The Employee Life Cycle - Part 5

In Part 5 of the Employee Life Cycle series, we focus on one of the most expensive and emotionally charged decisions operators make: who to promote, and how to keep great people once they’ve grown into leadership roles.

This episode breaks down the difference between promoting based on readiness versus tenure, and why strong performance on the floor doesn’t automatically translate into success as a manager. We discuss how to avoid the common “great employee, bad manager” trap by setting clear role expectations, supporting newly promoted leaders, and ensuring transitions into leadership are intentional rather than rushed reactions to staffing pressure.

You’ll also hear practical guidance on how to set new leaders up for success through structure, coaching, and clarity, before small gaps in confidence or authority turn into team frustration or turnover.

The second half of the episode dives into retention and engagement from an operator’s perspective. We unpack why people actually stay, why they leave, and how engagement is built (or lost) in daily leadership behaviors, not in once-a-year surveys. From recognition and trust to consistent leadership and realistic scheduling expectations, this episode examines the real drivers of long-term team commitment.

We also introduce stay interviews and proactive check-ins as simple, high-impact tools operators can use to spot burnout, workload concerns, and disengagement early, before valuable team members walk out the door.

This episode is designed for restaurant leaders who want to promote with confidence, intentionally grow future managers, and create an environment where strong people choose to stay.

What is The Restaurant Roadmap?

The Restaurant Roadmap is your guide to building and running a successful restaurant. Each episode explores the full journey of operations—from planning and development to menu design, execution, and growth. Hosts Danny Bendas, Amanda Stokes, and Chef Eric Lauer bring decades of expertise, joined by industry leaders and restaurant professionals who share their insights and stories. Together, they uncover strategies, tools, and lessons that help operators improve performance, strengthen teams, and elevate the guest experience. Whether you’re opening your first location or refining an established brand, The Restaurant Roadmap equips you to navigate every step with confidence.

Danny: Welcome to the Restaurant Roadmap podcast, powered by Synergy Restaurant Consultants. Your go-to source for actionable insights and real-world strategies from the industry's top experts, clients, and special guests. Whether you're building a new concept or refining an existing one, we're here to help you create a forward-thinking, sustainable brand, elevate guest experience, streamline operations, and maximize your bottom line.

With decades of hands-on experience, our mission is simple, to deliver practical, proven solutions to the everyday challenges restaurant operators face.

Eric: Let's dive in and get to work

Danny: Hello, everyone. Welcome back. This is, uh, the podcast of the Restaurant Roadmap, powered by Synergy Restaurant Consultants. We are on our way to the next story of the employee life cycle. I wanna welcome back our usual suspects. We have Amanda. Hey, Amanda.

Amanda: Hey, Danny. How are you?

Danny: Uh, great. And we have Chef Eric.

How are you, sir?

Eric: Doing great. How y'all doing?

Danny: Doing great, doing great. So we have been through a process, and we're in episode five now of our life cycle. We've been talking about where do you recruit people, how do you recruit people, how do you recruit people, Amanda's favorite part, the greatest first day of your life, your onboarding process, training, succession planning, and we are up to now, you know, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending, you're gonna lose people.

People are gonna move on. You may decide that there are people that you just don't feel are part of your team. So we're gonna talk about offboarding, and we're gonna talk about exit interviews. So let's kick it off, and let's talk about, and you know, Eric, I know how f- spoiled you get unless you're number one, right?

So we're gonna start with you, and how do you handle resignations and, and being professional about it?

Eric: Hey, listen, not every job is for every person. Sometimes people are on your team, and they're, and they're not in the right seat on the bus. They're, they're not melding with the rest of the team. They, they just don't feel like they fit in in your organization, and it's time for them to move on.

Or maybe they've learned everything they can from you, and it's time for them to move on in that respect. But either way, they're not sticking around on your team, and in our industry, we know that happens a lot. We turn over people very often. So how you handle that from an internal perspective is very, very important moving forward because just if somebody doesn't wanna work for you today, doesn't mean they don't wanna come back.

It doesn't mean they don't talk to other people and say, "Hey- These folks really took care of me when I left, and they're a great organization to work for. They're great to get your feet wet. You know, people are in different spots of their life, so you have to really meet them where they're at, and just be professional about it, and you'll get better results in the long term.

Danny: Yeah, I think good terms is all part of what we always espouse is great culture, great brand, caring, you know, compassionate. You know, and in this business, you know, I always say, you know, generally people in this business are just kind of passing through on their way to their next real career, right? So, um, Amanda, anything you'd like to add to that?

Amanda: Yeah. So you've heard me say many times that, uh, your first day is, is critical. It's very important. Well, so is your last day. I personally believe that handling resignations with professionalism sets the tone for the organization. Everyone's watching. So terminations that protect morale and culture are very critical, and then really making sure that people's exit from your brand does not create chaos Um, and so turnover handled well becomes a strength for your culture

Danny: You know, you're leaving yourself with a great reputation, and those people are gonna always talk very highly of you in the future.

'Cause if you did a great job with the rest of the cycle, you know, especially young people, you should take credit for really creating a strong foundation, a strong work ethic, and, you know, we should be proud of that, and we're helping them advance, which I think, um, you know, it just makes you feel good in the heart, right?

Or you're having a heart-to-heart with someone so that hopefully they're gonna get better, you know, in, in their next job.

Amanda: I just wanna say one thing too. When somebody is being let go, it- if it's coming as a surprise to that person, then the organization has failed. Somebody who's on their last leg should know, and when that meeting is called, there should be no surprises.

Danny: Well, and unfortunately in today's somewhat litigious, uh, environment, you have to make sure you do all the proce- proper documentation. So to your point, you know, if they don't know, shame on you, right? Because they've- you've given them plenty of warnings, um, which you really need also to correctly terminate somebody, you know, God forbid, if you have to.

Eric: Let me add one thing in there real quick. I think taking ego out of it is, is a huge thing because there's a lot of times, and we hear a lot of stories throughout our travels of, you know, it's just somebody's personal will or personal belief, and that's why they're terminating someone. And that person might be a, a real help to the organization, but somebody in the middle of the organization has a personality conflict with them, and I think those things need to be looked at up and down the organization.

And really, there should be some perspective put into it. If you have someone in your organization who is continually turning over people that are strong-willed and strong-minded, then that person might be culturally weak in your organization, and maybe the wrong person in that equation is being terminated.

Danny: Which then speaks to a challenge with leadership, which we always talk about. The other thing I think that's really important that I've always tried to live by, I think it's appropriate here, nobody likes to terminate anybody, right? But I always try to evaluate before If I had to terminate somebody, I always ask myself, did I give the person a chance?

Did I give them the right tools, and did I give them the knowledge in order to be successful? And if the answer to that is no, then I feel like shame on me. You know? It, it's not their fault if they're gonna terminated. It's my fault. So just making sure you have done everything you possibly can to set themself up for success, and then you sleep well at night knowing that you've done everything you can to help the person, and then you just have to move on, right?

So I, I think that's really important. So And then we wanna talk about you're gonna lose somebody, let's say somebody of great value. How do you protect yourself to make sure that the information, the knowledge, what they were responsible for, gets transferred to the right people? So I'm gonna ask Amanda to comment on that.

Amanda: You know, Danny, if you've done your job, and we discussed succession planning, you already have somebody who's fully assembled and ready to take charge of the person who's exiting's responsibilities. So there should never be a question as to who's gonna take over for that person if they leave. The succession plan sh- should already have been determined.

Eric: We've, we've talked about it many times over and over in past podcasts and, and past episodes. You have to have the correct systems and tools in place, and that way you're hard on the systems, easy on the people. Amanda talked about it. Somebody should be waiting in the wings, ready to step into that spot, and then it is assuming a responsibility that is dictated by the system and tools and organization surrounding that position.

And then it's not a huge transition, right? There's gonna be learnings that have to happen regarding the systems and tools, but it's not like you're stepping into an abyss and a vacuum of knowledge, right? You're walking in, you, you follow the same organizational tools that were in place for the previous person, and it helps make that transition much easier and quicker for them to get up to speed than if there was just that vacuum.

Danny: Again, gets back to everything we talk about, you know, uh, process over people, great leadership, always looking at where you are with your bench, and giving people an opportunity to move forward, you know, when, when the timing requires it. I think that, that's really great, everybody. That's terrific, so.

Eric: I'd like to say beware of leaders who guard information.

They're not sharing information with their subordinates. They're not helping them learn part of the system. Those are the most dangerous leaders you can have. They're not leading from a place of strength. They're leading from a place of cowardice because they don't want somebody to become as good as them, and then that holds the organization back 100%.

Danny: I was actually gonna use the word insecurity because they don't feel like they have some insecurity that if somebody knows more than them, they're gonna, they're, they're not as valuable or they're gonna lose their job

Amanda: I know a leader who says the same thing over and over, right Danny, that you should always be working yourself out of a job and creating your own replacement

Danny: I wonder who that could be.

I have no idea. Right. So all right, so moving on to exit interviews. Now, we do a lot of work with clients, uh, all over the place, and I often wonder, do they actually do exit interviews, and who does exit interviews? And, you know, I'm sure we all agree they're missing out on a great opportunity to learn about themselves and how to get better.

So I know, Amanda, I am absolutely positive that you do exit interviews all the time. So why don't you tell us about the hows, the whys, and

the importance of exit interviews?

Amanda: The most important thing is it's done in a timely fashion when everything is fresh in the person who's exiting's mind. And then the most important principle is they only work when trust exists, so if they feel comfortable telling you their whole story. And then I think it's important for us to d- to understand, is there a pattern in the people that are exiting, both people that have been terminated and people leave of their own accord?

Um, and then I think, you know, over the years I've seen leaders that are very defensive get very dishonest answers because, you know, they, they're only listening to what they want to hear And then from the team who's left behind, from their perspective, I would say feedback without action is meaningless.

You know, teams want to see change happen, um, so that if an exit maybe is viewed unfairly from the team and they see real change, they trust leadership

Danny: It's amazing what leaders' actions do to people's mindset, their attitude, their, uh, their concerns, and everybody watching, right? Um, that's really important.

Amanda: It's interesting, as I just did a pos- the other... post the other day on LinkedIn. It's about trust versus psychological safety, and they're two very, very different things. You can trust your leader but still not have a degree of safety to tell them the truth.

Danny: Yeah, and that, that should not be a barrier because transparency, I think, is everything, you know.

Whether you're sharing P&L, sharing business, sharing whatever. I mean, I think, you know, what do they say? Sunlight is the best form of, um, improvement or whatever it is, right? So anyhow, I know I screwed it all up, but you get the idea, right? So anyway, Eric, I am going to give you the final word, sir.

Eric: Exit interviews are funny to me.

I, I, I had an exit interview for a position that I worked for a pretty long time, and, uh, the person that was on the phone with me giving me my exit interview, it was hilarious to me because I don't think they were listening to a word I said. They were just following the script on the page, and when they got to the end, they asked me a question- About what it would take for me to stay in this organization.

And I, I, I said to her, I said, "Did you listen to any of the 10 minutes previous to that question? There's nothing that, in this organization that wants me to stay, so I'm leaving because of that." You can't change all of those things, right? So you're, you're just, you're just sitting there reading from a script, and you're not, you're not listening to anybody.

So if you're gonna do exit interviews, do them right.

Danny: Yeah. So somewhere in their manual it said you have to do an ex- exit interview, so they were just checking a box, right?

Eric: You got it.

Danny: And then obviously there's no learning there to make... 'Cause part of that also is to make you a better leader, you know, so you should take advantage of those opportunities where you can learn and make improvements, right?

I wanna thank you guys as usual. Great information, great feedback. Um, always remember, you can reach out to us at [e-mail]. Feedback, comments, and if you'd like a subject that we can talk about that would be of interest, let us know. Uh, Amanda, thank you so much.

Amanda: My pleasure.

Danny: As usual, great stuff.

We'll be in touch with everybody soon. Talk to you. Bye-bye.

Eric: Thanks y'all, have a great day.

Danny: Thanks for tuning in. We hope today's episode gave you valuable insights you can put into action. If you have questions, want more info on today's topic, or need support with your restaurant-specific challenges, we'd love to hear from you.

Reach out any time at [e-mail] and visit synergyrestaurantconsultants.com to explore our services, sign up for our newsletter, and catch up on past episodes. Don't forget to follow and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook so you never miss what's next.

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