Excellence, Feedback, and Balance

Excellence comes from getting many small details right. Keeping those standards high also means caring for the people doing the work.

The Littlest Things Matter

Guests notice delays most at the beginning and end of a meal. Eleven Madison Park created hand signals for water service so staff could coordinate deliveries and keep guests from waiting. Staff also followed set routes through the dining room, so they could move smoothly without calling out warnings as they passed one another.

Even the plate makers’ labels mattered. Staff turned each plate so that guests who lifted it to check the maker would see the name facing them. This small task helped staff practice the attention to detail they needed for bigger responsibilities during service.

Learn Their Tough-Love Language

Give praise generously. Keeping standards high also means correcting mistakes, but sarcasm makes people feel small and weakens a serious message.

“Praise is affirmation but criticism is investment.” Praise recognizes what someone has done well. Thoughtful correction shows that you are willing to help them improve. Accepting correction can make you feel vulnerable because you let someone else see where you need to improve.

Treat feedback as help rather than a personal attack. If you resist every correction or make excuses, people eventually stop offering feedback. That means you lose their help with improving.

Create Your Own Traditions

Traditions need to be reconsidered, too. They should give people chances to be noticed and heard when the team comes together. Without those chances, colleagues cannot fully know one another. Shared traditions also give the team something to look forward to.

Persistence and Determination Alone Are Omnipotent

Guidara’s father gave him a plaque with his favorite quotation: Calvin Coolidge’s words about persistence. Guidara hung it above his desk. The quotation taught him that talent, genius, and education do not guarantee success. Persistence and determination keep you working, and those other advantages cannot replace that continued effort.

Slow Down to Speed Up

Recovering takes time. To give others warmth, inspiration, and care, you need to make time to rest and recover yourself.

If adding another commitment makes you do everything else less well, drop that commitment. Taking on fewer commitments lets you keep standards high without exhausting the people who have to meet them.

Touch the Lapel

Asking for help shows that you are confident and know your limits. Refusing help can hurt other people, too.

The team slowed down and took a few breaths. They agreed on shared ways to offer and ask for support. Because requests for help became familiar and easy to recognize, people no longer had to feel ashamed of needing help or see it as admitting failure.