{"id":17505,"date":"2024-07-07T11:17:12","date_gmt":"2024-07-07T16:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/?p=17505"},"modified":"2024-07-07T11:17:12","modified_gmt":"2024-07-07T16:17:12","slug":"book-review-unreasonable-hospitality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/?p=17505","title":{"rendered":"BOOK REVIEW | Unreasonable Hospitality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"662\" height=\"1000\" src=\"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/AD98AC05A2A84189AE521F6DFA68AC683906A65E.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-17838\" srcset=\"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/AD98AC05A2A84189AE521F6DFA68AC683906A65E.jpg 662w, https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/AD98AC05A2A84189AE521F6DFA68AC683906A65E-199x300.jpg 199w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 662px) 100vw, 662px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Unreasonable-Hospitality-Remarkable-Giving-People-ebook\/dp\/B0B13W5GPT\/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2TWSQNFFGEIHJ&amp;keywords=unreasonable+hospitality&amp;qid=1704405489&amp;sprefix=unreaons%2Caps%2C93&amp;sr=8-1\">Unreasonable Hospitality<\/a><\/em> 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&#8230;at least he doesn&#8217;t mention it if he does&#8230;but he shares several principles that align with the call to biblical hospitality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I highlighted several things while reading and have posted those notes below&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Fads fade and cycle, but the human desire to be taken care of never goes away.&nbsp; Location: 131&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>But before I had the experience to let the conversation flow, one of my favorite questions to ask was, \u201cWhat\u2019s the difference between service and hospitality?\u201d The best answer I ever got came from a woman I ended up not hiring. She said, \u201cService is black and white; hospitality is color.\u201d \u201cBlack and white\u201d means you\u2019re doing your job with competence and efficiency; \u201ccolor\u201d means you make people feel great about the job you\u2019re doing for them. Getting the right plate to the right person at the right table is service. But genuinely engaging with the person you\u2019re serving, so you can make an authentic connection\u2014that\u2019s hospitality.&nbsp; &nbsp;Location: 142 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>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?&nbsp;Location: 170<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>When you work in hospitality\u2014and I believe that whatever you do for a living, you can choose to be in the hospitality business\u2014you 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\u2014a responsibility\u2014to make magic in a world that desperately needs more of it.&nbsp; Location: 351 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>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\u2019s perfect\u2014and they smile, too.&nbsp; &nbsp;Location: 428 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>My favorite was \u201cMake the charitable assumption,\u201d a reminder to assume the best of people, even when (or perhaps especially when) they weren\u2019t 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\u2019ve let down the team, ask first, \u201cYou\u2019re late; is everything okay?\u201d&nbsp; &nbsp;Location: 477 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Just being in the room felt like joining a movement or accepting a mission\u2014a vibrant and exciting community more important than yourself.&nbsp; Location: 497&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A leader\u2019s responsibility is to identify the strengths of the people on their team, no matter how buried those strengths might be.&nbsp; Location: 998&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Criticize the behavior, not the person. Praise in public; criticize in private. Praise with emotion, criticize without emotion.&nbsp; Location: 1,025&nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Knowing less is often an opportunity to do more. Location: 1,185 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If your business involves making people happy, then you can\u2019t be good at it if you don\u2019t care what people think. The day you stop reading your criticism is the day you grow complacent, and irrelevance won\u2019t be far behind.&nbsp; &nbsp;Location: 1,347 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>You must be able to name for yourself why your work matters.&nbsp;Location: 1,491 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>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\u2019s very first day: We hired you for a reason. We know you have something to contribute, and we don\u2019t want to wait to see what it is.&nbsp; Location: 1,729&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>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.&nbsp; &nbsp;Location: 1,735 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>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.&nbsp; Location: 2,034&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Praise is affirmation, but criticism is investment.&nbsp; &nbsp; Location: 2,088&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>no aspect of your business should be off-limits to reevaluation.&nbsp; &nbsp;Location: 2,129 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If you don\u2019t create room for the people who work for you to feel seen and heard in a team setting, they\u2019ll never be fully known by the people around them.&nbsp; Location: 2,165&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>New traditions work only if they\u2019re authentic\u2014if they fill a real purpose and satisfy a real need.&nbsp; &nbsp; Location: 2,173&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>when that external affirmation comes, direct it to the people responsible.&nbsp; Location: 2,246&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>As a leader, you have to use every single tool in your kit to build morale and keep it high.&nbsp;Location: 2,257 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Do less, and do it well.&nbsp; &nbsp;Location: 2,333 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A leader\u2019s role isn\u2019t only to motivate and uplift; sometimes it\u2019s to earn the trust of your team by being human with them.&nbsp; Location: 2,424&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It isn\u2019t the lavishness of the gift that counts, but its pricelessness.&nbsp; Location: 3,088&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>identify moments that recur in your business, and build a tool kit your team can deploy without too much effort.&nbsp; &nbsp; Location: 3,104&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>As our focus on Unreasonable Hospitality grew, we were always looking for a way to \u201cplus one\u201d the experience\u2014to give people a little more than they expected\u2014by staying alert to recurring situations.&nbsp; Location: 3,123&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>the value of a gift isn\u2019t about what went into giving it, but how the person receiving it feels.&nbsp;Location: 3,147 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Luxury means just giving more; hospitality means being more thoughtful.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Location: 3,165&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Gifts are a way to tell people you saw, heard, and recognized them\u2014that 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\u2019s life.&nbsp; &nbsp;Location: 3,210 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Nobody knows what they\u2019re doing before they do it.&nbsp;Location: 3,245&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Creativity is an active process, not a passive one.&nbsp;Location: 3,310 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Maya Angelou famously said, \u201cYou can\u2019t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.\u201d The more space we gave ourselves to dream, and the more trust we gave one another, the better we got.&nbsp; &nbsp;Location: 3,317 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>As you grow, you can\u2019t lose the very thing that gave you the opportunity to grow.&nbsp; Location: 3,338&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Sometimes the best time to promote people is before they are ready.&nbsp; Location: 3,440&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Start with what you want to achieve, instead of limiting yourself to what\u2019s realistic or sustainable.&nbsp; &nbsp;Location: 3,512 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>My compulsive attention to detail is one of my superpowers; it\u2019s how I take aim at perfection. But that tendency also means I\u2019m 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\u2014control and trust\u2014are not friends. Location: 3,560<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8230;at least he doesn&#8217;t mention it if he does&#8230;but he shares several principles that align with the call to biblical [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17838,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,25,23,28,17,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","category-education","category-generosity","category-integrity","category-leadership","category-restaurants"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/AD98AC05A2A84189AE521F6DFA68AC683906A65E.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}