🌭 Will Guidara: Restaurateur, Author of Unreasonable Hospitality

Culture Lessons from Restaurants

Hello, It’s Julia, Founder of The Switchboard, a newsletter exploring the ways we communicate and connect at work and beyond. Last year, I read Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara and loved it. I wrote this article about employee experience.

This year, I reached out to Will and his team to dive deeper into what we can learn from his experiences and apply to our communications and culture work. Thank you to Maren Patrick for helping make the interview happen. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

In This Edition

• How hospitality is a state of mind

• Why leaders must take time to do the most menial tasks

• When starting a new role, just listen

About Will

Will Guidara is the author of the New York Times Bestseller Unreasonable Hospitality, which chronicles the lessons in service and leadership he learned over the course of his career in restaurants.

He is the former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park, which, under his leadership, was named the Best Restaurant in the World.

He is the host of The Welcome Conference, serves as a Co-Producer on FX's The Bear, and is a recipient of the Wall Street Journal Innovator Award. 

What’s one value that matters to you and why?

Loyalty. I have my people. I am loyal to a fault to them. It’s a scalable value. When you are loyal, loyalty and greed are not friends. It doesn’t work with selfishness either. If you prioritize loyalty, it has a cascading impact, and it points you in the right direction, which is the right way to go. 

What is hospitality?

Hospitality is not the restaurant industry — it’s a state of mind. Anyone can make the choice to be in that industry simply by virtue of being as focused on people as you are on whatever else you do. 

I believe it’s the right way to live and it’s the greatest path to success. If you invest in relationships, they take a long time to build and take away. I think it’s one of the greatest competitive advantages that exists. 

What are unreasonable hospitality lessons that can be applied to creating community at work?

In great restaurants, our goal is to be as intentional as possible to create the conditions for connections for people around the table as we serve them or so that they can connect with one another. The same is true at work. This can take many directions. 

First, the daily huddle we have in the restaurant industry, called pre-meal — it’s the first 30 minutes before restaurants begin serving. It’s essentially like a stand-up meeting. It’s the part of the day when people you work with cease being individuals and come together as a team. That only happens if you spend that time together, not just talking about what’s on the menu, such as a new dish, but if you make it a moment of inspiration and connection when you are sharing ideas and inviting people to do the same by sharing in return. 

It comes from creating a culture of consistent communications where people are not just open to feedback, but creating a loop for it. The more people are encouraged to be honest in communicating what they need from one another or where they are falling short, the more connected they are, the less likely they are holding things back that can lead to tension-filled rifts. 

It’s also about taking moments of celebration seriously and being more creative than a cake in the break room on a birthday, but really work to create your own traditions people look forward to that fall outside the course of their day-to-day such that they can have fun together. Playing is a critical connection piece. 

All this falls under one simple idea — anyone who is successful is very intentional, relentless and creative in pursuit of whatever product they are building, unreasonable hospitality is about bringing that same relentlessness in pursuit of people – it’s not just the people you serve, but it starts with people you work with.

What can we learn from the hospitality industry about leadership?  

You can’t lead a restaurant unless you are in the restaurant. Leaders in restaurants are actually one of the few leadership positions where in order to be with your team, you are actually on the front lines. A great leader in a restaurant is inspiring the team, leading great meetings, doing the P&L and showing creativity. But they are also busing tables. I really believe if you are a leader, you must take time to do the most menial tasks because it’s hard to earn the respect of the group, if you aren’t willing to do everything you are asking them to do. 

There’s a retired Naval Captain, David Marquet, who I talk about in my book. He said at most organizations people at the top have all the authority and people on the front line have all the information. It’s hard to do anything of significance if you are not bringing authority and information together. That happens more organically in restaurants. 

Being intentional also happens more organically in restaurants than other industries. If people can show their intention to replicate this experience, the impact can be quite profound.

I love your hotdog story in your TED talk and book. How can people learn to look for those moments?

What gets talked about is what gets thought about. You focus on it, give yourself to it and wake up every day to make the best version of something. It’s actually easier to get engaged in hospitality because you get to see the instant gratification on someone’s face when they receive the gesture. 

The best way to instill this in a culture is to talk about it all the time. What people are thinking about is what they are looking for in the world. I talk about how to actually bring it to life in the TED talk — be present, be focused on the people you are with and don’t be multitasking so much that you can’t slow down to listen to the people around you. 

It requires taking what you do seriously without taking yourself too seriously — don’t close doors on ideas because they don’t feel on brand, recognize a gesture is about the person you’re sending it to, not about the brand. This idea of one size fits one — the greatest things are bespoke to the person, it makes the gesture more well-received and shows to the person that they are seen by you.

The ways this happens more consistently is if it’s prioritized. If in a daily huddle, a leader says we can bring more hospitality into what we do by doing, people will do that. 

If you were to become Chief Culture Officer at an organization, what would be your top priority? 

My primary priority is to do nothing at all for a while. Far too often, people feel this need to immediately happen to an organization as opposed to giving themselves enough time to understand it well enough so that they can happen for it.

You need to ease into a pool without making a wave. Get to know the people, learn as much as possible before you start telling people what right looks like. Because until you understand it, you have no grounds to evolve it.

When people demand immediate results such as 90-day plans, it’s setting the individual and company back. Chanel actually does not allow executives to speak at a meeting for 3-4 months. If you’re a Chief Culture Officer, the right role is listening for a long time. Culture can’t be taught, it must be caught to figure out what it feels like and what you can do with it from there. 

What is your favorite hack for work or life that you think others should consider?

I believe in scheduling life as much as work. The moment you put something in your calendar, it’s you saying to yourself and whoever that time impacts, that the time is a priority. Way too often we are putting work stuff into our calendar and leaving life stuff to fight over the scraps. 

I like scheduling investments in my relationships in life like how I schedule investments in my work. It can look like time to go to the gym or to think about what I want to do with my kids on Tuesday for the weekend so that Saturday doesn’t come and I’m struggling to make the most of the precious hours. I believe everyone should draw up a list of what matters to them. If the top three priorities aren’t in your calendar, it means you're not spending enough time in pursuit of them. 

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Reader Shout Out: Thank you to Rebecca Gallagher for sharing last week’s Summer Reading List. Reply if you've shared a post for a future shout out.

Thank you for tuning into this edition. I’m grateful to you for reading, reacting and commenting. If you enjoyed what you learned, consider sharing it with a colleague or posting on LinkedIn. Signing off for this edition. — Julia