Leading and Following

My leadership development has also been shaped by learning when to lead and when to support others within a team. Not every situation calls for being the person in charge. In many cases, the best thing you can do is recognize what the team needs and step into the role that helps the group move forward.

One place where I’ve really seen this play out is working in restaurants. During big weekends at the University of Delaware, especially Parents Weekend, the restaurant can serve over 600 covers in a single shift. Nights like that move incredibly fast, and everyone has to stay locked in to keep service running smoothly. Depending on the night, I might step into leadership responsibilities helping coordinate staff and manage the flow of service, but other nights I’m simply part of the team waiting tables or bartending and supporting whoever is leading the shift.

In those moments, I’m often following the direction of people with far more experience than me, like the restaurant owner who has spent over 25 years running the business or the head chef who’s running the entire back of house. When things get that busy, their experience and decision making really set the pace for the whole restaurant. My job in those situations isn’t to try to take over, it’s to trust their direction, execute my role well, and help keep things moving.

A lot of my learning in that environment has also come from following people with expertise in different areas of the business. I’ve spent time learning from liquor distributors and sommeliers about wine so I could help contribute to building our Wine Spectator wine list. I’ve learned from other front of house managers about how to handle difficult situations with customers, like when a steak comes out cooked wrong or when we unexpectedly run out of a product during a busy service. I’ve also worked with our catering managers to understand how offsite events operate, including helping run events at the Delaware Art Museum. Even in the kitchen, I’ve learned from chefs about how specials are developed and how they should be formatted and presented on a menu.

Experiences like that have shown me that leadership development isn’t just about learning how to lead others. A big part of it comes from learning how to follow people who have deeper experience, paying attention to how they solve problems, and using those lessons to improve how you contribute to the team.