134: Mastering Hospitality Workplace Communication - podcast episode cover

134: Mastering Hospitality Workplace Communication

Mar 23, 202343 minSeason 1Ep. 134
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Episode description

  • Does it feel like it’s harder than ever to communicate effectively with your staff members?
  • Have you adjusted your delivery style to be better understood by associates?
  • What’s the politically correct way now to speak with staff?

If you struggle with workplace communication, you’ll want to catch our episode with Executive Coach and Team Leadership trainer Kelly Featheringham when she joins Jim Taylor of Benchmark Sixty and Adam Lamb of Chef Life Coaching when we discuss mastering hospitality workplace communication.

To learn more about Kelly and her Executive Coaching Practice, then check out:

Kelly on Linkedin

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Book a Call with Kelly


Turning the Table is the most progressive podcast for today's food and beverage industry featuring staff-centric operating solutions for restaurants in the #newhospitalityculture.

Join Jim Taylor of Benchmark Sixty and Adam Lamb as they "turn the tables" on the prevailing operating assumptions of the restaurant business in favor of innovative solutions to our industry's most persistent challenges.


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Copyright 2023 Realignment Media

Transcript

Welcome to Turning the Table. My name is Adam Lamb. I'm here with my host, co-host, Jim Taylor. Welcome. Hey, Adam, how are you? I am really excited about this episode, Jim one of the things that I really like about what we do is we spend a lot of time like speaking and being in relationship with not only other folks who do what we do, but also folks out in the field. And there have been some things that have been popping up lately that that I feel really.

Honored that Kelly's gonna be with us in a little bit because a lot of these things have to do with the book. She's been on here a couple times before talking about assumptions and boundaries and where we've talking about communication. But a few folks that I've spoken to have offered the fact that communicating with their staff hasn't necessarily got any easier, has it? Yeah, it hasn't gotten any easier and it probably hasn't really gotten that much better.

So I'm looking for conversation too. And this you brought up a couple times something I think is really important is like that whole training gap that occurred. So you got junior managers who are now ready to take it on and covid happens and now they're hanging on by their fingernails and none of that, none of the soft skill training. Gets to happen.

And I know almost every single article or report I read about why people leave organizations communication is like in one of the top two three. I, I don't know if anybody listening is had that same experience not only having to deal with that, but also juggling what's pc, what can actually be said. And things just seem to be happening so quickly that. For a manager who hasn't been like steeped in this stuff I would be nervous going into the shop, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I think if you're not in an organization or you're not, Running an organization that, that considers a lot of these things. There's definitely and Kelly's got so much good stuff that I think this is gonna be a, another good discussion with her. So No doubt. So if you struggle with workplace communication you're gonna wanna keep listening. Because we're gonna have executive coach and team leadership trainer Kelly feathering him. And we're gonna talk about her book.

We're gonna talk about her new branding. And she may even. Tell us about her new book, which we're really excited to talk about, and we'll get into all that in just a moment, and we'll be right back after the break. Welcome to Turning the Table, the Most Progressive Weekly podcast for today's food and beverage industry. Featuring staff centric operating solutions for restaurants in the hashtag new hospitality culture. Join Jim Taylor, benchmark 60 and Adam Lamb as they turn the tables on.

The prevailing operating assumptions of running a restaurant in favor of innovative solutions to our industry's most persistent challenges. Thanks for joining us, and now on to the show. This episode is made possible by e vocalize. E VOCALIZE makes complex local digital marketing push button easy for anyone. Empower your franchises with programs that automatically optimize performance and program spending across Google, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

All from one, easy to use collaborative marketing platform. To find out more, go to Turning the table podcast.com/evo. And we bring on Kelly Ingham. Hi Kelly. Hi Kelly. Hi guys. How are you doing Great, thank you. And what a perfect time to have you on as we were discussing right before we got onto the show that this is a great time for folks who are out there on the leading edge of the hashtag new hospitality culture.

Get to book themselves on stages and talk about the new things that are coming. Jim and I are always. Sift in the tea leaves to find best practices that will really serve our listeners and viewers so that they can walk right back into their organizations and say, yeah, cool. I can try this. And yet I have to ask the question, how are you really, Kelly? I love it. I love it. This is our friends. This is from our friends chow co.org.

And so they have adopted this meat temperature gauge as a way to break the ice about how we're actually feeling without giving away too much. Cuz gosh what would we do if we didn't have our armor on? Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm definitely medium rare to wear. Perfect. It's exciting Mr. Taylor. Yeah I'm meeting rare today for sure. I'm feeling nice and relaxed today. It's Thursday. We're headed into the weather's supposed to start to turn to spring here right away.

Yeah. There's lots of good stuff, you think? Yeah. I on the show again for the third time. Yeah. I was just taking a walk yesterday up and down. My street, we live in a rural area, but ramps are already coming up, man. It's an exciting time when the ramps start coming up. Everybody like their ears at fault. Pork cup. And for those folks who don't know, it's a spring onion that's really thin and fragrant. That's a great time to get out there and start foraging. So I would say I'm medium.

I'm both amused and present. I was gonna say grumpy, but I don't want to give that away. And so to preface the conversation for folks who may not necessarily have have had the opportunity to to check out the first two episodes that you were on with us, Kelly your book Maximizing team Performance By Mastering Your ABC's took both Jim and I by surprise, because it seemed like a simple idea.

And then as I said, when I got about 10 pages in, I was already starting to kick my own ass for my ways of being up, like remembering that one time like, oh gosh. And the ABCs reference what exactly, when you're talking about how to maximize team performance, assumptions, boundaries, and communi. And what is it about assumptions that everybody forgets? Including me? You mean the ais? S for the you and me one?

Yeah. I think for me it's always shocking to realize just how many assumptions I hold. E even when I think oh no, I'm being, I'm present. I don't have any particular opinion about this. I'm just gonna hold some space and then someone says something and makes my eye twitch. It really is second nature. It's amazing how we do it all day long. And as I mentioned, I think previously, it's not done to be mean. It's just a behavior that.

We fully embrace all of the time, and unless we're aware of it and our conscious and are paying attention to making sure that we don't make those assumptions it just happens. Yeah. It's almost there's having the assumptions and then kicking your own ass about the fact that you had the it's a great way. Of distracting me.

Like when I'm in that space, it's a great distraction for me to actually get on to do what needs to be done, because I'm spending all my time just kicking my own butt and oh yeah, I should have done better. Man, we're all moving at the speed of light, which I think doesn't help us either. We're moving so fast. Efficiency is. Ever present.

So I think taking the time to slow down and think about things and ask more questions or ask for clarifications is almost directly opposite to what is in our nature right now, because we're always going. Yeah. There, there were so many things when we had that first conversation about assumptions. I was having, it made me have flashbacks about the number of times that I went that I thought that's what was happening and that wasn't even close.

So that I, yeah, and I think we don't give ourselves enough credit, man. Like Kelly, to your point, like things are moving so fast. We had to shut everything. In a heartbeat. We had to pivot our operations and we continued to adjust those all the way through the pandemic and the lockdown. And then all of a sudden it was like, yay, it's over. Let's party. And I think because we were so good at at multitasking that we don't give ourselves enough credit for just how well we can juggle things.

That also speaks to the point of it's easy to let things slip through the cracks. It certainly comes at a cost sometimes. What kind? It's so silly. I'm not even gonna ask that question. And what kind of costs are we, like of course we know what that looks like. And one thing that we didn't talk about last time, and I just want to briefly touch on, and maybe this is about the communication pieces. Like I spent a lot of time falling on my sword during that period.

Even when I didn't have the answers, people were still looking at me for stuff, and I would always take it on the chin and own that. Not as a way of like self flagellation someone had to say something. Do you know what I mean? And so do you find that. That type of transparency and vulnerability, especially in communication, is a good thing. Is that actually welcome in some corporate environ? I think to a certain extent, I think anything in moderation, right?

If you go too far and I mean it leans into the second behavior, which is boundaries. We don't wanna, we don't wanna completely erase our own boundaries by making ourselves the. The whipping tool or the whipping toy of all of it at the same time, it is good to take some responsibility and be part of the solution or part of the path to the solution instead of just passing the buck.

Yeah, and I find that some people who like prize harmony also become emotional doormats just because they want to keep the peace. Which is not effective either. No. And again, at what costs in the long term, right? It works for today, but then what are you teaching other people? What are you demonstrating for your staff? What are you demonstrating to your colleagues or your superiors? What is the long term cost there for short-term smoothing things over?

Yeah. So the, I think as I'm sitting here thinking about this the assumptions, the boundaries, and the communication. I mean they, the thing that's going through my mind is that, and I'm sure you did this on purpose, obviously, but the way that they flow from one to the next. I'm thinking about, okay, how many times did I make an assumption and then potentially cross some sort of boundary in my attempt to communicate something?

So what's, can you tell us about the basis around the communication side of things? Because I think like Adam and I were talking about right before we brought you into the show, that the communication in, I think business in general and leadership in general, but for sure in the hospitality space, it's probably gotten harder and it, I don't think it's gotten any better in most cases. So can you start to take us down that path a little bit? Absolutely.

So the three are definitely inter intertwined. And that was intentional. Because I think that they all lean on one another and our ability to. To leverage and be good or bad at any of them, certainly affects each other. So if you've got four boundaries, your communication is going to be challenged or you're going to make more assumptions to overcompensate. So they definitely they definitely move back and forth with whichever one you're excelling at or challenged at. I do think that communi.

Is featured throughout because we need our communication to be better at making assumptions, to be better at asking questions, clarifying questions to not make assumptions. Yeah. Our communication skills to help us set and maintain our boundaries. And then again, communication on its own for all of the things that we use it for to make sure that we are being clear in what we're telling the people that we're working with, or just people in general. And being considerate.

And like you said, it hasn't gotten easier. It's something that is so prevalent in training. I run into people all the time. I do training courses on communication. But still, there's just so much to it. When you look at all of the different ways we do communicate with written and verbal and non-verbal I mean there's just, it's such a, such an in-depth concept that I think it's difficult and we.

Again, we don't give ourselves the credit that trying our best and doing our best and showing up honestly and at least authentically and saying I'm doing the best. How can I be better accepting that feedback, give and take and not assuming that we should be perfect or need to be perfect. I strikes me, Kelly, that you're talking about a level of maturity that may not necessarily be accessible to. Some younger folks, and it's not a knock on them. We had a chef on.

Ryan Dodge, who spoke a lot about how we in the industry set folks up almost for failure because we don't impress upon them the importance of some of these things you can get pretty quickly and some of these things are gonna take you a while to get, which they don't want to hear because they want to make an impact right away. Yet can't tell you how many times having. One of the sharpest knives in the drawer, so to speak someone with a great deal of talent.

And they're tone deaf on how to communicate with other people. Yes. Yeah. I, and it's to your point, like modeling that has to take a certain amount of presence. Like Jim, you were talking about the filters yesterday, right? When in our conversation. Yeah. Talk a little bit about that because I think it, it Backs up to Kelly's point about like having some compassion and grace for yourself, but also having that as like your base operating system.

I think the filter that we were talking about yesterday and we've talked about this one a few times. Yeah. And Kelly, I think this came up in one of our conversations on a previous show too, was that filter around operating as a leader in a business as though your mission is to make sure that everybody loves working. And that doesn't mean tiptoe around people.

That doesn't mean constantly just doing, saying yes to everybody for everything, but it's a filter for how you communicate with people and how you consider people and how all of those things. And that was something that I was challenged with by a mentor 25 years ago.

And it stuck with me that there was this you should be on a mission wearing an invisible cape to take care of people that work with you and make sure, and communication is part of that, but it's just, it's not just that easy, right? There's, like Adam was saying, there's lots of learning involved in that. It takes practice. Nobody's perfect at it by any means. I'm curious where if there's somebody who's, let's.

Somebody who's listening today, that's leadership, and they're, they might be terrified about the things that they have to communicate to people, right? The number of different things that are going on all the time. What do you tell them? Where do you start? I think timing is a big thing and of course it lay adds another lay of complexity, right?

When we talk about people that are nervous about communication, finding the right time in the right place, finding the right tone, knowing your audience, knowing what you want to communicate to them. I'm a. End objective focused person, kinda do everything backwards. This is where I wanna be, how do I get from point A to there? Fascinating. Break it down that way. And I think that for me, that works for everybody. It doesn't necessarily work.

Some people start at the beginning and then they meander a little bit and then have to backtrack and that's perfectly fine too. But I think. When we're nervous in our communication, finding a time or a place that you'll feel more comfortable, cuz that's gonna give you more confidence, thinking about it ahead of time. Having a plan for what it is that you wanna communicate, what you want to get out and what you're expecting, doesn't mean you're necessarily gonna get it.

But I think a lot of times we wander into communications or conversations with people and. We have no idea what we wanna get outta that conversation. And that's what you end up in the assumptions quagmire there, because you're not sure what you wanna get out and halfway through they're saying things and you're just jumping around because you're not having a clear plan for what you want to get out. Time doesn't always lend us that opportunity to come up with a plan.

You have to your feet sometimes, especially in the hospitality industry, flight again. So trying to make sure. Even if you're in that situation where you're having us think quickly, give it two or three minutes to just think, or two or three seconds, what do I want out of this? And sometimes it's the words are already outta your mouth and you have to pull back and say, wait a second, this is what I'm looking for here. How do we get there? That's, yeah. That's so good. That's so good.

And again, acknowledging how many times I actually started in conversation without that thought. And then almost getting like shocked about where it goes. And I, I know probably one of the most structured environments to have those type of conversations is an annual review, right? Because there's a process around it, there's some boundaries and lanes and stuff. But also like critical timing stuff, like someone's acting out or you need a coaching council.

And my strategy was always to have them. What they were doing instead of me just telling them by using the standards. Okay. So we, do you remember when we first came in, we signed this document, you remember this one? And we talk, talked about it and is there something that I don't know, like that you, is there something happening outside of work that has you like flying off the handle at the, so trying to use that so they go No. And because then the work is.

And they're actually self-regulating, I guess is what I'm saying. And the environment also provides an opportunity for that type of self-regulation, right? Yeah. As well if everybody's grounded in the same standards. Yeah and I can appreciate how this is like a Gordian knot when you're talking about those three things, it's hard to break it up into three different podcast episodes because they're all intertwined.

But I guess Kelly, what I'm interested in is how long has it been since you wrote the book? About nine months. About nine months. And that was based off 20 years of experience and learning and experience. In the nine months has your viewpoint shifted any I know that you're working on a new book. I don't know if that's necessarily gonna be an addendum to it or maybe extrapolating some of those concepts. But is there something that, that you didn't necessarily.

Understand or appreciate at the time of writing that you, that now seems to be really important to talk about. I think, and I touched on it briefly, I think giving ourselves a little bit of grace I wish that I had written a chapter in there because I do think that it's very easy for us to take account of all of the things that we're doing wrong.

And the way that I wrote the book was giving the examples, the scenarios of it in a perfect world and in a realistic world so that you could see the differences. But I, I. If I do a second edition or I do an update to it, I will definitely add a chapter or two around the concept that, again, a lot of these are never gonna be things that we're perfect at, right? We're just not right. But understanding that we're constantly growing, we're constantly improving.

And part of the battle is just being aware and understanding and to your point, self-regulating, noticing when these things are happening and even maybe. Patterns for when they happen. Are you in a situation where you're stressed or in this situation with certain people as opposed to different people? Perhaps it's a work issue. Trying to find some of the patterns because those things will help us to be better at observing as well, and we can almost preempt the situation.

If you know that every time you go into a kitchen at one restaurant with a certain set of staff you're feeling pressured or tense. Being more aware. So things like that. No I know that you obviously, you've got quite a bit of hospitality. But didn't necessarily write this book for the hospitality industry. And it's it's amazing to me and reminded all the time how much crossover there is between the hospitality industry and every other industry out there.

But I keep thinking about this, the whole assumptions, boundaries, and communication around, it's the middle of a crazy shift on a Friday night in July, and Just crazy busy and there's high stress and there's assumptions happening all over the place, and then there's no boundaries followed. And Adam and I were joking about this yesterday, the venting and. Thing. It's okay, we need to have a chat. You need to walk in.

You go and there's some poor communication that happens and it's all, it's so relevant for the hospitality industry. The walkin chat there there's no more crying in the cooler, God damn it. Typically typical. For me, it was like like being able to walk somebody out of a space, especially high tension space. Like I get why going into the cooler makes sense. My what I became more aware of is that it's a confined space and if there's any power imbalance, it's immediately amplified.

And so typically what I would do is I would walk out to the let's go have a smoke on the dock. This is the back dock typically. It's not necessarily a very clean and orderly place, but at least there's some space. And it it took me a really long time to understand that in that confrontational. Dynamic of the dyad, that it's really easy for things to go south. And I didn't understand it until I was taken a drive with my wife.

And it seemed every time we were driving we would get into these really great conversations. We could talk about anything. And it struck me that a, the vehicle is in motion and we're sitting shoulder to. So there's not that dyad, but it's actually both of us looking out. And so I started using that as a tool for annual reviews, like to walk out to the cafe patio and deliberately sit side by side as opposed to being confrontational.

And that is something that I, it took me a long time to learn and no one ever said that it was just a, an intuitive thing. But I see that people do that now more and more like trying to diffuse the dynamic. What a, a good lesson around that, similar for me was, and Kelly, after I mentioned this, I'm curious your take on both of these examples. But there's some really good stuff in the Rockefeller habits about the way that, that he operated.

And so I was running a restaurant at one point that was attached to a mall and. At one point we would have meetings because the restaurant was busy, there's no space available. We'd have meetings in the food court and we were like, this is not cool. We're having a meeting in a food court and there's high school kids sitting next to us having eating subway or something like that. And so that just didn't seem like a professional environment.

Anyway, it evolved to the point where, same thing as what Adam's saying, we used to do, maybe not annual reviews, but we would have like strategic convers. Walking around the mall. Yeah. And it became this like internal joke that we'd have, go have a mall walk. And that was like, code word for we're gonna go have a meeting. And there was no distraction. It's, you're not on your phone, there's no interruption.

But it was, I agree with what Adams saying around that concept that you're side by side, there's this breaking down of a barrier. So the walking around conversation became really powerful. It's so important, your time, your timing, and your place for those meetings. And I joke that I the walk-in was a big thing, right? And consider from the perspective of the persons that's being sent to the walk-in or taken to the walk-in. Already there.

And this is my assumption, but I know how I felt when I had to go to the walk-in. It was like, oh, now everybody's gonna know I'm in trouble. Whereas, let's go grab a cigarette, let's go grab a smoke, let's go have a bottle of water on the dock. Whatever. That's a very different format. Anybody could be doing that at any time, whereas you're, you could assume if someone's been misbehaved or being obnoxious that's why they're there.

But you're not necessarily sure they could just be going to grab a break. Sure. What changes the dynamic of how you're approaching them, but also how they're gonna feel when they come back on shift or back on the floor or back into the kitchen and you're like, yep, I just got in trouble. Yeah. I'm just reflecting right now, get like kind of crappy feeling in my chest because having been in those situations and I know earlier in my.

I didn't have a lot of sympathy for anyone else in that particular situation. It was almost as if, and Jim and I talk about this all the time there has been a history of, because it was done to me then it's okay to do to others. Yet like I dressed this one dishwasher down one time in my office, and then it was completely glass lined and the, and this grown man fell to his knees. In this incredibly powerful heaping and sobbing, and my heart just dropped right to the floor.

I'm like, oh my God, what did I do? And it was like such a shock to me that I I don't think I gave myself the credit of the power I was wielding in the moment. And we really I was the store manager at 20 or 21. I. I have 30 people I was in charge of. I didn't know what I was doing. I was a shift manager then I was a assistant manager. Then you have a store.

It's like you're, you are in control of their schedule, their lives, but they can go out on a date on the weekend if you're gonna sh schedule them because you're upset with them, because they didn't do their shift work. There was just, and a lot of those kinds. Things are endemic, at least when I was in that industry, that it is can be very catty. Oh yeah. You have all of these different and it's a it's a family where you get all in the good and the bad.

You get very close-knit, so therefore you're passive aggressive at times. You're supportive at times, and all of the love and hate goes with that. And it's almost like this assumption if I freak. And yell at everybody, then it'll be understood. Like somehow I'm supposed to get the pass because I'm the boss, right? And I will go back at that and oh my God, I just wanna throw up right in my mouth.

And Kelly, I just I wanna round back to this compassion and grace because I feel it's very powerful. Do you think that within. That particular chapter, there would be an opportunity to talk about the backside of that, which is shame and regret for those of us who have a little long in the tooth and maybe look back at things that we've done and don't necessarily know how to move beyond them in a constructive and powerful way. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that is, we all, we.

Shoulder that at times there's so many shoulda, woulda, couldas and I think that it is hard sometimes to move forward because we don't have the closure or the opportunity to set it right. And maybe we set it right in different ways. And understanding that it. We can't turn back the clock. We can learn and we can grow and we can apply the things and make it better for other people and make it better for ourselves going forward with positive intent in our heart.

And If the entire objective of communication is to be understood, right? Because if someone was walking away from the conversation and they still don't get it that's gotta be on me. So in your experience, are there one or two things or three things that like prior to walking into that conversation that I might be able to deploy so that I make sure that I'm understood in a mutually honoring way. I'm not bringing anybody down.

They don't feel like shit afterwards or hold a grudge against me or try to throw me under the, do you know, all that dynamic because once that starts it's very hard to stop and it makes it really easy to hold them in judgment too about that. Then it's that. The polarization. So if I'm walking into a situation and I want to be understood, what is, like, how can I do that in the most efficient way possible. One would be know your objective and we are not long for listening.

So an objective per interaction is probably the best you're gonna get. You could try to five, but if you could figure out one thing that you want them to take away from that interaction, and it doesn't mean you can't meet with them multiple times. One thing, and then find a way to talk to them and ask them what did, what are, what did you hear me say? Or, What do you think we should do next? Or how do you feel about this moving forward?

But something open so that they have to give you a description. Like you said, when you do your performance reviews or, and you talk to folks about what they did wrong and you ask them to describe to you, because we do have to say it out loud. If we have to process it and work it, we're gonna remember it more. Than if somebody's just talking at us because you know the lip service.

I see your lips moving and you're, you are yelling at me and I'm thinking about what the order is that's waiting to be made, or what I'm gonna do after work. I sure, okay, now I'll get it with that. If I have to say to you I understand this is what I'm gonna do moving forward and make it a almost a coa. Because now you're bringing them on board as a part of the solution. You're giving them ownership of the next steps too. And it doesn't come across as being like manipulative or self-serving.

Exactly. And you might learn you might get a great idea from that too. Sure. If you're asking them, if you truly are open to Hey, we're having a problem with how this is going. What do you think we could do different? They may come up and be like I've been thinking for months. You should do this. But I was to say it. I was allowed to tell you.

Yeah. And again, God damnit Kelly time moves so fast when we're together but I know right before the call we were chatting in the green room the luxurious green room with the stuffed bear. But you also mentioned consideration and I think that's probably a great way to. And this conversation. But I, and before you go, I also want to hear a little bit more about your upcoming book, but absolutely. Can you talk about consideration a little bit and what do you mean by that?

Consideration when we're communicating, I think is about understanding who we're talking to who it is that you're having a conversation with. Getting to know your staff, understanding what, what lands with them and what doesn't.

And the more we know our employees, the people that we interact with, people in our family, our friends, our networking, social, the more what we understand, what drives them, what motivates them, what interests them, the more we can tailor and adjust our communication style to them. Some people are very, Some people are very informal. Some people don't mind language, some do.

There's so many different ways, and if we meet them where they are, we're so much more likely to resonate with them and to be absorbed than if we're bouncing off because we're talking to somebody that isn't going to be on the same page. I love that idea about meeting them where they're. Because then there's no, again I can't hold him. I can't hold him in judgment if he's not coming over here, I gotta go over there.

And sometimes when you, some, I've explained that to junior managers and sometimes they come back and they, it makes somehow they get the idea that it's like a downward movement. Do you know what I mean? Oh, I gotta talk down to them, or they're not up here with. Does that ring a bell? Yeah. Yeah. And I, again, some of that's some of that. Immaturity and leadership style. A lot of organizations don't provide leadership training. They don't try to actual manager training.

It's just, you know how to do the ordering and you can do the p and l on Tuesday nights when you count the inventory, right? But you don't know how to work with people and how to interact with them. Often we're not taught those skills. We're just thrown into the role. So the more we can. Seek to develop those even on our own. If it's, if there's not space for formal, there's so many books out there. There's podcasts. Yeah there's so many different ways, but they have to want to be better.

Yeah. And I think it's important to just put a pin in it and say, this is not just the hospitality industry. No. This is every industry out there, managers or throughout the world.

One of the, one of the corporate environments that I worked in that's just reminded me about we did a lot of work with our Adam, to your point, the junior manager side of things around just EQ and emotional intelligence and that they could try to do every day to help improve some of those scenarios and the meet them where they are thing that one just hit home for me because.

The simplest version of that we could think of and was before you ever get into any type of development, feedback, constructive conversation at all, it's just to go to the person and say, is now a good time to have a conversation? What respect that shows them. Yeah. No matter where they are on the ladder. And that was meet them where they are. And Adam, there was maybe in some scenarios, some swallow your pride. This person is below you, air quotes kind of thing.

But that's not what it's about. It's about if I just burst down the door and start providing feedback, they might not hear any of it and it's all been wasted. But yeah, that, Hey, is now a good time? Do you have five? Yes. Okay. We're present. We're here. We can be productive. So I, yeah, it's such a, it's such a simple, it's such a simple thing, Jim and yet I remember clearly dragging somebody off the floor. Yeah, it's not about their time. It's about my time. Now was a good time for me.

I laugh, but inwardly there's the groan and. I think Kelly, the work that you're doing is incredibly important. Even though it's not within our space, we still get to benefit from from everything that you're doing. And we will continue to have you cuz definitely wanna. Be very eager to see what you're gonna write next, but can you give us like a thumbnail sketch of the book to come tell us about the new one? It's about leading yourself first, so that'll be basically the tenant.

We're all leaders and we have to lead ourselves. I think you mentioned this the book about getting up and making your own bed. If we're not leaving ourselves, how are. How are we ever going to be good at leading other people? So it's about looking inward and finding very simple ways at all ages for us to step up. It's not an exclusive club being a leader. We can all do it if we want to. I can't tell you how many times I said that to staff members it doesn't matter what's on your jacket.

It doesn't matter how the size of your hat you can be a leader as a dishwasher because you leave that dish pit immaculate. And seeing that type of leadership where to be frank, there might be somebody right next to elbow with them that's not necessarily emulating that type of behavior. Not to say that it's any knock on their personality. A friend of mine when he used to do an interview for a cook would strike up a conversation about hey, what kind of car do you drive?

And really, I am, let's go out. Really, I wanna take a look at it because he would purposely want to go out to look inside the car to see the interior, to see if it was messy, and that's when he would make his hiring decision. Ever since then, I keep a little bucket there, like he's not gonna catch me no way. Good on you. Barn Hill. Thank you very much. And where else do you think that we might see this season, the speaking season? I'm working on that.

It's the season of speaking, so that's, if any of your listeners is looking for somebody to come in and and talk, I'd be more than happy to. I'm happy to do it in Zoom and to a certain extent in person that I can schools, even in college. I've talked to a few here locally here in my Virginia area for things like that because it's just, it's nice to get out and talk to people aside from just the training classes and things like that. Share more of this kind of messaging. Exactly.

And all your information is in the chat. And contact through LinkedIn also for your newsletter. And the one thing I can, I wanted to mention is I appreci. The example that you're setting for me because you had a podcast. I still have a podcast. And when I went to look at it, I noticed that there was like, there was a time when it, where the cutoff and I asked you about it and you said, I only have so much time. And that time now got a allotted to writing the book.

It wasn't like I was trying to do everything and for me, sometimes I have a tendency of jumping in wholeheartedly. So to be able to create the space in those boundaries for me was really powerful. So I just wanna say thank you for that and and to everybody listening Consistently send two books to every coaching client that I get.

One is Kelly's and the other one is Radical Candor, because I think those two books together harmonized actually set the set the framework for the handbook for the hashtag new hospitality culture. So thank you for that contribution to our evolution. Thank you, Jim. Any last words, my friend? I'm gonna read the book again. It's. And we should just plug you in here quarterly or something like that. Cause it's just a, yeah. Discussion. Good reminder, a good take away.

And we just love having you, Kelly. So thanks so much for joining us together. Yeah. And again, it's that Gordian knot man. How do you pull that apart? So it's in everything and. Probably should say that this is these principles are not necessarily just for work. In relationship, these things can be a complete game changer no matter how much water is under the bridge. So your husband is a lucky person to have somebody who understands that communication is key. Without. We got nothing.

So thank you very much, Kelly, Jim, folks we'll see you next week on Turning the Table. Thanks for joining us on this episode of Turning the Table with me, Adam Lamb and Jim Taylor. We're on a mission to change the food and beverage industry for the better by focusing on staff mental health, physical and emotional wellbeing by proactively measuring and managing staff.

Join other hospitality professionals co-creating the hashtag new hospitality culture by subscribing to our weekly newsletter at ww dot. Turning the table podcast.com/news. In every edition, you'll find innovative solutions ready to test and validate in your operation this weekend. Plus, listen to exclusive bonus content just for you. Connect with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram at Turning the Table Podcast.

If you found value in this episode, please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify. Give us a star rating. It helps other hospitality profess. Just like you find the show, or better yet, grab the show link and share it with a friend or colleague who you wanna see succeed. Thanks for stepping in and speaking out for an industry craft and fraternity that serves us all. Remember, retention is the new Cool y'all.

This podcast was written, directed, and produced by me, Adam Lamb and Jim Taylor. Turning the table is a production of Realignment Media.

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