Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect

by Will Guidara

“Black and white” means you’re doing your job with competence and efficiency; “color” means you make people feel great about the job you’re doing for them. Getting the right plate to the right person at the right table is service. But genuinely engaging with the person you’re serving, so you can make an authentic connection—that’s hospitality.

How do we create a facilities team that operates in color? How can we make others feel great about what we do?

When you create a hospitality-first culture, everything about your business improves—whether that means finding and retaining great talent, turning customers into raving fans, or increasing your profitability.

hospitality is a selfish pleasure. It feels great to make other people feel good.

“People will forget what you do; they’ll forget what you said. But they’ll never forget how you made them feel.”

Intention means every decision, from the most obviously significant to the seemingly mundane, matters. To do something with intentionality means to do it thoughtfully, with clear purpose and an eye on the desired result.

Enlightened Hospitality, which upended traditional hierarchies by prioritizing the people who worked there over everything else,

“It’s easier to learn the right way to do things at the high end than it is to break bad habits. You can always take it down a notch later, but it’s harder to go the other way.”

seek out new ways to make our guests’ experiences a little more seamless, relaxing, and delightful.

And the more normal it became for us to give this little gift, the more extraordinary it seemed to be for the people receiving it.

“All it takes for something extraordinary to happen is one person with enthusiasm.”

Let your energy impact the people you’re talking to, as opposed to the other way around.

More important, I never forgot how much his trust meant to me, which is why developing a sense of ownership in the people who worked for me would become a priority for me as soon as I was the one tossing the keys.

“Be the swan” reminded us that all the guest should see was a gracefully curved neck and meticulous white feathers sailing across the pond’s surface—not the webbed feet, churning furiously below, driving the glide.

Just being in the room felt like joining a movement or accepting a mission—a vibrant and exciting community more important than yourself.

“Before you fall head over heels with this one way of doing things, make sure you understand there are different approaches out there.”

There’s no replacement for learning a system from the ground up.

5: Manage 95 percent of your business down to the penny; spend the last 5 percent “foolishly.”

“Well, if you want them to be there for you when you need them, then you need to be there for them when they need you.”

You’re not always going to agree with everything you hear, but you’ve got to start by listening.

For this reason, I’d later ask the managers to stop sitting together during family meal, which the staff shares together before the restaurant is open. By spreading out, they’d learn, as I had, that the meal is a perfect opportunity to gather ideas and perspectives that might otherwise slip through the cracks.

Criticize the behavior, not the person. Praise in public; criticize in private. Praise with emotion, criticize without emotion.

Every manager lives with the fantasy that their team can read their mind. But in reality, you have to make your expectations clear. And your team can’t be excellent if you’re not holding them accountable to the standards you’ve set. You normalize these corrections by making them swiftly, whenever they’re needed.

make sure people who are trying and working hard have what they need to succeed.

Did a rule bring us closer to our ultimate goal, which was connecting with people? Or did it take us further from it?

But of all the words on that list, “collaborative” was the one we seized on as the first one to pursue.

We wanted to make our restaurant excellent without sacrificing warmth, contemporary without compromising standards.

hire those who were curious about what they didn’t know and generous with what they did.

leaders should actually go out of their way to choose conflicting goals.

Serving other human beings can feel demeaning, unless you first stop and acknowledge the importance of the work and the impact you can have on others when you’re doing it.

“The moment you start to pursue service through the lens of hospitality, you understand there’s nobility in it. We may not be saving people’s lives, but we do have the ability to make their lives better by creating a magical world they can escape to—and I see that not as an opportunity, but as a responsibility, and a reason for pride.”

when you’re really, really nice to people, they’ll be really nice to others, who will in turn pay it forward. That energizes me, even when I’m depleted.

life. You must be able to name for yourself why your work matters. And if you’re a leader, you need to encourage everyone on your team to do the same.

But refusing to delegate because it might take too long to train someone will only get in the way of your own growth.

Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you’ve told them.

So we reminded them: great leaders make leaders. You don’t want to have a hundred keys; you win when you end up with only one—the key to the front door. Once they’d turned over some of these responsibilities, they’d have more time to make their own contributions.

If you’ve corrected a guest because you don’t want them to think you’ve made a mistake, you’ve made a much bigger mistake.

Saying sorry, I reminded the team, doesn’t mean you’re wrong.

where everyone cares so much about the mission, they forget to care about one another.

But sarcasm is always the wrong medium for a serious communication. It demeans the person who’s receiving the criticism, the message you’re delivering, and, frankly, you as well.

If you don’t create room for the people who work for you to feel seen and heard in a team setting, they’ll never be fully known by the people around them.

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

I can only be authentic and inspirational and restorative if I buy back the time to restore myself. . . . This is not a passive pursuit; it’s active. The things I can control— mindfulness, diet, exercise, attitude, and whom I choose to spend my time with—those things take priority over all others. So when I do raise my hand, I’m armed with the mental fortitude to make sure that my ambition doesn’t undermine the clarity that got me all these killer opportunities in the first place.

In moments of crisis, all we had to do was walk up to an overwhelmed colleague and say, “DBC.” They’d stop and take a few deep breaths. What was really being communicated was, “I see you and what you’re going through. We’re in this together, and we’re going to get through it together, so what can I do right now to help?”

Being able to ask for help is a display of strength and confidence. It shows an understanding of your abilities and an awareness of what’s happening around you. People who refuse to ask for help, who believe they can handle everything on their own, are deceiving themselves and doing a disservice to those around them.

Too often, when we’re faced with a pernicious problem in our businesses, we fall back on the tried-and-true: push harder, be more efficient, cut back. Especially when the problems are nagging ones that erode the bottom line or those that persist because our organizations rely on humans and all their wonderful and fallible ways. Imagine, though, that instead of resorting to one of these fallback positions, you asked yourself: What is the hospitality solution? What if you forced yourself to be creative, to develop a solution that worked because of—not in spite of—your dedication to generosity and extraordinary service?

Too many people approach creative brainstorming by taking what’s practical into consideration way too early in the process.

Start with what you want to achieve, instead of limiting yourself to what’s realistic or sustainable.

My compulsive attention to detail is one of my superpowers; it’s how I take aim at perfection. But that tendency also means I’m always walking a tightrope between my desire to guarantee excellence by controlling everything and knowing I want to create an environment of empowerment and collaboration and trust among the people who work for me. Like excellence and hospitality, these two qualities—control and trust—are not friends.