In many homes the kitchen is the first organisation a person ever sees. There is a division of labour, a rhythm, a standard, and one or two people who hold the whole thing together without ever calling it management.
Watch closely and the lessons are clear. Prepare before you need to. Make enough for the person who has not arrived yet. Taste as you go. Clean as you go. Let the newest person do the simple job well before the harder one.
None of this is mystical. It is leadership in its most practical form: attention to other people’s needs, carried out reliably, day after day.
Carrying it into work
The best managers many of us have worked for would have recognised this instinctively. They made sure everyone was fed, in whatever sense mattered, before the real conversation began.
Feed people first, then talk.
Elikia Editorial
It is worth asking which parts of your own working style started in a kitchen, and whether they deserve more credit than they get.
