Remember the good ol’ days? When you were able to go to any food establishment and get decent service? I know it’s a mental stretch and wasn’t so long ago. Now, if we escape the restaurant without murdering anyone, we call that a win.
What happened? Did the next generation of kids entering the work force get raised to be rude? Not even close. Restaurants can no longer afford to train people to have customer service skills. And trust me, it’s a SKILL.
The kids who are “naturally” friendly were TAUGHT to be polite from infancy. The “customer is always right” motto has created a minority of monsters. The food service industry professes human interactions of the “friendly” nature. These come predicated with fairness, equality, and mutual respect. The “customer is always right” mentality has fed a small percentage of people’s shallow egos. They step through the threshold like The Emperor wearing invisible clothes. They imagine everything they think, say and believe is true.
These egomaniacs burn out the service industry personnel. So, personnel approach the 95% of normal customers with apathy, disdain and sometimes outright hostility. The domino effect creates a vicious cycle. Can establishments spend resources on treating anxiety disorders emerging from customer-monsters? No. The service personnel retreat into their protective shell. They remain in anxious wait for the next angry customer to take out their bad day on them.
The margins for restaurants have never been great. A tiny 5% profit at the bottom line, if you’re lucky. Expensive restaurants with stressed and understaffed crew are the norm. Business owners can’t keep up with minimum wage hikes. And we now live in an age of business behemoths like Amazon, Apple and Walmart. Society expects to receive so much for so little. For $1.99 a month I get access to thousands of shows and movies, each requiring millions of dollars to produce.
Unfortunately, the food industry is struggling. Unless you’re Taco Bell. They have been selling 79 cent tacos in massive volume for 30 years. But the rest? There are only a few choices to stay viable. Raise prices, cut training programs, understaff and churn and burn the crew. For the last 20 years budgets for training customer service skills have decreased. And customers must put up with it. Gone are the days where good service was an automatic bygone conclusion.
But it’s still possible to teach people these skills. Look at Starbucks. They have a model that still works. People are willing to pay $6 for a cup of coffee. A cup filled with cheap sugar. They keep their overhead low with large volume to sustain them. Guess what? They’re still spending money on training their employees. They teach them how to be friendly, polite, gracious, and pleasant. Regardless, if you’re aware of it or not, this is part of your purchasing agreement. Your coffee addiction comes with a smiling face. A person who acts interested in interacting with you.
What’s the point? Although restaurants have reduced their training department, there’s hope. Starbucks shows us it still can be a reality. We can’t blame technology, the new generation of kids, or 5G melting our brains. No. It’s focus. It’s what we accept. It’s always choice.
So what? Restaurants change, right? Soon it will be cheaper to build robots to make our pizzas than pay a human 50K a year to do it. There was a time when restaurant employees wore roller skates. Soon we’ll send our self-driving cars to Pizza Point to grab dinner for us. Times change, technology changes, and our behaviors change with it.
Ah, yes. All this is to illustrate why good leadership is in short supply and high demand. The desires and expectations of the general populous have increased. The time and money spent on teaching this skill has diminished. One of my favorite books is 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Written in the 80’s, we need its advice even more now.
The majority are not feeding their minds with ideas from smart people doing good things. They’re enamored by ignorant people doing dumb things. Not a judgement, a reality…or at least Reality TV. In his masterful book, Stephen Covey highlights the transformation. How society shifted from the Character Ethic to the Personality Ethic. Society focused less on a person’s character and more on this personality persona.
I’ve worked with many eighteen-year-olds. I asked those I worked with to define what good character is and they fumbled. They may understand it in principle, but have a difficult time articulating what it is or why it’s important. Test it out. Ask them: what is good character? How would you define it? Why is it important? How much of your day do you focus on it? Unless they have a specific education in Scouts, military or religion paradigms. Otherwise, this is not part of daily conversation.
Yet, on the unconscious level, people still judge other people. They assess them with their personal view of moral righteousness. We can name prominent people who have fallen from grace or popularity. All based on a perceived moral defect. Their actions, behaviors or thoughtless statements burn them to a virtual crisp. The cancel culture polices this morality.
The judgment may seem unbalanced, hypocritical and unforgiving. Yet, it’s still a representation of how the human psyche works. Humans expect their leaders to have some sort of moral character. Albeit today that is not a clear path along a defined roadway. It is an ever changing, often contradictory construct. An amalgamated mixture of conflicting data, expectations and rewards.
The point is, as a culture, we still judge leaders through a moral lens. We judge their character along with their personality. The world is currently growing by 80 million people a year. In ten years, there will be an extra billion people to lead. It seems to me less people have interest in leading. The focus is on fame, fortune, and followers…but not following from a place of service. Amanda Palmer focuses on this creation-fan interaction. She leads with humility, vulnerability and appreciation. Which is why her dedicated fans are so loyal to her. That exchange of power and following is healthy. But it is rare. Technology continues to transform people into numbers.
So, people aren’t taught the importance of leadership. There’s little investment of money into developing those skills. It seems like leaders receive constant criticism. Or to be a true leader means you go into politics. Yet, because of antiquated and outdated systems, leaders can only achieve so much. The limits of the system restrain them. Where does that leave the rest of us?
Let me return to the restaurant system, since I worked in that industry for 20 years. Employees receive wages close to manager pay. The benefits of managing can be hard to see with rising medical costs and reduced cash bonuses. Stress levels increase and quality of life suffers. Especially with technology making an already 24/7 job even worse. Your best and most promising employees refuse to take on the mantle of management. That leaves the people with the most fragile egos to accept the responsibility. Often, they accept this role for their own pride, sense of power or a title. Instead of coming into that position from a sense of service, they use or take advantage of employees. The employees resent them, and the vicious cycle continues.
A broken system. And it’s getting worse.
Good leadership has always been about service. There are many reasons Martin Luther King Jr.’s character still resonates today. Some reasons include the cause he championed and his orator skills. Those are good reasons, but there is more. He came to give and offer true service. He didn’t lead people because he loved the limelight or found interest in getting rich. His dream was his follower’s dream. He represented them. He spoke for them. He wasn’t pushing his personal agenda on to the audience. He championed the mutual agenda of the audience and served their need.
Almost 60 years later, his words still serve us. They represent us, motivate us and provide fuel for a worthwhile cause.
We’re running out of Good Leaders. Parents try to instill good morals into their children. Yet the world’s message contradicts what they’re learning. Parents teach their children to be good, moral people. But Kim Kardashian has 200 million Instagram followers. And she focuses on personality, not character. Kids pick up the not-so-subtle message. You want to get ahead in this world, focus on your outer persona, not your character. Does your character look good in a bikini? No? Uh oh, limited options for you kid!
There’s a great book called The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement that explains how we got here.
Does that mean we’ve lost? Is it like freeway driving skills in southern California? We must adapt and drive like a maniac?
No. Like all important self-correcting course changes, we must start a movement. We need to start training leaders now. The population is growing too fast. We must provide cutting edge psychological education. Otherwise, our Leadership Landscape will only grow more dismal. People will continue to cancel those who disappoint. The people with a knack for leadership will keep shying away. They will conclude the effort is not worth it. The gap will allow more Kim Kardashians into the void, perpetuating our broken system.
Emotional health is the foundation of true Leadership Growth. We need the upcoming generation’s commitment to healing. Or we will go on suffering from society’s disfunction. We must dismantle the stigma. We must create an emotional health movement. We need to dissolve the patterns established by generations prior. Use modern science and technology to build emotional health. Imagine a deep sliver in your finger. Do you want to put extra Band-Aids on it? Or would you rather dig out the sliver, so you can heal? Our society uses too many Band-Aids.
It’s time to dig deep, pull out the disfunction, and heal.
This is not a quick fix. There is no magic pill. The magic pill is a story. Everything in life requires work, effort and commitment. That is what we’ve lost with today’s Instant-Gratification world. We have lost the joy of accomplishing something worthwhile. Something we built with grit, hard work and tears. The world tells us—click this button, pay this fee and we’ll be happy.
Covid reminded older ones and taught younger ones a harsh truth. Humans. We are vulnerable. We are weak. And we must rely on each other for collective strength. This idea of Nirvana is a marketing lie run amok. People are reassessing their emotional health. They’re wondering why it’s so hard to cope with the realities of life. The world needs more Martin Luther King Jr.’s in the world. Such ones need to lead with truth, honesty, compassion, and resilience. They must focus on the underlying character—not a false or contrived persona.
The leaders are here. You reading this are one of them. You only need a bit of education, a format to follow, and the encouragement not to give up. Leaders are never perfect. They are here to serve others. To give voice to their concerns. And nurture the emotional grit to keep their heads up when others around are cowering in fear.
It won’t be easy. Nothing worthwhile ever is. But I PROMISE to help you get there. There is no greater joy than serving the needs of others. And this world needs you now more than ever.