Lessons from a French Chef on Delegating

Small BusinessTeam
Written By Kate Peardon

The year is 2010 and I decided to quit my high paying corporate job and move to Paris. I was studying an MBA and curious to see the cultural differences and similarities in leadership. This episode shares a story of one night I experienced in Paris watching a french kitchen.

I’ll share two delegation lessons from that night, and how you can apply in your own workplace



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Episode Transcript:

Kate Peardon: [00:00:00] The year is 2010 and I decided to quit my high paying corporate job and move to Paris. Why? Well look, if I'm honest, it's probably a quarter life crisis and deciding to study at Essec university and MBA seemed a legitimate reason to throw everything in and move on to the other side of the world.

One thing I was curious about while living in Paris was to see the cultural differences. Being knee deep in business leadership through my university studies, I found myself looking everywhere for leadership examples, and curious to see how this played out. Now Paris is known for a rich culinary heritage and renowned chefs, and there are charming bistros nestled on just about every street corner.

And I was curious if French restaurant kitchens are like the reality TV shows you see from the U S kitchens. With intimidating and shouting chefs and tears. [00:01:00] Or whether it was something different. The kitchen is a high pressure environment, similar to a lot of workplaces, and I can see how it would be a difficult place to have a positive leadership experience. Now I can't tell you what an average kitchen is like. But I can tell you about one night I experienced in this kitchen in Paris.

I remember sitting there looking through the gap in the kitchen enveloped by a symphony of sounds. Clattering of pots and pans, sizzling stove tops, and the focus chatter of everybody in the kitchen. Amid the controlled chaos I spot the chef. And they are orchestrating this intricate dance of the team. And it became really evident that the secret ingredient for success in this kitchen was not just exceptional cooking skills, but also the ability to delegate effectively.

There were two particular lessons of delegation that I learnt from my evening watching this kitchen.

[00:02:00] One was watching the chef teach a new dish to someone in their team. Now he laid out the ingredients, demonstrated the techniques and from what I could see was providing quite clear instructions. But if I'm honest, my French isn't great. And it was loud. So I'm just gauging this on body language alone.

So the opportunity for the apprentice to be shown how a particular dish was made. But the second step, which was really important, is the apprentice then created the dish and the chef watched. Now the apprentice was quite nervous having the chef watch, but I did notice the encouragement coming from the chef before it was then practiced again. After this the apprentice was on their own. And I thought this was a great example of the, see one, do one, teach one. So the apprentice watched the chef first create the dish, then they did it themselves with some feedback, and the next step, I'm not sure if this happened in future, probably not at that point, but the next step, if you're looking at delegation [00:03:00] is to help people to learn or cement in this new skill is to get them then to teach it to somebody else.

Because we're a lot more confident once we start to teach something to somebody. So this was a great example of the see one, do one, teach one.

There was also an experience where one of the dishes that the apprentice had created did get sent back because it wasn't close enough to the expectation of the chef. And I was curious to watch how that feedback was delivered. Now whether the feedback delivered was excellently done or the apprentice was good at taking on feedback. I couldn't tell you which is which, because I couldn't hear the conversation.

But the feedback went well. And this leads me to a question for you to ponder. Often we think about how good people are giving feedback. But we often don't think about how good we are at receiving feedback. So you could give yourself a score out of 10 for giving feedback. You could say, well, I'm an 8 out of 10 for giving feedback, but then think about [00:04:00] how good you are at receiving feedback.

And when I do this in leadership workshops or team culture workshops. People often have an aha moment of, oh, I am not good at taking on feedback. I take it personally. And I've always just blamed the person giving the feedback because they've had a moment of realization that, ah, the thing that I control is how I receive the feedback. I cannot control how the feedback is given to me.

So the second thing that I noticed went really well in this French kitchen that night is knowing when to intervene and when to let the team members take the reins. It's this balance of autonomy and support. So the example of the apprentice, putting together the dish, they then got some rope to create this dish themselves. But when one wasn't up to standard, the chef came back and spoke to the apprentice again.

So balancing this autonomy and support. Often people think it has to be one or the other, either autonomy or support. So autonomy giving them free [00:05:00] reign, you now are in control to run this project by yourself. Or complete support, which is, I will watch everything you do. But the truth is it's a balancing act between these two things.

So think about your own leadership. If you think about your environment, what is your version of peak hour? In a kitchen, peak dinner hour is when it's buzzing with activities. It might be for you, your offices buzzing orders or projects are pouring in. The pressure is on. Do you remember these couple of things?

Do you remember, you can't do everything yourself and how to rely on your team to execute the vision. And, can you balance autonomy with support?

So I didn't learn any secrets to French cooking. I learned a lot of secrets to French eating in my time in Paris, but not French cooking, but I did enjoy watching this kitchen that night. When you are thinking of delegation, think about this story in the French kitchen.

Can you see one, do [00:06:00] one, teach one.

For your team, can you demonstrate one, have them do one and then teach one. And can you balance your autonomy with support?

Coming up soon, I'll be doing another free masterclass on how to give feedback that doesn't suck. And what happened in this particular kitchen when the chef gave the apprentice the feedback of the dish, that wasn't good enough will always remain a mystery because I couldn't hear the conversation.

But what I can tell you is the chef did a great job at giving feedback because the feedback landed. The apprentice wasn't devastated. And a better outcome came with the next dish. So, if you would like to learn how to give feedback that doesn't suck, keep your ears and eyes peeled for this upcoming webinar.

And I hope to have you along to that session. Thanks for listening. 

Kate Peardon
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