Remember when you first started in the pizza industry? Maybe you were a delivery driver – or a line cook obsessed with achieving the perfect hydration. You loved the work, and you wanted to be the best.
Once you opened the doors to your own business, you were no longer the dough maker, you were overseeing the humans responsible for imitating and representing your brand. You were the leader.
Did you stop and learn the craft of leadership? Did you even stop to think about your leadership skills? One of the main reasons restaurants flop is because great chefs didn’t stop to become great leaders.
If you’ve stopped being a student of leadership – or you never studied the act of leading – you’ve stopped being a leader or you’re likely not a leader at all! You’re just a person with a loud voice and a lot of e-mails. Now is the time to study leadership and become the leader your pizzeria needs.
Check Your Ego
When we stop doing the hard work of checking our egos and staying in the research, our vision gets blurry. We start looking at the people who work for us and subconsciously categorizing them. Maybe you see them as obstacles, like the new guy who is always in the way. Maybe they have the skills to help you build, and so you see them as an opportunity: a skilled pizza maker who can surely win you clout, or an influencer with a huge following. Or maybe you don’t see them at all! They are a body that fills space and doesn’t negatively impact your bottom line.
If you see your team like this, you aren’t leading, you’re maneuvering. You’ve forgotten that every single person in your building is a human being, not a variable in your spreadsheet. Don’t worry, we all do this. Good leadership isn’t something you just have and keep, it is something you practice every day.
Get Out Of Your Own Way
Real impact happens when we realize we are no longer the main characters, we are facilitators. I want to challenge you dive back into the research – the research around leadership, not pizza dough!
In fields like education or most public sector work, people are taught to constantly evolve. But in business ownership, we get busy and forget that our biggest asset isn’t our product, it’s our people. When we work on ourselves, we finally start to see the skills everyone else is bringing to the table. We stop seeing employees and start seeing partners.
Resistance Is Opportunity
Resistance is going to happen. It’s part of the game. But you don’t remove it by pushing harder against people; you make progress by pulling with them.
When we look outside our own little bubble and commit to being lifelong learners, we gain the clarity to see humanity in our work. We stop seeing resistance as a threat and start acknowledging people’s ideas and pushback as opportunity.
It’s time to get out of your own way. Check your ego, study the craft of leadership, and remember that we are capable of so much more when we stop treating people like obstacles and start treating them like partners.
MELINDA CARBAJAL is the CEO and managing member at Simply Pizza.
