I recently stepped down from the general manager role at my parents’ fast-casual middle eastern restaurant. Over the last 1.5 years, my life was dedicated to leading a small but mighty team of individuals through what was the most challenging time for the hospitality industry - the Covid 19 pandemic.
There were constantly changing rules and regulations, declining sales, low employee morale and uncertainty around what the future held. Not a great environment for a new business owner; however, it was the perfect environment for me to learn about leadership first-hand, and to put into practice everything I had studied during my MBA.
This blog post captures 3 leadership lessons I learned while leading a team through the largely unstable and ambiguous Covid-19 business environment.
1. Choose people over profit: Find the courage to value transparency over secrecy. I chose to shut down our restaurant temporarily to protect my staff and customers despite pressure for growth. The time my entire team took off helped flatten the curve for our larger Brampton community (which was the epicenter of hot Covid-19 activity). We had $0 in sales over this 4-week period.
2. Maintain an inventor mindset: As our in-store sales and foot traffic declined, we had to get creative to increase sales. Necessity truly is the mother of invention, and we had to get creative out of necessity. I pivoted on our core strategy to open new avenues for sales growth by partnering with UberEats and SKIP. This allowed us to open new streams of revenue while still maintaining rigorous health and safety protocols.
3. Be shameless about asking for help: If there was a support grant out there (which there were many), I seeked it out and applied for it to ensure we could keep our lights on. No shame in asking for help. No shame in getting the help. No shame in keeping my team members on the payroll.
My experience over the last 1.5 years was truly transformative. It allowed me to build on my management competence and develop my own leadership style – one of ‘eating last’.
The one choice – whether a leader puts themselves or their people first – determines if they are worthy of our love and loyalty. Great leaders sacrifice their own comfort, even their own survival, for the good of those in their care. That’s what eating last means.
Simon Sinek explores this idea best in his book titled “Leaders Eat Last”. His book highlights the hidden dynamics that inspire leadership and trust. Check out Sinek’s presentation on why leaders eat last – I hope it inspires you as it did me.
