Treat Your People Right and Watch What Happens

R&R Pizza Express, located at 1970 W. River Rd, was recently voted as the #1 best tasting pizza in Tucson. However, the road to becoming the best hasn’t come without many pitfalls, according to owner, Luis Bayardo.

Luis’ business career began in the hospitality business, where he held a variety of management positions for several large resort hotels. Managing hotels provided a great training ground for Luis and it was there that he made several mistakes and learned many great lessons about effective leadership.

Luis describes himself as someone who is driven, with a high energy level and a strong work ethic. Through his own managerial experience and observing other peer managers, he quickly learned that yelling or belittling employees in any way, shape or form doesn’t work as a motivation tool. The real and lasting motivators, he notes, are “positive praise and a building a fun and healthy work environment.” He says, “The words ‘Thank You’ are so simple to use, yet so underutilized in the world of business today.” Thanking his people often did not come easy at first, but over time became a learned discipline that proved immeasurable for his business and his customers.

One of the other key leadership lessons that Luis has learned along the way is the relationship of money to people. His discovery…that money is truly only a short term motivator. Many a time, an employee would approach him requesting a raise. If a raise was given, he would notice a short term improvement. But, inevitably, the raise would lose its effect and the employee would slip back into their old ways and ultimately quit or were fired. The bottom line? He found that raises never solved his people problems.
What he soon found is what people really want and thrive after is fulfillment and joy in their work. They want an environment that’s fun and energetic.

Another key principle Luis has learned from the past mistakes is when to give and when not to give. In his first years of management, he found himself to be very inflexible and strict, which caused friction and strained his employee relationships. Through careful observance and experience over time, he learned that sometimes he needed to “cut some slack” to his employees and to be more considerate of his employees’ day to day challenges. He now realizes that while his staff’s personal struggles may be small in scope to him, they are large in scope to the employee. The individuals he employs are usually minimum wage type positions and with that he’s had to develop more tolerance. His employees’ lives are the most important thing to them, not his business and whether Luis is successful or not.

Luis has also come to understand that occasionally he needs to play favorites (ie, “if you do a little extra for me, I’ll do a little extra for you”). The pizza business is fast paced and demanding in several areas. In peak volume times, including daily large catering jobs, he takes special notice of those employees who exert that little extra effort. In effect, it becomes like a “bank account.” The extra effort acts like deposits into the bank. As challenges with employees come up, he remembers those deposits and allows them certain withdrawals (most of these being flexibility in some shape or form with personal challenges, time off, mistakes made, etc.). This approach has proved to build great loyalty and respect from his team.

A final lesson learned from Luis is that little things mean a lot. He is always looking for opportunities to reward and motivate his team in small ways. Gift cards, movie tickets, an afternoon off, etc., all go a long way to building stronger employee relationships and more loyalty. These unexpected little things have created a strong core team that has remained with Luis through “thick and thin” (no pun intended) in his pizza business.

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