Good afternoon, welcome. This is another episode of Turning the Table sponsored by Benchmark 60. This is episode 1 1 1 part two of our ongoing restaurant series called We Before Me or The Great Hospitality Culture Reset. In just a few moments, we'll be speaking to our featured guest executive leadership coach and mentor Kelly feathering him when she's gonna get us grounded in the ABCs of attracting, cultivating, and inspiring team members for maximum organizational impact.
We ask that you share the show with someone you care about who can find this information useful. And please, if you can't leave a review, my name is Adam Lamb and I am a career coach for chefs and hospitality professionals. And I'd like to introduce my co-host, Jim Taylor of Benchmark.
Adam , as, as always,
Good to see you. Exactly, sir. There is a lot going on, isn't
there? There's a lot going on. Yep. So lots of
interesting stuff happening. So before we bring Kelly on, I, you know, in last week's show, you kind of threw something out as kind of like a no brainer man. It just kind of took me by surprise when you said that you'd spoken to somebody and they said that you can either manage by fear or you can lead from love. So that was kind of apropo and kind of , you know, I get it, that managing, you know, comes from limited resources, you know, declining outcomes.
Whereas love is a little bit more expansive and contraction or expansion, you know, you can almost feel in your body. And then something came across my feet that kind of blew me away, which was this concept of, you know, you really have to have a lot of courage in order to build and lead a team, especially when you know there might be some people on there who, you know, do things better than you. Mm-hmm. , like, how did you navigate that in your own career?
Because I know, you know, you were kind of a different type of manager than I experienced, you know, you. Much more enrolling. And you were a lot about the team, so did, do you ever get in that spot where, you know, you're bringing on guys that you know, you know, might, you know, outshine you, and how did you deal with that emotionally?
This is a loaded way to start the . Start the chat today. And I, I'm sure Kelly's probably laughing at,
at Oh, she's definitely got a grin on for sure. Enjoying
in this conversation, but kind of kick it off. I mean, so first of all that, that sort of comment that I made about, you know, leading from love or from fear of those, Last week. I can't take credit for that. Tyler Williams is, is his name. He's the, the leader of everything culture at Zappos, which is, I mean, everybody knows that company and they have Sure. Unbelievably strong culture and employee retention. And I think he told me that his actual title is fund.
He's just in charge of making sure that everybody loves coming to work every day, which we also talked about last week. But you know, how that resonated for me was, and, and we, Kim and I got into a good discussion about this, is that you can't lead from just. Acceptance. You can't lead from just care. You can't lead from, I'm just here. It's either you love what you do and the people around you, or you are trying to basically force the issue.
And you know, you can't be anywhere really in the middle, but. I mean, how I did that, it, there's an interesting thing, and we could, again, we could talk about this a lot. A very close friend of mine, we can leave his name out of this, but a very close friend of mine was actually just promoted to the position that I was trying to get when I was still in the corporate world. And when him and I met on the, on the job in the restaurant he was, I think he was a fireplace salesman.
And he was bartending one night a week and, and he was someone who we just saw a lot of potential in, and a lot of, you know, he just had a way about him with people and, you know, he just was, he took a humble approach to everything he did. And so we actually approached him about getting into management, knowing that he had a really.
You know, a lot of upward mobility and, and, you know, fast forward a few years, it's funny, I was, I actually had to, had to swallow my pride a little bit when I phoned him the other day to congratulate him for being promoted to the job that at one time I was really working hard to get and didn't.
So you know, I think it's just about everybody wins together and when it comes to team leadership and management, and if you can't accept that there are gonna be people at some that are better at some things than you are. And if you can't wrap your head around the fact that you should actually do everything you can to help move them forward towards their strength you know, the, the leading from love side of things gets. A little messy and hard to, hard to do
so. Right. And I, I, our, like, our lead in to bringing Kelly on this quote by Steve's jobs, which is, you know, management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do. While leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could. And toss that out to good friend Chef Ryan Dodge, who I think is all about that kind of stuff. So, Wanna welcome to the show, Kelly Feather. How are you doing? Great. How are you guys? I'm doing great.
And we just wanna throw this up because of course this is what started at all. Thank you. Kelly's book, Maximizing Team Performance by Mastering Your ABC's. How Simple? It sounds so simple. Kelly Featheringham: If only it were right. kidding. Yeah. So Kelly everybody knows you as this amazing coach for C-suite executives and, and building teams and stuff, but you've had your start in a somewhat different environment. Did you not? Did you, did you start out in the hospitality industry? Did
you I did, I did. Tell us
about that.
Yeah, I , so picture me 12 years old busing tables. . Yeah. Seating people busing tables running around the restaurant. Mm-hmm. , I loved it. I I really did. I got my, got my start there. So I bought my basketball shoes for high school, things like that. Mm-hmm. , and then I stuck with it for quite some time. I think it's one of those things that's in your blood. My mom has been a lifelong waitress and it's just, it, you get caught up. I was reading one of the articles actually on, on Jim.
LinkedIn page all talking about when you get caught up in it, that you, your friends are in the industry. You date the people in the industry. Your roommates may be the people into the industry. You might even marry them. And it's, it, it, it really is. I almost feel like it's intoxicating. It's, it's hard to extricate yourself from it, and that's part of why I was in it for so long.
Even after I was doing other jobs, I usually had at least another one or two jobs going on the side because it's just the, the energy, the environment, the support that you find and and teams is one of those things that in restaurants, I really. Felt you, you feel like you're a part of a community in a restaurant more so than you do in any other job I've ever had. Because you, you work these crazy long hours. Mm-hmm. , you're commiserating about what's going on.
If there's chaos in the restaurant, be back of the house or front of the house, you really do lean on one another for support and encouragement and it's just a great, great experience.
And you had your own store at 19. I mean, you were a hard. Kelly Featheringham: Night Young professional. I think it might have been 20, but yeah, I, I . Wow. I did I once, It's crazy to say that. I mean, I mm-hmm. , I have a picture somewhere. I posted on LinkedIn a while back when my, my shift manager outfit for Pizza Hut with my little bow tie and, and yeah, it's it's one of those things that's, A great memory.
Yeah. Because I think most of us, you know, at that age are thinking very different thoughts. . Yeah. Yeah. And that, and so you spent some time in government.
I did, I did over 15 years in government quite the shift from, from attending bar winning tables to traveling around the world and building teams, foreign affairs. I was in the business of building relationships and building teams and making sure that they had the support, the tools that things that they, they needed.
You know, Jim, you mentioned just a few minutes ago about when we don't necessarily know everything and we bring somebody else on that is more knowledgeable, and I found that that was one of the greatest things that I figured out and I, I don't know that I figured it out on purpose. It just kind of landed in my lap that I worked with very technical folks and they were so brilliant and every day I sat in awe of, Wow. I. How do they know all of this stuff? Who knows all these things.
Yeah. And my job was just to make sure that they had the resources and the support they needed so that they could make us all successful. And I was just kind of like the, the backup . Adam Lamb: It's interesting that you say that, Kelly, because I, as I got wiser and more mature in my, in my in my outlook and my leadership style, I realized that really my job was to clear everybody's. To keep their lanes clear so that they could just move forward with what they had to do.
Why did your time in government lead you to the space of No, I think there's places out there where this type of skill could be used. I think that part of it was I was getting to the point where I was tired of traveling. Mm. I got married in 2016 and I kind of had other things I wanted to be doing back here in the States. I didn't wanna be spending so much time, so I started thinking about what was next for me. Mm-hmm. . I also had an executive coach through the government, and she was amazing.
I loved the support that she had and the concept that, gosh, where were you 20 years ago? I, I, I would've really benefited from, from having somebody like me when I was 20. And I wanted to have, A new role that I would have a closer impact. I was very tied to the mission in my government job and I loved working there, and I felt very passionate about it. But you always feel two or three steps removed, whereas this, every day when I talk to people, I get to see them.
I. Figure something out that they're struggling with or, or having a breakthrough or an aha moment or just celebrating a promotion or, or a new job, Things like that. I really selfishly get to be much closer to all of those wonderful moments. Mm.
And Jim, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. No, no, go ahead. So I was, initially you were kind enough to send me your book, which was great. And then I looked at it and I said, It's 94 pages. Look at that. Hmm. And it so sounds so simple. And yet within the first few pages, you know, I got a couple gut punches. Because you make a very strategic case for how. A leader would actually look at things. And you talk about the ABCs, so can you go over those, those, those building blocks? Right.
Yes. So the ABCs are assumptions, boundaries and communication. And the way I talk about 'em in the book is, you know, we're constantly making assumptions. So being aware of that boundary setting, maintaining, pushing back both from the the boundary set, as well as the person that's pushing against the boundaries, and then leveraging communication to improve the first two, improve our behaviors around the first two. , Adam Lamb: Right.
The thing that struck me was , you're talking about business, but almost every single one of those three things I've found to be critical in the health of my personal relationships as well.
And you know what's interesting? I'm sitting here going all of the, I immediately, when you said those three things, immediately went to specific scenarios that I've experienced in the restaurant business. Yeah, especially the boundaries piece and the communications part.
I mean, the assumptions one, there's, you know, there's things like with that too, obviously, but you know, the boundaries part is incredibly relevant in hospitality and communication, especially in an environment that, you know, is always on the go. I mean, that's one of the, I find one of the biggest challenges that most leaders in hospitality have is how to communicate, you know, one of the things.
That I was challenged with at one point when I was still doing, you know, the corporate operations thing was someone actually said to me once, You have to find a way to make sure that the host on their first day that has never worked in a restaurant is as confident and understands the mission as much as the person who's worked there for 15 years. And that's incredibly challenging to do. Yeah.
Yeah. And the hostess is the face, right. They're the first, first person that people meet when they come there. They're kind of the, the
linchpin. So can we, can we touch on, and not to give away all the secrets in your book, obviously, but can we touch on maybe the communication piece a little bit? a little bit
more. Yes. In the book, I talk and, and just in general in my coaching and training, I, communication is just one of those things that I think that we use without thinking so often, right? Mm-hmm. , I mean, we're, we're constantly communicating with our body language, with what we're saying, with what we're doing, with what we're not doing, with the decisions that we're making. There's so many different ways that we're communicating.
Which is great, but if we're not thinking about how clear that communication is and how intentional and, and how specific we wanna be thinking about it more from an objective driven perspective, then a lot of times our, our communication can go sideways. I mean, how many times do we ask a question and someone answers something completely different and you're think. That's, that wasn't what I asked.
Was that, because I didn't phrase the question correctly, was that because they heard something different? Was that some kind of a barrier in the way that we're communicating? There's so many ways that communication really breaks down. The way that we build relationships, we build business. We, we keep our day to day going smoothly.
And if we are paying attention to how we're communicating and being specific and being measured in what it is that we're asking and we're telling, it can really save so much time. It saves a lot of money, it saves a lot of relationships, I think because you. Learn how to navigate the, the communication styles of each other. And a lot of this is done by asking questions. I think so often, and this kind of ties into the assumptions piece. Mm-hmm.
, we don't ask a lot of questions in, in, in the essence of time. Worrying about offending somebody, making somebody feel stupid, looking stupid. We don't wanna ask questions cuz we don't. People to think we don't know, but we don't ask a lot of questions. We just talk. So in the more questions we ask and the more listening we do, I mean, we've all heard that, that we have two ears and one mouth, right?
So it's very true asking questions than really hearing the answer just empowers us to be such a, a more effective group of people.
Perfect. That's a pretty solid
takeaway. Hey, Adam? Yeah. I, I . Shared a story with Kelly in an email about an assumption that I had made that really blew up in my face, which was, we're doing this menu change at a restaurant and I pride, you know, always prided myself on being a good communicator. So I over-communicated.
We had plenty of sessions had, you know, everything posted on the Wall station, everything, and then there was a person that was, you know, continually making the same mistakes and went up to him and kind of challenged up and he would, you know, Look up from his shoes and kind of whisper to me so that no one else could hear. But Chef, I don't know how to read. And so I think that sometimes we don't even know the questions to ask.
So if we don't, then it's incumbent upon us to like have imagination. I mean, to know that someone, or to think that someone didn't know how to read when that had never come up before. And of course he's not gonna bring that up. Which leads me to the other point, Kelly, I think sometimes. Thinking about my own career, I never asked because I didn't want to know. Yeah, right.
Because then, because if I knew then it would be incumbent upon me to change it, which is kind of shameful to admit, you know? But yeah, that's why it was kind of daunting to me to read it. I mean, I think I've made a lot of progress, but I think the way that you've laid everything, and given case studies to work through. There's eight case studies in the book where you read and go, Okay, so this is the situation and what assumptions are they making, like work?
And then that last page of the story is, okay. So if they were, if they were working the ABCs, this is what the situation would've looked like. and everywhere I turned talking to my wife about her business and, and it seems like those three issues come up so often and I'm really glad that you. Say it in such an accessible language, I guess is what I wanna say. And, but that's not all of it. After the case studies, you also talk about some things that you language 'em.
I think for me they were kind of assumptions or like I thought I knew them, but can you talk a little bit about adaptive oversight?
Yes. So , I, it, it's, so, adaptive oversight is my version of micromanaging. Micromanaging is such a dirty word, right? It should be four letters. Everybody gets very stressed when I talk to them about micromanaging and, and. We can't micromanage. You don't do that. And, and, and I think as I mentioned in the, in the book, we all have our story of that manager that was all up in your business and just drove you crazy because they didn't know how to do it.
But we also have probably had several managers that were micromanaging us and we didn't realize it. And, and like I say in the book, it, it wasn't magic, it's adaptive oversight, the way I describe it. Because what they're doing is they're thoughtfully.
Applying the level of support and oversight that you, specifically, you the employee need, and you do that by getting to know the employee, asking questions, understanding what they need from you, and paying close attention about how long they need. For you, right? There are a lot of employees that are brand new, and they do need a lot of support. And you can call it micromanagement or you can call it support because you wanna set them up for success.
So we need to give them the support that they need. And then there's that time where you taper that off you. You kind of take a step back. It's like a child with a bicycle, right? They're on their training wheels. You're holding the seat for a little while. Everybody needs their seat held for sometimes. But at some point you have to let it go and, and they may fall off and then you help 'em back on and hold the seat for a little bit longer and you work with them to do that.
Right? So the micromanaging thing, like you said, it's a bad word, right? I mean, nobody, everybody hears that and they, they remember that maybe that one person that they worked with, but so, so many people I think in my experience, fall into micromanaging because they're either, Afraid of letting go of control or they, you know, I worked with lots of managers in my career that they openly would tell you that I feel like if I give away all my secrets, then I'm gonna be useless.
Yeah. So they would end up micromanaging people, you know, because they needed to have that, that still that control over what was going on. So how do you help people go from that position to. , you know this, this different way of looking at things in adaptive oversight. How do you help them make that transition? Cause that seems like a big, fairly complex, you know, thought process.
It is, and I think that it's more of a mindset shift. I think it's that shift from managing to leading, and I think it's understanding that. Again, the the team piece is so powerful. We're so much stronger when we have a group around us and we don't need to know everything to be the rockstar. And, and if you train somebody to be amazing, they lift you up, right? They that you get to do more things.
You get to broaden your expertise or broaden your roles and responsibilities, and then they lift you up. And then further and further, I think, It is a mindset shift though for people to get to that place of understanding that they don't have to be the only one that knows everything. That by empowering people around them to to be able to bring their skills to the table.
Then they can add to theirs, and then they'll be seen for other things as an expert and then, We're, we're constantly building and layering upon that. But it is, to your point, it's not a, it's often, it's not an easy switch because type A personality here, you know, control freak. I like to know everything and how it's getting done right.
At the same time, I can't possibly do all of the things and, and, and if I want to grow and succeed and, and get better and better, I have to be able to allow for that space for others to be able to come in and, and
pitch. So do you think it's a fundamental misunderstanding of how delegations should work? Because clearly there's a space where, you know, everything's clearly laid out. Do you have any questions? Do you understand what, what the expectations are? Do you have any assumptions in need? Okay, so then they go off to do their thing and maybe a manager waits too long to check back in.
Or, I mean, I guess your adaptive oversight principle means that, You clearly understand everybody's need level and apply yourself appropriately to that.
I, I think, yes to the second part that you apply, but it's a little bit of a hybrid. I think that it best, and we're talking best case scenario, right? Oh, oh. The key here is to. Just be watching. And I think I, I talk, I have a chapter in there where you're not stalking or lurking in a creepy way, but the best bosses are the ones that are kind of around and just, they're paying attention. There's knowledge is power.
The more we know, and it doesn't even have to be in questions, just checking in, just asking question. Walking around and hearing what's going on. If you have a staff member that's really struggling and you keep noticing that, they keep running over to the person next to them to ask them questions, they might have a challenge and they're afraid to come to you.
So just the power of observation really sometimes can empower you as a leader to, to figure out, Oh, maybe I need to, I need to slow down on the delegation to this person cuz they're, they're taking a little bit longer, right? The other thing is just setting really clear objectives with them. Hey, this is what I want you to do. Check back in with Mihir. How does that work for you? How does that feel? Are we good with that?
Is we'll look at it and then they may come back and be like, I, I don't need that much oversight. And be like, Okay, well, we'll take a look at it and we'll see. And, and we have to be, we have to be sensitive to that because again, it's then, it, then, then you're venturing into that micromanager as opposed to the, the adapt oversight. But just clear communication about, Hey, I just wanna make sure that you've got what you need so that you can rock.
. Adam Lamb: So in the book you talk about, you have a chapter called Secrets of Delegation, so you want to give away a couple of those You know, we're all about solutions here on this show. I mean, there's problems that we talk about, but we really want to be able to, to highlight something, some, you know, a few concepts or tools that that folks can take back into their operation this weekend and make a difference. So, yeah. Any way that you could assist them would be much appreciated.
Absolutely , absolutely Delegation's all about clarity. We have to be very specific. If you're gonna delegate to somebody, especially a brand new person, you wanna tell them what you wanna tell them, when you wanna talk to them about how you, you may. Wanna leave it up to them about exactly how they get it done, which is probably a great way to, to give them some space to be creative or figure it out on their own. But you wanna make sure that they have very clear objectives.
They know exactly what you're looking for, they know exactly when you want it, and they know exactly how they want it presented. Am I coming? Am I briefing you? Am I gonna talk to you about it? Am I gonna at a restaurant? Am I gonna bring you the plate of whatever it is I'm making? Right? We wanna make sure that they know exactly what they need because in the with delegation, the more things we leave up to chant. Chances. Chances happen. Right? Right.
So you never know what you're gonna get, which that may be your approach. It may be something where you're offering some growth to an to an employee and you wanna give them the opportunity to be like, Hey, go out, see what you can come up with and come and do this. But you also have to be okay with whatever crazy thing they come up with. Could be amazing or could be, Wow, you really took this in a different direction.
Right. And it seems to me that what I'm hearing you say is, Direct, clear mutually on in conversa or direction is definitely the way to go because either that or you're dancing kind of around assumptions, right?
You assume that they know or da da and you're constantly checking back in, Listen, stop me, Stop me if I, you've heard this, or you already know, but I just wanna make sure that it's, you know, we promote clarity here and make sure that they're every, because that way at least everything's above board and they know, and when either they. Don't succeed or start to follow behind. There's like, okay, so what didn't you understand about what we talked about before? I mean, did we go over this?
Did you interpret this differently? And I found that to be really, really powerful in in coaching sessions, coaching and counseling sessions, as a way to kind of bring everybody back to the standards of, or the, or the kind of, not assumptions, but what we wanna see. So we talked about this, we talked about this, talked about this, and where are we?
And that's why for me, those coaching councils are an addendum to their annual review, because by the time we get to the annual review, I don't want anything to be a mystery. Like there should be no surprises or gotchas. It's like, okay, we talked about all this, and yet in our environments, they're hospitality environments. They're moving so fast most of the time. Yeah. Wh how do you.
Managers who are transitioning into leaders to understand that you gotta take the time, you gotta schedule it, you gotta post it in there.
Time is such a, such a hot button right now. I don't have enough time. There's not enough time in a day. One thing that I find that I. I, I like to incur, encourage curiosity. Mm-hmm. . And, and if you are delegating and you're giving a description, why not say to the person, Tell me what you're thinking about how you're gonna attack.
Just be curious and, and let them describe it back, but even before they go off to do it, because then you might find out before they even start that, whoa, they, that was not what I was driving at. Let's, let's take a few steps back and re-talk about the terms here, but, you know, tell me a little bit about your approach here and, and you can approach it. Pure curiosity. Hey, you work different places. I'd love to hear how you, how you're thinking that you're gonna tackle this.
Something like that. Sure. Mm-hmm. . And then you know, with the, with the leaders and, and scheduling the time, it really. It's just driving in that point of we're all so much more successful if we all come together and take the time to support one another as a team. If, if, if you have a team member that's struggling right now, and if we take it totally in a different direction, maybe you have a team member that's that's going through something personally and just need some time.
A, a manager's gonna say, Take the time, do what you need to do. You're gonna make the time to help them out In that situation, why wouldn't you make the time to help them out to be more successful in the organization that you're running, that you're leading, and then you're all gonna be more successful.
Right. Yeah. And that, that time com, the combination of the time piece and delegation, I can tell you for sure that the one of the biggest challenges that I had, especially in multi-unit management, It's so busy. So how much time do I have and combine that with, I'm gonna delegate things to people who I think are capable of getting good results. But then when do I step in and beat a safety net, and when do I let them essentially fail in order to learn? Right?
I mean that, especially because margins are so tight and time is so little, you know? I found even with myself, especially early in my multi-unit career, I just always jumped in and bailed people. That wasn't, that didn't do anything good for them. Right, Right, right. That was serving me and my paranoia that if the result wasn't good, then I was gonna have to answer to somebody. . Adam Lamb: You did, You didn't wanna look bad. Right.
Yeah. And so, you know that, that's, I always found the, especially in multi-unit, you know, to try to connect this to hospitality, that hospitality piece, that was a really difficult for me, especially early on in, in that part of my.
When you're looking at dollars and cents, allowing your staff to fail when it costs money is, is very difficult. Yeah.
And, Oh, go ahead. Sorry. No, no, no. And, and hard to argue with, right? Because at the end of the day, everybody's looking at the p and l and I just wanted to kind round back to your, your statement about curiosity. Especially, you know, thinking about leading junior. Members of management, like so chefs or, or lead or lead service or whatever, and to actually ask that question opens up the door for role play.
You know, so tell me how you're gonna handle that and have that all kind of gamed out before it goes out, which I'm a really big fan of because, It's a great opportunity to catch anything like, Okay, so give me the review now. Kelly, I know. I wanna be conscious of your time and, and first off, say thank you so much for, for spending this time with us. I'm sure our listeners got a lot out of it. I know that I did mm-hmm.
. But one thing I'm really curious about is how much like I get that somebody who hires you is already in that space of curiosity and wants to. you know, how, how different things can be, but what kind of resistance do you encounter in going into these operations and not necessarily maybe with the ceo, but with the teams?
Hmm. I don't get too much, I think. I, I'm, I'm there to listen more than anything else. If I, if I'm doing a training, obviously it's just a general training and mm-hmm. , I, the way I approach my activities with organizations and with teams is very much a, a coaching format, not necessarily a hardcore, Here's 25 slides. I'm gonna talk at you for two hours. I actually don't use a whole lot of slides. I'd rather have conversation around scenarios that they're experiencing. Mm-hmm.
, it's a safe space. We don't, I, I don't report out. It's, it's the team. So they can come and it can be a complaint fest. I'll let that go for a certain point, because I think sometimes that's important so that I can hear what's going on. And then we talk about the scenarios, kind of with the book, like the book where I took the, the mm-hmm. scenario and then the. Principles and then the, the optimized version of it. We do that in real time.
We talk about, Well, this is what's happening right now. Let's game it forward to your point, let's, let's role play this. How could you do this differently? And then when they do it, if they're doing it in ways that sound really problematic, then I just ask a lot of questions around. So, Fast forward a few hours. What, where, where's this gonna end up here? What, what is this gonna look like? How's that person going to, to re respond to this? And things like that.
So it's, there's not too much pushback, I think, because it's more, there's not really wrong answers. We just ask a lot of questions about how to optimize, how to improve, how to make it personal to them. Right. That's going to be, cuz everybody's solution is different. Everybody's
different but it, but in the end, they're all pretty clear that they want things to. Right. Yes. That's the, that's the common value that they hold. Yeah. Yeah.
No one comes to work wanting to do a bad job.
totally get that. Very true. , do you have any
thoughts? Well, I'm gonna have to go and order myself a copy of the book, that's for sure.
I'll send you mine. It's all marked up with all the good parts. the one, the one
thing that sort of stuck with me is the the, the assumptions thing and the, I think the example was you ask a question and they don't answer properly or they don't, you know, and immediately my mind went to assuming that they're not listening, Yeah. Rather than, you know, trying to look at that differently and think, did I, like you said, did I ask the question properly? Was I clear? Did I communicate properly? Was the timing right? Was there other distraction?
You know, there's a million other things that could be going on, but I think I think so often we probably would go to that. Were you listening? Pay attention, right? Mm-hmm. , get off your phone or, you know, something like that. And it, but there's so many other variables that could go into that. So that's a big takeaway for
me. Definitely. Right? Cuz we wanna make it about us. Instead of them. Kelly? Of the three and I think, I know we're gonna go with this anyway, but I'm gonna ask anyway. So of the three Assumptions, boundaries, and communications in your experience is like, if someone's listening to this and they want to go in and try something, which one of those three do you think it would be the most impactful or, or the ones that folks have the most problems with? It.
Oh, I know. Probably assumptions. I mean, I, I,
they're in so insidious
they, they, and we do it all day long and Right. Like I say, it's, we don't do it to be mean. We do it. I think we do it to take care of people, we do it to, because we're worried about them and we don't want them to think they're, we think they're stupid. We don't want them to think they don't understand. Right. We we're constantly think of what is. Term about parents that are, We had the lawn, or what was it, The lawnmower parents mowing in front of the kids.
We're doing that for other people all day long. We're trying to clear the path for them to make sure that they don't feel any kind of unease and I think discomfort. Yeah. We, we kind of constantly have to keep thinking before we say something. I'm like, Am I assuming something here? Cuz I might be, and maybe I should reframe the question.
Hmm. I find that fascinating because, , I've no come to that conclusion myself, is that I have to be okay with some someone else's uncomfortability. Yeah, right. And vice versa. I don't want you to make it easy, You know, I don't want you to make me comfortable. I just need to understand what's going . And that's such a weird place to be in, because like you said, we're all carrying one another.
Like we don't, We're all geared for harmony, so that's where we default to instead of like, Well, we actually need to solve the problem first. Right. Jim, I'm sorry, I cut
you. No, no, I was just saying I really enjoy the, this concept. I think that it's, I mean, yeah, we'll say the same things over and over again. I mean the, mm-hmm , the communication side of things, the boundaries and hospitality. I mean they all, it's just very relatable. So I think it's good stuff.
Fantastic. And when's your second book coming out? Kelly . I mean that's, this one was so good. You know, there's gotta be another one, right
There is, I'm working on it next year. . Adam Lamb: And to be clear You ha you have a podcast up, right? You're not doing any new episodes, but there is one. But all that information's out there. So what's the name of the podcast? It's called Building Your Best Career.
Building your best career. I'm gonna make sure that that's in the show notes building. And if someone wanted to get in touch with you, they were listening to this and like, Yeah, I'm just gonna let her hat come in here and do this.
Yeah, you can. I'm on the website, kelly feathering.com or my email is Kelly Kelly feathering.com.
Of course it. That's awesome. Kelly, thank you so much for your time. We're definitely gonna have you back because this conversation is way longer than 30 minutes, so I really appreciate you being here. Thank you very much. It's been our pleasure. Thanks so much. Join as well. Thank you. Thank you. You bet. And that's it for this episode of Turning the Table. Join us next week for the most progressive podcast out there in the hospitality industry. And. It's also a while. What Jim?
It's, where is it now? It's 50, 55, 60 in the uk. It's in the, in the business charters. It's definitely climbing, that's for sure. Which I think is amazing. So thanks for all our listeners. We really appreciate you. Please share the show, like, subscribe, put some stars in there. We really appreciate it. Have a great. Thanks for joining us on this episode of Turning the Table with me, Adam Lamb and Jim Taylor. This episode was sponsored by Benchmark 60.
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