Case Study · The Inn Collection · Hospitality · First time to confident manager
We turned The Inn Collection's best servers, chefs and supervisors into confident managers.
We turned The Inn Collection's best servers, chefs and supervisors into confident managers.How we diagnosed them
Every manager's development needs were diagnosed with the Hospitality Manager Strength Index, the only diagnostic tool built to benchmark managers in the hospitality industry. It measures behaviours such as:
Recognise emerging trends and the needs of guests
Coach and develop your team
Manage performance and behaviour
9.5/10
rated across ten workshops, every one of them scored 9 or higher
15
managers developed, most stepping into their first leadership role
5
focus areas, built for a busy service
Executive Summary
- Sector
- Hospitality / Multi-site
- Buyer
- People & Development leadership
The Brief
Take the supervisors, assistant managers and chefs promoted from the floor across the group's hotels, and give them the leadership skills to run their teams and the guest experience well. Build it for the pace and reality of a busy service, not a classroom.
The Outcome
Fifteen first-time managers benchmarked against their industry on the Hospitality Manager Strength Index and developed across five focus areas, who came back from each session already managing differently on the floor, and who now run one-to-ones, have the hard conversations and coach their teams as one consistent way of leading across the group.
From the leadership
We grow our managers from the floor. The supervisor who was the strongest server, the chef who ran the pass, the person stepping up to lead the team they worked alongside last week. Doing that for the first time, in hotels spread right across the North, is a real leap, and we did not want to leave our new managers to make it on instinct. 10X embedded a Performance Partner in the business, measured every one of them against a Manager Strength Index built for hospitality, and then worked on the real problems on their plates, shift by shift, rather than in a classroom that has never seen a Saturday service.
What we have now is fifteen first-time managers, in hotels that rarely meet, all leading in one confident and consistent way, and a team that learned as much from each other as from anyone at the front of the room.”
Ashleigh Fenwick
Head of Learning and Talent, The Inn Collection
01 / The Trigger
Their craft made them brilliant. Their leadership had to be built.
A server who was the best on the floor is now the supervisor running it. A chef who owned the pass now leads the kitchen team. The Inn Collection had promoted its best people on their craft, and recognised that craft is not the same as leadership. It saw the leap the new role demanded, from doing the work to leading the people who do it, and chose not to leave its new managers to make that leap on instinct.
The reality these managers were leading in
01
Promoted on craft
The best servers and chefs become the team's leaders, most stepping into management for the first time
02
Multi-site & dispersed
Hotels spread across the North of England and North Wales, each running its own floor
03
High pace, high turnover
A fast, demanding industry where leadership shapes whether people stay
04
Guest-facing every shift
The team's leadership is felt directly by guests, service after service
The Inn Collection runs hotels across the North of England and North Wales: places to eat, drink, sleep and explore, where the guest experience is made or lost on the floor, every shift. Like most hospitality groups, it grows its managers from within, promoting front-of-house supervisors, assistant managers and sous chefs into the people who run the team.
Leading for the first time in hospitality is demanding. Fast pace, sites spread across the country, and a team that was your peers last week. The Inn Collection recognised that a brilliant server or chef does not automatically become a confident manager, and that the shift, from doing the work to leading the people who do it, needs real support rather than instinct.
So it brought 10X in. The brief: give its first-time managers the leadership skills the role actually demands, built for the reality of a busy service rather than a training room, and measured against what good management looks like specifically in hospitality.
02 / Benchmarked for hospitality
The partnership began with the Hospitality Manager Strength Index.
The Hospitality Manager Strength Index is the only diagnostic tool built specifically to benchmark and identify the development needs of managers in the hospitality industry. A generic leadership assessment measures a supervisor against behaviours that do not exist on their floor, and can tell you nothing about how your managers compare to the rest of your sector. This one scores each manager across twelve behaviours and three objectives, and benchmarks them against the wider industry. Before a single workshop, every Inn Collection manager was measured on it, showing precisely where their strengths and development needs sat against their peers across the sector, and giving the programme a hard, hospitality-specific foundation to build on.
The Hospitality Manager Strength Index
Three objectives and twelve behaviours, benchmarked against the industry
01
Develop & Engage Your Team
- Hire the right people
- Build strong working relationships
- Coach and develop your team
- Build a balanced, inclusive team culture
02
Deliver Performance & Results
- Support the wider business and align your team to it
- Set direction and plan ahead
- Delegate and hold the team accountable
- Manage performance and behaviour
03
Drive Innovation & Reinvention
- Recognise emerging trends and the needs of guests
- Collaborate across all service teams
- Lead change across the site
- Measure the impact of new ideas
03 / Built for the floor
Every workshop set on a real shift.
With the diagnostic done, the programme worked through five focus areas, each chosen for what leading actually looks like in a busy hotel. The scenarios were a fully-booked Saturday service, a difficult shift, a team member who was a peer last week. Practical workshops ran one focus area at a time, with troubleshooting sessions in between so managers could bring the real challenges from their own floor and work them through with peers in the same role.
How every focus area ran
The skill was never the point. Using it on the next shift was.
Every focus area ran the same loop. A Prime workshop set the skill, then each manager left with a challenge card to use on their own floor: coach someone in under two minutes, ask the team how they want their feedback, hand a task to the person you would normally do it for. They put it into practice across the next weeks of service, and came back to a troubleshooting session to work the real problems with peers in the same role. The development happened between the sessions, on a live shift, not in a training room.
Five focus areas, framed for a busy service
01
Building Relationships
Leading the people you poured pints and plated covers beside yesterday, across the bar, the pass and the rooms.
02
Managing Performance
Holding standards through a fully-booked Saturday service and a packed dining room, without losing the team.
03
Coaching & Developing
Turning a strong server into the next supervisor, not just covering this week's rota.
04
Building Team Culture
The welcome a guest feels at the table starts with the culture in the kitchen and behind the bar.
05
Driving Change & Improvement
Rolling out a new menu, standard or system across the floor and making it stick through a busy week.
Who was in the room
Fifteen managers, all of them close to the guest.
Assistant Managers, Front-of-House Supervisors, a Sous Chef, a Trainee Manager and Front-of-House team members stepping up, drawn from hotels across the group, learning alongside others in the same role.
04 / One way to manage
Hotels that rarely meet, learning to manage the same way.
The Inn Collection's hotels are spread across the North of England and North Wales, and its managers seldom share a shift. The programme put them in the same room, in the same role, every few weeks, and the strongest learning came from each other. One manager's idea to plan the rota three weeks ahead so no one worked nine days straight was taken up by other sites in the same session. A fix that swapped kitchen-to-floor buzzers for radios was carried back to another hotel before the call had ended. A way to drive a change through a young team, win the informal leader of the group first, was coined in one breakout and adopted across the rest.
Across ten sessions a shared language formed, some of it taught, much of it the cohort's own, until managers who had never worked together were describing the job in the same words. That common vocabulary, more than any single workshop, is what made fifteen managers across the group start to lead in one consistent way.
“It was good to hear other people's opinions when they're in the same role as me. We can take ideas from each other.”
The shared language they built
“Connect, then correct”
“Coach, don't fix”
“Take the emotion out of it”
“Different, not wrong”
“Little and often”
“Find the leader of the group”
“One version of the truth”
“The standard you walk past is the standard you accept”
“Calm the advice gremlin”
“Us against the problem, not each other”
Not a policy, a vocabulary. Across hotels that rarely overlap, these are the lines that kept returning until they became the common way The Inn Collection's managers talk about managing.
05 / What the team says
The change, described by the people who made it.
Across the group's hotels, here is how The Inn Collection's managers describe what the programme changed for them.
“Having completed the programme, I now feel more confident in key areas that drive growth in our team. The focus on communication and consistent feedback was especially valuable.”
“It's been really eye-opening to how I should give feedback to the staff and managers around me, and have those difficult conversations. Really well put across and very easy to understand. Highly recommend.”
“This programme is excellent for not only managerial development, but self-reflection. After every session I find myself looking inwards and growing as a person.”
“It's definitely given me the confidence to go and implement what I've learned with my team. I can now go away from a session and confidently run a one-to-one.”
“It made me question whether I was actually coaching or directing teams, and gave me new questions to consider when working alongside my team. Small changes that become bigger over time.”
“The programme was engaging and informative, and helped me set new goals for myself and learn more about my management style. I've learned how to effectively run one-to-ones with my team and recognised areas where I can improve straight away.”
“Really good at helping you shift to a more open mindset. I've taken away the growth mindset and how to coach and prompt instead of instantly trying to fix a problem.”
06 / What changed
Managing differently on the next service, not just in the room.
In hospitality the test of a manager is the next service, not the classroom, and that is where The Inn Collection's cohort changed. Session after session they came back reporting what they had done differently on their own floor, not what they planned to try. The workshops rated 9.5 out of 10, every one of the ten scored 9 or higher, but the proof that mattered showed up between the sessions.
The behaviour change
What the cohort did differently, back on the floor
The clearest evidence came in the troubleshooting sessions, where managers reported what they had already changed and what happened when they did. The move was always the same one: from doing the job to leading the people who do it. It showed up in the specific habits of managing, the parts of the job a promoted server or chef is rarely taught.
01
One-to-ones that finish a shift well
Managers who used to skip them now hold regular one-to-ones, several timed to the end of a shift so people leave having heard what they did well and feeling they accomplished something.
02
The hard conversations, had calmly
One manager handled a difficult incident mid-service without raising their voice; the team member later thanked them for how it was dealt with, and said they would come to a manager sooner next time.
03
Coaching in under two minutes
One took the challenge to coach in the run of a shift into a wave of new starters, little and often, instead of overwhelming them on day one, and found it landed better.
04
Feedback built on examples, not opinion
Another shifted to specific, example-led feedback and a consistency drive across the team, so people knew exactly what good looked like rather than guessing.
05
Rotas rebuilt to protect the team
One manager redesigned their site's rota three weeks ahead so no one worked eight or nine days straight, and reported the difference it made to how rested and steady the team felt.
06
Across the kitchen, floor and rooms, one team
Managers took shifts in each other's departments, the kitchen, housekeeping, the front desk, and came back leading as one team rather than several running their own race.
Why it matters for the business
In hospitality the manager on the floor is the guest experience and the reason people stay. The Hospitality Manager Strength Index showed The Inn Collection exactly how its managers compare to the wider industry, where they lead it and where they trail it, and gave a way to measure that again as the next cohort comes through. Develop the people closest to the guest and you raise the experience and keep your best people; leave them to instinct and you risk losing both. The Inn Collection chose to develop them, and now has fifteen managers across the group leading in one consistent, confident way.
07 / Start here
If you promote your best people on their craft and leave them to lead on instinct, a fast industry will churn them and their teams. The Inn Collection chose to develop them instead.
Every partnership between 10X and a client is entirely bespoke and unique. Book a no-obligation call with one of our Development Experts to scope how we could support you and your situation.