Category: leadership

reputations

“Reputation is what others perceive you as being, and their opinion may be right or wrong. Character, however, is what you really are, and nobody truly knows that but you. But you are what matters most.” -John Wooden

So much of my identity has been tied to my business, maybe because I share the same name as my organization, but I think it is more than that. It used to be so very difficult for me to hear any negative feedback about what we were doing. Although I am not in every location all the time (impossible now with 4 different cities), I keep close tabs on what is going on. I get alerts on my phone whenever we get an online review, and it used to be that the alert would trigger a Pavlovian type response in my gut. I would feel a bit of dread, expecting the worst but hoping for the best. Most of the time the reviews were glowing, sometimes critical, and other times downright mean. I know we are humans, and as such imperfect, so there are bound to be mistakes and failures in our delivery, but that was a hard lesson to accept. I think it is a basic human need that we want to be loved, and when you think your business is you, and someone doesn’t love your business, it can feel very much like a lover’s rejection. At least that is what it felt like to me for many years.

James would remind me “don’t take it personally”, but that was easy advice to hear, not so much to implement. I can’t recall a specific moment where the transition started, it was more a process of learning to love myself and to believe in my own integrity and character as a person that helped me get off the roller coaster ride of emotions. Even if we are not business owners, we have reputations. There are people judging and sorting and putting us into boxes all day long. Just notice it, we all do it. “He is a great dad.”, “She is a go-getter.”, “He is a hothead.” The thing is that whatever box you get put in, your reputation, is based on the other person’s perception and life experiences, it may not have anything to do with you other than you share one similarity to something they have experienced in their past, so they file you there.

The only thing that really matters is who you are, how you act and the things you do in public and in private. I can see clearly now that my business is so very much more than me. It has grown and blossomed through the people that I have working with me every day. I am humbled and blessed to see the love they bring to our communities and the people we serve, without me being there. Its still a bummer when we sometimes blow it, but we are human, and what matters more is how we respond when we do make mistakes. This is where the test of our character comes, when we have the opportunity to learn, to show extra love when we failed to make someone happy, and to grow.

You are not your reputation, you are much more than that.

good to great

Some people seem to have a natural ability to provide genuine service. You can recognize them by the genuine smiles and eye contact that they give you, the open body language, the willingness to take time to listen or talk to you. There is a woman at the Safeway I shop at that is this way. No matter how long the lines or hot the day or grouchy the customer, she always seems to have a ready smile, lilting, upbeat voice, and positive attitude. I go out of my way to stand in her line when I see her working, irresistibly attracted to her energy and the knowledge that when I leave her line I will feel just a little bit lighter. There is the busboy at the restaurant we went to a couple of weeks ago who was balancing an insane number of dirty plates on his tray, yet took the time to look at each of us as he removed the dishes from in front of us, give us a slight nod and a smile. Or Manny, our amazing gardener extraordinaire who is always so busy but makes the time for us when we need a fence repaired, a tree planted, or help with our sprinklers.

We are blessed to have people like this in each of our restaurants, naturals who need no further prompting to do whatever it takes to ensure our guests are delighted. But not everyone is a natural. The Disney company has service down to a science, and has books and even a training program for companies to learn how to perfect customer service. If you have ever been to Disneyland or Disney World, you may not realize how much has gone into the training to create a magical experience for you. The always crowded parks are a testament to the success they have been able to create and maintain. With so many employees have they been lucky and attracted only naturals? I think no. But you can teach people what great service looks like.

We are definitely in a service business, but really isn’t any business? If we use as models the people that exemplify great service, and teach our team how to duplicate it, can we be like Disney? No matter what your thoughts are about the theme park (crowded, expensive, crowded) I don’t think anyone would argue that as a model for service and success in business, they have it down. We have taken the qualities that identify great service for our type of business, and listed them out on paper. We train our team, the naturals and the rookies, as to what great service looks like. We focus on great service, and service will improve. It’s the way it works. Where focus goes, energy flows.

values

Have you ever noticed when something keeps coming into your awareness? I’m not talking about the hypnotic yet annoying marketing rendition of California Dreamin’ that is the lottery commercial. I do think the universe is conspiring to market a message to me when I keep seeing something or hearing it or coming into contact with it. I am learning to pay attention. Values is the word that keeps coming up for me. I have been using it an awful lot lately, a search of my writing over the last month pulled it up in no fewer than 16 times, and at the retreat I went to recently both of the speakers I sat in on had as their main subject matter…you guessed it, Values.

I know my personal values. I value family, my work, growth, health, and love, but I’ve been thinking, what about my organization’s values? Although we attempt to live by our personal values, part of being a leader is to articulate the team values to those you lead. I have been contemplating this, and when we had only 5 people on the team it was easy to influence them and work cohesively, especially since 3 of the 5 were my husband, my mom, and me. The challenge has come as we have grown. 20 people was still a tight ship, since I was hands on in the restaurant and James and I personally trained and hired everyone. The ration of 2:20 made it easier to communicate our values to the people working with us.

But now we have over 80 people that work in our organization, some in the front row, the people that greet you and take your order for your food, and just as many or more behind the scenes, prepping, baking, paying the bills, cleaning the restaurant and ensuring that the finished product, the experience we project, is a positive one for the people we serve. With such a large group of personalities it is even more important for us to clarify our values as a company and what we stand for. The shared values of the team are what bring the team together and help to direct the decisions they make every day, and if you have not shared these values with them, there can be less cohesion and chaos as everyone has a different idea of what is important. The team’s values are the glue that hold it together, especially at crunch time.

Most organizations have generic basic core values, like customer service, profitability and integrity, values that no one can argue are important, but the real power for us comes from identifying specific things that we value that if we are living by these things, the rest falls into place. For our organization our core values are:

1. We value people. We believe every person on the team plays an important role in the whole. We believe the best of people and focus being the best version of ourselves for the people we come into contact with.
2. We value teamwork. We know that one of us is never as effective as all of us. In the words of Mother Teresa “You can do what I cannot do. I can do what you cannot do. Together we can do great things.”
3. We value adding value to others. We exist to add value to the people on our team and to our guests. We work together to serve and brighten the day for those we interact with by exceeding expectations and doing whatever it takes to build loyalty.
4. We value personal growth. We believe in everyone’s potential for growth, and that we believe in giving our team the tools to succeed and to grow personally.

Do you know what your values are? Does your team?

it’s a process

There are no shortcuts along the way to self improvement, and as a leader you must be focused on always improving yourself in order to improve anything outside yourself. It can be really hard when faced with the reality that you may not be operating to your fullest potential. I like to think of myself as the type of person who handles her stuff, I went into business for myself partly because I like to be in charge of my own actions and not be managed, or told what to do. Although I am confident now in my leadership and ability to create positive change, it wasn’t always the case.

For many years I put myself in the position of follower. My husband and partner is a strong, natural leader, so this was easy and not a bad thing, most of the time. Some of the qualities of a great leader are that they see the untapped potential in those they lead, set the vision bigger and clearer than most can imagine, and inspire others to grow and improve themselves. For a long time I was firmly stationed in a place where I believed, “This is how I am. I can’t help it. This is all I have.” Luckily for me, James loves me enough to not buy that BS, but I resisted. Each time we opened a new location, he was the driving force that made the lease negotiations, remodels, and openings happen, with me acting as his assistant, doing the support tasks that he needed. Each time we faced extreme tests on our relationship as partners and a couple, and I would often fail to rise to the level I needed to in order to maintain the momentum. When he would bring this to my attention, my reaction was to get defensive, to withdraw, and to want to quit. Emotions were high because we always have a clock ticking to get the locations opened before we are too far in the hole financially and have to pay rents with no money coming in, so our talks were rarely calm and reassuring.

It has only been as I focus on improving myself by working to overcome a life controlled by emotions and reactions that I have found my place as the leader of our organization. Improving yourself is not a destination, you cannot be satisfied with doing just enough to get by, or by quick fixes. Improvement requires a daily commitment, daily habits that work to rewire and rebuild your inner workings with intention. Many people underestimate the little things, but it is the little things, done daily with consistency that make the biggest impact. Change happens with or without our involvement or awareness. The question for us is will will grow and learn with the changes? Improvement is not “one and done”, it’s a process, day by day, decision by decision.

tribes

The word tribe is one that I have just recently started using. I know that there are bigger and greater organizations that have been using this word for some time, there are books about it and you can search it online and find a plethora of information about it, but for me it’s a new term. It’s really just a way of expanding my thoughts to include more people in our vision. When I talk about my team, I am referring to a smaller, more defined group of people who know each other and work together towards similar goals, but when I expand my vocabulary to use “tribe”, it is something more.

The idea of our tribe is the expanded group of people who not only work together, but also add value in other ways, either by being clients, suppliers, our community, or even members of our extended families. There is a huge tribe of people with tatoos, there are tribes of people who practice Buddhism, there are tribes of people who live to serve. It really means a group of people that are like us and do things like us. We care about the people in our tribe, and rally to support them when the need arises.

It is not an elite club, its an open door to a community that has the energy to create positive change. We don’t have rules, but we do have shared beliefs. Beliefs such as we all have the potential to make a difference in the lives of those we interact with. We care about our fellow man and work to make things better. Since I also have a business within a tribe, there are times when we have people in the organization who are not synchronizing with the culture of growth and connection that we have. This does not make them any less valuable as human beings, but it can cause ripples in the flow of our momentum as a business. It is the job of the leaders to ensure that the people they are leading understnad how we do things. In any business there is so much more power and better results when you have people working together, helping out when needed, and most importantly doing what they say and acting with integrity.

Just the other day one we had a scenario in one of my businesses where of my leaders asked someone to stay and hour later to help him with a project. The person, lets call him Jerry, agreed, however when the time came for him to help out, Jerry was nowhere to be found. Did Jerry forget? or was this an indicator of a bigger issue? A leader needs to look at the big picture and to have open communication. Is this the first time something like this has happened? Have we taken the time to really connect with Jerry and let them know they can trust us to be there for them as well? Are we transparent and clear when we have a one on one with Jerry, and let him know that the message he was sending by disappearing after committing to help was that he could be relied on?

We are working together to create positive change in our little universe, and what you did to get to this point in your growth, success, development, life, parenting, marriage, business, (use whatever word you like), will not get you to where you need to go next. This is why relationships end, brands die, people change jobs, stagnation happens. Everything is always changing, expanding, decomposing, and if you are not growing together, you are growing apart. It can be hard to let go of the old and embrace the new, but we are all changing all the time, so your tribe will see people come and go as part of the natural evolution of life. Don’t cry about it, just accept it and know that change is inevitable, growth is optional.

“What tribes are, is a very simple concept that goes back 50 million years. It’s about leading and connecting people and ideas.” Seth Godin

little imperfections

We were tiling the big walls in our small bathroom and as I looked at the 18 boxes of tile sitting there it was easy to get overwhelmed.  Starting was easy, just spread out the goop and stick one up there.  Practicing teamwork with James as he made the easy cuts, we were able to move quickly through the field and deplete most of 2 cases.  Then we got to the window, and had to stop and think and measure and cut and cut again.   This progressed through the day as we would blaze through the open wall area, then get to the inevitable spot where a whole tile didn’t fit.  The bathroom at this moment sits half way complete, and from the right angle it appears perfect, but as is human nature, my eye gets drawn to the one tile in the corner that is protruding slightly further than the others, and the other one up top that looks like the cut happened on the wrong side.
When I was making wedding cakes I could always see the imperfections, the spots where the fondant had a small crease or the flowers were slightly larger or smaller, the marks from my spatula and the small cracks that could happen in the buttercream when transporting the cake.  But curiously I was the only one who would notice.  All the bride and groom and their guests would see is the completed masterpiece, my mistakes were invisible to them.  The mistakes in the tile will disappear to all but maybe a few once the grout is in there, this I know from experience.
The tile job is a microcosm of any big endeavor I have undertaken.  Its a myth that success happens overnight, its almost always a slow brick by brick process.  I have a big project sitting in the inbox of my brain and thinking about it definitely can make me veer to overwhelm if I let it.  I know that once I start it and enlist the right people to help me with it, we will progress quickly, then we will reach the inevitable spot where we need to test, shift, evaluate, and proceed again. I know it will be a success because my criteria for success is that we are adding value to our guests and opportunity to grow for our team.  There will be mistakes, rather, there had better be mistakes.  If we are not trying different ways of accomplishing the goal, learning, cutting, adjusting, we will never reach completion.
This is true for any project or company or vision or goal- the mistakes along the way are part of  the process.  Making the cuts and adjust and continue moving forward- no one else will see or remember the mistakes you make.
“A brand is a living entity, and it is enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand small gestures.” – Michael Eisner, Walt Disney Company

settling down

We look at people who are living outside the norm, maybe its a young man dating a lot of women, or a woman choosing to focus on her career, or someone travelling the world instead of going to school, and we say “When they settle down, they will get married, or have a baby, or get a real job”. Why on earth would we ever choose to settle down, why don’t we settle up? Just the phrase has a negative meaning if you really think into it. Its saying to lower your expectations and become average. It implies that once you “settle down” you will have to give up what you had before. What if that is a crock of shit? What if you decided instead to settle up, to make the next phase of your life even more magnificent than yesterday?

I think too many people think that life has to be ordinary. That you lose the passion after a long time doing one thing, or being with one person. People talk about their glory days, or when I was younger, or before I had kids like it was the best of their lives. I know that the best is yet to come. I know that expecting today and however many tomorrows I am fortunate enough to have on this earth will be even more extraordinary than today. How do I know that? Because I expect it. I live as if it were true. I dream and stretch my imagination and know that no matter how old I am there is still so much I don’t know. I will never settle down. I am committed to always growing and stretching higher so I can fully experience all that this life has to offer me, and bringing as many people along with me as I can.

It doesn’t matter who you are, or how stuck you may feel, all it takes is a dream, a vision and a belief in your potential to continue to grow (and maybe a helping hand to give you a little pull!). I continue to take that hand when it presents itself to me. When I need a reminder of how great life is all I need to do is reach out and there it is, most of the time my amazing husband’s, but sometimes its the invisible hand of kindness with a stranger or someone on my team.

“There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living” Nelson Mandela

it’s lonely at the top…

…and other misconceptions. My earliest leadership examples were my parents. They treated the people who they employed like family. This felt right to me and it was the example that was modeled for me by my entrepreneur parents. They would have holiday parties at our home for their employees, help them out when they were in need, even taking people into our home to offer a place of refuge when they were in crisis. My model for business and leadership was shaped by what I saw my mom and dad do. My dad operated a communications business in our basement for much of my youth, so the coming and going of his techs was a common sight, and these 2-3 guys became a part of our extended family. When the business had grown and he moved it to a shop in another town it left a quiet spot where there had once been a hub of activity. When my mom was pregnant with my younger sister she was working as a seamstress at a shop that sold wedding dresses. The owner was getting ready to retire, and my mom made the gutsy decision to take over the business. Thus began my further education in entrepreneurial success.

My sister and I grew up in the bridal business, and our first experience with the excitement of being a business owner was when I was about 14 and my sister was 12. The retail clothing business has the problem of every changing inventory, leaving businesses with a constant overstock of “last year’s models”. My parents gave my sister and I the opportunity to take last year’s bridal dresses and set up a shop one block down from their own large retail store. The shop was tiny, about 250 square feet with a small counter, bathroom and one dressing room. The proximity to the main shop made it easy for us to walk back to check in with mom, and also to service the people who wanted a deal. We were only open limited hours, weekends and one or 2 days after school, but the best part was that we got to keep all the proceeds! We had to learn how to keep simple accounting, and it was our first intro into profits and expenses. It was empowering and exciting every time we made a sale. My mom’s philosophy was to always give the best service possible, that was her way of differentiating her business and preventing her products from being commodities, and we modeled this even as young girls in our tiny shop.

As we got older and more interested in the activities at school…and boys…our little venture became less important, and when we gave up the lease after 2 1/2 years I was ready to move on to other opportunities. I went to work with my mom in the bridal shop and began seriously training on learning the books. As a natural introvert, I liked this job. I liked sitting in a quiet office with the hum of activity around me, figuring out and balancing the sales and expenses for the shop. It was also a less favorite part of my job to sell. This was awkward for me, but as with many small businesses, we were often just a little short staffed on the busy weekends, so Saturday was a day I would be scheduled to work the front. This meant spending an hour to an hour and a half with an excited newly engaged bride and her entourage getting to know her and understand her vision for her wedding, then showing her dresses that fit that image. I am so blessed that my mom pushed me outside my comfort zone and that I had to practice the important skills of communicating and connecting during these sales shifts. She encouraged me and pointed out my natural strengths, while modeling herself the way to give great service.

When I decided to launch my own business, I used the valuable skills I had learned while growing up in a family business to form the outlook and philosophy for managing my employees. I had seen this work for my parents, and also seen where it made them vulnerable. I thought I would be different, and that I would not make the same “mistakes” that they had. There were some times in their business where their generosity and beliefs about the good intentions of all they interacted with caused them pain. There were situations where they were taken advantage of, when confidential information was not kept sacred, of blatant theft and deceit. I saw this but I thought that would never happen to me.

Unfortunately I was wrong. I have had situations where people I trusted broke the trust. After one situation that was particularly painful, I pulled back. I started to listen to voices that said “Keep your employees at a distance”, “Never get to close to your people”, “Keep business business and personal personal”. These voices seemed at the time to ring true. I had felt firsthand the pain of someone I trusted stealing money. I heard them share confidential information with outsiders. This felt personal. I zagged over to the opposite extreme of my upbringing and natural nature. I vowed to keep my people at arms length. It was all business and that’s that.

This unnatural behavior lasted about a year. Then I realized that the dissatisfaction I felt about going to work could be pinpointed on the shields I had put around my heart. “You have to touch a heart before asking for a hand”, a quote by John Maxwell, came into my in-box. A timely reminder of who I am. I love people. I LOVE PEOPLE. It is not lonely at the top if you bring people along with you on the ride. It is incredibly rewarding to be able to impact the people you work with, live with and lead in a way that enables them to see their own powerful ability to influence people they interact with. I continue to grow and learn every day with intention, and work to share what I have learned to help inspire others along the way. I am by no means done with my journey, and I know the best is yet to come!

communication

Communication is the foundation of leadership. Even bigger than that is communication is the glue in relationships. If you are not communicating with your team in an honest, clear and consistent manner the team will break down. This is where you get drama and grudges and conflict. You will stop learning, you will stop hearing, the team will stop communicating with you or each other.

If you are not communicating, people think you don’t care. A leader’s abilities can be measured by their skills at communicating their vision to their team. Does it have to be in words? Not always. Being a great at communication starts with being a good listener. It means taking time to hear what is being said, and to know what is left unsaid. It is being the living example of what you are working to create. You don’t have to be able to get up in front of a crowd and teach or preach to make a huge impact. It starts one person at a time.

a normal life

Why do we settle for normal? We judge so much by comparing to this standard of normal, or as I like to think, average. If I think about the people in my life that are truly making things happen, making a difference, creating and growing, they are nothing like normal. They are extraordinary. I am so blessed to know so many of these originals. They are people that are doing what they do, even ordinary things like gardening, painting, making coffee, or cleaning homes in an extraordinary way. They do the little extra things that bring the people they serve to email me personally about how lucky I am to have them on my team. They are the ones that bring such a positive energy to what they do, no matter how mundane the task may seem to be.

In this instant feedback time we live in I get real time updates on any missteps we make, and I know that it is always easier for people to complain than it is to give praise. So when someone takes the time to let me know how amazing their experience has been I value it 1000% over any complaint. You know the people I am talking about, the housekeeper who goes the extra mile and organizes your drawer, the painter who meticulously tapes off the area he is not painting, the barista who remembers your name and your drink order. How about the gardener who remembers your favorite flowers and plants those in your garden? The dishwasher who comes to the front of the restaurant to help clean tables? The server who serves you with an authentically happy self in spite of how busy they are? It may be the cashier at your regular grocery store, who is so happy to be there it seems impossible.

I have so many of these people in my life that it amazes me as I sit here thinking about it. They are not the big movers and shakers that we think about when we think extraordinary. They are not running Fortune 500 companies nor do they aspire to. But they are catalysts for change nonetheless. They are taking what they do and stepping it up a notch. That is all it really takes to set yourself apart, just that step above the line out of average to begin your journey to extraordinary.

“There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.” Roger Staubach