So, Do you need help connecting fully with your staff?
Speaker:Does it feel like nothing you do inspires your crew?
Speaker:Do you need help finding ways to motivate your staff?
Speaker:If so, this show's for you a little bit.
Speaker:We're gonna be bringing on Edwin Kumar and Chris McFadden of Ultra Team develop.
Speaker:And the McFadden group as they join us today to talk about their new
Speaker:program, restaurant Leadership 1 0 1, a training program for chefs
Speaker:in front of the house managers.
Speaker:And if you've ever suffered from a imposter syndrome and didn't know where
Speaker:to build your leadership, street cred.
Speaker:This is your show, not like you and I have anything like that in common, Jim.
Speaker:The imposter syndrome.
Speaker:Been
Speaker:through that a few times for sure.
Speaker:Yeah, we were talking about that just yesterday.
Speaker:We were talking about that yesterday.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It happens yesterday, I think in one way or another for a lot of people.
Speaker:My name is Adam Lamb and I'm here with my co-host Jim Taylor.
Speaker:And we're dedicated bringing you solutions to the hospitality
Speaker:industry's most persistent challenges.
Speaker:We ask that you share the show with someone you care about
Speaker:who can find this information useful, and please leave a review.
Speaker:It really does help others find these solutions.
Speaker:And I'd like to for the very first time welcome our new sponsor and this show.
Speaker:Is made possible by Evocalize., Is a sophisticated, yet simple local
Speaker:marketing automation for multi-location brands and technology platform.
Speaker:That drives results and saves time for teams and users.
Speaker:What does that mean?
Speaker:It means they're an all-in-one press and play marketing platform
Speaker:which is revolutionized a bunch of different industries and now they're
Speaker:entering the food and industry space.
Speaker:And Jim, I don't know about you ma'am, but I'm tickled to death
Speaker:that they decided to partner with.
Speaker:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker:And I think that some of the stuff that we've been talking with them about
Speaker:at Evoke eyes, there's so much that.
Speaker:Genuinely, I just, I think it's gonna help operators because they they
Speaker:were talking with me the other day about some of the stuff related
Speaker:to specific product or Correct.
Speaker:Specific types of menu where it's, yep.
Speaker:We're, we've got 16 bags of kale that are gonna bad if we don't
Speaker:sell them in the next few days.
Speaker:And they can really target some really cool stuff.
Speaker:So anyway, I think there's good opportunity.
Speaker:To help the industry and just provide a, another good solution.
Speaker:I couldn't agree more.
Speaker:I was talking to Justin yesterday about that AI component that they're layering
Speaker:on top of it and they're partnering with POS companies and other GPOs so
Speaker:that smaller smaller operations can have access to this same technology.
Speaker:But to Jim's point, yeah, if you plug in a.
Speaker:A trigger for kale and all of a sudden across this, across four or
Speaker:five restaurants, now of a sudden you've got an excess of kale.
Speaker:It will automatically produce a promotion and an ad for,
Speaker:Hey, we got kale smoothies on.
Speaker:That's crazy.
Speaker:And it can also do all kinds of localized data for weather.
Speaker:And man I think AI is just one of the coolest things, and
Speaker:I'm not scared about it at all.
Speaker:You keep hearing about this AI's coming for your job.
Speaker:AI's coming for the job well, It's gonna be an interesting adjunct
Speaker:to our human capabilities as well.
Speaker:I don't think it'll ever take over.
Speaker:But gosh, won't it be fun to play with that stuff?
Speaker:Oh
Speaker:yeah, for sure.
Speaker:All right, we're gonna bring on Christopher McFadden and Edwin Kumar.
Speaker:Afternoon.
Speaker:Jens.
Speaker:Hey guys.
Speaker:Cool.
Speaker:And we're gonna do a little check in because of course, at this
Speaker:point in the show, we'd like to make sure to ask the question.
Speaker:How are you really?
Speaker:This is for our, from our friends at chow Code dot.
Speaker:And the idea is that a temperature is associated with certain emotional aspects.
Speaker:And Edwin, I'd like to ask how are you, babe?
Speaker:Rare, medium, rare.
Speaker:Medium.
Speaker:Medium.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I'm feeling medium rare.
Speaker:I would be more on the rare side, but it's snowed out here in Vancouver I'm feeling
Speaker:medium America's motorcycle season.
Speaker:Not quite here yet.
Speaker:And you must be coming off the high of finishing your first
Speaker:cohort in RL 1 0 1, right?
Speaker:Restaurant leadership 1 0 1.
Speaker:So that's gotta be a great feeling.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Mr.
Speaker:McFadden, I love
Speaker:the medium rare world.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Little
Speaker:bit about that.
Speaker:Jim and I were talking about some of these emotions
Speaker:are actually contraindicated.
Speaker:How could you be glad and grumpy at the same time?
Speaker:But I guess we're all a complex balance of all those emotions, right?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Mr.
Speaker:Taylor.
Speaker:I agree.
Speaker:Yeah, I'm, I think I'm medium rare today.
Speaker:I feel like I say the same thing every week, but I think it's a
Speaker:good check-in still a reminder.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I'm thankful today and relaxed and hopeful that this is a good
Speaker:conversation.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Item we can think we can slam dunk.
Speaker:That this's gonna be a great conversation.
Speaker:I agree.
Speaker:Yeah I'm rare for sure, and I'm gonna lean to the rare side
Speaker:because I'm really excited.
Speaker:I'm also really curious to learn about this restaurant leadership program
Speaker:that, that you guys put together.
Speaker:And I'm also encouraged by some of the things that Jim and I, some
Speaker:of the conversations that we've had some of the things that are
Speaker:happening out in the industry.
Speaker:And it's a, I think it's a great time to be part of such a wonderful
Speaker:industry like the hospitality industry.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Couldn't agree.
Speaker:So why don't we start by asking restaurant leadership 1 0 1.
Speaker:What the hell is it?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Who wants to take the mic here?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Who wants that presentation?
Speaker:This is good.
Speaker:It all,
Speaker:it really all started with Ed and I meeting almost this time last
Speaker:year where we had sat down to a half an hour coffee and it turned
Speaker:into a five and a half hour meeting.
Speaker:Things that we had felt were missing in content in restaurants and
Speaker:that it was always about, here's the handbook, this is how you do your job.
Speaker:But nothing ever reverting back to how do we take care of you?
Speaker:How do we build you as a leader and develop your your personal skills.
Speaker:So we decided to run with it.
Speaker:The emotional intelligence world and soft skills world
Speaker:was something that we knew we.
Speaker:To really focus on noticing that it hasn't happened in the
Speaker:hospitality sector as instrumentally yet as it does in other sectors.
Speaker:So we we hit the ground running on March 12th last year.
Speaker:And in case anybody hasn't actually said this to you guys thank you very much.
Speaker:Because we recognize that leadership is probably low on the ladder of importance
Speaker:that most hospitality programs and culinary programs actually spend time on.
Speaker:So I think it's an excellent opportunity for those of us in
Speaker:the industry who actually want.
Speaker:Own our careers to be able to have this asset to go out.
Speaker:Okay I know enough to know that I don't know this, and where do I go to get that?
Speaker:And as Shane's saying, see, you already got thumbs up from Shane.
Speaker:He's great.
Speaker:Op great training program.
Speaker:Highly recommend.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Awesome.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Awesome.
Speaker:Yeah, and just bounce off of what what Chris was talking about.
Speaker:It's we both went through, and I'm sure you guys can relate to this as well,
Speaker:Jim and Adam, where it's trial by fire.
Speaker:Like you learn when you run into the obstacle.
Speaker:Correct.
Speaker:And the way that defines you when you run into that obstacle is a
Speaker:little bit arbitrary actually, because it just depends on how you have
Speaker:to best behave in that situation.
Speaker:As opposed to being armed with the idea of, okay, how do I actually navigate this?
Speaker:Hey, we have a new menu rollout or whatever else.
Speaker:How do I address the fears around this?
Speaker:That's not logistical.
Speaker:That's human based interaction.
Speaker:What do you mean we're changing sections?
Speaker:What do you mean we're changing POS systems?
Speaker:How do you address that as a leader towards the heart of the
Speaker:people that you're speaking with, as opposed to necessarily being
Speaker:like this is just how you do it now.
Speaker:And that's effectively a lot of what we're talking about in the program
Speaker:is how to connect on a human level.
Speaker:With your internal client, which is your employee and your other staff members
Speaker:and your other leaders on that team.
Speaker:I am curious to know, when you sat down for that half an hour coffee, what was
Speaker:the first sort of aha or first problem that you connected on that you're like,
Speaker:we need to do something about this.
Speaker:Was there
Speaker:one well
Speaker:One common like really pissed me off type thing or what was it?
Speaker:It's it, okay so it's funny because I actually I contacted
Speaker:I, I sent a message to Chris.
Speaker:I said, Hey man, this is gonna sound super pitch.
Speaker:But just roll with it.
Speaker:And and so we end up, yeah, we end up connecting.
Speaker:And it was interesting because we actually, it took us about two and
Speaker:a half hours before we got into the dirt of the negative experiences.
Speaker:It was more around us thinking about what would we like to have seen and
Speaker:what did we provide later in our careers as we became more mature.
Speaker:That we could have implemented earlier that had it only been exposed to us.
Speaker:And so it really wasn't until I'd say two and a half to three hours into
Speaker:into a beautiful simple omelet that that which was dead cold by that point.
Speaker:Where we kinda talked about, Hey, yeah, you know what, like these are some
Speaker:of the major issues that we encount.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And how do we help people navigate them so that they don't have to have
Speaker:those hyper traumatic experiences.
Speaker:So at the two and a half hour mark, you looked at each other and said, did we
Speaker:just become best friends, kind of thing?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yeah, totally.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, it was, the brom was formed.
Speaker:10%.
Speaker:Did you guys not know each other before
Speaker:that coffee?
Speaker:Oh yeah.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:We knew each other for years.
Speaker:We mentioned few years, probably 2015 or something like that is
Speaker:when
Speaker:I met you at Chumba?
Speaker:Yeah, it was some, somewhere around there, but we knew each other in
Speaker:passing through other Those are all,
Speaker:and so if I can ask okay, so you're in this me, you're in this meeting.
Speaker:You're talking about things like you wish someone would've told you
Speaker:about it sooner, and now it's an opportunity to pay that forward.
Speaker:What were like the big blocks that, that started first, like what
Speaker:were the things that you felt were necessary to cover in this program?
Speaker:In no particular order of importance,
Speaker:I think the most difficult thing was opening up a blank
Speaker:Microsoft Word document.
Speaker:Ooh.
Speaker:That's the starting point of what, what enveloped into
Speaker:an eight week set of modules.
Speaker:And then the number one thing was soft skills were the key factor
Speaker:that was the number one set of words that we had used with each other.
Speaker:What we need to focus on.
Speaker:And then how do we develop the type of program to look into the idea of
Speaker:what soft skills are from the beginning.
Speaker:And then developing it along the way to be able to focus a
Speaker:lot more into empathetic world.
Speaker:Empathy comes up six or seven times in the class, each modules getting
Speaker:into establishing goals and values and change management that you need.
Speaker:And the connection really that.
Speaker:That memorable moment when you realize that you're taking care
Speaker:of guests in the restaurant.
Speaker:But that always seems to be the focus in realizing that we're in a people
Speaker:business we should be taking care of ourselves and our people, number one.
Speaker:And that's where the development came in a, in quite a few stages.
Speaker:And so we finally got to.
Speaker:You know what is the most important thing for people to say, huh, I didn't
Speaker:think about that in the restaurant, or, this is how I've always just done it,
Speaker:and I got promoted because I was a great bartender and I just became a bar manager.
Speaker:But nobody gave me the Hey, let's talk about what we need to do to
Speaker:develop your problem solving skills or your communication skills within.
Speaker:Becoming more adaptable to what the transition looks like.
Speaker:And instead it was just, here's an inventory program and go.
Speaker:So we wanted to make sure that we were touching on the understanding
Speaker:of hard skills and what has to be done in a restaurant, but let's focus on
Speaker:redeveloping you as the person you are
Speaker:first.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:There's so much there, right?
Speaker:Sorry, Adam, just No, go right ahead, sir.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Adam, you and I have talked about this so many times that, that
Speaker:let's develop certain skills.
Speaker:When I was going through that, The way it was worded to me was, don't do that again.
Speaker:Sorry.
Speaker:Learning some skills.
Speaker:Do that again.
Speaker:Cause it worked fantastic.
Speaker:There wasn't
Speaker:skill around it.
Speaker:The GM is Hey Adam, when you get a second, can you come
Speaker:in the office for a second?
Speaker:Oh, what I did revealing the last 48 hours of my mind, like,
Speaker:how did I screw this up again?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You're start getting planning
Speaker:I think it's amazing that you guys are starting to not starting to,
Speaker:you have there's, you've formal.
Speaker:And quickly you've found a pretty good niche in the market, I think, right?
Speaker:There's restaurants Canada's behind you guys on some of this stuff,
Speaker:and you're gonna be presenting at the show in Toronto, aren't
Speaker:you?
Speaker:I'll be a part of the panel with you for a more
Speaker:resilient leader.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Edwin, maybe you can answer this question.
Speaker:I get that some of the some really important things to
Speaker:think about are values and.
Speaker:And there's an internal par partially into that.
Speaker:There's also an external part of that how you're showing up in the workplace.
Speaker:So I get that you could probably teach that, but how
Speaker:do you actually teach empathy?
Speaker:Yeah there's different elements on how we approach this in the course.
Speaker:It's figuring out how do you actually define.
Speaker:Empathy and when is it useful and when like when do you use it tactic
Speaker:tactically, and when do you use it?
Speaker:Just from a a core part of who you are.
Speaker:And I I think one of the biggest elements in there is that people
Speaker:sometimes have associations with just certain words where maybe empathy
Speaker:represents a weakness in someone.
Speaker:Maybe empathy represents someone being overly vulnerable.
Speaker:But empathy is really just about core understanding.
Speaker:And it.
Speaker:Necessitate.
Speaker:In fact, it doesn't even require agreement at all.
Speaker:You don't have to con agree or condone with anything to be
Speaker:empathetic to the other person.
Speaker:It just means you have a deep level of understanding.
Speaker:And so then we actually utilize a lot of experiential conversation,
Speaker:dialogue within the course itself.
Speaker:And then we test against it.
Speaker:We create like these little mini scenarios and say, okay, great.
Speaker:Let's do breakout rooms.
Speaker:Let's figure this out.
Speaker:And then we workshop it.
Speaker:And then afterwards we debrief those workshops.
Speaker:And so then the reality of, okay, academically I understand it, but
Speaker:then experientially I can actually start to realize where my capacity is
Speaker:within those two things becomes really quite as the self-awareness comes up,
Speaker:and I get that empathy is not necessarily, doesn't necessarily.
Speaker:Oversharing or scenarios like that.
Speaker:And you can understand where a person's coming from intellectually
Speaker:and also emotionally, but it's not like you want to carry them in order
Speaker:to to make sure that they get what they need in the moment, correct?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Correct.
Speaker:And in fact, it's actually the opposite.
Speaker:It, it has a lot to do with empowering the other person to figure it
Speaker:out on their own with you as a.
Speaker:Not as the person that's actually getting the driver's seat, which is a very
Speaker:specific style of pay setting, which gets in the way actually, because we actually
Speaker:promote that a lot in the restaurant space where the busier person gets promoted
Speaker:because they're the busier person.
Speaker:But you can't do that exter internally.
Speaker:It's not sustainable.
Speaker:As you get into running larger and larger teams or more and more units or.
Speaker:How do you do that?
Speaker:It, and so becoming an effective leader is tricky because as you move out of
Speaker:specialization how do the backfill of soft skills start to carry a lot of
Speaker:the weight of your experience, right?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Interesting.
Speaker:So who is, I mean there's, you've mentioned and we've all in this
Speaker:conversation so far, we've talked about the bar manager, the gm,
Speaker:the, now you're talking about moving up through levels of organization.
Speaker:Who's the, who's it for, who's the best fit for something like this?
Speaker:Yeah, so really we're talking about it was interesting cuz we had a breadth of
Speaker:people in our first cohort, in our first.
Speaker:And effectively what it was, we had some junior people and some
Speaker:people with a lot of experience.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And what was great was is that in fact some of the younger ones had a, had
Speaker:already integrated some of the things that the older ones didn't, but then
Speaker:the older ones had experienced that the other ones hadn't quite gone through yet.
Speaker:And anyone that's starting to move through or is interested in moving through
Speaker:leadership in the restaurant ideally is where it's at and if you've got blind
Speaker:spots, they'll get revealed in the course.
Speaker:And not only get revealed, but give you the opportunity to work through it
Speaker:and figure it out and really think internally about what does this mean.
Speaker:There was actually a really important part, Chris I think this probably
Speaker:stood out for you as well where we a couple of different ideas or internal
Speaker:stories were brought up within the class and we just straight out challenged.
Speaker:It was like, is that actually working for you?
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:And on both sides.
Speaker:It was a pretty, pretty big moment.
Speaker:I think it was neat.
Speaker:If you wanna talk about three or something like that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Catching people off
Speaker:guard with those questions.
Speaker:They're like what?
Speaker:And not
Speaker:an example.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So for example there, there was one particular scenario where someone said,
Speaker:it's always about saying yes, and then someone else had said I think it
Speaker:has to come down to pragmatic execution.
Speaker:And the thing is that like we, we wanna know okay, if you're the yes
Speaker:manager and you're doing that for the client, does that negatively impact the.
Speaker:But if you're doing that for the staff, does that negatively impact the client?
Speaker:So these all or nothing kind of statements can sometimes can sometimes become
Speaker:things where you're like, are you sure?
Speaker:And the, are you sure in a safe environment is a
Speaker:great place to explore that.
Speaker:Christopher I have a question in mind for you, but I just wanted to pitch to Edwin.
Speaker:You've done your first cohort, everybody's got their diploma
Speaker:and survived emotionally.
Speaker:And was there anything that came up in this beta test that perhaps you hadn't
Speaker:given enough time or space for that now you wanna make adjustments for?
Speaker:Or did it
Speaker:yeah, I think there was two specific ones.
Speaker:One was the aspect of change manage.
Speaker:And how consistently that's happening in restaurant spaces, whether it's
Speaker:a new feature, a different way of serving wine updates, the seasonal
Speaker:food, all sorts of stuff like that.
Speaker:And what's the impact of that on new staff?
Speaker:And then with the high churn rate, how are you continuously training people?
Speaker:That was one thing that kind of came up where we could probably
Speaker:spend a bit more time on.
Speaker:The other one was goal setting.
Speaker:Where how do you set up high levels of engagement with your team, where you can
Speaker:set 'em up with 90 day and six month based goals to increase engagement.
Speaker:So you're supporting their growth and how is that thematically
Speaker:leaning into your brand.
Speaker:Those were two very specific aspects that we found the students really liked
Speaker:but also, That might be a whole separate like thing that we may have, right?
Speaker:Excavate And Shane's chiming in said we had challenges and disagreements all with
Speaker:the context of further understanding, but very productive deep dives.
Speaker:And I just wanna say hazah man, that you used the opportunity to actually challenge
Speaker:and to create a safe space for somebody to actually go there where maybe they.
Speaker:Operating under false assumption all this time and challenge them to actually
Speaker:take a dip a different perspective.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And just before you throw that over to Chris I think that's, it's an
Speaker:important distinction here that they can do that in this course because
Speaker:I'm not doing their employee review.
Speaker:They're not worried about getting fired.
Speaker:Or saying the wrong thing or revealing a weakness or an idea that
Speaker:they can beta, that they can test.
Speaker:That's how do you do that with someone where maybe the relationship with
Speaker:your direct manager is not quite so
Speaker:safe?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Because it's becomes entangled at that point.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So what happens in the cohort stays in the cohort.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:very much very
Speaker:much and it was neat to watch the thinking that went into there
Speaker:were some students that just paused for three or four minutes in.
Speaker:And a being caught off guard by what was being talked about and that it
Speaker:was actually being talked about.
Speaker:And then to think out their response in a different way because they didn't expect
Speaker:it to be asked in this kind of tone.
Speaker:And it was amazing to watch.
Speaker:Students just go, huh,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Like that Yeah.
Speaker:Moment.
Speaker:That's a rich, that's a rich moment.
Speaker:Christopher, I know that you wanted to talk about a particular subject
Speaker:that we chatted right before the show, but I also wanted to make mention
Speaker:to our listeners and viewers that.
Speaker:As usual, once this hash hashtag lunchbox live stream ends, we're gonna
Speaker:go into another studio and we're gonna do our lightning round where all four
Speaker:of us are gonna give three, three steps or three things that you can
Speaker:actually try out in your organization this weekend and test it yourself.
Speaker:See what works, see what doesn't work.
Speaker:And Edwin, I think that point that you made about like being
Speaker:outside of the chain of command.
Speaker:And in a safe space, like there have been some organizations I walked into and the
Speaker:fir, one of the first things I heard was they don't trust HR for whatever reason.
Speaker:Or they don't trust upper management for whatever reason for whatever history.
Speaker:And I don't think I gave it enough thought that, like how wonderful that
Speaker:must be to be outside of that space and that management structure to be able
Speaker:to really be in a state of discovery.
Speaker:That's a great gift.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It, it changes the dynamic a lot.
Speaker:It's one of the benefits between all of us being in the coaching
Speaker:space, especially specific to restaurant hospitality that I
Speaker:think is not quite yet realized.
Speaker:Where we're that ability of having that third party credible voice, but then
Speaker:also having that ability to have the solace of knowing that you can actually.
Speaker:In, in that environment and not feel inhibited or
Speaker:guarded, is such a huge win.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Be because the ability to make the mistake is where you're gonna learn
Speaker:and without fear of repercussion or you know that it's coming around back at you.
Speaker:I think that's priceless and good on you because again, like hearing you say that
Speaker:it's landing in my heart going oh yeah.
Speaker:If that, if I was actually in that space it'd be different if I was in
Speaker:the ballroom at the hotel being led by some facilitator who came in and there's
Speaker:management holding up the wall in the back on, okay, let's see who fucks up now.
Speaker:And Christopher I'm curious because you mentioned This idea about staying
Speaker:ahead of the burnout factor, and is this in relationship to restaurant
Speaker:leadership 1 0 1 as a, as like u utilizing this course and program
Speaker:as a way to stave off that burnout?
Speaker:Yeah, I think one big thing that Ed and I had started realizing, and actually the
Speaker:two of us being a part of the alumni, if you will, of restaurant tourism.
Speaker:But people just started leaving the.
Speaker:We just, we were watching some pretty serious names in this
Speaker:industry, start to just go somewhere else or do something else.
Speaker:And that, that was a huge trigger for us to, I think one of those
Speaker:kind of pivotal moments at that two and a half hour mark of our first
Speaker:conversation of what if we could have helped keep people in this business?
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And not that necessarily.
Speaker:I might jumped.
Speaker:Jumped off ship for a lot of reasons.
Speaker:But writing this course was a huge aspect for both of us to
Speaker:be able to look internally
Speaker:and as we were writing it and go, oh, bad man,
Speaker:that, that would've been, my wife actually made the joke.
Speaker:She goes, you're gonna, you're gonna take this course as well, right?
Speaker:And I said, yes.
Speaker:So I
Speaker:edits on the flight back and forth from V.
Speaker:I was like, okay, I did the course.
Speaker:She goes, yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Maybe a few more moments of it.
Speaker:But the
Speaker:Could we have seen Vancouver restaurants had more success and the whole before
Speaker:Covid, during covid, after Covid moments of how it shifted our industry that
Speaker:was a capturing factor for us to go.
Speaker:Could we have saved people from the burnout factor.
Speaker:And that this course and knowing this course was a part.
Speaker:Trying to help help save
Speaker:that.
Speaker:Jim.
Speaker:I'm reflecting on the fact that I don't think a day goes by when we don't
Speaker:talk about the training gap, right?
Speaker:As we've defined it, which was this weird thing about maybe being promoted
Speaker:to a junior manager, pre Covid v and then the entire operation.
Speaker:Spins on a dime, you're just keeping your head above water.
Speaker:And then they come out of that and everybody think, okay, it's cool.
Speaker:We can go back in the pool now and be in, run over.
Speaker:And yet these managers haven't had an opportunity to Yeah.
Speaker:Gain these critical, soft skills.
Speaker:Gimme your thoughts on that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You and I have talked about that multiple times, that development and
Speaker:training gap where I get promoted into management and the typical
Speaker:progression through the company might.
Speaker:2, 3, 4 years of management before you're conditioned enough to be a GM
Speaker:or whatever it might be, or a chef.
Speaker:And what the pandemic did was people still have 2, 3, 4 years of management
Speaker:experience, but they were packing takeout.
Speaker:They weren't doing the same things that they were doing.
Speaker:And now things go back to normal and they still go I've got four years of
Speaker:experience and I'm ready to be a gm.
Speaker:And they're promoted into running.
Speaker:7, 5, 6, 7, 10, 12, 15 million a year business.
Speaker:And they don't have that yet.
Speaker:There's, I think this what you guys are doing.
Speaker:It, to me, it plugs straight into that.
Speaker:That, for lack of a better term, that gap.
Speaker:And just to what you guys were talking about a minute ago, I think it's very
Speaker:cool that you were able to speaking about empathy and just how real you've been
Speaker:about this process is that you actually looked at what your former self needed.
Speaker:In order to be more successful.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And just to roll off of off what you just said as well, there, there's another
Speaker:element there that ties in and that is the idea of resilience with the idea of
Speaker:being overwhelmed and burnout factor.
Speaker:And ironically, the greater you can flex the empathy muscle, the
Speaker:higher the level of resilience over.
Speaker:It's more about when you're pushing back against the understanding of what someone
Speaker:else is experiencing, that actually your resilience gets compressed.
Speaker:And so one actually grows with the other which, which is not
Speaker:often talked about, I don't think.
Speaker:But yeah,
Speaker:that's a core, core factor.
Speaker:And before I get into our last question, I just wanted to shout out in doing
Speaker:research, This particular episode, of course, I came across a Gary V Post, right
Speaker:where he starts off soft soft skills are like em like empathy and kindness
Speaker:are often viewed as nice to have when in reality they should be seen as a must.
Speaker:In fact, they're actually the hardest skills in business and he goes on.
Speaker:But the last line really threw me for a loop, and I know how much a
Speaker:Gary v Jim, you're inspired by him.
Speaker:But the last line of the post is being kind and having empathy is not just the
Speaker:right thing to do, it's actually roi.
Speaker:And I'll put a link to that post in the show notes.
Speaker:But if we can do a quick rip whip round and and come back to the
Speaker:original question of the show was how do you inspire, connect,
Speaker:and manage your staff with empathy.
Speaker:So if we can just get a minute or two from each one.
Speaker:Edwin, you wanna start off with
Speaker:that?
Speaker:Yeah, sure.
Speaker:So effectively it's about showing up and being connected at its core.
Speaker:This is getting out of your own head and trying to listen without
Speaker:fact finding, try to listen without solution based without jumping
Speaker:the solution right out of the gate.
Speaker:If you have the ability to first hear what someone else is going through,
Speaker:absolutely within two, three minutes, maybe 10 minutes into a conversation,
Speaker:you're gonna have the ability to fact find what the issue was and go to solution.
Speaker:But going there right out of the gate is not.
Speaker:The ideal cuz all someone is feeling is that they're a cog in this big thing.
Speaker:And that you're solving the problem that they're experiencing, not
Speaker:meeting them where they're at.
Speaker:That would be one of the biggest elements.
Speaker:So if you removed fact-finding and you removed trying to find the solution,
Speaker:what question would you ask your staff?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:If you didn't have those two things on your immediate agenda.
Speaker:Perfect.
Speaker:I love it.
Speaker:Christopher.
Speaker:I'm not trying to get us to answer
Speaker:that right now.
Speaker:I'm open into answering.
Speaker:Go through the course.
Speaker:You have to go through the chorus.
Speaker:That's excellent too.
Speaker:Mr.
Speaker:McFadden.
Speaker:I
Speaker:think one big thing and this is a I'm pretty transparent in this
Speaker:world and very honest about things.
Speaker:I had gone through a lot and as I took a break, I realized that if I was going
Speaker:to come back into my restaurant and be the leader that people were expecting
Speaker:me to be, then I needed to start off my conversations with making amends.
Speaker:And
Speaker:I realized falling on my own sword was the most, most satisfying thing that
Speaker:I needed to do for everybody else.
Speaker:For myself, of course, but and then I started after chicken, three weeks off.
Speaker:Let me sit down with all of my team to find out what they need from me.
Speaker:And that was the door that I opened.
Speaker:With really knowing that I can't be the leader that I want to be
Speaker:unless I'm the leader that my team wants and hoped me to be.
Speaker:So I was I started with apologies to my team if I'd ever let them down.
Speaker:And then let's talk one to one to dive deeper into what
Speaker:what we can do to be stronger.
Speaker:And allowing me the opportunity to open my eyes much more
Speaker:clear in in listening to what my
Speaker:Team for.
Speaker:You're also modeling clearly to them what transparency and vulnerability looks like.
Speaker:And if you're willing to do that, does that mean that I'd be more willing to show
Speaker:up to you in a similar fashion, right?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Love that Mr.
Speaker:Taylor.
Speaker:I don't know if this is gonna answer the question, but the thought that
Speaker:keeps just going through my mind was just, there's been a few discussions
Speaker:about resiliency and I've, I've said this to a, I think Adam, we
Speaker:might have talked about this before.
Speaker:I've always just had this thing in my gut that I the restaurant industry has its
Speaker:own definition of the word resiliency, and to me it's just shut up and work hard.
Speaker:And that, I think what you guys are doing is going to bring a lot of light
Speaker:to the fact that being resilient isn't about just shut up, take it work harder,
Speaker:work longer work any of those things.
Speaker:It's it's really about helping people understand what empathy and
Speaker:being solution based and learning and development and all that stuff is about.
Speaker:I'll do whatever I can to support you guys.
Speaker:I think what you're doing is really good.
Speaker:That's excellent.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:I have
Speaker:Christopher, when you're talking about making amends and falling on your
Speaker:sword I got really good at doing that.
Speaker:And yet there was a point where there was some staff members
Speaker:saying okay, you're sorry.
Speaker:Now what?
Speaker:You keep saying you're sorry, but nothing ever changes.
Speaker:So for me, I think is I would've a really really.
Speaker:Transparent conversation with my direct report and let them know that this is
Speaker:the emotional tact that I want take with my crew so that I can, so that I can
Speaker:feel supported in showing up for them.
Speaker:That, and almost to Gary v's.
Speaker:Point it's ROI positive.
Speaker:If we can save one person from going out the damn back door
Speaker:that's 4,000 bucks right there.
Speaker:Because I've tried to do that without having my direct report okay with it.
Speaker:And it just blew up in my face.
Speaker:So this thing of being able to manage up and manage down, and again showing up as
Speaker:being not unreasonable, but that we're at the space now where things have to
Speaker:change or we will all be out of business.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Thank you so much guys, for all your input.
Speaker:Congratulations on restaurant leadership one-on-one.
Speaker:All the links will be in the show notes.
Speaker:I'm gonna do a recap of this particular episode in post tomorrow morning, which
Speaker:we'll have the link for the bonus content.
Speaker:And Al as always I just wanna say thank you very much to e vocalized
Speaker:for making this episode possible.
Speaker:And the links will be in the show notes as well.
Speaker:And believe it or not, at Turning the table podcast.com.
Speaker:On the sponsor page, there's a video there that you can access.
Speaker:Again, the sh the links will be in the show notes so that you can
Speaker:actually see what kind of impact this possibly might have, this
Speaker:technology might have on your business.
Speaker:Christopher, Edwin, Mr.
Speaker:Taylor.
Speaker:Love you guys so much.
Speaker:Thanks for making this a really kick ass show.
Speaker:Thanks.
Speaker:Thanks for Shane and all the other listeners and viewers.
Speaker:As always, we'll be back next week on Turning the Table Thursday, 12 o'clock
Speaker:Eastern time and yeah, I feel blessed.
Speaker:This was a great conversation.
Speaker:Thanks.
Speaker:Thanks so much guys.
Speaker:Thank you very much folks.
Speaker:See you then.