Fast food or Gourmet: Which leader are you?

If you had to describe your leadership style, would you be a gourmet leader or would you be a fast food leader?

I was listening to a marketing seminar about attracting the right people. The presenter asked us to examine our website copy to see if we are presenting our services as a fast-food or as gourmet. It was a great question that got me thinking a lot and I wanted to present it to you.

First let’s talk about the difference between fast food and gourmet food. Fast food is uses cheap ingredients to produce a quick meal. It is common. You can expect the food taste the same no matter where you go. The burger in North Dakota will taste the same as the burger in Florida. Fast food tastes good going down but proves not to be good for you later. The flavor of the food is predetermined. It is good in a pinch but it’s not something you can live on perpetually.

Gourmet food on the other hand invokes a different feeling. It is made with high quality ingredients. The reason behind the ingredients is just as important as the ingredients themselves. Gourmet food is  custom and uniquely special to the restaurant, the region, or the chef. It is about the experience. Gourmet food custom blends flavors together so that it’s consumer can experience a new oral sensation. Gourmet food leaves you feeling satisfied not just full.

As you read those distinctions did your mind start listing the difference between a gourmet leader and a fast food leader?

Fast food leaders

Fast food leaders see people as commodities that can easily be switched out. People are ingredients and fast food leaders don't look for quality ingredients. They'll take whatever because they don't value people. An example of this comes from one of my favorite action movies, The Fast and Furious  6. The villain, Owen Shaw, gives his take on team: “A team is nothing but pieces you switch out until you get the job done. It's efficient. It works.”  Even though the man saying it was a cute British actor with an accent that would make one swoon, the truth is his view on his team is of a fast food variety. Fast food leaders view humans as commodities that can exchanged, replaced, and debased as long as the job gets done.

Fast food leaders keep the status quo. They do not value nor to do they look for diversity in their team members. He or she values keeping things running smoothly over rocking the boat.

Fast food leaders are full of fluff with no substance. You can be under this leader for years and not grow one bit.They are all about jargon, buzzwords, and catchphrases.They lead with stale cliches and ideologies. They aren't original.

Things fast food leaders do that drive people crazy:
• They don’t confront or handle conflict well. It takes too much time
• They interrupt and shove their ideas onto others.
• For them, obedience is more important than understanding.
• Their vision is short sighted. They don’t look long term
• They use their leadership position to hide their insecurities

Gourmet leaders

Gourmet leaders not only understand that the people carrying out the mission are indispensable to the organization’s success, but they also take action to support their stance.
Gourmet leaders know and show empathy. They can connect on a personal level with their employees.  They help their employees unearth internal motivations for success. They craft employee development plans the align the organziations mission to the individuals development and career aspirations. Being under s gourmet leaders’s is an experience.

Thing gourmet leaders do that makes them successful:
• They actually listen, instead of waiting for you to just stop talking.
• They equal parts encouragement and praise and correction and challenge.
• They are secure enough to reproduce themselves.
• They ask for opinions and perspectives other than their own.
• They leave their employees better in the long run

Which type of leader are you? Which type of leader would your team say you are? If you don’t know, ask them. Do you know what you need to do in order to be more gourmet and less fast food?  Contact me so we can chat about.



This BRAVE Living blog post is for the woman who knows she is called to an even greater level of leadership, influence,  and money, yet can't figure out how to do that day to day. Subscribe to my 7 Communication Mistakes Women In Leadership Make to understand what might be holding you back.

photo credit: Anne-Marie Nichols via photopin cc

Stop Fighting For Your Limits

I never particularly liked Owen Wilson or Vince Vaughn until they made the movie The Internship in 2013. When the movie came out on video, I bought it. 

I love the movie, not so much for the actors, but because of the message. It places the emphasis on PEOPLE in a technology reliant world. 

My favorite line from the movie was delivered by Vince Vaughn. He was trying to convince a small shop owner to expand his business by using technology. The owner was hesitant and then Vince's character said it:

"If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them"

The It's Not Personal; It's Business Lie

This post was written by Julia Winston and first appeared on Asmithblog.com

“It’s not personal. It’s just business”

Most are familiar with the line from The Godfather (1972). Many have written praising this movie for its leadership lessons. Many have written denouncing this line as a lie, a farce, and problematic. Regardless of your stance, we want to believe it is true. In this article I’ll tell you why we want to believe it, even though it isn’t true.

Listening Is A Human Need?

When it comes to listening, people usually want to know "how can I get people to listen to me?" 

They can site incident after incident of how a boss, coworker, or family member doesn't listen and the rift it is causing. They recognize the problem and are living testimonies of listening gone wrong. 

So here is my question. If you know first hand how frustrating it is not to be heard, then why aren't you doing all you can to make sure you aren't causing that same frustration to others? 

In this post, I talk about listening as a need and reveal 4 ways you can become a better listener.

Learn To Be Yourself

This summer I took my kids to see Rio in theaters.

We own the DVD of the movie and have seen it hundreds of times. I thought it would be the perfect way to introduce my young children to the movie going experience without producing too much anxiety about the big screen, dim lighting, and loud sound. As the movie started, the anxiety of the unknown left my kids and they melted into the familiarity of the characters, music, and lines they knew all too well.

I too experienced the movie in a new way. 
Here are 3 ways you can learn to be yourself...Rio style!

Leaderships Lessons Learned in the Ladies' Room

Image courtesy of Keattikorn, freedigitalphotos.net

The line to the ladies room is infamously known for being long.  Most women have opened the door only to have the line meeting us there. So we wait. 

One time I entered a movie theater’s ladies room and had a different response. I entered to find a line of 5 women before me. They were chatting happily with each other and just waiting.

Instead of settling into my place at line, as usual, I had a thought. “There are close to 15 stalls in this room. Surely, they can’t all be occupied.” So I got out  of line, walked past the other ladies and went to see if indeed all the stalls where occupied. 

Why Respect Doesn't Have to be Earned

Our greatest communication struggle comes when we demand other people to see things the way we do and then disrespect them when they don't. 

I recently saw Lee Daniel's The Butler starring Forest Whitaker as a White House butler who served eight presidential administrations. 

Though unsure what to expect of the film, I assumed it would be a movie about race in America. To my surprise, it wasn't a movie about race. It was a movie about the complexity of human communication.

In the mosaic interconnect of communication, passion, and people, this film presented two powerful communication lessons we can learn.

Before we get there, allow me to take you on a fictitious journey into the thoughts of Cecil Gaines, the butler, and his college aged son, Louis. 

Lessons on Finding Bravery In Unexpected Places: #Blog4biz Day 31:

Image Courtesy of Microsoft Clip Art

Today is the last day of the #Blog4Biz Business Blogging Challenge hosted by Fleur Management. It has been 31 days of blogging prompts about big things like business plans to small things like office supplies.

Today's challenge asks us to chose a business owner and (1.) write a pitch or proposal on how our businesses could collaborate and (2.) ask that business owner for a meeting to share those ideas.

This is a good challenge especially for small businesses. We can go farther if we begin thinking how can we work together to met a common goal. If you have been reading along, you know that I try to find some way to connect communication into every post. Today I am not going to that. In this last post, I am going to challenge you to open your eyes and find the lessons and chances to be BRAVE in everything you do.

Communication Lessons from the movie Vantage Point

Only  a few more days until you can enter to win a $50 gift card to Target. Click here for more information on the BRAVE-LY Back At It Giveaway!

Today's #Blog4Biz challenge is a super fun one...and super hard. I am suppose to think and write like another #Blog4biz participant. How would he or she solve one of my business problems?

What a creative concept. And it reminds me of the movie Vantage Point that was released in 2008. Here is the trailer to refresh your memory.

According to Wikipedia, Vantage Point is a 2008 American political action thriller film directed by Pete Travis. The story focuses on an assassination attempt on the President of the United States, as seen from the various vantage points of different characters.Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, Forest Whitaker, William Hurt, and Sigourney Weaver star in principal roles. 

I remember watching this movie in the theater. I was looking to see how they would bridge all 8 perspectives and wrap up the story. I remember hearing the audience gasp each time the movie literally rewound to begin the story from another character's perspective. It was a novel concept that I enjoyed watching. Eventually, I just wanted to get to the end. But I realized, just like in real life communication, how you get there is just as important as arriving.

This isn't the first time Hollywood has cashed in on "perspective pieces". 2004's Crash  was a racially charged piece that showed how several character's lives connected in ways they didn't even realize. 

Thinking back on it now, both of those movies have a lot of communication lessons we could learn. I am going to stick with Vantage Point for today's challenge.