Sherman’s Steps to Your Front-Row By Marilyn Sherman
Welcome to Sherman’s Steps to Your Front-Row! This is the first in a series of articles filled with hope and inspiration to help you and your role in the foodservice industry. Each article will have practical steps for you to take to increase your leadership effectiveness, boost your morale, communicate with more clarity and even suggestions on how you can deal with difficult customers. Why the Front-Row? The front-row represents the best version of you and the life you lead. You have a choice every day as to where you sit, either in the balcony, general admission, or the front-row. In this hypothetical venue, balcony seats represent dis-engagement. Have you heard the term ‘quiet quitting?’ This is a post-covid term indicating how some people realized after working from home during quarantine that they didn’t
MARILYN SHERMAN KEYNOTE SPEAKER
feel like giving 100% anymore. According to a 2022 Gallup poll, 60% of people are emotionally detached at work and 19% are miserable! If you have ever heard me deliver my ‘SEAT of Success’ keynote speech, I describe the balcony as a place where people can leave, then come back and no one would have noticed that they had left. General Admission represents your comfort zone. Maybe you’ve gotten used to a certain way of leading, a way of behaving, a way of taking care of (or not taking care of) your health for example. General Admission is a dangerous place to be because it represents habits that may not serve you. In fact, habits can lead to a rut of mediocrity and soon you become so disengaged that the balcony is now where you are. Then, there is the Front-Row. Here is where you are motivated to improve, you are open to new ideas, you are adapting to change with resourcefulness and hope. You are stretching yourself out of your comfort zone of general admission and you are improving your view from the front-row. Here you are engaged, you are striving to be better, you are improving how you show up and you are inspiring others by your actions. In fact, the best seat in the house is where you are illuminating the path for others to get to their front-row because they are watching you. You are leading by example, like an usher in a theater in Las Vegas. Ushers have two things: knowledge of all the seats in the venue, and a flashlight. Their job it to light the most direct path to each attendee’s seat. As a leader, whether you realize it or not, people are always watching you. They are watching how you handle situations, and they learn by example. When you are living your best life, they notice how you show up and hopefully are encouraged to act on your positive example. What are the rules? Here’s the good new…there are no rules! You get to define what your front-row looks like. You get to define what it means for you to lead from the front-row. You get to decipher how you show up and only you can measure your effort of success. There is no judgement. For me, having an opportunity to keynote a conference of inspired leaders in the foodservice space is my front-row. Many of you reading this now would rather have root canal than be on stage delivering a speech for an hour. On the other hand, what you do and your skillset to do it is admirable to me and I don’t know how you do it! Each article in this series will be filled with steps to take to help you navigate your leadership path. Here are your first of many Sherman Steps to your Front-Row:
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