Coaching for Leaders - Talent Management | Leaders
688: The Power of Leadership Through Hospitality, with Will Guidara
We expect hospitality from a restaurant or hotel, but we often miss opportunities for this mindset and how we lead. In this episode, leadership as an act of hospitality not only for the organization and team, but for the leader themselves. This is Coaching for Leaders, Episode 688. Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential. [MUSIC] Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I'm your host, Dave Stahoveak. Leaders aren't born. They're made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. One of the ways to think about leadership is through the lens of hospitality. I hadn't thought much about that until I read the book of this week's guest. An invitation for us to think about how do we bring hospitality into our work as leaders, not only for others, but also for ourselves. I'm so pleased to welcome Will Gudera to the show. He is the former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park, which under his leadership received four stars from the New York Times, three Michelin stars. And in 2017 was named number one on the list of the world's 50 best restaurants. He has co-authored four cookbooks, was named one of Crane's New York Businesses 40 under 40, and is the recipient of the Wall Street Journal's magazine's Innovator Award. He is the author of Unreasonable Hospitality, the remarkable power of giving people more than they expect. Will, what a pleasure to meet you. Similarly, I'm so excited to be here with you, and I've been looking forward to this conversation. I have heard your name and your book mentioned to me probably half a dozen times in the last year, and now I know why. In reading it, it took me on a beautiful journey. And the journey starts early in the book with a story about your mom. And I'm wondering if you could share with me a bit of the backstory of your mom and what you learned from her about being welcomed. Yeah, my mom was a flight attendant for American Airlines when I was growing up. And I mentioned that detail because this was back in the day when that was the classiest job, right? She was this beautiful awe-inspiring person who had bought through a ton of adversity. Her parents died when she was young. She grew up in the home of her aunt, let herself through night school, and always wanted to be a flight attendant. And so that's what she did. And she was unbelievably good at it. And until when I was about four years old, she was diagnosed with brain cancer. And they removed the tumor, but it was malignant, not benign, which meant that they weren't able to remove all of it and had to rely on radiation treatment to kill what remained. But this was back in the day before radiation treatment was as refined as it is now and the lingering impact of the radiation damage ultimately rendered her into becoming quadriplegic. And so by the time I was nine, ten, that's what she was. She was wheelchair-bound, unable to move, and honestly not really able to speak all that intelligibly. And yet, I have never felt more loved on a daily basis, actively and intentionally loved by anyone else in my entire life. The story that I share in the book, which is something I still think of often, and whenever I tell the story, it is obviously a little emotional. But we moved once she was in a wheelchair to a house very close to my school. My dad was really concerned about my confidence growing up and didn't want me to be overly reliant on other people's moms to driving around. So my dad literally put us in a house that's that our home would be the place where people hung out. So I'd always walk home from school or ride my bike home from school. At this point, we had nurses at the house with my mom to take care of her when my dad was at work. And every day, when the weather was, you know, anywhere remotely good enough to do this, she would have the nurses push her in her wheelchair to the end of the block such that she was there waiting for me when I got home from school. And it was important to her that given she wasn't able to do a lot of the things for me that most moms were charged with doing, whether it was cooked for me or do the laundry or, well, anything that required any physical activity that she always did what she could. And that was something that was important to her. She wanted to be there to welcome me home every single day, and she couldn't talk. She couldn't say out loud, welcome, but she had this big to the smile and that smile was, I mean, it took over her entire face, her eyes would smile. And the smile itself, the way that she looked at me, the way that her joy and having me home radiated through her, it just showed me the power of that. It showed me how when you give all of yourself to make someone feel welcome, the way it makes them feel is something that they might never forget. And I'll never forget how she inspired me to want to do that for so many people. You write, the smile was all I needed and it taught me an invaluable lesson, what it's like to feel truly welcomed. There's a distinction in your work between service and hospitality. And you say service is black and white, hospitality is color. Tell me about that distinction. I think way too many people conflate service and hospitality as being the same. And I believe one of the biggest steps an individual or an organization can take towards creating the kind of culture that I believe in is understanding that they're two very different things. Service is simply a part of the product you're selling. It is living up to the basic promise you've made to your customer in my world service is getting the right plate of food to the right person within the right amount of time and charging them the right price for that plate of food. Hospitality is how you make people feel while you're doing that thing. It's the extent to which the people you are serving feel a sense of belonging is the extent to which they feel seen. It's the extent to which they feel some level of connection to you to one another to the brand. Maya Angelou wrote, it's perhaps my favorite quote about hospitality and most people that work in restaurants have heard this said to them at some point or another. People will forget what you say they'll forget what you do, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. I've talked to so many people who ate at my restaurant over the years during the times when we were serving some of the best food in the world, many of whom don't remember a single thing they ate. The thing that they remember is how we made them feel that is hospitality. You write, I'd really like to let you in on a little secret, one that the truly great professionals in my business know, hospitality is a selfish pleasure. It feels great to make other people feel good. I read that will and I thought about all the people in our listening community, the members I have the privilege to work with, and how many of them show up for their work every day. And think about that, that it's, yes, it's the service aspects of leadership, the making sure we hit the results, making sure we get to where we need to go. And it's also the heart and the care and the joy of seeing people learn and to grow. It's so much a part of so many leaders hearts. And yet it doesn't necessarily always mean we do it in practice, doesn't. Well, yeah, because another adage that's been said so many times, it almost sounds trite, but in most companies, what gets measured is what gets managed, and it's really hard to measure this stuff. And so it ends up falling by the wayside. I think the reason why it's important to me to share what you just read is twofold. One, because anyone who feels that way hopefully feels seen in, in hearing it, but it's also a beautiful reminder that this is actually not an impossible thing to compel the people who work with or for you to embrace. It's just a matter of inspiring it out of them or introducing it to them because it does feel freaking good. And once you start doing it, you get so unbelievably addicted to it. You don't want to stop. Not to mention the fact that I believe when you create a culture of hospitality, it restores a sense of purpose to the work because I don't think there are many things more energizing them when you get to see the look on someone else's face when they receive a gift you're responsible for giving them. It is energizing it. You recognize the importance of that role in the world, and I think it makes it just a whole lot easier to bring your fully realized self to the work on the difficult days. But for those out there who don't feel a connection to that idea that feel like it's a ridiculous thing to say, it feels good to make other people feel good. I mean, I think everyone, everyone I know anyway has experienced this. It's the holidays. There's someone you love. You spend a lot of time thinking about the gift you wanted to give them. You give it to them. The look on their face, if they love it, that gift ends up being more of a gift to you than the actual gift was to them. We love that feeling. We love the feeling of working hard to bring someone joy and then realizing that it worked. And if that's true, why aren't we working to have that more often at work? I heard you say you're not in the business of serving people dinner. You're in the business of serving people memories. And I think so much of the work of leaders is, yes, getting to the results we need in our organizations and you are a shining example of someone who has led an organization to some impressive results. And to what you just said earlier, sometimes people don't even remember what they ate, right? Because that actually isn't the thing that really made it special. It was the experience. It was the memory of it. And I think anyone can relate to that idea. If you've ever experienced extraordinarily warm and gracious hospitality, regardless of industry, it exists everywhere. It's harder to find in some than in others. You probably know what I'm talking about. I've stated some remarkable hotels with amazing hospitality. I don't remember what the room looks like. I have no idea whether the thread count on the sheets was 600 or 800 or 1200. I don't know how many pictures were in the bathroom or who made the robes or how expensive the soap was. And yet these are the things that so many companies invest all of their time and energy and attention into getting right. The thing I remember was, did I feel welcome there? Did they make me feel like I mattered? Did they do the kind of things that showed they were willing to go above and beyond to make my experience at that hotel a little bit better than it could have been at any other hotel, 100%. But I've experienced that at dentist offices and airlines and I think that is truly the thing that separates the good from the great. I mean, listen, every, every company is looking for its competitive advantage. What is the thing about its product or brand that is special enough such that a new competitor can't come around and eat their lunch? Here's the thing. I actually don't care how good the product is. I don't care how good the brand is because eventually, and this is not my opinion. This is a fact. Time has proven it to be true. Someone will come around and create a better product or create a stronger brand. It's just a matter of how long it takes. Maybe they're going to be smarter, more talented. Maybe they're going to have more money, whatever. The only competitive advantage that exists over the long term comes through hospitality. They're consistently investing in relationships because those take a long time to build, and if you build them the right way, they take a long time to erode. Now, that's all well and good, but the only scalable way to do that effectively is to first start by showing that too and investing that in your team. My longtime boss and forever mentor Danny Meyer famously said that hospitality is a team sport. It doesn't matter how hospitable you are as the hospitality of the whole that defines your collective success. It is impossible to expect a group of people to treat your customers in a way if they don't know how good it feels to be treated in that way, and that's your responsibility. Your responsibility is to invest in them in exactly the way you want them to turn around and invest in your customers. I was thinking about Danny Meyer as well, too, because I stumbled across a YouTube video from him recently, and he made the point that he's learned that you have to put your customer second. And it's behind the staff, which I think in the hospitality framework is something that most people wouldn't necessarily think of that way. They think of traditionally the customer first, but he goes to exactly what you just said, team first. By the way, I learned that from him, and some people may hear that and think it sounds woo-woo, but it's actually like the very definition of strategy. I'm constantly looking for the best levers at my disposal. What are the things that I can exert the least amount of energy into that have the greatest impact? That's not because I'm lazy, but we only have so much energy to go around, and so we need to be really thoughtful and strategic in how we use it. I can run around like crazy and try to impact as many of my guests as humanly possible. I mean, at our peak before I sold the company, we had restaurants in LA, Las Vegas, New York, the Hamptons, Aspen, London. If I worked every single day of the week, 24 hours a day, maybe I would have been able to touch 4% of the people we were serving, or I can spend a lot of energy focusing unilaterally on the people that worked for me, and I can touch 100% of them, and they would, by definition, pay that forward to 100% of the people we're serving. It's just a more strategic and scalable approach, not to mention the fact that it has the added benefit of being the right thing to do. I heard another interview you did recently, and I don't know the exact quote you said, but I wrote down Leadership at its best is an act of hospitality, that that's part of leading well. And there's so many beautiful examples in the book of where you and your team really did this and were so mindful of how you did it. And one of the things, of course, that's a reality for every leader is both praise and criticism. And there's a really short quote in the book that says, "One size fits one." Tell me about how you think about that in the context of praise and criticism. Well, so I believe that creating a culture where feedback is the norm is one of the most important and powerful things a leader can do. And when I say where feedback is the norm, what I mean is that not only is it well received, but it's sought out. But when I talk about feedback, I'm not just talking about praise. I think we're in the middle of a pretty beautiful cultural season where more companies are recognizing the importance of praising the people that work for them, and I think that's a beautiful thing. But sometimes I fear that in our focusing on praise, we're forgetting about the power of criticism because of praise is affirmation, criticism is investment. And there are a few things more powerful that a leader can do than stepping outside of their comfort zone for long enough to invest in the people around them. But it's only a good thing if it's done thoughtfully, and there's some rules to give to giving criticism thoughtfully. The first is criticize and private. You can pray is in public, but criticize and private because the moment you criticize someone in front of their peers, a wall of shame goes up and they're no longer able to receive the message you're trying to deliver. Criticize the behavior, not the person way too often. We are telling someone they are bad. When really what we're trying to communicate is the thing they are doing is not up to our standards criticize consistently. We can't pick and choose when we are in the mood to convey criticism because a leaves the team feeling uncertain about what is important to you and it reinforces this idea that you only criticize people when you're in a bad mood. Criticism should never be emotional. The moment you bring emotion into something as pragmatic as criticism, you make the conversation emotional, which again makes it hard for the person to receive the message you're trying to deliver. And then one size fits one or I kind of talked about in the book is like tough love languages. Anyone who's read the book, The Love Languages, which is an amazing book about marriage. Probably knows where I'm going, but not all people are the same and similar to how I talk about serving our guests. Not everyone is looking for the same experience since you need a contour, the approach you take to make people feel the most at home. The most at home in your environment. The same is true for how you criticize people. I have people on my team who get really sensitive and defensive, no matter how I approach the conversation. And so I need to keep that in mind and I'm not going to have a really difficult conversation with them and say, all right, we good, we good and then go right into service like I need to give them time after the conversation to kind of come back to center. There are others in my organization that we are totally aligned that it does not need to be emotional. I can have a pretty intense conversation with them and two minutes later we're back on the field doing what we need to do and we've both let it go. And there's people that I need to be gentle with. There's people I need to be more firm with. If hospitality is about making people feel seen. We do that with the people we're serving. We do that with the people we work with and it applies to everything we do and criticism is no exception. How did you and your team figure out who are the people that you could have that tough conversation with and no two minutes later, they're good. And the person that's maybe going to need an hour or so to process it and reflect on it and struggle with it a bit. I mean, I don't think it's, listen, I think relationships are relationships and the lessons you learned from those in life can be applied to those and work and vice versa. They don't all go both ways, but a vast majority of them do. I think if you have friends, you've figured out how to navigate through moments of tension with those people you've gotten to know people you learned what makes them tick. The same is true with the people you work with. It just requires making the decision that getting to know the matters to you and the understanding that any relationship is a living breathing thing. And it's an iterative process that you're going to try things with people and they're not going to work and what defines you isn't that experience. It's what you learn from that experience and how you use it to make the next one a little bit better. There's so many practices and organizations on formal performance reviews, formal sit down conversations in order to deliver feedback, give praise. And I'm reminded of what you say in the book that Danny Meyer says that hospitality is a dialogue, not a monologue. And the invitation to be giving feedback all the time and that have to, that be a regular dialogue daily hourly, that to me strikes me as so key for it coming from the lens of hospitality versus I'm just delivering that monologue. Well yeah I mean it's centered in your intention, right? I'm sure some people are listening to this and like that's way too much work I can't do that all the time. Recognize that, as you said it's a practice and like any practice it seems overwhelming in the beginning but once you get used to it suddenly it just feels effortless and routine. And if the true reason why you're doing it is to invest in people's growth and help them get to where they're trying to go it's actually pretty satisfying and fulfilling. I mean in my restaurants I would give hundreds of pieces of feedback every single night, the little things and the big things. If someone dropped a plate just right I would say hey good drop. If they turned a corner too wide I would say hey next time please hug the wall. And then the big things too, whether someone having a real difficult night where they emotionally let other people down or someone that just crushed it and deserved all the public praise in the world. I think all of that is important now listen I understand the need for formal reviews. In most every company a formal review process is an opportunity where there's a rhythm around pay and crease and like a proper sit down where you're actually carving out time and genuinely investing over the course of however long but a real chunk of time. And that relationship in someone's growth in praising them in telling them where they can improve. That's important but if that comes in place of year round feedback then I think you're missing the boat on how people learn and how they grow and how people feel connected to a person and a mission. You make the invitation for all of us especially when giving criticism to make a charitable assumption. What does a charitable assumption sound like? I mean you could also say give people the benefit of the doubt or ask the question before you say the thing. If someone comes into work late three days in a row you can just say hey you need to be on time. This does not work you are not respecting and honoring your colleagues when you come in late and you're making everyone else's lives more difficult because of your tardiness or you could say hey is everything okay. Maybe the person that's late they know they're late they don't need you to remind them that they're late maybe they're struggling with something really really difficult at home whether it's a sick child or parent or they're going through a challenging divorce. Maybe that person is actually the person that needs your love and support more than anyone else in the team and then maybe they're just late and then it's a different conversation. You don't know until you've asked that question until you've assumed the best in someone before you address the behavior is representing the worst. And what I'm hearing there too is you're also addressing it so yes you're doing it charitably and you're having the conversation versus letting it sit. Not talking about it for a week that that way you can know better what's actually going on always address it always make the time. And sometimes by the way you're going to need to address it twice either because they didn't receive the message the first time or because with a bit of reflection you realize you didn't communicate it well the first time. The number of times that I got home after a long day of work sat down a very glass of wine to journal and reflect on the day and realize that, gosh, I was not at my best when I had a conversation with whatever Fred or Joe or Mary. I'd write that down in the next day going on apologize, not for the message I was delivering, that's where people mess up in apologies as they undermine the message they're trying to deliver, but for the way in which I delivered it. Which by the way is powerful for a number of reasons it actually reinforces the message shows that you are someone that's constantly trying to improve and once you're willing to criticize yourself and take responsibility for your own shortcomings. People are that much more likely to want to receive criticism from you. That message that you deliver the next day after reflecting on it thinking about it coming back, what did it sound like? Hey, yesterday when we talked about blank, I'm sorry, I know that the way I communicated with you was not right. I know that I was not walking the walk in the same way that I talked the talk. I fell short of my expectations for myself and all of you. The message I was trying to deliver, I still believe in that you need to do this. What you were doing was not right or correct or whatever, but I'm sorry about the way I delivered it. As you point out, I think somewhere in the book too, saying sorry doesn't mean you're wrong. It's the how, it's the how you did it. Yeah, although, yeah, and that can be taken in a few different directions here. You're saying, sorry, yeah, I was wrong in the way I delivered it. I still believe in the message. Yeah, right. Indeed. Speaking of criticism, I don't know if you got criticism or just folks telling you it was not a good idea. It was you and your team had a practice of giving attention to the superstars on your staff, sharing their wins in social media, making sure the guests in the restaurant knew who those people were. And people told you, hey, other restaurants are going to poach them if you give them too much visibility. What led you to deciding to do that? And how does that come back to hospitality for you? I mean, honestly, in so many cases, integrity and hospitality overlap. We created a culture of collaboration and ownership and I tried to engage as many people from the team as humanly possible in owning parts of the restaurant. So a food runner did the coffee program, an assistant server was in charge of the beer program. And because a lot of people owned a lot of parts of the restaurant, each of those parts was the only thing that mattered to those people and each of those programs became more successful. And because of that success, a lot of people would reach out and want to write articles about the beer program or the coffee program. They don't always ask for a quote from me, but it wasn't me that was running that program. I shouldn't be the one to give them the quote. And listen, I think affirmation is a beautiful thing and I can give all the affirmation of the world. But when someone's written about or celebrated from or by anyone outside of your walls, it's a powerful thing. And so I'd always say, no, I'm not going to do the interview, but he will because it's his responsibility. I did it for a few different reasons. One, back to the point of integrity, it's the right thing to do. Don't take credit for other people's work. Way too many people do that and it's hard for me to understand how you could. Two, that person is going to have that much more pride in their work and then, by definition, be more invested in doing it well. Three, the more people that worked for me that were known publicly, the more likely it was that when someone came into the restaurant, they were going to end up talking to someone that they'd read about, which made the experience better. And four, for the people on our team that had not yet found a place or an avenue, a channel where they could invest and fuel their passions. It motivated that much more to figure out how they could. Now, yeah, the more famous the people on your team become, the much more likely that someone's going to poach them. But if you live in a place of fear, if you make decisions around doing things so that other people won't take your team, you're probably not actually caring for your team in the way that you should be. And I think any successful business person out there would agree that you should always make decisions from a place of strength and hope, not weakness and fear. In one chapter, you finish with five words and the words are make it cool to care. What led you to focusing on that phrase? When I think about that with my daughter, there's three all the time. I don't care where you are in your life, how old or young you are. There's a part of every one of us that wants to be cool. And when you think back to high school days, the cool kids, at least when I was in high school, were the ones that didn't try too hard. It was that behavior that was celebrated. And so even the best people would pretend to care less in order for the people around them to think they were cool. And that was certainly the culture when I got to the restaurant at family meal or during team meetings, people weren't, they were talking about how drunk they got the night before or making stupid jokes, whatever, just so that other people would think they were cool. In order to focus a team such that you can collectively strive for greatness, you need to change the culture such that it's no longer cool to be that person. It's cool to be the one that cares the most because whatever a culture deems as being cool, that will be the thing that people think about and aspire towards. And that requires a leader not caring about the people, not caring whether or not the people that work for them think they are cool, but being so unabashedly passionate that they've redefined for the people that work for them, what is cool. And that means sounded like a dork sometimes and like not being afraid to scream your passions from the mountaintops in spite of the eye rolls because eventually passion becomes infectious, and you can change that within your culture. We started this conversation with your mom, I'd love to finish it with your dad. You can tell reading the book what an incredible relationship you have with your dad and his wisdom and his lessons are sprinkled throughout the book. And I find myself wanting to have a conversation with him to just hear what he would say. And I'm curious as if you reflect on the last year or two, maybe perhaps since the books come out, what have you learned from him recently? Yeah, my dad is my greatest mentor, obviously my dad, but also my best friend. I mean, he is truly one of the greatest leaders and one day you should have him on the podcast. But indeed, gosh, I mean, I learned from him constantly. I think the lesson I've learned most recently from him, he told me, you're never too young to be a mentor and you're never too old to have a mentor. And I loved that because you get to a point where whether it's how old you are or how much success you've had or just where you're at near career. It feels weird to be a mentee in that relationship. And his whole belief is the day you stop learning is the day you stop living. And the day you stop welcoming people to play that role in your life is the day you stop growing. I love that one. Will Gudera is the author of unreasonable hospitality, the remarkable power of giving people more than they expect. He's a pretty cool guy too. Thanks, Will, for your time. Thank you so much. If this conversation was helpful to you three related episodes, I'd recommend one of them is Episode 289, how to lead part-time staff. Christopherio was my guest on that episode and we talked about the reality that is different of leading full-time and part-time staff. And one of those realities that is very different is scheduling. It is very challenging for a lot of leaders and managers to coordinate scheduling with part-time employees. And Chris invites us in that conversation to think about that as an act of service. Boy, it fits in so well with Will's message of hospitality and how we can actually do a better job in a management role overseeing part-time staff of actually thinking about scheduling as an act of service. So many wonderful invitations in that conversation, including that. And by the way, Chris hosts a podcast called Keys to the Shop. So if you are in the coffee or restaurant business, he's been going many years on the show a wonderful resource for you. Chris is a dear friend and in fact is the person who introduced me to Will. So thank you so much, Chris, for that introduction. Also recommended is Episode 306. Five steps to hold people accountable. Jonathan Raymond was my guest on that episode. You heard the mention in this conversation that hospitality is a dialogue, not a monologue. Jonathan has been inviting us for years to have that dialogue regularly with employees every single day. His accountability dialogue has been used by so many in our community, especially the first step of that dialogue, which is the mention, making daily mentions of not only the critical things that are needing to get attention, but also the positive things that are happening. You hear that practice in Will's work and in his success. Jonathan walks us through step-by-step exactly how to do that to really find accountability. That's not only good for the employee and the team, but also for the manager, Episode 306 for that. And finally, I'd recommend Episode 633, the mindset to help your organization grow. Tiffany Bova was my guest on that episode and we talked about her research looking at how we experience organizations. And often we think about that from the standpoint of the customer. A lot of the attention, surveys, all of that, rightfully looks at how the customer is experiencing the organization. And almost every organization espouses that employees are their most important asset. And yet espousing that isn't enough. A lot of organizations don't necessarily do that in practice. Tiffany reminds us of the importance of both the customer experience and the employee experience. And more importantly, how do you start to do both well to help your organization to grow? Episode 633 for several steps there. All of those episodes, of course, you can find on the coachingforleaders.com website. And if you haven't yet, I'm inviting you to set up your free membership today over at coachingforleaders.com. Why? Well, one of the benefits you're going to get is the ability to search the entire library by topic. You can't do that on the podcast apps, unfortunately, but we've made that available to you inside of the free membership on the website. So if you are looking for more conversations around organizational culture and feedback to the areas we're filing this conversation under today, there's many, many years of episodes there that will be helpful to you on exactly what's most important right now. Just go over to coachingforleaders.com, set up your free membership. The library access and searching is just one of the many benefits you'll find inside of the free membership. And if you're looking for a bit more, you may want to discover more about coachingforleaders plus. One of the key benefits of coachingforleaders plus is a weekly journal entry from me writing about my own experience. And one of the things you may not know about me is that I have a master's degree in making things more complicated than they need to be. I talked about that in the most recent entry of my journal, the tendency, not only for me, but I think for a lot of us, sometimes getting too caught up in the how we do things in the process of it and missing the point, missing the bigger picture. I talked in a recent entry of how I've struggled with that, how I think that we, I see that same struggle in a lot of our members, and also what we can do to begin to move past it, some of the key questions we can ask. It's just one of the many recent journal entries that come out each week. It's part of coachingforleaders plus one of the key benefits. For more, go over to coachingforleaders.plus. Coachingforleaders is edited by Andrew Kroger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. Thank you as always for the privilege to support you, and I'll see you back next Monday for our next conversation on Leadership. [MUSIC] You