Speaker:

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.