Soft skills, not hard skills, are what make restaurant leaders thrive.

2 Feb 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment, the speaker explains his approach to coaching restaurant leadership teams, specifically for groups like New South Restaurant Group and Jared’s team. He runs bi‑weekly leadership calls that deliberately avoid discussing operational hard skills—since managers already possess those—and instead concentrate on developing soft skills such as time management, mindset, stress management, communication, and emotional intelligence. He argues that these interpersonal and mental‑capacity skills are rarely taught in the restaurant industry but are essential for managers to thrive and advance.

Chapters

And one of the things I've noticed too, with you guys is you guys, your communication has gotten so much better. So one of the things we work on, like when I work with restaurant groups like the New South Restaurant Group and Jared and his team, one of the things I really focus on, we do a leadership call every other week with the whole leadership team. And when those calls are like, a lot of people think, well, you're going to talk about hard skills. I never talk about hard skills. Those guys know the hard skills. So what we really focus on with a leadership team is we focus on the soft skills. We'd focus on, like that time management. We focus on mindset. We focus on stress management. We focus on communication. We focus on emotional intelligence. We focus on all those soft skills that no one really teaches in a restaurant business. Because, I mean, to get to the level you're at in restaurant game, I mean, you already have the hard skills or you wouldn't be a manager. You know what I mean? So how do I get you to get those soft skills? And those soft skills are where we really, really dial in on.