Invite Your Team Along

There’s a fascinating and possibly overlooked advantage that businesses with strong cultures have: when an employee comes up in the organization, any other way of doing things just feels wrong.

And wrong is how EMP felt when I walked in on my first day.

In retrospect, I can now name everything that was going sideways and tell you what I did by way of correction. In the heroic version of this story, I struck a masterful pose and enumerated a number of inspirational management tenets, all of which transformed the restaurant within the week.

But the truth is, Danny’s way of doing things—the way he treated his employees and guests—was so baked into my consciousness that for the first few months I was acting on instinct alone.

Mostly, the team needed to be brought along. They needed to feel seen and appreciated. They needed expectations to be clearly laid out and explained. They needed discipline to be consistent. They needed to feel like vital and important parts of an exciting sea change, not obstacles to making it happen.

From a management perspective, we needed to return to first principles, and at Union Square Hospitality Group, the first principle is to take care of one another. The fine-dining squad hadn’t come from within USHG—and even if they had been able to absorb this crucial, employee-centered aspect of the culture, they’d been so focused on making their mark on the restaurant that they’d let this central principle fall by the wayside. That’s why Danny had insisted the next GM come from within the company; for him, that aspect of the culture was not negotiable.

To bridge the gap between the two factions, improving communication was going to be key. At the same time, we needed systems, so everybody would know what they were supposed to be doing and how they were supposed to be doing it.

It was my hope that both fixes would make the team feel safer—and inspire them to come along on our mission. There was a lot to be done to make the restaurant better, but there would be no point to doing any of it if the people who worked there didn’t love coming to work. If I couldn’t succeed in getting hearts and minds on board for the bigger project, then the grand vision of a push toward excellence would be dead on arrival.

It didn’t even matter who was right and wrong, though, because nobody was communicating effectively. The front-line staff weren’t talking to one another because nobody was talking to them, and they weren’t listening to one another because they felt like nobody was listening to them. So I spent my first few weeks sitting down with every single member of the team and hearing them out. That was a whole education in itself; I learned a lot of information about the restaurant it would otherwise have taken me a long time to figure out. Those meetings also taught me that time spent goes a long way. Sitting down with people shows them you care about what they think and how they feel and makes it that much easier for them to trust that you have their best interests in mind. For this reason, I’d later ask the managers to stop sitting together during family meal, which the staff shares together before the restaurant is open. By spreading out, they’d learn, as I had, that the meal is a perfect opportunity to gather ideas and perspectives that might otherwise slip through the cracks.

Every manager lives with the fantasy that their team can read their mind. But in reality, you have to make your expectations clear. And your team can’t be excellent if you’re not holding them accountable to the standards you’ve set. You normalize these corrections by making them swiftly, whenever they’re needed.

And make those corrections in private. I can still feel the flush of shame and horror that crept up from my collar when I was screamed at in the dining room by the chef de cuisine at Spago; I’ll remember it for the rest of my life. And while it was a terrible experience, it was also a privileged peek at a mistake I never wanted to make.

Correct an employee in front of their colleagues, and they’ll never forgive you. In fact, the wall of shame that goes up may mean they can’t even absorb what you’re telling them. Issue the same correction in private, though, and it’s a different exchange.

In truth, hiring was hard before we got the culture of the restaurant fully dialed in. When we had an opening, I’d find someone good to join the team—not necessarily impeccably trained, but energetic and enthusiastic about the mission. But even if that person was all charged up when they got hired, the residual negativity of some of their colleagues would eventually infect them. The fine-dining crew was still being snooty, and some of the remaining members of the old guard weren’t ever going to get on board. Three or four times, I hired someone I thought showed promise. But they’d last only a month before the flame of their enthusiasm dimmed and died, and then they’d quit. So the next time a position opened up, I didn’t race to fill it. Instead, I waited until another position came open, and then another, and then hired three great people, all at the same time. Instead of one new person cupping their hands, trying to protect the tiny flame of their enthusiasm, that little crew brought a bonfire no one could put out.

For every course, the table was set with fresh silverware, new wineglasses were placed, food was served and spieled, wine was poured. After we were done eating, the plates were cleared, and the table was crumbed. Those six actions happened for every single course—which meant that over a fifteen-course menu, we were being interrupted ninety times over the entirety of our meal. And that didn’t even include the introduction to the menu or any mid-course check-in.

Ninety times—when our stated goal was to create an environment where people could connect over the table, where, as I had said a thousand times, the service and the food and the environment were mere ingredients in the recipe of human connection. That is unreasonable, but it’s not hospitality.

We’d always believed we should serve what we wanted to receive. Serve only what you want to serve, and you’re showing off. Serve only what you think other people want, and you’re pandering. Serve what you genuinely want to receive, and there will be authenticity to the experience.