The leadership style that holds up in hotels and kitchens is leading by example: being present on the floor, doing the small tasks yourself, admitting mistakes in front of the team and bringing more motivation into the room than anyone else. Directive, top down management tends to limit the people it is meant to run.
Hospitality has a long tradition of command. Many of the general managers and chefs I spoke with were trained by people who gave orders and expected silence in return. Almost none of them lead that way now. What they describe instead is a style built on visibility: the leader is on the floor or at the pass, does the small tasks in front of the team, and holds themselves to a standard the team can see and copy. The common name for this is leading by example, and in my interviews it came up more often than any other idea about leadership.
The clearest case for it came from Matthew Orlando, then chef and owner of Amass in Copenhagen, whose zero waste kitchen earned a Michelin Green Star. He described the leader’s job as setting the mood in and out of the kitchen, and he was candid that this means the staff cannot see the chef’s own stress or exhaustion.
“Leading by example is the best form of motivation. Because I set the tone at the top, I would never ask my staff to do something that I wouldn’t do myself.” Matthew Orlando, then chef and owner of Amass, Copenhagen
Read carelessly, Orlando could sound like he is asking leaders to fake energy. He is asking for something else. A leader who has dealt with the morning’s frustrations before reaching the floor brings more of their real motivation into the room than anyone else does, and that is what the team responds to. Performed energy, the chef who shouts because shouting is what a chef looks like, is read correctly by the brigade within about a week.
The hotel side offers a useful before and after. Peter Hopgood, then general manager of Outrigger Fiji Beach Resort, began his career in what he called an autocratic register: directive, top down, the model his generation inherited from the people who trained them. After a Franklin Covey leadership program built on Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits, he concluded that this posture was limiting the six hundred people he was responsible for. He rebuilt his approach around regular staff surveys, public appreciation and recognition during reviews rather than feedback reserved for the corrective moment. What strikes me most about his story is that he made the change where the team could watch. A private adjustment would have reverted under the first serious stress. A visible one became the new standard.
Presence is the other half of the style. Susanne Hatje, then general manager of Mandarin Oriental, New York, described daily contact with colleagues in the heart of house and the front of house as the way she keeps the property pushing for excellence.
“I believe it’s important to constantly have an open dialogue with the team to inspire innovation, a hunger for excellence and success.” Susanne Hatje, then general manager of Mandarin Oriental, New York
Two cautions belong here. The first is that leading by example cuts both ways. Philip Barnes, then general manager of The Savoy in London, told me that a general manager who walks by a problem becomes the problem, because the team has watched the leader tolerate it. The second is that the style has nothing to do with charisma. It is consistency, the same small acts performed in front of the team after the novelty of the role has worn off. That is what separates the leaders whose teams follow them from the leaders whose teams merely comply.
Chapter 3, Leading by Example, works through this style in detail, from where the leader stands during the day to the hardest move of all, admitting in front of the team that you were wrong.