A service culture is the leader's own behavior, repeated daily over years and copied by a team that watches closely. No offsite or consultant produces it. The leaders I interviewed build it by listening, including the team in decisions, sharing knowledge and financial results, leading by example and rewarding effort that goes beyond the role.
Most people looking for a service culture go looking for a program. The leaders in this book would tell them to look in the mirror first. A team hired well and onboarded carefully is the raw material. The culture built from it comes from a thousand small choices the leader makes, daily, over years, in front of people who are watching and adopting a copy of what they see. There is no shortcut through that. The rebrand, the offsite and the consultant engagement all fail for the same reason: the culture is the leader’s behavior, multiplied.
The late Patrizio Cipollini, general manager of Four Seasons Hotel Firenze from its opening in 2008, gave me the most compact definition of respect I have heard from anyone in either field.
“Respecting your team means listening to them, including them in decision-making, asking for their advice and insight, and rewarding them for going above and beyond.” Patrizio Cipollini, general manager, Four Seasons Hotel Firenze
Each of those verbs is a discipline rather than a posture. Listening means giving people time and attention when they have something to say, especially when it is inconvenient. Including them in decisions means consulting even when consultation slows the decision, because it improves the buy in. Asking for advice assumes the team knows things the leader does not, which is almost always true. Rewarding effort means making the going above and beyond visible to everyone else.
Cipollini went a step further than most operators would find comfortable. He shared the hotel’s goals with the whole staff, shared the financial results every year, and gave each department the budget it was responsible for delivering. Showing the team the numbers treats them as adults whose work matters the way an owner’s work matters. In the experience of every operator I know who has tried it, a team that knows the property’s numbers runs the property as if the numbers were its own, because it has just been told, in effect, that they are.
On the restaurant side, Hans Neuner of Ocean at Vila Vita Parc in the Algarve, two Michelin stars, described the same practice as a set of pillars. Earning respect, he told me, comes from doing what you know well, leading by example, sharing your knowledge and expertise, and empowering and supporting your team. Read as an operational specification, each pillar rules something out. The leader does not bluff into parts of the operation they do not understand. The leader does the work they are asking the team to do. The leader actively hands over techniques and judgments that took years to acquire. And the leader makes room for the team to act without asking permission.
Joan Roca, who grew El Celler de Can Roca from two cooks to forty, put the whole argument in one line.
“I learned that managing such a team in an inclusive way based on all their various talents is the only sustainable path.” Joan Roca, chef, El Celler de Can Roca, Girona
The word doing the work there is inclusive. A culture that treats a forty person team as a single unit loses the people who could have grown into its next generation of leaders. A culture that manages each person according to who they are keeps them, and compounds.
What unites Cipollini, Neuner and Roca is that none of them described a program. They described their own conduct, repeated until the team mirrored it. That is the uncomfortable truth about service culture for any leader hoping to delegate it: it cannot be delegated. It can only be demonstrated, every day, until it belongs to everyone.
Chapter 4, First the Team, follows this through hiring, onboarding, the leader’s role as protector of the team, and the moment a leader has to let someone go.