Donald Burns reflects on the challenges of restaurant leadership: the emotional ups-and-downs of returning daily to a difficult but beloved business, and the complicated, often ambivalent relationship leaders have with their teams — including the idea that staff keep an informal mental list of leaders’ small annoying behaviors they'd like changed.
Being a leader in the restaurant business, it's far from easy. Yet here you are, getting back out there day after day, going for another round with the Beast. You love the business deep down for all the good and bad that it offers you, even love the team that you have that you complain about. Your love for your team is at times a torrid affair. Here is some news that you might not be aware of. Your team probably has some similar thoughts about you as well. For all the good things you do as a leader, they have a kind of a list that your team keeps about all those little things that they really wish, deep down, you would stop doing.
If your restaurant only works because you work 80 hours a week, it doesn't work.
