GLS 2018: Session 3 – Danny Meyer Interview with Elaine Lin Hering
Trey McClain
I was eating dinner with aunt and uncle the night before LSAT. My uncle asked me, “Do you realize how long you are going to be dead?” I said no. He said, “I don’t either. But its a heck of a lot longer than you’ll be alive.”
So thankful to have found a topic I love (what’s on the plate, what’s in the glass) and meet others.
In NYC, there are 26,000 restaurants. 19,000 without pizza parlors.
The road to success is paved with mistakes well-handled. Restaurants are like a sailing regatta.
Good service: Did we do what we said we would do?
How did we make you feel when we were delivering great service?
Service are all the technical things we do. Innovations in service all get copied by others.
The shelf-life of innovation is 2 minutes. We have to thrive on the thoughtful actions.
Investment banker brought 7 clients. He ordered the best chardonnay. I brought it to him and he said it wasn’t a chardonnay. It’s completely irrelevant who is right or wrong. It’s important that the customer always feels heard.
I’ve learned as a dad that dads are hardly ever right. I’ve learned as a husband that husbands are never right.
There is not an animal that makes better or more mistakes than human beings. Humans are wired to be mistake-makers. What if they were viewed as natural resources. We need to view mistakes like waves. If you’re a surfer, you need waves to ply my craft. Mistakes, if embraced and handled in a profitable way can land you in a better spot.
5 As of mistake making: be aware that you made it; acknowledge; apologize; act on it (fix it); apply additional generosity. Think about what you would want done and then do more. The only thing you can do is write the next chapter.
Mistakes provides the greatest opportunities to learn (as long as they are not mistakes that lacked integrity).
We were hosting an event for fancy clothing designer. Server poured olive oil down brand new Calvin Klein dress. I promise this story will have a happy ending. Got the dress replaced. Sent basket.
When mistakes of integrity are made, you need to pull at your family values.
Working in the restaurant is a great job because it is like a family. Great restaurants have an espirit of being a family. It’s either an adjunct family or a replacement for the family that they wished they had.
We create a sibling rivalry among our restaurants.
My biggest failure as a leader was injecting the best parts of a family into the restaurants too far. It’s not a family; it’s a business. In a family you don’t fire people. You get 2nd, 3rd, 4th chances. In a business at times you cannot do that.
There is not a greater crushing blow to me than when a person who is technically or emotionally suited to thrive in my business leaves.
The minute one becomes a leader: we get a megaphone stitched to our lips, everything we say is amplified. Everyone of our followers gets a pair of binoculars where they are watching us.
Became the Koch County field coordinator for a congressional campaign. 30 people who reported to me were all volunteers. Couldn’t fire anybody. The only thing I could do was inspire them to a higher purpose. They were there because they wanted to be there.
If I want to have people on my team that are as good as I want them to be, means that I owe them a lot more than just a pay check.
We used values and purpose to motivate people just as much as a paycheck.
Every business is keeping for talent.
People are looking to belong where they work and they want to trust where they belong.
In the food industry, we’re always looking at those who have scaled systems. We’re working on how you scale culture: the way we make you feel when you work in one of our places, when you dine in one of our places. It is the single most defining factor in a business.
We make it clear from the interview what we stand for. We’re going to call upon the gifts of who you are.
Six emotional skills. Emotional skills cannot be taught. They can be celebrated.
Kind-hearted and optimistic. We believe that hope is at the heart of hospitality. Do they have kind eyes?
Curiosity.
Work-ethic. Someone who cares about doing the job as well as they can do the job.
Empathy. People who imagine what it might be like to stand in your shoes. Aware of how they are making you feel, like a boat going through the water leaving a wake. What wake am I leaving in my path?
Self-awareness. They know what their own internal weather report is. Hospitality is a team sport. I need to take responsibility for not being a skunk.
Integrity. Someone who has the judgement to do the right thing even when no one else is looking.
All those skills add up to someone who has a high HQ (hospitality quotient).
Thinking about quitting in leadership? Push your reset button and see if that works.