Although I’m on to a new book this week, I can’t stop thinking about Unreasonable Hospitality. I wonder how many of the lessons contained within its pages can be applied in schools, and I am hopeful that much of it can be. Today, I wanted to share the gems I mined from within its covers. I hope they inspire you and, much more importantly, lead you to action.
No one who ever changed the game did so by being reasonable.
———————
How do you make the people who work for you and the people you serve feel seen and valued? How do you give them a sense of belonging? How do you make them feel part of something bigger than themselves? How do you make them feel welcome?
———————
How you serve is as valuable as what you serve.
———————
We have an opportunity – a responsibility – to make magic in a world that desperately needs more of it.
———————
Intention means every decision, from the most obviously significant to the seemingly mundane, matters.
———————
…hire great people, treat them well, and invest in their personal and professional growth and they will take great care of the customers…
———————
It’s easier to learn the right way to do things at the high end than it is to break bad habits. You can always take it down a notch, but it’s harder to go the other way.
———————
All it takes for something extraordinary to happen is one person with enthusiasm.
———————
Let your energy impact the people you’re talking to, as opposed to the other way around.
———————
Words matter.
———————
Before you fall head over heels with this one way of doing things, make sure you understand there are different approaches out there.
———————
There’s no replacement for learning a system from the ground up.
———————
On Felix: Felix’s type will be familiar to managers in every kind of customer service business. They’re notoriously disrespectful to their coworkers and often an absolute nightmare to work with, but they’re considered unfireable because they’re so beloved by the company’s customers…Just because a few regulars love an employee doesn’t mean they should be allowed to erode the foundation of everything you’re trying to build. As charismatic and as charming as these people may be with the public, and as valuable as the relationships they have with guests may seem, the collateral damage the Felixes do to the culture of a business is too dire to be tolerated.
———————
It’s everyone’s job to take care of everyone.
———————
The Rule of 95/5 – Manage 95 percent of your business down to the penny; spend the last 5 percent “foolishly.”
———————
If you want people to be there for you when you need them, you better be there for them when they need you.
———————
You should never waste an opportunity to gather intel before your first day on the job.
———————
There were plenty of standards in place, but no real systems to communicate them.
———————
There was a lot of work to be done to make the restaurant better, but there would be no point to doing any of it if the people who worked there didn’t love coming to work. If I couldn’t succeed in getting hearts and minds on board for the bigger project, then the grand vision of a push toward excellence would be dead on arrival.
———————
Don’t cannonball. Just ease into the pool.
———————
A leader’s responsibility is to identify the strengths of the people on their team, no matter how buried those strengths might be.
———————
Criticize the behavior, not the person. Praise in public; criticize in private. Praise with emotion, criticize without emotion.
———————
Establish a regular rhythm for giving praise.
Whether it’s criticism or praise, the job of a leader is to give their team feedback all the time…If you can’t find more compliments to deliver than criticism, that’s a failure in leadership – either you’re not coaching the person sufficiently, or you’ve tried and it’s not working, which means they should no longer be part of the team.
———————
Consistency is one of the most important and underrated aspects of being a leader. A person can’t feel safe at work if they’re going to be apprehensive about what version of their manager they’re going to encounter on any given day.
———————
You’re going to mess up. When you do, apologize.
———————
The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.
———————
Communicating consistent standards, with lots of repetition, was important; a good manager makes sure everyone knows what they have to do, then makes sure they’ve done it – that’s the black-and-white part of being a leader. But a huge part of leadership is taking the time to tell your team why they’re doing what they’re doing…
———————
How we were connected as a team was more important to me than anything.
———————
Employees who aren’t succeeding tend to fall into two camps: the ones who aren’t trying and the ones who are. The end result might be similar, but the two need to be handled differently: you’ve got to move heaven and earth to help the ones who are trying.
———————
Does a rule bring us closer to our ultimate goal or take us further from it?
———————
Knowing less is often an opportunity to do more.
———————
It’s a cliche that culture can’t be taught; it has to be taught.
———————
…when you’re hiring, you’re not only hiring the people who are going to represent and support you, but the people who are going to represent and support the team already working for you. Morale is fickle, and even one individual can have an outsize and asymmetrical impact on the team, in either direction. Bring in someone who’s optimistic and enthusiastic and who really cares, and they can inspire those around them. Hire someone lazy, and it means your best team members will be punished for their excellence, picking up the slack so that overall quality does drop.
———————
You need to be as unreasonable in how you build your team as you are in how you build your product or service.
———————
If your business involves making people happy, then you can’t be good at it if you don’t care what people think. The day you stop reading your criticism is the day you grow complacent, and irrelevance won’t be far behind.
———————
What criticism offers you is an invitation to have your perspective challenged – or at least grow by truly considering it.
———————
Language is how you give intention to your intuition and how you share your vision with others. Language is how you create a culture.
———————
No matter what you do, it’s hard to excel at it if you don’t love it.
———————
You must be able to name for yourself why your work matters.
———————
Success comes in cans; failure comes in can’ts.
———————
Often, the perfect moment to give someone more responsibility is before they are ready.
———————
New people have the gift of fresh eyes and could see all the warts the rest of us had long stopped seeing.
———————
The first time someone comes to you with an idea, listen closely because how you handle it will dictate how they choose to contribute in the future.
———————
It may not be possible to do everything perfectly, but it is possible to do many things perfectly.
———————
No football team phones it in for 20 games, then steps it all the way up for the Super Bowl. Similarly, you can’t be a mediocre restaurant three hundred and sixty-four days a year, and then transform into a great one the day a critic happens to come…you cannot suddenly become something that you’re not.
———————
People can feel perfection.
———————
If you correct a guest because you don’t want them to think you’ve made a mistake, you’ve made a much bigger mistake.
———————
Their perception is our reality.
———————
It’s easy to be a partner during the good times, but it’s most important during the hard ones.
———————
People usually want to be heard more than they want to be agreed with.
———————
There’s no one-size-fits-all rule for managing people.
———————
I say there is no better way to show someone you care than by being willing to offer them a correction; it’s the purest expression of putting someone else’s needs above your own, which is what hospitality is all about. Praise is affirmation, but criticism is investment.
———————
No aspect of your business should be off-limits to re-evaluation.
———————
When external affirmation comes, direct it toward the people responsible.
———————
As a leader, you have to use every single tool in your kit to build morale and to keep it high.
———————
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
———————
If you aren’t tending to your own needs, you can’t help the people around you.
———————
Do less, and do it well.
———————
A leader’s role is not only to motivate and uplift; sometimes it’s to earn the trust of your team by being human with them.
———————
Adversity is a terrible thing to waste.
———————
It’s easy to panic in the face of adversity, creativity is the better solution.
———————
Raindrops make oceans.
———————
Perspective has an expiration date, no matter how hard you try to hold on.
———————
Unfortunately, when you lose the viewpoint of the people you’re managing, you also tend to lose your empathy for them. We’d all be better leaders if we could tap back into what it felt like to be led.
———————
People love to dress up when they don’t have to.
———————
If you don’t have the courage to state a goal out loud, you will never achieve it.
———————
What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?
———————
When you’ve surrounded yourself with talented people, there’s nothing more powerful than a collective decision.
———————
There is no better way for a leader to figure out why an idea isn’t working – or how it can work better – than to walk a mile in the shoes of the people you’ve charged with implementing that idea.
———————
You should always – ALWAYS – be on the lookout for the Legend.
———————
Nobody knows what they’re doing before they do it.
———————
Make it nice.
You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more of it you have.
———————
I’m always surprised when people spend a fortune on a new project, then skimp on training the people charged with bringing the project to life – a perfect example of what it means to be “penny-wise, pound-foolish.”
———————
There is such power when a leader can admit their mistakes and apologize for them.
———————
If you call your team your family, you need to invest in them and give them opportunities to grow with you and your organization, and you should extend the same courtesy to your most valued customers.
———————
#ChooseToBeGreat
Angelo
CHOOSE TO BE GREAT 