Because when you start focusing on extending the charitable assumption to the people around you, you find yourself giving it to yourself a bit more as well. We were introduced to many of these concepts on our very first day, at the meeting for new hires. Those meetings were in themselves unusual; my Cornell friends had gone on to work for large restaurant companies who didn’t do anything of the sort. And the importance of those meetings within USHG’s culture sent an immediate signal: “There’s a certain way we do things here, and it’s bigger than teaching you how you move through the dining room or how to spiel a dish.

My biggest takeaways were: Criticize the behavior, not the person. Praise in public; criticize in private. Praise with emotion, criticize without emotion.

I’m always interested in what others, and not just the esteemed critic from The New York Times, think about what we’re doing. If your business involves making people happy, then you can’t be good at it if you don’t care what people think. The day you stop reading your criticism is the day you grow complacent, and irrelevance won’t be far behind.

I wrapped up that first strategic planning meeting by telling the team, “The moment you start to pursue service through the lens of hospitality, you understand there’s nobility in it. We may not be saving people’s lives, but we do have the ability to make their lives better by creating a magical world they can escape to—and I see that not as an opportunity, but as a responsibility, and a reason for pride.

Most of us have no difficulty at all in delivering praise; that’s the fun part of being a boss. But it’s hard to criticize someone. So I spend a lot of time with my managers talking about criticism—how to deliver it, how to receive it, and maybe most important, how to think about it. We all want to be liked, and when you give someone a note about what they could be doing differently and better, you run the risk of losing their goodwill. That’s why I say there is no better way to show someone you care than by being willing to offer them a correction; it’s the purest expression of putting someone else’s needs above your own, which is what hospitality is all about. Praise is affirmation, but criticism is investment.”