Military Leadership Strategies in Restaurants? You Bet!

What does being a waiter or bartender have to do with fighting wars? A former US Navy Submarine Captain, David Marquet and one of America’s most prominent restaurateurs, Danny Meyer have some answers.

Enlightened hospitality, as Meyer calls it, preaches that above all, you have to first extend hospitality to your employees.

He goes on to encourage leaders to make their employees feel like things are happening FOR them, so that they can do their jobs better and more easily, rather than TO them, as something that they have to deal with and overcome.

Lead by teaching, set clear priorities, hold people accountable.

Marquet stresses that leaders need to give ownership to their employees. He’s not talking about ownership of the business - though employee stock options can sometimes be an effective performance incentive (more on that in another post).

Rather, turn all your employees into leaders by moving authority down to the individuals with information (front line employees), rather than moving the information up to those with authority (supervisors).

Give control, ensure competence, provide clarity.

It’s not a coincidence that well respected and successful leaders in two significantly different high-stress industries found remarkably similar philosophies to be so successful.

Combining these two models gives you a really complete framework. Here’s what that looks like:

1. Give control - formally and officially trust and empower your employees to make as many decisions on their own as possible

2. Ensure competence / lead by teaching - make sure your employees have all the skills, tools, and knowledge they need to do their jobs the right way and successfully

3. Provide clarity / set clear priorities - outline requirements of the result or deliverable in as much detail as possible with examples so that there is no doubt what’s expected

4. Hold people accountable - trust but verify, inspect what you expect, whatever catch phrase you want to use, if your employees aren’t living up to your expectations or standards, you need to explicitly tell them how/why ASAP, and give them the opportunity to fix it and improve

5. DON’T MICROMANAGE (this one is a bonus, just from me - but still totally necessary)

Become a servant leader. Be a leader who's highest priorities are those of the people he/she leads, and constantly demonstrate that you care about their growth and development.

If you take care of and empower your team, they will take care of your customers (and vendors), which will generate substantial and sustainable returns for owners and investors in the long-term.

Want to build a business filled with leaders that runs itself?

If this sounds like something you might want to explore, just hit the button below and we can get the conversation started!