Welcome back to another edition of our hashtag lunchbox livestream, turning the tables for those of you who are new to this, we we stream live on LinkedIn. YouTube every Thursday, 12 noon. The show is about staff centric, operating solutions for the hashtag new kitchen culture. The show is sponsored by benchmark 60, and we have Jim Taylor here with us and waiting in the wings. We have a very special guest.
I refer to her as the hospitality leadership of bad-ass, but you know, I think you'll probably. I understand that that's what it looks like too for you. Anyway, good morning, Jim. How are you? Excellent. How are you? I'm doing great. And before we bring Alison on, I think that there's a little something that we get to a show and tell people you've been out this past week on a mandated paternity leave, which you did in marked 60 support for both the masculine and the feminine, and this.
Gorgeous thing right here, McKenna Taylor at her she's gorgeous. And there's an image of her with the with the dog who apparently is having difficulty reconciling the fact that he is no longer the baby of the family, that he is just jealous. It's awesome. But we'll still take him out. He's he's going to be okay. Sounds great. Let's welcome, Alison to the show. Hi. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Alison Anne is a hospitality leadership skills coach and mentor, and her website is the restaurant revolution, which immediately pissed me off because I thought, damn, that's a good name. Why didn't I think of that? I was not surprised it wasn't taken and in all transparency. One of the value adds that Alison brings to all her clients issues. Also a benchmark 60 solutions provider.
That's not necessarily going to be our topic of conversation today, but I can't think of any, any hospitality leader right now. Who's not seriously considering trying to figure out a better way to not only manage, but retain their staff at a point of attraction. And that's one of the things that.
So great about benchmark 60 Allie, before we get going, I was just curious, you know, w w one of my observations has been that in my career, there wasn't really any formalized type of school or class that I could take as a hospitality professional for leadership. And I think I'm probably not the only one. Who got confused early on. Like, what's the difference between managing and leading?
Like what do you see as that fundamental difference and what are you doing in support of assisting people to get those critical leadership skills that they're going to need for, you know, this next restaurant evolution? Hmm. I mean, first I have to give you props Adam, because the fact that you even had the wherewithal to ask that question means that in my experience, you were like way ahead of the curve while you're welcome. I say this with part of the reason.
I got into the restaurant industry when I was 17. I was just a total cliche. I thought it was going to be something fun for the summer and then I'd be out and literally it'll be 20 years in January. I just, I just can't. I just can't stay away. Restaurant industry people are my people and this industry is my industry. And so please know that I say with, with great, great love. Most industry people don't even know that there's a difference between management and leadership.
Yeah, so that's, that's a huge, that's like a, a step zero. Because so many people get into a leadership role in the hospitality industry and they think that it's about making sure numbers are good and telling people what to do and getting people to follow the rules which is. They're great management tactics.
And in my experience, both as a human being who has worked in the industry and in the work that I do as a coach and a consultant, people, people very rarely follow the rules because somebody said, these are the rules and I need you to follow them. And there's a lot of surprise here. The manager. The supplies manager supplies or the manager. That was how it worked for me. Somebody just came up to me one day with the keys and said, you're good to close out. Right?
Yeah. You know, you don't, you don't make any stupid, you're the money out, leave it on the desk and all handle it in the morning. Just make sure that the door gets locked to your, to the code. So what, why do, why do you think that restaurant, the restaurant industry. Is it like that because most other industries aren't like that people have more formal management and leadership development training wise. Why restaurants like that?
You know, I think that it's in part that like restaurants have always kind of related to themselves as the wild west. Like we're not, we're not like other industries. You can't make me put on a suit and tie and sit at a desk. You can't make me, I won't, I have tattoos. Right. And I'm going to make alcoholic beverages for a living. And so you have a whole community full of these kind of like slightly too greatly rebellious. I'm not like other people.
I don't fit into the cultural norm stories, running their lives. And then they all get together and are like, Hey, let's run a business. What could possibly go wrong? Right. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And it's, it's interesting because then there's so many of those people who I don't know about you, but when it was my turn to get into positions of responsibility, it was literally, I think the boxes I had to check were don't do anything stupid. Don't piss anybody off.
You know, maybe formally or informally don't date, the staff you know, don't show up late or miss your shift basically just don't do anything stupid and you're going to get some responses. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Just show like the slightest commitment to your job. And next thing you know, you're on the fast track to being in charge of the place without actually any sort of support or training in what it takes to run.
I think my last job before I fully went solo, let's say it's a place that did 5 million a year in revenue. Which you know, if you, I know Jen, the kind of places that you work that might snap sound like small potatoes, but this was like, it was just, it was just a bar. It was like a bar that a guy owned that some of us ran and we did 5 million a year in revenue.
I had 49 people whose livelihoods relied on my leadership skills of which I had what I pulled out of my butt and was like, this seems like it might work. Let's try this. So, how did you learn some of this stuff? Sorry. Oh, no. I was just going to ask the same question. It's like, that's, that's such a great question.
So I do like a little, a little bit of how I got started was just kind of self-taught I just looked around at the industry and was like, this, this doesn't seem like it's working like the whole. You know, oh, people are afraid of the chef, so they'll do what he says or like scrambling. There was even, even where I worked, there was so much scrambling all the time. It was like, oh, we didn't think to prep. We're chicken wings at the sports bar for super bowl weekend. Like who?
So I would see decisions like that being made and be like, Yeah. Yeah, we got it. Yeah. I think about how we're doing things here. And so it was just in start with a lot of conversations with people. And then I also just, I very naturally and drawn towards creating relationships with people, having conversations with people, that kind of vulnerability that you. Typically get in the restaurant industry.
I I'd say that's like a little bit of how I am like a rebel and counterculture is I'm like, oh, you say we don't talk about this thing while I do. Let's talk about money. Let's talk about your childhood trauma. Let's get it. I I've known you for 10 minutes. Do you want to give me advice on my relationship life? So yeah, so it was just kind of like experiencing that. I, I was someone who. Looked at the industry and said like, I feel like maybe we could do things a little differently.
And from there it was actually just a series of fortunate events. I was posting online, a lot of, kind of my thoughts on, on society and culture and double standards that we had set up, the ways that people were treated in the industry and an acquaintance of mine got in touch and she said, Hey, I think you'd really. Do well at what I do. And she was a professional coach. And so she introduced me to her coach training program.
And I ended up going through a transformational life and leadership coach training program. Where they can see, they say coaches lead and leaders coach. And so it was all about not just building leadership skills, but also doing the transformational inside work that I had to do in order to move myself forward and kind of transform my own internal thoughts and processes, and really grow as a human. So that I could grow as a leader. So they trained me.
I continue on in their leadership development program to this day. It's a fantastic company called accomplishment coaching and the states and Canada. So that's really where I didn't learn in the restaurant industry. I learned in a leadership development program and now take everything that I've learned over to the restaurant industry. Cause it's like, guys, guys, this can change everything. This is life change. Allie, you bring up a great point especially in reflection of, okay.
So I want to, I want to go farther with my career. I somehow Intuit that there are some skillsets that I don't have and I need to find somewhere where I can get some skills. So I think at first my journey would be okay, what are the mechanics like? How do I actually. How do I actually you know, how do I actually do a great coaching council?
How do I do a great review process that the data and you get all these mechanics down and completely missed the point that if I'm not doing my own work, how am I supposed to show up and be completely present and you know, not get triggered in conversation, you know, all those critical, soft skills. I, you know, for lack of a better way to put it seem to have been like completely overlooked by the industry a hundred percent. Well, because soft skills, we don't do soft in this industry.
This is a hard industry. It's a hard industry. We're bad-ass is we hustle. We, we make it work. We deal with so many kinds of people. But yeah, absolutely. It's you can know everything there is to know about the mechanics of running a restaurant and still be just, oh, I feel like I'm on CNN now. Yeah, without knowing how to be a leader, how to be in relationship with people like people. Oh, relationship. Oh, we're not re relationship is not necessarily just.
Who's the line cook going home with tonight. Everyone is constantly in relationship all the time. And without knowing how to successfully be in relationship with people, you are never going to be as successful a leader, as you would be, no matter how good you are doing the numbers, no matter how tight your ship is, you can have the checklist to end all checklists. And if you are not leading people to come along with. Then you're just missing out on, on truly being an effective, effective leader.
Jim, I know that you worked for a long time for one of the most you know, forward-thinking companies restaurant companies in Canada. You were with them for a long time. You came up through the system. I think in conversation you said that, you know, they were very focused on staff development and it, can, you kind of give us a thumbnail sketch of like how they brought you over.
Because I think, I think that whole idea by just giving somebody the keys or just because I'm the sous chef and now the chef has gone, you know, omics, you know, they, they assume that I have the skill set to go do that. And Allison's point was completely pertinent in that she actually searched outside of the industry to learn to coach. Right. And how did, what was your experience like coming up with that company?
Yeah, well, I think I was really lucky that that's the company that I sort of just fell into. Right. I mean, I basically applied off the street to be a server there, a waiter, but you know, in, in sort of early two thousands and mid and through the mid two thousands, that company did everything from specific women in leadership development programs to, we built an internal university, actually like a university type curriculum.
Program that every single manager in the company went through and it was everything from emotional intelligence to you know, how to give and receive feedback, not just give feedback, but receive feedback. The concept that they used was actually called feed forward. So get to the point where you can actually give people constructive. Productive information before it happens. Right. You know, help them, you know, see what's coming.
And, and some really cool and unique scenarios where they blended speaking of relationship, they blended the people that were involved in that coursework together in a way that it actually builds stronger culture in the company. So what I mean by that is when I was still in fairly junior level management. One of the scenarios that I ended up in was I had to give feedback for. To the vice-president.
I was like 23 years old and I'm giving feed forward to the president of this multi-million dollar, multi location company as practice. And his job in that scenario was to practice receiving feedback. Right? So it was really an interesting way to go through it, but they did, you know, peer to peer, peer to peer mentorship, internal university, women in leadership, you know, all these different programs that really helped develop people. In that, in that organization.
And I mean, there's some really talented people in that company still. So I was really lucky that way. Alison, have you seen similar similar efforts on this side of the border by companies who are that? Forward-thinking I will say I have heard, excuse me. I have heard of that. I have heard that there are places that are making those strides. I think that that's the future of the industry. But I, I also think Jim, like you said, like it's luck these days to fall into a place like that.
And Nope, there are a lot of places and not because they don't want to be strong businesses, not because they don't want great work cultures, but just because they either don't have the background, the skill sets or the. Hours in the day to set something like that up. So right now it is, I think it's luck if you fall into a place like that, we're starting to realize how important that is. But I, I, in my experience that is that's the future.
And currently we are not seeing that in many bars and restaurants. Right. I don't, I'm not asking you to paint with a broad brush. Right. But, you know, as folks who are, you know, deep into the current state of the restaurant industry, are there specific skillsets that you see time? And again, that would support someone's growth. Like what are they missing?
Yeah. Well, I was actually thinking as, as you were talking, Jim, that with this, like the, the fif right thing, I was just going to say, thanks for being with us. Yeah, feed forward. It's so brilliant.
And as you were telling that story, I was having the memory of like the opposite experience, where I came in as, you know, a 20, probably 24 year old who, who saw different ways that things could be going and had ideas and went to some of the more established staff, went to bosses and got the response of like, who do you think you. Yeah. I remember sitting, sitting in a staff meeting of a place where I only worked there once a week. So most of the places they had never even met me before.
And they were like, who is this woman? Who's telling us that there are better ways that we could be cleaning our check presenters. Yeah. So this is actually, it's a step it's kind of like step zero. One of the first things that I work with people on is that that response is just, it's a habit. It's, it's that kind of like, I need to hold my shit together. I, I know what I'm talking about. And, and other people can't come in here and tell me what to do. That's all like a habitual mindset.
It's a lot of mindset training. So the first, the first step I think is just noticing when you're given feedback, when you are giving feedback, like what's my internal conversation. What's going on? Am I someone who says, oh, that's so great. Thank you so much. What a great idea. Are you someone who says, who does this person think that they are? Are you someone who, oh my gosh. Like, I can't tell you how many times, Hey we need to talk to you. Oh my gosh. I'm going to get fired.
Like every time. I could be their top employee. And every time I was like, oh, I screwed up. I'm going to get fired. Yeah. So that's my internal reaction, which is bleeding out into who I am as an employee bleeding out into who I am as a leader and how I'm interacting with everyone on my staff. So yeah, really step zero is just notice what your natural reactions to things. And then think about, okay.
If I'm picturing like the ideal boss that I want to be the ideal employee that I want to be two, three years in the future, like how would that person react? What kind of thought process would that person have? And do you just, you start to interrupt the habitual responses in the moment and just practice. Okay. What, what does boss three years from now me say about this?
I mean, once you start talking to people who are in those positions that want to learn and want to improve, I'm sure they're like all in immediately, right there. They're all over it. What do you say to the company that says that they don't have time for this stuff? I mean, anyone listening is like, okay, this is critically important.
And I remember, or, you know, not speaking specifically for myself, but people are probably thinking, I remember going through some of this stuff or I remember the challenge. Feeling like I'm going to get fired just because I didn't put that dish in the right place in the dish area, or I didn't buff the wine glass properly. Right. Someone's giving me feedback. So what do you, what do you say to the company that says, I don't know if we have time to do this.
I mean, the first thing that I say is I get it, I guess. That's, that's why I really value that I have 20 years of front of house experience before I got into coaching and consulting. Like there's so many people that I talk to my like, oh, well, why don't you just like, have a weekly meet? Why don't you just. Why don't you just get up earlier, but why don't you just get to work earlier? Oh, I'm already working 16 hours, six days a week. You're right. Why don't they just get to work earlier?
So the first thing is I get it, like we're all in a space where our time is insanely valuable. Because of that, nothing is ever, ever going to change unless we change it. Like, I wish that I had some magical, like, ah, you feel like you don't have time for that. Here's my five time-saving hacks, which is a great for a LinkedIn post. Right. But fantastic, great clickbait article at the end of the day.
The only thing that is going to change is what we change in the cultures of our restaurants, which starts with how we use our time. So if you are someone who doesn't feel like you have time, even starting to carve out five minutes a day and set that boundary for yourself. Like, this is my five minutes to use, to look at the future of this restaurant or to use, to work on my leadership development.
Or even just like I take five minutes a day to have a conversation with, with one staff member to really start to build that more personal relationship, get to know who they are as a person, what they need. It's it's the same kind of mindset shift that we were talking about with the feed forward. Is it interrupts that story of, I don't have time with just two minutes here, five minutes there and you start to really build a muscle around saying, you know what?
I don't have the time and I'm going to make the time anyway, because if I don't then nothing is going to change. So Alison, let me follow. Really potent comment with another question, because it seems to me that as sensitive people who really enjoy serving others, how do we create a boundary that's going to protect us and also protect our relationships by engaging in self care and self nurture. I mean, I mean, can I just like, no, I'm too busy today. I know I don't need to meditate.
I got this at least right now, like a good reminder, like what's the boundary that we have to hold as non-negotiable, if we are going to continue to grow and be present to our staff in a way that serves them and us well, and it's going to be different for every person. But. It's such a great question. It's such a great question too, because you know, everybody's different. There might be that person for whom five minutes of meditation is life changing.
But oh, Shane like such a great point, right? Thanks for participating, James St. James just chiming and saying yes. Saying yes to developing empathetic leadership means saying no to something else you're spending your time on. Is there something you can delegate be prioritize in order to practice, practice actively? And again, what a great way to put it active leadership, proactive leadership, not reactive leadership.
Yes. Yeah. And to your point, Shane, so often I think we tell ourselves, like, if I take time for building my leadership, like my self care, and I had a boss who, God bless him. He's an amazing human being. If he didn't go to the gym every day, He turned into a raging asshole. Like you just could not work with him. I spent more time fighting with him over little petty stuff than it would have taken for him to just go to the gym, just go to the gym, get out of here and your sleep at night.
And a lot of times we feel like if I say yes to developing my leadership, taking time for self care, the whole restaurant's going to follow. I've got this to do list, you know, the, the, this is this, this is the list of the four things that are on fire today. And if I don't handle them because I'm in charge, then everything's gonna fall apart. So by starting to.
No matter what the time period is, no matter what your self care looks like, whether it's going to the gym, getting enough, sleep, meditating, getting your nails done. Like for me, having my nails done is like a huge self care. It, it boosts the quality of my life immensely. And if you don't get that, I don't care. It's my thing. Now, yours. Or by setting that boundary, setting that time, however long it is, whatever it is, you actually start to realize.
That some of the things that you assumed were going to just go to the dogs, they don't, they, they handle themselves. You can hand them off to someone else or, you know, you start to notice like, oh, okay. Well, of the five things that I thought would go to the dogs, four of them actually ended up being okay. I. Got to them later. Oh. One of them actually did go to the dogs. Okay. Good to note. That's actually something I need to set up structures for.
I need to have some sort of a process in place to make sure that this gets handled, but you can't even know those things until you're starting to experiment with how you're using your time and your. Excellent. Alison I want to be conscious of our time and our commitment to our listeners and to our viewers. But I feel like this conversation could go on a very long time. So first off, I just want to say is it okay if we ask you back again? I would love that, please.
Yes. And, and before we have to break, I'm curious to know I I've put in the chat several ways for folks to get in touch with you. Do you want to just kind of rattle off some contact information? So if folks are intrigued by some of the stuff you're saying they can follow up with you. Absolutely. I'd love that. My website is restaurant revolution.me, M E. You can reach [email protected]. Ali, S O N a N N E a dot coaching at GMs. And you can find me on LinkedIn.
That's one of the best places to get in touch with me. I'm on LinkedIn all over the place all the time. So please feel free. Send me a DM on LinkedIn, Alison, and restaurant revolution. And before everybody leaves, cause we got a few minutes more and I want you to use up every single bit of this. Actionable intelligence is what the show's about. So can you give our listeners and our viewers at maybe three things?
That you feel could make a huge difference that they can actually put into use in their operation this weekend? I mean, I know if I might be clunky because it's a little unpracticed and stuff, but if somebody really knows that something can be better what are like your top three top hits, I guess you would say love it. Create time to talk to every single person on your staff at least. Start with once a week, even if it's 30 seconds. Hey, how are you doing?
Start to relate to your people as human beings first and your employees. Second to his practice asking what do you need right now? Or what would help you right now? You can try to predict what your people need all day. It takes a lot less time to just ask them. And the third one is, you know, this is this is a little esoteric for some people, but it really can be a game changer is practice asking yourself, who do I want to be? Who do I want to be in this situation?
Focusing more on who you want to be and how you want to show up in the world as a human and letting that change. How you act is going to be more of a transforming once and for all shift than having to decide all the time, what, what do I want to do? What do I want to do? How do I want to act? What do I want to do? Just choose who do I want to be? How do I want to show up in the world and let the decisions come from there? That's really good. Thank you for that. Thank you.
Hold on a second, because that is awesome. I want to make sure everybody gets it. Who do you want to be? How do I want to show up in the world? And Allie, would you say that that's a part, is that a parking lot conversation that you're having with yourself, you know, in the car before you like walk into the building or a, can you just take a moment and just reconnect to that as a way of course correcting in the core in the midst of your day? Yes. I mean, both. You can have it in the parking lot.
And I think that's great set the intention. Who would I want to be today, but then we're all humans. We have reactions that take over and yeah, time and time again, in the midst of the day, come back to it. Like, wait a second. Who do I want to be? Wait a second. Who do I want to be? Yeah. Which is so hard in the moment, right? Because again, we're, we're sensitive and it's easy to get triggered because most of us where our hearts on our sleeve and this is not about. ESOP, right.
This is like, in some ways actually a call to expand your heart. Would you say? Yeah. Yeah. That's also vice for my situation as a new dad right now to do I want to be thank you for that. I'll spend some time on that one for me. That's the shift and not just today, right? Because the reality is, is we can become that person. Moment. Right. Because if we can imagine it, then we know what's possible. So I think that's a great place to leave it.
Alison and restaurant revolution, hospitality management, bad-ass and moonlighting rock and roll singer. We thank you very much for your time. Adam, Jim, thank you so much for having me. I love this conversation, so great. And just want to remind folks that this this show right after gets converted conveniently to a podcast called turning the table. It's on Spotify iTunes. It's everywhere you get your you get your Podcasts.
And I just want to post a URL in here so that everybody gets it because it'll open up to whichever podcast player you have. And as always, we want to thank Jim and benchmark 60. And finally, I don't think that we can let this moment pass without really giving a huge shout out for the person who's done the most work this week. Thank you. Jen Taylor. Yeah. Bring a mechanic in the world. You got it. Thank you very much, everybody. We'll catch you on the next episode of turning the table.
Stand tall and frosty. Everybody have a great week. Thanks for joining us on this episode of turning the table with me, Adam Lamb and Jim. This episode was sponsored by benchmark 60 we're on a mission to change the food and beverage industry by focusing on staff, mental health and wellbeing by forecasting and actively managing workload productivity.
Over 200 restaurants and food and beverage operations have discovered for themselves an increased staff retention and become a preferred employer in their market by using our proprietary system. If you'd like to have an operational culture that everybody wants to work. Then check out benchmark 60 on the [email protected].
Thanks for taking the time to be with us and the courage to try new things for the restaurant professions, oldest problems turning the table is a production of realignment media.