Before Danny Meyer built an eatery empire stretching from New York's fine-dining scene to Shake Shack locations across the country, he was self-admittedly insecure. A simple leadership mantra helped him overcome his early-career self-doubt: "Use your words."
"I had this awful affliction that I think a lot of first-time leaders have, which is: It was far more important for me to be liked than to command respect from people," Meyer, the founder and executive chairman of New York-based restaurant group Union Square Hospitality Group, told organizational psychologist Adam Grant during a March talk at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
The conversation was recently released as an episode on Grant's "WorkLife" podcast.
In 1985, a 27-year-old Meyer opened Union Square Cafe, a restaurant where "half the people working for me were older," he said. There, his management approach largely skirted direct communication.
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"My leadership philosophy was pretty weak. It was, 'If you see me doing it, that's what I expect you to do,'" Meyer said. "If I wanted you to do something, I had the awful habit in those early days of saying, 'Can I ask you a favor?'"
After he opened his second restaurant, Gramercy Tavern, in 1994, "it finally dawned on me" that he needed to be clearer with his workforce about his expectations, he said. That meant making it "crystal clear" what success looked like for employees and communicating those guidelines "from the very get-go, when you're hiring someone," he said.
Today, Meyer's restaurants have "expected behaviors" for their staffers: excellence, hospitality, entrepreneurial spirit and integrity. "We do hold people accountable" to those expectations "when we hire you, when we review you," he said.
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Meyer's firm and plainspoken leadership style today is a far cry from his bygone habit of asking permission to direct his staff. Being assertive is indeed an effective way to command people's attention, Stanford University organizational behavior lecturer Matt Abrahams told CNBC Make It in March.
Abrahams' advice: Don't ask for authority — just exercise it.
"Just exerting that control, either by asking a question, standing in silence or making some kind of declarative sentence that's provocative will help people [listen]," he said. "You might have to repeat yourself once or twice, but that's what I do."
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