Posted: Jul 14, 2017
When the topic comes up about, most people will easily say they are a leader. The cold, hard truth is most are not. They simply like the concept of being a leader and the sound of it. (Come on, leader sound much more dynamic than being a manager.)
But leadership is not a title. It’s poetry in motion. It’s integrity. It’s all action. Everyone can be a leader. This bears repeating: Everyone can be a leader in your restaurant.
Leadership is, at its core, about taking personal accountability. It’s about doing exactly what you say you are going to do with no excuses. As soon as you start playing the excuse game, you have dropped from being a leader to being a victim. While we talk about being a true leader at our restaurants and businesses, few actually are.
Let’s explore how that happens. If you want to really become a leader, then be the best version you can be. That means becoming a badass.
The Dirty Dozen for Badass Leadership
1. Don't ask people to do anything you won't or can't do.
There is an old Sicilian saying, “Don't ask for what you cannot take.” As a leader you need to take action every day. When you make the decision to really be a leader, you step up to the big league and make a commitment to play the game at a higher level.
So, before you make the leap to being a leader, make sure it is truly something you want. Leadership is not easy. It’s a challenge and the biggest challenge will come from within yourself. You need to be sure this is a path and a journey you want to go on. Another thing to consider is why you want to become a leader. Great leadership is born from the attitude of being in the service of others.
You need to be willing and be able to do the task you are asking them to do. Being the leader means just that — leading. You lead by setting the example and being visible to your team. Leadership is out where the action is, not in the office during peak-service hours.
2. Results are the goal — the only goal.
Leaders do not worry about the clock. To them, time really seems to stop because they are in what is known as “flow.” This is the state where you get kind of lost in the activity and time seems to fly by. Some people refer to it as a Zen-like experience: no past, no future, just the moment.
When you’re the leader, you need to focus on getting results. Hours are arbitrary and really do not show you can make things happen. You put in 12 hours or more a day? So what? What did you get done? How did you move the business forward? How did you use your time? We all can look busy. The real question is “What are you busy about?”
3. You must have integrity.
When you’re a leader, your word is your bond with the team. Trust builds great teams and when that is lost, it’s very hard to come back from. When you lack integrity, you lose respect. Lose that and you’ll find it very difficult to lead anyone.
You must make it your mantra to do what you say you are going to do. There is no way around this to be a leader. Telling the team one thing and doing something different yourself sends mixed messages to your team. As the leader, they look to you for the example. If you’ll telling then to be on time and yet you are always strolling into work about 15 minutes late, you are sending mixed messages to your team.
4. You need a consistency recipe.
Being average is just that. Average. If you plotted out all restaurants on the classic Bell Curve, most would fall into the middle or average. Let’s be honest and admit that being in the middle sucks. There is more competition in the middle and you’ll have to fight every day just to maintain your guests and your staff. High turnover is a symptom of being average. It starts with the leadership (or really lack of leadership) in a restaurant. It happens because managers are not consistent.
With more and more restaurants opening each year, it’s vital that you get a grip on consistency issues. Here is where independent restaurants should take a lesson from the big chains. You must have systems in place that are clear, concise, easy to use, and teachable. Systems and standards are the two key ingredients to your own consistency recipe. Most people understand the systems part — it’s the standards part most fall short on.
"The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark." — Michelangelo
Setting your standards high is exactly what true leaders do. They set the bar high for themselves and their team. The late Chef Charlie Trotter was the a beacon in this industry for high standards. His standards were so elevated that most people thought they were unrealistic and he liked it like that. Look at some of the amazing chefs today who excel in this industry from the time spent in Trotter’s kitchen: Graham Elliot, Giuseppe Tentori, Mindy Segal, Art Smith, Curtis Duffy, Matthias Merges, Michael Taus, Rick Tramonto, and Grant Achatz (just to name a few). When you set your standards higher than you than you normally would, you raise the standards of those around you. Water does seek its own level and if you want to be a real badass leader, then you need badass standards.
“I have always looked at it this way: if you strive like crazy for perfection —an all-out assault on total perfection — at the very least, you will hit a high level of excellence, and then you might be able to sleep at night.” — Charlie Trotter
5. You must manage your state.
State is the energy. Your energy. Just like in an atom, there are positive and negative charges. Whether you know it or not, as a leader, your energy has a great impact on your business. It always starts with the leader. If you come into work in a bad mood, you start looking for things to reinforce that bad mood like fuel. Energy begets energy. Negative thoughts crave more negative and on the flip side, positive thoughts crave positive. The problem comes when positive clashes with negative. Sad to say that most time negative will overpower the positive thoughts.
Psychologists call this negativity bias. The human brain is amazing and it has evolved for one basic drive…survival. Negativity bias was built in so we would could pass on our genetic code to future members of our lineage. So, most people are hardwired to be sensitive to bad news over good news. Knowing that you are wired this way is a good thing, because now you can take steps to change.
“Awareness precedes choice. Choice precedes change.”
Making sure your energy is on the positive side when you are at your restaurant is a key trait for badass leaders. They are consistently monitoring their state and making adjustments to keep that energy elevated throughout the day.
How can you keep your state at its peak level?
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