Welcome to another episode of Turning the Table my name is Adam Lamb and I am a career coach for chefs and hospitality [email protected]. And we have my co-host, Jim Taylor, benchmark 60 here with us. Hey, Jim, Adam. Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving. This is episode one 17. What are you grateful for? And how would anybody know? On this episode we'll be talking about how an attitude of gratitude can make the difference between struggling or thriving in your career and life.
At the end of the show I have a very special announcement that I'd like to share with everybody. . As always links to the videos and other things discussed in the show can be found in the comments and the show notes. And Jim, I kinda wanna started. I start, I wanted to start with a couple things that we forgot to get to last week, and that's some listener comments I got.
I got a DM from a guy by the name of Marcus, rep from Noble House hotels and resorts, and we had a conversation and he was very generous about his praise for our conversations on the show and how it was really important that. That the chefs that he works with knows that it's okay to not be okay. . Yes. And I thought that that was a really lovely comment. And I know that you also had somebody reach out to you and ask you what you do, a podcast . Tell us about that.
Yeah, actually a, a good friend his name is Brett and, and him and I have known each other for. I dunno, since we were 12 years old or something like that. And, and yeah. Funny, he sorts, wait a second, you do a podcast. You know, I guess we don't promote it well enough to our closest circle sometimes. Right. But right. Exactly.
Yeah. He he sent me a message saying that he'd listened to a couple of episodes and, and just, you know, it was taken him back to, you know, he doesn't work directly in restaurants anymore, but had a long career in hospitality and was one of those people who. Left, just said, I can't, I, I don't wanna do this anymore. Right. And so that was, that was good.
And then we had another, I've had another couple of really nice messages from a, a guy named Ricardo who likely would be a good guest to have on here. So, Ricardo, if you're listening, great. We're thinking about you. The message that he said actually was, I don't even, I've lo I've lost track of how many episodes I've listened to . Cause everyone, you know, just resonates really well. So happy to hear that we're, we're talking about things that, that
matter. That's awesome. And before we move on about an attitude of gratitude, I wanted to just kind of pop this in because our guest last week, Jensen Cummings threw out a quote in the show. They kind of glossed over a little bit, but he mentioned this book, radical Candor how to Be a Kick Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott. And I have a link for that in the show notes for Amazon.
It's not an affiliate link, but I just wanted to say that since that, since our conversation last week started the audiobook version of it and I was blown away because I recognized that it's basically the leadership handbook for the hashtag new hospitality culture. You know, a lot of things that we talk about. She summarizes in a really beautiful way and talks about her own failings as a leader and mm-hmm. how she was able to kind of dive into a study of like, what makes great leaders.
And she worked for Google and, you know led a team of 700 and, and stuff like that, but I. I gained more from you know, her stories of failures. Like she was talking about one guy that was kind of doing mediocre work and she kind of patted him on the back and said, yeah, great, okay. Even though he was falling short and that continued on and on and on, and then the rest of her team started looking at this and going like, what? Like, what's going on?
She ended up having the firearm and his question to her was, well, why didn't you tell me? Like, why didn't you tell me where I was going? Yeah. And she took that to heart. And then, so some people think this radical candor idea is, is an excuse to be an asshole. And this is not the case at all because really the first quadrant of this is be a human, be a human being bring your whole self to work and celebrate that and know that. Encourage other people to do the same.
Because again, we've talked about this a lot on the show, this kind of primary lie that we tell ourselves is that, you know, we leave it all at the door, which is complete horses. And when, when we see somebody struggling, you know, either we ignore it hoping that they're gonna straighten themselves out, and maybe I'll just say, I've done this and, and own it. Or allow them to struggle with some sort. You know, having to pay the pendants of, oh, you went out and drank last night. Right.
Oh, okay, cool. I'll let you, I'll just stand here and watch you go down and place . But she she was working from the principal, like, how do I create an environment by which. People love to come to work, so she's not afraid of the L word love.
Yeah. Which I celebrate and you talk a lot about, because I think every, most of the time when I throw a question to you about leadership, your response is like, I was challenged to create an environment on my shifts where people really love to come to work. Mm-hmm. . Jim Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. And, and it's, we've talked about this like you said a few times before. Mm-hmm. . And it doesn't have to be this thing about, you know, make it this fluffy, you know place where there's no candor.
Like you said, there's no feedback, there's no mm-hmm. , you know, nothing constructive. There's no development, there's no any of, you know, tiptoeing around making sure people just. You know, like their experience. It's about, you know, the supporting of people, the, the fact that we care about people's success, the fact that, you know, everybody wants to learn and part of learning is about feedback.
And that whole process, but it's, you know, I think I've mentioned this before in some of our discussions, is that it's afil. It's actually more of a filter than than anything else, right? Mm-hmm. providing a workplace that people love to come to is actually a filter for how you design the experience for the employees more than it is about creating a fluffy experience. So talk to me a little bit more about, like, when you say it's a filter, does that mean that like you're looking at your.
Staff's experience from the moment they hit the door to the moment that they leave, that you're constantly trying to like, I guess be in their shoes. Like be in their clogs. Be in their aprons, be like, yeah, and, and take into account like, okay, so what's their experience about. Sure.
You know, I, I, I think it applies to, you can apply it pretty much like I said, as a filter to any category of the business. So think about, you know, the hiring experience or the interview process. Does it take three weeks to get through the interview process or is it something that, you know, they know where, right away, where they stand when they get hired, is, do they actually get trained or do they just get, here's your apron and hop online and try and figure it out? Sure. Here's a tray.
Go serve those tables and then hold them accountable to the fact that the service wasn't. Well, they haven't been trained. You know, when it comes to feedback, like you said, is it, is it direct and supportive in a way that's gonna help them improve? Or are we just telling them that they did a bad job? Mm-hmm. , you know, all of those, you can go down the line of different experiences thinking about what is the staff gonna. Love about their job or what are they gonna leave their job?
And the question that I always used to ask people when I asked them, you know, employees and, and people that I worked with, if they loved coming to work every day mm-hmm. I would ask them that question. Do you love coming to work every day? Do you enjoy your job? How are you doing? and then let them go about their answer. And then I would ask them, what do you tell your parents or your spouse or your friends, what do you tell them about your experience at work?
Because I know what, in most cases, if they had any feedback, uhhuh, what they're saying to their friends and family is different than what they probably would say to me. And so we used to ask that question and still do in certain scenarios because it, it positions it differently about like, be honest with me. Tell me about, you know, give us feedback cuz that's part of the process.
I, yeah, I think it takes a certain degree of maturity in that position, that leadership position, to be able to ask that question. Because, you know, you might get , you might get an answer that's That's directed at you in a negative way. And so how do you actually interpret that and try to glean the gold out of that and then throw the rest of away as like being, you know, highly emotive experience or whatever.
And so I know why younger managers probably wouldn't say that because again, speaking for myself, taking a great deal of pride in what I. And how I show up every day and then have somebody criticize that. That's not my boss, . Yeah. That takes, that takes I guess that, that takes a filter of neutrality, right? Like assuming a filter of neutrality says that. I like what they're talking about.
What they're saying is not really a reflection on me, it's a, it's, they're talking about their experience and I don't necessarily have to react to it. I don't have to defend myself because I've been in those situations where someone will say something and I'll go right on the defensive and try to argue with them when in fact they feel that way because they feel that way and there's no other reason other. And by the way, but if you're in a position of
leadership, you might actually have an opportunity to do something about it. Sure, absolutely. We had a really interesting example actually with a restaurant group that we're working with at Benchmark 60 yesterday. And it's funny that now we're talking about this cuz it was exactly this, this scenario, this, this conversation about people loving coming to work and, and actually, you know, it sounds a little bit woo woo. You know, the, the impact that that has on the business.
And so in this specific scenario, we were talking about the, the opportunity for this, this restaurant to be more profitable or this group of restaurants to be more profitable and found that there was something going on that was causing the average wage of their employees when they looked at it as a, as a whole to be really, really high, you know, compared to what they thought they were paying people. And so we started to look at that.
We found that there was five employees in one location working. Each of them was working at least 70 hours a week. Holy crap. So, okay, so on one hand it's causing, you know, they're paying time and a half to mm-hmm. a lot of people for a lot of hours every week, which is just, you know, pouring money down the drain.
So there's the financial side to it, but we actually, the interesting thing that was the sort of trigger for action with that group was, One of them actually said, there's no way they enjoy
that. Who does? Right. You know, that's, that's like that veneration of overwork. You know, those would be the people who are like, yeah, I'm in the grind. And I saw meme the other day. I almost burst out laughing. There's a picture of a line cook who's, you know, bragging about working 70 hours and, and he's in the grind. And then there's a little tagline on the bottom, like, fascinating. He's celebrating he's celebrating the conditions of his. Of his servitude or, or something like that.
It's like he's all, he's all of a sudden become like celebratory of the fact that there is a system of oppression that he's, that he's bought into and has actually taken on that as a point of pride. And before I go any further, I just wanted to say to to our listeners, happy Thanksgiving. You know, it's, it's us Thanksgiving and you guys are working, so we are too. And I just wanted to also, mm-hmm. , make note of the fact that Canadians Celebrate there Thanksgiving, October 11th. Is it Jim?
Well, it, yeah, it's typically around, it's around that date. Yeah. Yeah.
And I don't remember us ever, you know, shouting out to, I mean, Jim, you're Canadian, my wife is Canadian. There's lots of of folks from Canada that actually listen to the show, and maybe we should be, we can be a little bit more attuned to the fact that. Listeners from other areas have things to celebrate as well and should be. Yeah. And venerated for that. And the fact of the matter is, is, you know, it's kind of our salute to the troops to be here.
I know LinkedIn is probably a ghost town right now because everybody . But, but we chose to be here because we wanted you all to know just how grateful we are for you and
that, and, and speaking for the Canadian. Contingency. Okay. We're not upset about not having the happy Thanksgiving because we didn't do a show on that day. Right, right,
right. But I mean, it's is that, yeah, and I'm in a very unique situation this year because probably for the first time and 30 years I'm actually at home and so. I'm at my daughter's house in Roan Mountain, Tennessee where she's created this kind of like animal village farm, which is insanity. And I recognized that I hadn't seen my mother in about 12 years since my son got married. And so last year I was kind of dancing around the subject, Hey mom, maybe you wanna come out, da da da da.
And she was watching her stepson's dogs, my, my half-brother. And so this year I just called it and I said, I'm not gonna be a victim of the circumstance anymore. Called her up about a month before I said, Mo find, find somebody to watch the dogs. I'm. Send you a flight. And she got in about 1230 at night two nights ago. And we drove up here yesterday and to see her with my two daughters. As adults having this experience with each other.
I just blown away, man, so I can, I'm like so deeply grateful and we haven't even got to dinner yet. It's just I go out on the balcony and there's my mother talking to one of the girls and instead of like interrupting them, I just kind of like walk away and allow them to have their experience because I realize that how important it is for them and how important it's for my mother to feel connected to them. And you. All of us got our own shit, and there's always a reason not to connect.
And I just felt very strongly that I needed to do something to kind of facilitate this connection. So and to be frank, facilitating this connection with you today, I feel very grateful. So yeah, that's what I'm grateful for.
Well, I mean, I, I think even though we went through this process, Canadian, well, it's not a process. We have our Thanksgiving, like we said, a few months or a month ago. Yep. But You know, we spend a lot of time in the US and with American restaurant groups and, and have lots of friends in the, so Thanksgiving's always something and plus there's good football to watch today, right.
So we can be, you know, think about that . I mean the front and center thing for me is that I've got actually she's three months old today. Yeah. So thankful for that. Yeah.
You know, as a matter of fact, I think we started our. Not too long after she was born. Right. So it's kind of like been able to chronicle the whole experience of not, not only you know her, but the experience of your wife and the experience of you guys together. And I know we've had some phone calls at, you know, Sunday at 10 o'clock when you're driving her around trying to get her to sleep. Yeah. But like, holy moly, what a big thing.
And again, how wonderful it is that you are as an entrepreneur. Someone who can actually be there present pretty much all day long. I mean, you've got your business calls and stuff and so I've just kind of recognizing, you know, in my 30 years, how. You know, working the holidays and work in the birthdays and stuff. And my children were always kind of like, yeah, dad, it's cool. Got it. Not a problem.
And yet I always had this sense of guilt inside that I wasn't necessarily present for them, and that I have such a deep connected relation to the relationship to them. Now I feel like more like, like what a lucky bastard I am, because I know lots of folks in a similar situation. Yeah. You know, their kids have made up a different story and like I said, you know, they feel how they feel like they feel. So you can't argue with that. You can't do anything about it except just to love 'em up.
And so mm-hmm. , I encourage those who may not necessarily be having the same experience today to make it a priority and just make it happen.
And we were talking earlier about things that were, we're grateful for, directly related to the re. Industry and our experience in it. And you know, I think we should spend some time on that because we, you know, we, and I, I thought a lot about this this morning and, you know, we talked a little bit about it before the show, but I was thinking about, you know, it's okay.
So it's Thanksgiving and you know, we're, there's no matter what you do, you're gonna be put in this position where you're gonna think about the things that are going really well in your life and that you're grateful for and thankful for. And Uhhuh and I actually ended up. Sort of organically going through this process in my brain of thinking about the, all of the amazing experiences and learnings and connections and relationships and all of that, that, that came from working in restaurants.
Mm. And I think, you know, we, we often on this show and in lots of scenarios, talk about the challenges that exist in hospitality and the things we need to work on and the, the opportunities that exist. , you know, the 70 hour weeks and the mm-hmm. , you know, the, the levels of stress and the workload and the, you know, inflation and all these different things that are going on that make it hard. But, you know, I wouldn't I know I wouldn't be where I am today in my life if I hadn't.
Spent as much time as I did in restaurants. Mm-hmm. , I knew I wouldn't be as confident speaking with people. I wouldn't be as outgoing. I wouldn't be as, you know, comfortable in with strangers. I wouldn't be married to the woman that I'm married to if I hadn't worked in,
yeah.
Right. Yeah. So that list for me is, is endless.
So, yeah, I, I, the, you know, we talked at the top of the show about an attitude of gratitude and for me, you know, Might sound a little woo. I'm not scared of the woo. Okay. What I know is that there, there is a biochemical reaction that happens in the brain when you consciously choose to be grateful for what you have, like focus on that as opposed to focusing on the negative and. My experience in working in hospitality is there are so many negatives.
There are so many things that it seems to be natural to want to bitch about 'em or to talk about 'em because in one way you need to kind of get that out of yourself. So you need someone else to talk about it. But after a while, it's because it feels like, you know, misery loves company, so everybody's kind of like at this lower vibration for, for lack of a better word. And it's taken me, you know, I've had some health challenges this year and there have been moments where I had.
Shift my way of thinking around away from pain to like looking around my house and, and my wife and my, and my connections and like having to like consciously choose to be connected to that as opposed to why things suck in my body. And what I discovered was, is that as soon as I started looking about the, looking around about the things that I was grateful for, I found more reason. So I'll give you a great example. My daughter loves to say fml, right? Which is short for her.
Fuck my mom because she's like, I got all these animals and I gotta do this. And, and she's created it all on her . She somehow forgets that she made this choice. Mm-hmm. , but she'll go, da da da da. And I'm like, don't you say that, don't you say that out loud, don't you say that out loud. Because what ends up happening is that vibration actually goes out and you'll start finding more reason to say that. And so what about like, looking around.
Just like being grateful about where you're at, what you have. Okay, not perfect. Don't have everything. Who cares? All of us can find at least one or two things today to be grateful for and use that as a way of being. And then the next question would be like, okay, so how do you actually show that gratitude? Is it in the way of interacting with others? Do you have a smile on your face because you're remembering, you know, just how fortunate you are?
You know, my daughter was involved in an accident not too long ago, and she came very, very close to the outcome being completely different. And she's walking around and she's healthy , and she's here, which I'm incredibly grateful for. And yet I know for a lot of folks that they don't have that opportunity, so, mm-hmm. . The question is, it's like, okay, is there something in your life that you can be grateful for? And if you continue to focus on that, can you find other things?
And then how do you actually express that gratitude either to yourself or to others? Because once that happens, everything starts to shift. I like to say, if you move on energy on one thing, you move energy on everything. So, and to get back to your point about like, I could very easily. Look at my body and say, you know, I did damage to my body by my conscious choice to be a chef and work in kitchens and have work on tables that were too short or too high or whatever. Mm-hmm.
in bad environments or whatever. I could look at that and say, you know, I'm a broken down chef now because those are the choices that I made and crap, and yet, . I can also look back and remember this very specific opportunity. I was connected to art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, their culinary program. And at one point they asked us Janet Bush Miller, that saying, happy Thanksgiving guys. Happy Thanksgiving, Janet. Happy Thanksgiving, Janet.
They asked me and 20 other chefs to fly to Houston to take part in a quorum because they wanted to reevaluate their entire culinary program. And so we're sitting in this room and there's this very lovely, very nice woman, a facilitator, and she's got a, a pad of yellow stickies. And then she starts asking each one of us what we know, like what are the skill sets that, you know being a culinary. And before long, the entire wall was covered with these little yellow stickies.
And I looked up at it. I'm like, I, I had no idea that I knew all that. Right, like maybe I hadn't used that particular skill set or whatever, but I thought about, you know, all those experience that led up to that moment and all the things that I had been kind of the, the skill sets and knowledge that I'd been like kind of put in my back pocket and to see it on a wall. I was blown away. And that's when I realized that.
The things that I've learned as a culinary and a hospitality professional are skill sets that are directly transferable to other areas, other careers. If I wanted to, like I throw out the, the easiest one, which is project management, right? There are people who get paid big money for managing projects around certain timelines because in the end, the product is, the product is the product, whether it's a building or it's a digital product, or it's a plate of.
Sometimes we have to take, again, in a very neutral fashion, take our ego out of and go, okay, so , do you know what I mean? Oh, yeah. Because some of us are really committed to that plate of chicken . Jim Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. Project management is definitely one of those things. You know, like we were talking about things like communication I think is one of the, the things that I'm the most grateful for.
From my experience in restaurants and whether that's communication in terms of dealing with customers, you know, a whole bunch of them all at the same time, that are all, all have expectations, whether it's communicating with the kitchen. Because I spent most of my time in the front of house. So maybe communicating with the kitchen when things are really busy, you know, trying to make sure that things go well for the guest, communicating with the team, giving feedback.
You know, there's all these different ways that you know, I'm incredibly grateful for that in terms of my experience in hospitality, because it gave me endless opportunity to practice. Mm-hmm. Every day, all day. Yeah. And, and you know, we've had some really amazing people on the show. You know, I'm thinking about Kelly feathering them and her book about the ABCs of, of leadership, you know, where she's talking about assumptions, boundaries, and communication.
And it seems like a lot of the folks that we have come on the show come back to the central feature of, you know, what, what is good communication? And I guess I would juxtapose that, like, is it good or is it effective? And so I was taught coming up that you give a shit sandwich, right? You talk about something positive, then you bring up this negative act or, or performance, and then you sandwich that with another piece of, of good news, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And that's, and that's when I understood that no, you know, it's, it's like putting cheese on a shit sandwich, you know? It still doesn't make a taste any better and. What I've come to understand is that people receiving that now think it's disingenuous in both ways, right?
Like, how can they trust the good stuff when you kind of, so again, coming back to the, to the book Radical Candor, it's like you can give direct feedback in a mutually honoring way that they understand the message clearly without confusing the situation with throwing like false praise on it. So, mm-hmm. , even though I consider myself to be a good communicator, I'm.
Through this show and through my own personal development, so many ways to communicate more effectively, especially, you know, in my own personal relationships with my daughters, with my. Because I know for my own sake, for my own self, that work was a great refuge. You know, if there was crap going on at home, I could always go at work and be kind of understood and respected and people would have to do what I say and less conflict inevitably have to come home.
And so what kind of skill sets do you need in order to not only support you at home? Mm-hmm. , but at also at. So I think that's a great quandary, great inquiry to be in, don't you?
Yeah, absolutely. And the, the shit sandwich thing, kind of a funny one that I did a lot of multi-unit management mm-hmm. . And the joke that we always had amongst that group or that team was don't we always used to say to each other, don't be a seagull. Wow. Don't be a seagull. Don't fly in shit all over the place and fly out. No, I, you know, it, it, it resonated always really well with me, partly cuz I just think it's kind of funny.
But it, you know, it really, again, there was that filter of don't just show up at the restaurant one day out of 20, give a bunch of, you know, feedback, quote unquote, and leave. To not be seen again for 20 days. You know, nobody's going to enjoy their experience when the, the district or regional manager shows up if, if they're a sea all Mm. Right. So, you know, that was a, always a good one for me. And then the other thing, speaking of sort of the grateful, being grateful for, for things.
We used to do this exercise, which I think I. You know, I was thinking about this this morning before we got on the show. I wanna challenge everybody who's listening to us now or listens to us down the road, or mm-hmm. , you know, I'm gonna intentionally do this today. And, you know, Adam, you should do this too. Or, here's my challenge to you.
We used to do this exercise where we would, in, in group sessions or in boot camps with people or, you know conferences and stuff, we would say, okay, everybody, everybody pull out their phone. Usually we're in those meetings and those types of things, we're telling everybody to put their phone away, right? Right. Get off your phone. We say, okay, pull out your phone. I want you to send a message to somebody that you care about, thanking them for something.
Telling them that you love them, or telling them that you're grateful or telling them, you know, thank you for, for this or that. And then we used to ask for a volunteer to read out the response that they got from people.
And it was always shocking the responses that came back from people because, you know, you'd have someone send a message to a friend that they haven't talked to in a few months or, you know, something like that and just saying, I, you know, I love you and I, I'm grateful for you and this and that, and you've always done these good things from me. And you'd get these responses that would be like, are you okay? Do you need me to come get you? Is something wrong? Are you drunk?
Are you, are you in trouble? Like, you know what's going on? And it just always was a good reminder that we just don't do that stuff often.
Yeah, I, I totally get it, man. It's so powerful and, okay, so I, I, I'm good. I'll, I'm up to the challenge. I'll do that. Yeah.
And you know, maybe next week when we're on the show, we should read out a couple of responses from
people. Yeah, definitely. We want them to . Yeah. Share 'em with us so that we can share 'em on the show. I gotta tell you Jim, this entire experience of working with Benchmark 60 and creating this show for me has been a labor of love. And I can't tell you how grateful I am to be able to spend this time with you every week regardless of whether it's Thanksgiving or football, which is 1230. I think kickoff is going on right now.
. Yeah. Because I know that we are always focused on possibilities and solutions and how important that is. Because, you know, we've had some really high flying guests that talk about concepts that may, may or may not be deliverable. And yet I know that we're always kind of focused on one or two or three pieces that can actually be delivered. And really encouraging other other providers in the same space, other podcasters, other speakers to do the same.
all these different solutions and outlooks and perspectives matter in the long run. That's why I was so excited to actually dig into Radical Candor because soon as I started reading it, because I'm in the process of writing a new book, right? And when I'm reading, when I'm listening to the book, driving in the car, I'm like, oh, Godammit, she talked about that. She, well, like now I have nothing to write about. Which is cool. So I just wanted to say thank you.
I wanted to thank the listeners who've supported us since day one. Again, the show continues to grow and reach. Folks are, once they find the show, they're they're going through all the episodes and I know that sometimes you know, they may get a little emotional and get a little wonky, but that's okay. At least it's real and transparent and vulnerable, which are a couple of the values that, that we hold to be dear. So thank you very much.
Yeah. Well, thank you too. You know, this, this conversation that happens every week wouldn't exist if it wasn't for you. So , thank,
thank you much. Yeah, now you made me all flustered, man. Thank you for that. No, it's, it's okay. I can be emotional. And happy Thanksgiving. I wanna say thank you to all the troops out there who are in service to those. Who won't have to. And what you're doing is a sacred thing, man. You're providing an opportunity for people who may not have seen one another for a long time, to come around a table and be in relationship.
And what I know about our country, about our world right now is that we need more relationship. We need more opportunity to get down and be with one another, and. As as the mediator for my second divorce said, I've, I've yet to see somebody angry with a mouth full of food, I'll tell you that story next week. But thanks very much everybody, and we look forward to seeing you again on turning the table.