1. Culture will make or break a team.
You can have a group of very talented individuals, but if they do not know how to work with one another, your team will be lacking. When you work in a place like a summer camp kitchen, the labor is hard and you will be physically and emotionally exhausted. This job is not seen by others, so if you do not feel supported by the people around you, discouragement will creep in and bring down team morale. There were days when we were extremely tired, but those were the days when it became incredibly clear how important the people surrounding me were. We could lean on one another and encourage each other to work hard even when it wasn’t easy.
2. No job is beneath you.
When you work in an industrial-sized kitchen you really learn just how disgusting some jobs can be. This includes scrubbing the floors on your hands and knees. So, as a leader that meant getting down on the ground and scrubbing the floors. Delegating tasks is great, but leaders should lead by example and be willing to face the difficult jobs head on. I learned that my team was much more willing to do the difficult jobs when they saw me doing them first.
3. You set the pace.
These previous two bullets taught me that as a leader, you set the tone for your team. When you are a leader, your attitude doesn’t just affect you, but the whole team. You can acknowledge that something’s hard, but rather than complaining about it, a leader steps up and encourages others to do the same. There were many days in the kitchen where I woke up at 5:45 a.m. with no desire to cook pancakes for 600+ people, but having a bad attitude would only make it worse for myself and others. Instead of focusing on the bad, I would turn my attention to the people I was serving and the team I was working alongside. I learned that reframing challenges as opportunities to serve and lead others makes them exciting rather than upsetting.