288: Managing First-Timers in the Workplace with Chris Deferio

Pete Mockaitis
Chris, thanks so much for joining us here at the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Chris Deferio
I’m honored to be on your show.  I really love and I’m looking forward to talking about this subject today.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.  Well, I was honored to be on your show, Keys To The Shop.  A good spot, and so, folks, check that out.  But first I want to talk about you being a champion in latte art.  How does that come about, and what does a latte art contest look like in practice?

Chris Deferio
Well, we can define the terms.  Well, I work in coffee.  And in coffee, and specialty coffee in particular, there’s this thing where you steam milk so that the foam is tight enough and flows enough to be able to form ribbons on the surface of beverages, specifically espresso drinks.  And you can see rosettas, what we call leaves, hearts, designs like that – usually symmetrical leaf / heart designs on the tops of coffees.  It’s actually pretty popular; so popular now, weirdly, you’ll see it on International Delight creamers.  They’ll hire a barista to do a heart and they’ll use in their marketing.  So that’s latte art, so milk art, because “latte” is Italian for “milk”.
So, we have competitions for these types of things, of course, because we’ve got to entertain ourselves, and there’s money on the line.  And I won my first one back in 2004 and I ended up winning two times after that, so three times total latte art champion.  And just sounds really funny to say, but the skill involved in it is one of just becoming sort of familiar with what the two liquids do when they meet in the cup, and it’s important.  I don’t want to downplay it too much, because a well-presented coffee is one that you’ll talk to your friends about, which means repeat business.  So it translates into something practical, and it’s fun to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I want to know what are the game-changing, winning designs that capture the judges’ hearts?

Chris Deferio
Well, speaking as a judge – I run a competition now with Coffee Fest tradeshows.  And I’ve been a long time judge before; I’m back again leading the Latte Art Competition as a judge, head judge, and there’s a lot of things we look for.  My designs when I won were basically variations on a leaf pattern that involved a lot of layers from the outside of the cup into the middle.  So, just a nice base, and I’m speaking in coffee terms – symmetry is really important, striking contrasts between the brown of the coffee in the white of the milk is also very important.
In the competition we judge on speed and also a general kind of flexible category, depending on the judge, of aesthetic beauty.  So, those are some of the categories we look for.  So there are some game-changing designs out there where people will do multiple different designs in the cup at the same time.  I was one of the people – old guy in coffee – that have pushed some of those designs out there into the industry, and now it’s really just about perfecting.  There’s not a ton of brand new stuff, just variations on classics, as far as I can tell.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, do you have some photos we could see in the show notes?

Chris Deferio
Oh yeah, I’ll send you some of mine and I’ll send you some of the winningest baristas’ examples.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good.  Well, I’m trying to imagine, because you don’t have a lot of space to work with, and I guess it can’t get too out there, in terms of, this is a portrait of a person who is running on the beach.

Chris Deferio
Oh yeah.  Well, it does in some ways, it does, because people do one of two types of latte art.  You have etching, which uses a tool to draw a design like you’re describing.  You theoretically could do that.  The drink might be cold by the time you’re done, and it might not taste great.  I don’t know what they’re using for drawing, but we do free pour latte art predominantly.  I think that in competition may be the more respected version of latte art. So there are two types of latte art – there’s free pour and there’s etching.  So etching is just using a tool, so you could draw that.  You could draw yourself in a cup of coffee if you really wanted to.  But we do free pour latte art, so there’s no tools involved, just the flow of milk.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool.  So, you are coffee master and professional and you share some of that in your podcast Keys To The Shop.  What’s that all about?

Chris Deferio
Well, Keys To The Shop I’ve had for the last year or so – back in January 2017 – is a podcast that I run collecting best practices essentially from the industry to help people.  My tagline of the show is to give insights and inspiration and tools to people who work in retail, especially coffee retail.  And my audience is built, it is made up of owners, baristas, managers, people who would one day want to own a coffee bar.
And we bring in not only just industry experts to talk about workflow behind the bar, like how to build a drink quickly and well, or conflict resolution and things like that.  We bring in outside experts as well – authors of books dealing with management, or like I said conflict resolution is one.  Tom Henschel of The Look & Sound of Leadership did an episode on the podcast about conflict resolution, which translates into whatever industry you want to, because you’re working with people.  So, the point is, I want to provide a really focused podcast to equip my industry with the tools they need to succeed, and tell the stories of people who have succeeded in the industry as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Very cool.  Alright.  So now when we talk about some of these management issues, one thing we were discussing is that you have lots of experience and see lots of coffee shop owners doing leadership of folks who are at their first job.  Maybe they are interns, maybe they’re in college or they’ve recently graduated.  And so I thought it would be great to really dig into your wisdom on this point.  So maybe you could orient us first of all, how does managing folks in their first job substantially differ from those who have maybe just even one or two or three years under their belt?

Chris Deferio
Well, I think the way it’s different is that the structure under which they’re used to operating is just alien and different.  l like to think about, if they’ve come from a school environment, where there are things set up for them to go to, there are classes – you’re not really having to think about it, in fact you’re part of a group – there’s not a whole lot of individual attention in most cases.
And so by and large I’d say once you’re behind the bar and a lot depends on you individually, there’s kind of this deer-in-the-headlights.  There’s just so much to take in.  It’s not necessarily unique to them, but I think it’s times 10 with somebody who’s not used to being on display and being the focus of the individual attention that a manager has on them, because that manager is responsible for the owner’s business and the business is on the line.  And they understand that responsibility but don’t necessarily know how to function under that weight.  And so, sometimes it does feel like you’re drinking from a firehose and they can act that way.
So, there’s a lot of things that you need to bear in mind when you’re managing somebody who doesn’t have a lot of employment experience.  Even if they’ve had like a summer job, a job that’s a full-time job, even their first quote-unquote “real” job, is quite different.  And so, how you approach them as a manager has to bear that in mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, and I’d love for you to expand a little bit upon, we talk about the deer-in-the-headlights or the overwhelm or the reactions of the new employee.  Could you share a little bit there, in terms of… I imagine some of them are probably jarring and not what you want to see.  So, could you maybe highlight a few of those?  Maybe they’ll be some twinkles of recognition from listeners to say, “Oh, okay, okay.  Maybe I should have a touch more patience with that at first.”

Chris Deferio
Sure.  So, I’d say a good way to recognize this… Or let’s just say a common way to recognize that – you’re dealing with somebody who’s under that kind of situation is that, like I said, deer-in-the-headlights, but in the restaurant industry they call them “pan shakers”, or people who would start cleaning something that doesn’t need to be cleaned; they’re just looking for something to do.
There is just a general lack of awareness, the peripheral awareness.  Even though you’re in a busy cafe, none of it really affects you much.  And it should, and it’s odd that it doesn’t, because there’s so much stimulus going on you don’t know what to focus on.
And so, I think a manager who’s in that situation needs to be able to have a strong hand of guidance on what is it that they should be doing in that moment.  Having a good onboarding process for example is a great way to kind of counteract the confusion and the shock of being in an environment where now we really are relying on you to make this rush of customers work, or this cafe work.

Pete Mockaitis
And so when you say “manager” here, the manager is the person who is the first real job person, kind of working for and reporting to the owner.  Is that how you conceptualize this?

Chris Deferio
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, got you there.  So indeed, intriguing.  So there’s a whole lot of stimuli, and it seems like folks in that position where they’re unaccustomed to it may just sort of start doing something, even though that something is not at all the right thing.  Any other kind of key symptoms or behaviors you notice?

Chris Deferio
I would say emotional is another one.  In any case where somebody is under that kind of pressure there’s going to be overly emotional responses to things that are just commonplace work-related tasks, that you and I, having been through the ringer maybe for years, or at least some experience, might not take it personally.  But I’d say taking things personally is one of the symptoms that I would see.  It’s like, “Okay, this is…”  They maybe weren’t expecting it.
I know I felt that way when I had my first job, which was in a grocery store just stocking things in freezers and fridges and milk cartons and what not.  The pressure was just so great to perform that you just kind of took everything to heart.  And there’s really no stopping that; it’s almost a rite of passage, I think, when you have your first job.  But where it can go south, I think, is when a manager then takes them taking it personally, personally. [laugh] And then it kind of goes off the rails.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is interesting.  So, could you maybe paint a picture there, in terms of an example, where you’ve seen this happen with folks either in some of the shops that you’ve worked with or consulted for, in terms of making it all come together?

Chris Deferio
Well, okay.  So, I would probably just use an example of when I was a trainer and I had some experience in coffee, when we brought on new baristas.  This was actually an example of one of my failures, in that I was so confident – having some experience I just had too strong of a hand in my management.  But the individual was performing the job okay, but not really to my standards as a manager, and I was kind of arrogant at the time anyway.  But tamping is an example of something we do – we press the coffee down into a filter so that it could be extracted.  And I was noticing that the tamping was off or lopsided so that it wouldn’t extract properly.  And I brought it up in a way that maybe in hindsight wasn’t the greatest, but they took it so personally that…

Pete Mockaitis
“You’ve got a problem with my tamping, bro?”

Chris Deferio
“How could you notice that from where you’re standing?”, or… There was a lot of pushback, and I realized what I had done was I stepped on the only security that they had, because they’d just been trained by the manager at that store.  And what I was doing was coming in and essentially removing the only security that they had, without care for what it would do to the rest of what was built on that foundation.

Pete Mockaitis
Now we say “the only security”, you mean like he’s coming from a perspective of, “Tamping is the one thing that I have nailed.”  Is that what you mean?

Chris Deferio
Yeah.  Well, if you call into question parts of what they know to be true, then you might as well be calling into question the entire thing.  So, “If my tamping is off, maybe my milk is off, and if my milk is off, what am I doing here being a barista?  Maybe I was taught wrong.  I’m not ready for this.”  Your mind can kind of go a million miles an hour down the wrong path.  And it all kind of stemmed from a non-empathetic approach to an issue that could have been resolved by some other means that reinforced what they had learned, or added to rather than stripping it away simply to be right.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, intriguing.  So I’d love to hear, in retrospect, how would you address this issue, because you can’t have a sub-optimal temp at the end of the day.  Right, Chris?

Chris Deferio
No, I don’t think you can.  In the moment, I either could have… I think this would have been the best way to do it, is to investigate what kind of training the person had, before assuming what they had first.  So if I had questions for the manager as to how much training the person had, I should have asked.  Instead of addressing it with the individual first, I should have just let it go, because by the time I got there they had probably already been making drinks that way for hours, if not days.  And my stepping in in the middle of making drinks for customers is not going to solve it in their mind.  It might solve my personal need to sort of get my fidgety, “Ooh, you’re not doing that right” out there into her world, but it really didn’t accomplish what I wanted it to long-term.
So, I think having a more patient view of that situation and allowing myself to shoulder the burden of having unresolved tension, rather than just kind of chucking that tension right onto what was happening in the moment, if that makes sense.  I, as a manager or a leader, there’s this tension you would have that you want to see people do something right, but sometimes you have to let them do it wrong a little bit longer in order to wait for the right opportunity to show them in a way that’s effective.  And so it forces you to question, “Do I just want to talk, or do I want to affect change?”

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing.  So then, what might be some indicators that this is the right time?

Chris Deferio
I’d say when things are more calm, when people are in a good mood, and when you are not upset.  Because you might be responsible for the bottom line of your company, you have to know yourself well enough to know when you can not sound like a jerk, or be passive-aggressive, or give somebody the feedback, a crap sandwich with the critique and the praise.
There is a bit of self-knowledge that’s needed to know how you sound first of all, and when’s the right time for you to do it calmly.  And then, like I said, when things are calm in the store, when there is a time that talking about technique is brought up, in fact – that’s a way.  Hopefully you have mechanisms or systems of communication in place, where feedback lives, like a one-on-one every week with the manager, or an ongoing training session.  Those are perfect times and require forethought as an operator to say, “You’re going to have these conversations with people, so where do those conversations live?”  They can’t just be invented on the spot; they have to have a place for your peace of mind and the security of the barista.  So, I’d say rather than indicators, maybe just dial back even more and say, “Have I built a system in my shop or my business that allows for a safe space for feedback, both from me to the barista or employee, and from the employee to me, to critique me?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you.  Well now, you used the phrase “safe space”, so I am thinking about South Park – that’s the name of the show – where they did this song, “My safe space…”  And I want to touch upon the word “Millennials”.  I guess I am one, but in a previous episode we had Lee Caraher say like 72% of Millennials don’t like the word “Millennial”.  They don’t want to be called a Millennial, because there’s so much baggage and negative associations with it.  So, I’d love it the more that you could be fact-based, experience-based, research-oriented to this.  To what extent is there something real when it comes to the difference in managing Millennials or folks who are fresh out of college?  Are they still Millennials or are they the next one yet?

Chris Deferio
Maybe, and maybe it’s Gen Y, I’m not sure.  Or Gen Y is the same thing.

Pete Mockaitis
So what’s real and what’s just a bunch of stuff that people cook up to sell books or to try to stereotype and sort of offload responsibility?

Chris Deferio
Yeah, it’s a good question because we like to categorize.  Part of the human mind is all about, “This goes in this section of my brain, and this goes in the other.”  And if we need to understand people it’s easier to have a sorting mechanism, and so that’s what these names start to become.  And in no other time in history, especially with the rise of the Internet, do we have as much access to articles that kind of form our thinking towards people before we even meet them or know them in reality.
So, the reality of Millennials, I think, is simply that they are young, and I don’t know that there’s that much of a difference outside of the world they interact with.  They’re not not humans, and they have the same drive for success and love and acceptance and to interact with the world around them.  And they have the same idea that they want to change the world the way that any other generation did.  So, I think Millennials as a group have been given a bad rap by people who don’t want to take responsibility for leading Millennials.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Chris Deferio
Yeah, so on the show I had Bruce Tulgan, who’s the author of a book which I think every manager should read.  The book is called It’s Okay to Be the Boss.  I bought that for all of my managers in the store I worked at, and they all agreed it’s a fantastic book, practical.  The author also works for… His company is called Rainmaker Thinking, and they authored this incredible long-term study on the workplace opinion of Millennials toward management.
And what they found is essentially that Millennials want leadership, they want to be told how to succeed in the workplace, and actually are looking for people to, as the book that Bruce wrote says, to be the boss.  And they say in the book that there is an undermanagement epidemic, not a micromanagement one; in other words people are abdicating their responsibility to be leaders within an organization.
And Millennials I think are, just based on this study and my own experience – like I said, they’re people who want to do a good job.  And when somebody says to you, “I want to come in your company and deliver a ton of value, and what do I do, where do I sign up?”, and they’re eager – if you look on that with distain, there’s a lot of issues there.  You need to be prepared to help that person succeed.  So I view Millennials as eager and will not take lack of clarity for an answer.  So the mystery of just figuring it out on your own – hey, we have Google.  That’s gone.  Figuring it out on your own looks more like YouTube than just hacking away at it.
So yeah, Millennials I think have been given a bad rap and they are young people looking to be led, and then to lead themselves.  They want to make a difference in the world and we have an opportunity in jobs like coffee that are historically transient jobs – they’re not the jobs that they’re going to have for the rest of their lives – to shape people for the career that they actually are going to be spending a lot of time in.  So, managing first-time people, first-time employees, especially young ones, as impressionable as they are – they have a ton of energy and they have a ton of vision to contribute to a company if you’re up for the challenge of continuing to actually work in your company.

Pete Mockaitis
So that doesn’t sound unique at all to Millennials, in terms of if you’re young and inexperienced, “Figure it out” isn’t great leadership, management, guidance, at that sort of stage in a person’s development.  I mean you might say “Figure it out” in a nicer way, which was, “Why don’t you take a rough draft at a plan of attack and we’ll sync up in a day?”  That’s maybe a nicer version of “Figure it out.” [laugh] I’m not 100% abdicating my responsibility for getting to the bottom of this thing, but I would like you to take the first approach there.  Well, cool.  So then, you’ve got some takes on how one manages expectations optimally in the first real job environment.

Chris Deferio
Yeah.  So, managing expectations is a great place to start because as I was just touching on how we as an older generation – myself turning 40 here shortly – have a responsibility to manage ourselves first, so that we can lead others.  And that means if we have expectations of people that are unreasonable and are secretly based on our desire to just not have to do as much as we actually have to, then we need to deal with that so we don’t pass on dysfunction.  In today’s day and age there’s a ton of leadership dysfunction, and leaders in restaurants and coffee bars and politics are under fire.
And so, all eyes are on people who have authority and power, and we need to be able to have some kind of forethought about the people we’re bringing into our organization and stop being surprised by what happens when we bring young people into an organization.  You can’t really be effective as a leader or as a company if you’re constantly just scratching your head and complaining and surprised by something that you knew was going to happen.  So, embrace it, prepare yourself for it, and be the leader that’s necessary for what you’re going to inherit.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so the managing expectations there – you’re talking about what it’s fair for you to expect of someone who’s newer, younger, inexperienced from the get-go.

Chris Deferio
Yeah.  So, they’re going to make mistakes, no doubt, when you onboard somebody.  In coffee for instance a lot of us have labs, and we have labs for a reason – because we don’t want people experimenting on the customer.  Or we have shadow shifts for instance, where you are on with the manager and they are watching you to make sure that you are performing in the critical areas.
However, you don’t want to rob people of their failures; you don’t want people to only do exactly what you say in every case.  You want to see them spill milk or you want to see them kind of strain to figure something out and not just jump in and not let that muscle develop, because then you will never be truly confident in that person’s “a-ha” moment, because they could fake it.  They could just say, “Oh yeah, I understand now”, but when you’re gone, because they didn’t develop the muscle of understanding through failure, then it’s just going to crumble under the pressure, especially if it’s one of their first jobs, like we were talking about earlier.
So, having a lab for another company might look like just an entry level position within the company, where consequences of failure are not dire – you’re not going to pass it on to your big accounts.  But you have somebody there that can walk them through the process and explain, as failures are made, how to do the job from A to Z.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that’s great.  Don’t rob them of their failures – nice turn of a phrase there.  And so, when you say a “lab”, can you help me visualize?  I’m imagining a lab coat and a white room and…

Chris Deferio
It’s exactly right, that’s what we do.  We actually recreate, so the speak, the coffee bar.  So it’s like a micro coffee bar, and sometimes it’s behind glass and other times it’s just hidden in the back corner.  It’s not usually the prettiest place but it’s got an espresso machine and a brewer, it’s got a couple of tables, and you schedule sessions with baristas when they are new employees, or existing employees that need work on one particular area.  You schedule some time in the lab to work on your tamping, to work on understanding a particular policy.  A lot of meetings are held in labs.
So, a lab for a coffee bar I think is critical, and the equivalent in any organization like where does the training take place, helps kind of anchor the idea, like, “Yeah, I’m here to learn right now in this space.  And we can just bang around in here and nothing is going to happen in the outside world, except I’m going to learn and bring what I learn to that outside world.”

Pete Mockaitis
It’s interesting when you describe the lab, it conjures to mind almost like a movie montage, like there’s music playing and someone is failing repeatedly and spilling it all over themselves.  And then the wise mentor is frustrated but sticks it out until there’s a maestro coming out on the other side.

Chris Deferio
Yeah, this is very much like Rocky.  Ivan Drago versus Rocky lifting logs in a log house.  It’s an approximation.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great.  Okay, so we talked about not robbing people of their failures, managing the expectations, giving some protection so there’s not dire consequences if things go awry.  I’d like you to also kind of unpack a bit, you’ve got some takes on when it comes to the follow-through.  Not just saying, “Hey, do this”, but what comes after the “Hey, do this”?

Chris Deferio
Yeah.  This is a super hard one, and it is one of the things that erodes trust the most between direct reports and managers, or baristas and managers, however you want to phrase it.  When you tell somebody to do something and they do it – let’s say they do it well.  And nothing happens, except they do it well and they know, but nobody sees it – that is going to demoralize the individual, because nobody is there to see their victories.  I think you get some satisfaction out of it, for sure.
Yeah.  So if you are on the bar and you are not having follow-through from your manager, what that looks like is like you said – just “Do this” via text message.  You get a text message or an email that says to do it this way.  You need to have the presence of the manager there to follow up with you in order to either correct you or praise you, to guide you or affirm you.
And the present leadership is a good phrase for this.  A shop I worked at used the phrase “present leadership”, because often times what we have is a secondary culture form around this abdication of leadership to follow through.  So, for us it happens on closing shifts, when management is home – they try to get themselves on a 9:00 to 5:00 schedule, and then the closing shift is there by themselves.  And what you’ll find is that it’s kind of like a different culture, and they don’t have the kind of contact with the leadership as their counterparts in the morning do.  And the difference is that the people in the morning get the benefit of getting to see the manager every day, so there is a natural built-in opportunity for follow-through.
You can’t really judge an employee’s performance if you haven’t observed their performance in a consistent way.  So when you give them a raise and you tell them they’re doing a good job, but they know that you haven’t actually followed through and seen how they’re doing, if they need help, and been there along the process – they know you don’t know what you’re talking about, and it’s hollow.  And so you erode trust, they don’t trust you when you say “Good job”, because they know you haven’t even seen them do their job.
That’s part of what I mean by “follow-through”.  For managers who really want to be there for their employees, it’s going to take a lot of work upfront, but you build momentum in the future so where you might have to schedule yourself to come in during a time where you normally don’t come in to the store – maybe it’s a closing shift for coffee bar examples – just to make yourself known, to ask how things are going, see if there’s any questions, observe them in action.  Do that for a week or so, two or three times a week.  And that person will get the drift that you are concerned about their progress and you’re building rapport with that individual and following through on the thing that you said they should do or how they should do it, etcetera, if that makes sense.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s interesting.  It sounds like this sounds pretty, I guess, fundamental and just, “But of course leaders should do that.”  And yet at the same time, I think there is a healthy opposition force that would say, “Oh my gosh, Chris, that is just too much work.  Why do I have to do all this handholding?  Come on, we’re grownups here.”

Chris Deferio
Well, yeah.  Grownups who can plan ahead of time, like we said manage your expectations – well, part of the expectation is that you’re going to have to spend some extra time with people who are new.  And I think the thing that really throws people is the minutiae of their job as a manager, because so much of our job in management has to do with reacting to situations and putting out fires.
And if you never really get that under control and don’t have control of your own schedule, keeping on human relationships on top of just ordering these other things for the office and responding to emails from people who may or may not want to buy your coffee or your product – there’s no room left for the people that you hired.  And there’s this weird relief – you come in and they’re doing fine; you’re like, “Oh hey, how are you doing?  How are you doing?  Good?  Are they taking care of you over here?  Great.”  And then you just walk away.
Now you’ve abdicated your responsibility as a leader to the people they’re working with, who have become the sort of surrogate managers for you because you can’t get it together with your schedule.  So it all kind of comes back to the leadership and what you expect from yourself.  It all kind of comes back to leadership having their stuff together, so that they can actually help other people form their careers and their understanding and their skillsets.

Pete Mockaitis
Now that example you used, in terms of, “How are you doing?  Are they taking good care of you?” – that’s an example of abdication.  Can you expand on that?

Chris Deferio
Yeah, so not in all cases, I think, but I see it a lot of times in coffee bars, where you throw people on to a bar and you hope that the most senior barista there will kind of show them the ropes – show them all this stuff about the POS and show them this other thing over here too, and, “By the way, I just remembered, can you show them this?”  Now, that might be delegation if it’s done with clear intent and structure, and always done that way, if that’s purposeful, but often times it’s just Plan B or Plan C when it comes to what the manager maybe ideally wanted or found out that they don’t have enough time to spend to walk this person through the POS system, the register.
So, what I say is advocation I mean naturally when you’re entering into an office or a service industry or whatever it is, the manager is the person you understand to be the source of knowledge, the one who is going to help you understand how things are, at least at first.  But when you never get that and they’re just the person that has you sign your tax forms, and then they just kind of throw you on bar but then show up at your review, it just feels like, “Why are you even here?  My coworker should be reviewing me, because they’re the ones who taught me, corrected me, were there with me during that really crazy rush, where we all burned ourselves.”  There’s rapport, and managers often times miss out on building that rapport, because they unintentionally, I’d say, in most cases, give away their opportunity to build those relationships.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s good.  And I kind of finally want to get your take on when it comes to retail or coffee environment, there are times where you mentioned the rush.  In a realm of crowds and chaos and a whole lot happening real fast, what are some pro tips just for keeping your cool and your sanity and focus about you with all the stimuli?

Chris Deferio
Two things.  One – have workflow already in place.  If you own a bar, if you manage a system where you have to deliver a result, you have to have a workflow.  And that workflow has to actually be taking into account different situations that you could come up against.  For us, let’s say you have a menu of 15 items with four different variations on those items, okay?  So, you’ve got to practice all of the ways that people can alter those drinks, and maybe there’s ways that they’re going to… How is it going to be in the worst scenario and what do we do?  What’s the plan?
Too many people just cross that bridge when they come to it, and if it’s on fire they don’t cross it at all.  The workflow is a critical one.  And that was one of our first episodes actually on the show Keys To The Shop, with my friend Ryan Soeder on mastering workflow.
The other part is managing yourself emotionally.  You need to detach, essentially.  Not in a robotic way, but if you’re working the workflow, if you’re working behind the bar and you have a line out the door and you know you’re doing your best – there’s no reason, logically, to stress out.  You can’t go any faster, and everybody understands that.  And they keep coming every day, so they know.  They see, they have eyes, they understand what’s going on.
And somehow what happens when we forget that – we try to rush the process, we don’t fall into a rhythm.  And when we do that, we don’t do the other thing also – I had a third – is, communication.  Our communication can either come from a place of fear and insecurity, or it can come from a place of, “We’re in this together, we’re doing the best we can and we’re going to lean into the pressure rather than trying to run away from it.”
I’ll give an example.  There are times when I have personally been really stressed out on the register, and when I’m that way what I like to do is… I don’t know how to describe it, but I just kind of smile to myself and I overexaggerate my hospitality as a way of reminding myself what I’m doing here.  I don’t go goofy or anything, but I turn an inward switch.  And I think it’s important for people to figure out, “What’s my approach to the chaotic workplace environment and how will I pull myself away from that, observe it as an outsider, so to speak?  And not become out of control emotionally, but lean into the fact that this is what’s going on and it’s not going to define us.  We’re not going to let the shift run us; we’re going to run the shift.”  That’s a good way to just remember it.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely.  Well, Chris, tell me – anything else you want to make sure to highlight before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Chris Deferio
Yeah.  I just want to encourage everybody who works with young people and transient employees – it kind of goes hand in hand – that they are training up a future generation of leaders and owners and managers, people who will influence the course of history.  And it sounds really dramatic to say it that way, but every person who you know who you read a biography about who’s inspirational, worked at a deli, worked at a restaurant or a coffee bar at some point.
And maybe not everyone, but they had jobs that were kind of what they might consider menial.  But have had lessons that shaped them in the dish pit, in the mop closet, in a one-on-one with a manager; kind of like your favorite teacher in elementary school.  So our responsibility to actually take up a mantle of leadership and lead young people well in these jobs is really, really critical.  And it’s all about relationships and allowing yourself to be vulnerable, while at the same time being a strong leader that will help shape the next generation.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely, thank you.  Now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Chris Deferio
Yeah.  So, I think my favorite quote comes from David Whyte. David Whyte is an English poet and I think the quote is, “You must learn one thing: the world was made to be free in.  Give up all other worlds except the one in which you belong.” So his book, if I could recommend it, is called Crossing the Unknown Sea, and it’s kind of a philosophy on vocation as a way of becoming, a journey into meaning through your work.  And so I really, highly recommend that book.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh great, thank you.  And how about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Chris Deferio
I don’t have a… Okay, tool would be just pen and paper, honestly.  I don’t thrive in digital environments as much as I thought I would, and I do have things.  I love my high-end drawing pens and special graph paper notebooks for organizing my thoughts.  I’m not full into bullet journaling or anything, but I do like to braindump onto paper and organize myself that way.  And sometimes it makes it into my reminders on my phone or something like that, but more often than not I’m trying to write something down.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you.  And how about a favorite habit?

Chris Deferio
So, I guess a favorite habit of mine, besides coffee, would be – which is a great habit, it’s very healthy for you – I try to get up early.  It’s something I started doing a couple of years ago, actually started to try to adopt a way to kind of embrace the day.  Now I know this is not unique to me, but when I started doing it, it really turned my world upside down that I could actually start my day well by just getting up early and stretching and drinking a lot of water and thinking, including things like morning pages is a huge one, stream-of-consciousness, because I don’t get a lot of time, especially at a coffee bar, to create and to express.  You’re always reacting to outside situations.  So it’s nice to have some space where you can set your trajectory internally, and then embrace the day.

Pete Mockaitis
And tell me, is there a particular nugget that you share that really seems to connect and resonate and get folks quoting yourself back to you?

Chris Deferio
Yeah.  There is something that I used to say in talks and I think I should bring it back, and that is that the customer has been hurt in the past by coffee.  The customer has had some kind of a traumatic experience in a coffee bar and they bring that experience in with them.  So, we have to approach them from a position of owning the stuff that our industry sort of did to them and earn back their trust.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so intrigued.  I can’t recall an experience of my own.  Are we talking about hot spills, or what do you mean?

Chris Deferio
I mean emotionally, like you go into a specialty coffee shop and often times what you find is maybe the barista is not as welcoming as you thought they should be for the price point of the coffee.  We promise a special experience a lot of times and when somebody walks in, the expectation is set so high by the marketing that the actual reality of the experience is disappointing.  And so, knowing that people are sort of accustomed to dealing with disappointment when it comes to something that’s so hyped as specialty coffee with all these latte art flowery drinks and what not, we kind of have to approach it with some empathy and realize that A) it’s not personal, B) let’s make that up to you; let’s make this the best experience that you could possibly have.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright.  And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Chris Deferio
Well, I would definitely recommend they go to KeysToTheShop.com, and the podcast the same name on iTunes.  It’s just KeysToTheShop on Instagram and Twitter as well.  And those are the best places.  My email is chris@keystotheshop.com.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for those seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Chris Deferio
Be patient with yourself, be patient with others, and take a look at the big picture on a regular basis.  And learn to be happy with the work that you’ve already done and hopeful for the work that you’re going to accomplish.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome.  Well, Chris, thanks so much for taking this time.  Lots of fun.  I wish you tons of luck in your coffee adventures, and you are a champion in more ways than just latte art!

Chris Deferio
I really appreciate that.  Well, thanks for having me on the show.  It was really fun.