Group Cohesiveness

I worked at T.G.I. Friday’s in Wilmington, NC for approximately 2 years. The group cohesiveness in the kitchen was nothing less than exceptional.

The composition of the group was great. I believe that this was because we had an excellent kitchen manager. He did all of the hiring and all of the scheduling of the kitchen staff. He knew exactly when to schedule people together in order to make an efficient cooking line.

The entire kitchen staff benefitted individually from working together, in my opinion. We all received affection from the wait staff because we did our jobs well together. Personally, I benefitted from being a team member because I felt I was in high demand. We also hung out together outside of work. I was like a family away from home.

As a group, we had immeasurable task effectiveness and communicated well with each other. The leader in this group was a guy named Salvador. He was a very friendly, very experienced cook. He had much insight on how to do things well. He would keep us task oriented by making sure everyone was working on the correct item at the right time and made sure to let everyone know when an item was needed to complete a set of dishes. There was a computer system in place that allowed for each station to view what the other stations were working on, so this also made task effectiveness very high. There was also a mandatory rule that was in place to keep communication going. If someone ask for something, the person responsible for that item would have to reply in some fashion to make sure the communication was heard and understood. In Sal’s case, he simply shouted “echo!” I would use the phrase “4-10, sir!” as a joking slant against my kitchen manager as he was from the marines.

There were a couple of opportunities that I think may have provided a better situation. For instance, one of the kitchen staff viewed their job as a competition to