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Unreasonable Hospitality
What is unreasonable hospitality? Service and hospitality are not the same thing. Service is the thing you’re doing. In my world, it’s getting the right plate of food to the right person at the right time. Hospitality is how you make people feel when you do that thing.
One of my favorite definitions of hospitality is that it is being creative and intentional in pursuit of relationships. It’s about making people feel seen. Now why unreasonable hospitality? You look across disciplines whether it’s directors or athletes or producers, designers, entrepreneurs, the most successful out there are relentless in bringing the best version of themselves or their product to life. They are unreasonable in their pursuit. Unreasonable hospitality really it just means making the choice to be as unreasonable in pursuit of how you make people feel as you are the product you’re selling those people. And when you do it, I believe it becomes your greatest competitive advantage.
Three Keys to Being Unreasonable
What I found is unreasonable hospitality happens when you can motivate a team of people to do three things. One, to be present. For me, what that means is caring so much about the person you’re with that you stop caring about everything else you need to do. And these days with cell phones as perpetual distractions in our pockets or with our ever-growing to-do list, it can become really difficult for any of us to slow down for long enough to actually listen to those around us. I believe we have a flawed relationship with efficiency where we think that the more efficient we try to be the more efficient we will become. With hospitality, sometimes you need to slow down in order to speed up.
Number two, if you want to be the best at what you do, you better take what you do seriously. And also, we all need to stop taking ourselves so seriously. Way too often in customer service, we let these self-imposed standards get in the way of us giving the people around us the things that will bring them the most joy. Brands are important but the moment you let your brand tell you that you are not allowed to do something that will make one of your key stakeholders happy then the entire relationship has gotten out of whack.
And third, listen, if hospitality is about making people feel seen, the best way to do it is not to treat them like a commodity but a unique individual. The greatest gestures are bespoke to the people you’re extending them to. The best form of hospitality is not one size fits all, it’s one size fits one. If you can empower your entire team to go out there every single day to be present, to stop taking themselves so seriously, and to find one-size-fits-one gestures to deliver to the people you’re serving. Not only will you make the people you’re serving so much happier, but will you make your team happier. Because I have yet to meet a single individual that won’t give more of themselves to help something succeed once they feel even the smallest hand in helping to determine what that thing is.