my own shoulders. Understanding each component and applying it to our daily activities is why I decided to expand on this important topic to that was discussed in Chapter 1 of Supervision in the Hospitality Industry.