PURPOSE AND RECOGNITION
How understanding your purpose creates recognition of other people’s needs, and why this helps you achieve your desired outcomes.
This week, I made a decision to delve right back into the kitchen at the Rob Roy. With so many businesses requiring my attention, this decision means that I’ve worked thirty-six hours in the last two days. So what drove me back to the pots and pans?
As crazy as it might seem from the outside there is, quite literally, method in the madness. I didn’t just wake up on Monday morning and think it would be fun to play chef for old times’ sake.
I spent an entire month planning this intervention at the hotel. Every day, I came in and watched the security footage – not to spy on my staff, but to understand what they needed.
To gain this insight, I had to watch their workflow. Once I knew where all their points of pain were, I jumped in the kitchen to work with them.
Everything I do has a purpose. Once I have defined my purpose I look at the outcomes I want to achieve. Then I create the method to make this possible.
In this instance, my purpose is to elevate the Rob Roy so that it becomes a venue I am wholeheartedly proud of, and where my dreams and visions are realised.
The outcomes I’m looking for are to create a more vibrant environment and a more cohesive culture for my staff. This, in turn, will give our customers a more refined experience.
The method brings me back to the kitchen. Why? It’s simple: you can’t expect people to know your standards if you don’t teach them directly. Purpose requires that you become the vision for your people.
I can demonstrate incredibly quickly how to ‘close the gaps’ and create improvements – it’s about being systematised and working to a plan. However, this is just the surface level of the needs I am meeting by getting back in the kitchen.
Being present in a really hands-on way is also about providing inspiration, rewarding effort, acknowledging abilities, and celebrating achievement. This meets the needs of every member of staff, throughout the entire organisation.
The love I have for food and leadership, and the pride I take in every aspect of my work, can’t be translated if I sit in an ivory tower and tell people what to do. I have to be with them.
When you work with people to meet their needs, you exchange ideas, develop trust, increase loyalty, strengthen relationships, and create true engagement. All of which ensures you achieve your outcomes and fulfil your purpose.
There is another point worth making in relation to purpose and recognition.
There’s a moment during service, as the clock strikes seven, when I think of my children. Normally I would be putting them to bed at this time, and so in that moment I miss my children and Lucy terribly.
It’s something that I’ve never experienced before, because I haven’t worked in a kitchen since having children, and I feel an incredible emptiness in that moment, because I am conscious of the sacrifice that is being made, by them and by me.
It is in these moments of emptiness that your purpose carries you through the sacrifice. But more than that, it makes you appreciate and reflect on the sacrifice.
This is why, although I was unable to put my children to bed, and although I was tired from the last couple of days in the kitchen, I made sure I got up this morning to spend time with them before the working day began. I recognised the need we all had, and ensured it was met.
No matter how driven you are, you can’t lose sight of the sacrifices. If you have an agenda but no purpose, so that your ambition is to be successful no matter what the cost, then you risk losing everything.
There’s no point being filthy rich or terribly broke and having no one to share it with. You might question why you would want share being terribly broke with anyone.
The reality is, that’s when you need the people you love the most. This is why you can’t take the sacrifices for granted. To recognise sacrifice, you have to recognise need.
When you understand your purpose, you can safeguard the things you value. Through self-awareness, you increase your awareness of others. This enables you to meet their needs, creating a perfect and infinite loop of helping you to achieve the outcomes that allow you to live your purpose.
Kristian Livolsi
