Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara is a great read for anyone who recognizes the opportunity you have to take care of people and really make a lasting impression on their life. Guidara is not a Christian…at least he doesn’t mention it if he does…but he shares several principles that align with the call to biblical hospitality.
I highlighted several things while reading and have posted those notes below…
- Fads fade and cycle, but the human desire to be taken care of never goes away. Location: 131
- But before I had the experience to let the conversation flow, one of my favorite questions to ask was, “What’s the difference between service and hospitality?” The best answer I ever got came from a woman I ended up not hiring. She said, “Service is black and white; hospitality is color.” “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. Location: 142
- How do you make the people who work for you and the people you serve feel seen and valued? How do you give them a sense of belonging? How do you make them feel part of something bigger than themselves? How do you make them feel welcome? Location: 170
- When you work in hospitality—and I believe that whatever you do for a living, you can choose to be in the hospitality business—you have the privilege of joining people as they celebrate the most joyful moments in their lives and the chance to offer them a brief moment of consolation and relief in the midst of their most difficult ones. Most important, we have an opportunity—a responsibility—to make magic in a world that desperately needs more of it. Location: 351
- Two things happen when the best leaders walk into a room. The people who work for them straighten up a little, making sure that everything’s perfect—and they smile, too. Location: 428
- My favorite was “Make the charitable assumption,” a reminder to assume the best of people, even when (or perhaps especially when) they weren’t behaving particularly well. So, instead of immediately expressing disappointment with an employee who has shown up late and launching into a lecture on how they’ve let down the team, ask first, “You’re late; is everything okay?” Location: 477
- Just being in the room felt like joining a movement or accepting a mission—a vibrant and exciting community more important than yourself. Location: 497
- A leader’s responsibility is to identify the strengths of the people on their team, no matter how buried those strengths might be. Location: 998
- Criticize the behavior, not the person. Praise in public; criticize in private. Praise with emotion, criticize without emotion. Location: 1,025
- Knowing less is often an opportunity to do more. Location: 1,185
- If your business involves making people happy, then you can’t be good at it if you don’t care what people think. The day you stop reading your criticism is the day you grow complacent, and irrelevance won’t be far behind. Location: 1,347
- You must be able to name for yourself why your work matters. Location: 1,491
- Once people had gotten a feel for how good it felt to make a contribution, they would start actively looking for a way to do it again. And it was a way for us to communicate, on a person’s very first day: We hired you for a reason. We know you have something to contribute, and we don’t want to wait to see what it is. Location: 1,729
- The first time someone comes to you with an idea, listen closely, because how you handle it will dictate how they choose to contribute in the future. Location: 1,735
- Managing staff boils down to two things: how you praise people, and how you criticize them. Praise, I might argue, is the more important of the two. But you cannot establish any standard of excellence without criticism, so a thoughtful approach to how you correct people must be a part of your culture, too. Location: 2,034
- Praise is affirmation, but criticism is investment. Location: 2,088
- no aspect of your business should be off-limits to reevaluation. Location: 2,129
- 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. Location: 2,165
- New traditions work only if they’re authentic—if they fill a real purpose and satisfy a real need. Location: 2,173
- when that external affirmation comes, direct it to the people responsible. Location: 2,246
- As a leader, you have to use every single tool in your kit to build morale and keep it high. Location: 2,257
- Do less, and do it well. Location: 2,333
- A leader’s role isn’t only to motivate and uplift; sometimes it’s to earn the trust of your team by being human with them. Location: 2,424
- It isn’t the lavishness of the gift that counts, but its pricelessness. Location: 3,088
- identify moments that recur in your business, and build a tool kit your team can deploy without too much effort. Location: 3,104
- As our focus on Unreasonable Hospitality grew, we were always looking for a way to “plus one” the experience—to give people a little more than they expected—by staying alert to recurring situations. Location: 3,123
- the value of a gift isn’t about what went into giving it, but how the person receiving it feels. Location: 3,147
- Luxury means just giving more; hospitality means being more thoughtful. Location: 3,165
- Gifts are a way to tell people you saw, heard, and recognized them—that you cared enough to listen, and to do something with what you heard. A gift transforms an interaction, taking it from transactional to relational; there is no better way than a gift to demonstrate that someone is more than a customer or a line item on a spreadsheet. And the right one can help you to extend your hospitality all the way into someone’s life. Location: 3,210
- Nobody knows what they’re doing before they do it. Location: 3,245
- Creativity is an active process, not a passive one. Location: 3,310
- Maya Angelou famously said, “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” The more space we gave ourselves to dream, and the more trust we gave one another, the better we got. Location: 3,317
- As you grow, you can’t lose the very thing that gave you the opportunity to grow. Location: 3,338
- Sometimes the best time to promote people is before they are ready. Location: 3,440
- Start with what you want to achieve, instead of limiting yourself to what’s realistic or sustainable. Location: 3,512
- 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. Location: 3,560