What A Great Restaurateur Taught Me About Hiring For A Family Office

Every month last year more than 4 million people voluntarily walked away from their jobs as part of what was called The Great Resignation. Although the trend initially continued into 2023 with the U.S. Bureau of Labor reporting that some 3.9 million Americans quit their jobs in March, the experts now say it’s over.

But some of the reasons that were driving so many people to quit their jobs still exist. The failure of wages to keep pace with the cost of living is certainly a factor, but so is the lack of satisfaction that many people get from their jobs. In one survey of people who had left their jobs, 92% said the pandemic made them feel that life is too short to stay in a job they weren’t passionate about.

That attitude is understandable but raises questions regarding how to find and hire people who will be passionate about their jobs and want to remain in them for the long term. This change in attitude among the workforce has required employers to change their thinking about how they hire and train.

As I pondered this situation for our firm, a family office, I found good advice in an unexpected source, Danny Meyer’s book Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business. I picked up the book because my favorite restaurant in New York City is Meyer’s The Modern, where the dining experience is both exceptional and relaxing because the service experience is so thoughtful. How does he get such great employees I wondered, and how does he help them develop their skills in a way that creates an experience that diners find irresistible?

No matter what kind of business you are in, a crucial component of success is the ability to attract quality people into your organization and to create an environment where they want to create a great experience for customers and colleagues.

In his book, Meyer says that in the hiring process he makes a sharp distinction between the individual’s innate skills and personality traits and what is trainable. He says he can train anyone to set a table or gracefully pour a glass of wine, but those are only part of what makes a good restaurant server.

It’s innate skills such as warm optimism, curiosity, strong work ethic, self-awareness, and personal integrity that create the positive customer experience. I think that most of us would agree that those are the traits of someone we would like to be as well as the kind of person we’d like to work with. But attracting, hiring, and retaining those people is not easy.

He calls these individuals 51 Percenters because at least 51% of who they are is made up of skills that can’t be taught. Meyer describes five key characteristics he looks for to see if someone is a true 51 percenter: warm optimism, empathy, self awareness and integrity, deep curiosity, and a strong work ethic. You can tell someone you want them to be optimistic or empathetic, but unless that emotional attitude is part of who they are at the core, it won’t be authentic.

What he calls a “hospitality quotient” is what many others refer to as people skills. Regardless of how they are defined, these skills are invaluable in any business that deals with the public. And having a team comprised of people with those innate traits helps create a positive, collaborative culture.

These days when interviewing potential employees at our family office, we tend to focus on the intangible, and in many cases untrainable, 51 percenter skills more than the technical skills that we can train. Most people hire the other way around and miss out on important skills that contribute to a winning client or customer experience.

The Core Emotional Skills of a 51-Percenter

· Optimistic warmth (genuine kindness, thoughtfulness, and a sense that the glass is always at least half full)

· Intelligence (not just “smarts” but rather an insatiable curiosity to learn for the sake of learning)

· Work ethic (a natural tendency to do something as well as it can possibly be done)

· Empathy (an awareness of, care for, and connection to how others feel and how your actions make others feel)

· Self-awareness and integrity (an understanding of what makes you tick and a natural inclination to be accountable for doing the right thing with honesty and superb judgment).”

Source: Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business, by Danny Meyer