1: “My dad had his own platoon in Vietnam,” Will Guidara writes in his terrific book Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect.
“He’d be the first one to tell you it wasn’t a great one,” Will shares, “In fact, it’s highly likely he got it because nobody else wanted it.”
One of the soldiers in the platoon was nicknamed Kentucky after his home state.
“Kentucky was lazy and wasn’t in great shape,” Will notes. “He had no hand-eye coordination, and terrible aim. And he was not the brightest bulb on the string; in the early days, my dad says, he wasn’t sure Kentucky was plugged in at all.”
Upon taking over the platoon, Will’s dad was immediately frustrated. But he decided to channel his frustration into getting to know his team.
When he spoke with Kentucky, he learned that the young soldier had “lived his entire life in the dense, deep backwoods of the rural South and that his supernaturally good sense of direction had been honed by a lifetime of navigating that land.”
Turns out that was a valuable skill set for a soldier in Vietnam.
So, Will’s dad decided to make Kentucky the lead soldier for the platoon.
“Where he excelled for his whole tour,” Will notes.
“No matter how dark it got in the jungles of Vietnam, no matter how thick the foliage or how confusing the terrain,” Will explains, “Kentucky could always find his way—in stark contrast to my dad and all the other city slickers, who were encountering those conditions for the first time.”
2: The Kentucky story was one Will internalized and set out to emulate when he became General Manager of Eleven Madison Park (also known as EMP), a New York City fine-dining restaurant.
Under Will’s leadership, EMP would one day earn the coveted #1 ranking, according to The World’s 50 Best Restaurants.
To be a successful leader, we must learn “to identify the strengths of the people on our teams, no matter how buried those strengths might be.”
“In getting to know the guy, my dad turned one of the worst guys in the platoon into one of its strongest assets,” he writes.
When we take on a new leadership role, we get to choose our team.
“Even if we inherit them,” Will writes, because we get to “decide if we want to keep working with them or not.”
One approach is to “weed out everyone who had a reputation as a less-than-stellar employee,” Will writes.
“Eventually, some folks will need to be managed out,” he shares. “But first, I needed to make sure a hidden capability wasn’t lurking behind someone’s subpar performance.”
3: Which was the case with Eliazar Cervantes, who had been hired as a food runner.
His managers complained constantly to Will that Eliazar didn’t care.
When Will spoke with him, he learned that Eliazar “wasn’t particularly interested in learning about the food,” Will recalls. “Of course he couldn’t remember how old the balsamic vinegar was; he wasn’t passionate about it.”
Eliazar was, however, a natural leader and someone who took pride in being organized. He was “the kind of person who carried authority easily, and who could keep a steady hand on the wheel, even when it felt like the whole enterprise was headed off the rails.”
Rather than reprimand or fire him, Will assigned Eliazar to become an expeditor in the kitchen.
“The expeditor,” Will writes, “is the person who tells the cooks when to start preparing the food and makes sure each dish gets to the right person at the right table in a timely fashion.
“A good one will know exactly what a table ordered, where they are in their previous course, and how long their entrées will take to cook. At a restaurant like Eleven Madison Park, he might be holding thirty different tables in his head at any moment.
“In other words,” he explains, “the expeditor both conducts a symphony every night—and makes sure the planes don’t collide in midair. It is one of the most important jobs in any restaurant, and one of the hardest.
“And watching Eliazar do it was like seeing someone play chess in three dimensions.”
The bottom line?
“Once Eliazar moved from a position with no organizational component or opportunity for leadership into one that depended on those skills, he quickly came into his own,” Will notes, “and the whole restaurant got to see his genius.
“He went on to shine as head expediter at Eleven Madison Park for years,” he writes, “becoming an essential part of our success.”
The lesson for leaders? Finding the hidden gifts of those in our teams is one of our most important responsibilities.
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: How often do I take the time to truly understand the unique strengths of each person on my team instead of defaulting to initial judgments?
Action: Identify one person whose gifts may be underappreciated and start a conversation this week to better uncover their strengths.
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