The most important leadership layer in hospitality is the one nobody develops.

A focus on employee well-being can translate to reduced turnover and burnout. Middle management needs to be provided training and education as well as experiences that enables them to be continually learning and growing. Managers and front-line leaders need knowledge, experiential learning opportunities, application practice time plus learning tools that focus on decision making to help create better work environments. Business educational offerings and trainings can be planned to produce opportunities and the development of career pathways for employees and middle managers, creating careers of choice. A sustainable hospitality workforce (we are in this for the long haul) can support the hospitality industry progression into the future by creating well -balanced leadership at multiple levels.

Turnover and burnout in hospitality operations centers on where line employees and middle managers face our guests and the public, as well answer to a business’s leadership. The ability of an operation and its staff to provide a positive work environment (maybe even a fun environment with a reputation for employee well-being) can go a long way to build leadership careers in hospitality. A key focus going forward in the hospitality industry is to provide opportunities and education that emphasizes employee and environmental well-being.

Supervisors and department heads are the bridge between executives and frontline employees. They may indeed be the most consequential leadership layer because they must translate policies, staffing decisions, service standards, and culture into actual workplace practices. Meanwhile, they act as the “ears” and “eyes” of top executives, helping them understand the challenges faced by frontline employees.

Many frontline managers are promoted because they have been strong individual performers, but they may receive limited preparation in coaching, conflict resolution, employee engagement, wellbeing, or people development. At the same time, they often carry heavy operational workloads with limited authority to address staffing, scheduling, compensation, or resource constraints.

Frontline managers play an essential role in identifying service issues and growth opportunities in daily operations, as well as motivating frontline employees to engage at work. Hence, leadership development for frontline managers should include people-management skills, data and AI literacy, service recovery, and decision-making. Equally important, managers need realistic workloads, access to support, and enough autonomy to act.

Organizational culture is not created in executive presentations; it is experienced through daily interactions among frontline employees, supervisors, and leaders at all levels. Hotels must invest in both the capability and capacity of frontline managers.

This is what happens when organisations treat people as numbers on a spreadsheet. Line and middle managers absorb some of the most demanding aspects of hospitality work: pressure from senior leaders and owners, the emotional needs of their teams, and the expectations, and sometimes unacceptable behaviour of customers.

Good hospitality companies do exist, and many understand this reality. They prepare, support and develop their managers for these challenges rather than simply promoting them and expecting them to cope. National and organisational cultures can also either strengthen or undermine how managers deal with emotional exhaustion and stress, both during and beyond service hours.

Hospitality is not for the faint-hearted. Resilience and emotional strength matter, but they should be developed through proper training, genuine support, sufficient resources and humane working conditions, not used as excuses for enduring avoidable dysfunction.

The neglect of line and middle managers reflects a wider leadership myopia created by the spreadsheet approach to people management. Treat these managers well, invest in their development and give them the authority and support to lead effectively. Only then can they inspire their teams and help people love their work, even if in an industry characterised by a transient workforce, they do not stay forever.

Reflecting on the question across my career, wherever I have encountered strong culture and an esprit de corp, it's because of a visible, experienced and inspirational leader. They may not have been on the front line, but you knew that they were with you at the battleground.

I believe you can inculcate culture, but ultimately successful teams' leadership needs to believe in that culture and live it. This aspect, I am certain can be trained or educated. Either it connects at an individual level and is carried forward. Or the culture is in words only and not embodied. Therefore, as always, it comes down to leadership. But on this one it is the personal makeup of a leader in my view.

The other serious aspect painted by Colin is the pressure industry professionals are citing. Hospitality at its relevant times, is a fast-paced industry, full of expectation and the need to deliver. If teams are feeling burned out, then it suggests an overload of capacity that is systemic. All the culture in the world will not survive extended inefficiency. I would also suggest that is what drives attrition.

Conditions have a significant impact. Under constant pressure, culture is not always enough.

Frontline leadership is underfunded when organizations treat frontline managers as an operating cost and assume strong performers will become effective people managers without training and preparation (the rise of accidental managers). AI risks reinforcing that logic: automating coordination and reporting can make reducing management layers look attractive, while obscuring the relational work those managers perform. 

My concern is that hospitality could mistake administrative efficiency for leadership capacity. As AI handles more pattern-recognition-based tasks, attentive human service can become a stronger differentiator to create a competitive edge for hospitality companies. Frontline managers make that possible through how they coach employees, resolve conflict, and empower teams to recover a disappointing guest experience. 

Treating these managers as invaluable human capital means selecting for empathy, mindfulness, and coaching ability, then supporting those capabilities with protected training time, mentoring, manageable workloads, and authority to act. Assess their performance through employee well-being, retention, and guest outcomes alongside financial results. 

AI should help create time for this work. Financial Times reporting already illustrates how restaurants use AI to reduce operational burdens and free staff for guest interaction. Reinvesting part of that capacity in manager development would make hospitality’s human promise more credible, for frontline leaders and guests alike.

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, introduced the controversial 20/70/10 performance management model. Under this approach, 20% of employees were top performers and rewarded with promotions and incentives, 70% received development support to improve performance, and the bottom 10% were dismissed. Critics argue that the model fosters excessive competition and may result in the loss of employees who need more time, guidance, and support to reach their potential. Nevertheless, the approach provides upward mobility.

Because hospitality employee turnover is high, development and recognition should extend beyond middle and senior management. As employees move into senior positions, replacements should ideally come through internal promotion – from the bottom 10%. This necessitates effective performance management. In today's fast-paced workplace, I advocate that quarterly performance reviews can help identify and develop talent. With mentoring from department heads, frontline employees become better prepared for future leadership roles – provided supervisors are properly trained to conduct meaningful performance evaluations.

Ultimately, the long-term success of hospitality organizations depends on their ability to develop and retain frontline talent. By investing in employee growth, recognizing and rewarding potential early, and creating clear pathways for advancement, organizations can improve retention, strengthen leadership pipelines, and build a more engaged workforce.