When Leadership Means Standing With Your Team.
dership isn’t about hierarchy — it’s about standing with your people when it matters.
🧠 🧂 The Uncomfortable Truth About Leadership:
Taking your coworkers’ side is almost always considered a liability—especially if you’re a manager or a leader.
In many companies, leadership is still confused with distance, silence, or blind alignment with upper management.
You’re expected to manage people, not stand with them.To “keep control,” not ask uncomfortable questions.To deliver numbers—even if the cost is human.That’s the unspoken rule.
🔥 🧂 Why I Never Fully Played That Game:
That reality has never stopped me from advocating for healthy work environments, fair treatment, and equal opportunities among staff.
Not because it’s trendy.Not because it looks good on LinkedIn.
But because I’ve worked the stations.
I’ve lived the hours.
I’ve seen what burnout, imbalance, and quiet resentment do to kitchens—and to people.
Caring about your team’s lives outside the pass doesn’t make you weak.It makes you aware.
⚖️ 🧂 Work–Life Balance Is Not a Luxury:
Somewhere along the way, hospitality convinced itself that exhaustion equals commitment.
That sacrifice must be constant.
That empathy is optional.It isn’t.If advocating for work–life balance, respect, and basic human decency makes someone a “problem employee”, then the issue isn’t the employee.It’s the culture.
🏗️ 🧂 Bad Culture Is Bad Business:
Here’s the part many business owners don’t want to hear:
If your operation only works when people are overworked, afraid to speak, or easily replaceable—then your business model is fragile.Strong businesses aren’t built on fear or silence.
They’re built on trust, clarity, and sustainable teams.People who feel supported perform better.
People who feel respected stay longer.People who feel heard care more.This isn’t ideology.It’s operational reality.
🧑🍳 🧂 Final Thought From the Kitchen:
Leadership isn’t about always choosing the company’s side or always choosing the team’s side.
It’s about having the courage to choose what’s right, even when it’s inconvenient for your position.
And yes—sometimes that choice comes at a cost.But if that cost is your standing in a system that thrives on burnout and imbalance,then maybe the problem was never your leadership after all.
