Today, we're going to talk about putting other people's stories first.
Specifically, why when you do that, it's a powerful way to become a next-level leader.
So to do that, I'm going to tell you three stories and then we're going to look a little
bit at the neuroscience as to why this is so powerful.
I was particularly struck by the world-famous restaurant in Seattle, Washington called Canlis
Restaurant, run by two brothers, Mark and Brian Canlis.
Their secret is putting other people's stories first.
These brothers deliver unforgettable customer experience night after night, year after year.
They share exactly how they put their customers first by putting the customer's story first.
It's a radical approach and they focus their whole team, their hiring, everything they
do around that one idea.
So as they put it, they put it this way, your customer is the hero of the story, not you.
In particular, they looked at their customers or their guests as entrusting them with the
treasure that tonight matters.
For some people, it literally was a last meal with a parent or an anniversary or graduation
or a first date or work promotion.
You can see that that matters a great deal to the people involved.
And so they took it that their customers, their guests were entrusting them to make
tonight special, to make it matter.
This made the team very attentive.
For example, the parking attendant had a photographic memory and would remember your car so no ticket
was issued.
And when you got up, they got your car ready without you having a ticket.
Just that sense of belonging, that sense of I belong here.
I love the way they describe it.
They said it's not a transaction of take.
You take our food, we take your money.
You know, they went way beyond that.
So they weren't just looking at the external things for customer service.
They were looking for the internal things.
And this is what the staff really focused on.
They called it keeping the promise.
And the promise is that tonight will matter.
And the staff will say this every night before they start serving.
So before the guests arrive, tonight we're keeping the promise.
So I wonder for your company, what's the promise you need to keep for your customers?
Your customer is entrusting something to you.
This is treasure to them.
They are the hero of the story.
So be trustworthy.
You know, it's not just about meeting or exceeding expectations.
It's that internal thing that matters that we're going to keep our promise of making
tonight count.
So that's a really big deal in a business.
You know, for each of these people who sometimes waited many months to get a reservation at
this restaurant, but they knew that that treasure, that night, would really matter
and it would really count.
You know, at the end of the day, the core values of your company are only values if
they cost you something.
You know, they cause you to make these hard decisions.
But when we make our service so relational, when we're putting ourselves in their shoes,
when we put their story first, it takes our leadership to the next level.
Not just for the main leader, but for everybody in the team.
You know, the staff are on a journey too.
And that's why, you know, we don't use people.
We grow people.
It's why you're going through this program.
So if you use people, they will just use the customers.
But if you grow people, they will grow the customers.
And it's the same thing.
This happens internally and it happens with our customers.
So here's the question.
What promise are you as a team keeping to your customer?
Secondly, in keeping the promise, you yourselves change to make, you know, in their case, make
the night matter.
They tailored themselves around what the client needed.
And every single table was different.
There wasn't just a general standard of, well, here's our standards and meet expectations.
No, this is next level leadership we're talking about, where you're keeping a promise and
the promise for each table would be different.
And so your company's core values cost you something in that they require you to be attentive.
The second story is about a school that we started.
We started a school, a K-8 school.
And within the first three years,
we were the top academic school in our state.
And within four years, we're in the top 4%
of all private schools in the United States
on the highest testing standard.
And what we really focused was creating articulate leaders
who could effectively inspire others
to serve their generation.
And how we got there was to think
about other people's story first.
And the way we did it for the school is we asked ourselves,
what will it take to produce the next Thomas Jefferson
or Elizabeth Elliot or C.S. Lewis?
You see, we reduced that story down,
which the parents loved, and we brought it down to,
what does the school do?
Cultivating purposeful, intelligent young leaders.
And to do that, we focused on character
as a key aspect of education.
Or in Latin, esse quam videri,
to be rather than to seem.
A lot of people seem.
So we wanted the kind of leaders
that were the genuine article.
And we made this about each child's leadership story,
about help cultivating them to be exactly that,
purposeful, intelligent young leaders.
And the third story is about a managed fund
that I was working with.
Now, we could have pushed and set the target
as our expectations is to have a return of 10% a year
or whatever the fund was offering.
But then we discovered this idea
of putting the customer's story first.
So we got on the phone and we started to call our customers.
And we asked them, this investment matters to you.
Could you tell us the story?
We were amazed.
Oh, I wanna be able to send my child to college.
My granddaughter to college, she'll be the first one.
Or they went through all these stories.
I wanna enrich my retirement because we're a bit short.
Or whatever it was, we wanna travel.
Or we wanna give ourselves to this nonprofit organization.
We wanna be able to have enough funds
so we can do that free of charge in our community.
Well, the story started to roll in
and we were blown away.
When we put other people's story first,
what we did became more meaningful.
By the way, we changed
because not only did our leadership go to the next level,
but we ourselves became very attentive to our customers.
It's a beautiful idea, putting other people's stories first.
Now, why do stories work like this?
You know, Paul Zak at Claremont Graduate University
found that good stories cause our brains
to produce oxytocin.
So in other words, we love the way that stories make us feel.
Not what they make us think, the way they make us feel.
You know, people will often not remember,
or your customers will not remember what you said,
but they will remember how you made them feel.
So why are stories so powerful then?
Well, they are relational.
I love the story we've talked before
about the elephant, the rider, and the pathway.
If we're trying to move a customer,
we're trying to move somebody down the road,
the elephant is like the emotions.
The rider is like the intellect.
And a lot of times,
we spend all our time talking to the rider.
But guess what?
If the elephant doesn't wanna move,
it doesn't matter what the rider does.
Explaining the rational thing to the rider is not enough.
But stories move the elephant.
I love that.
Stories really connect us to each other
because they connect us to our humanity.
You know, in literature, we have great stories
that have genuinely stood the test of time.
We call them the classics.
Why?
Because they're stories that teach us
how the human heart works.
And that's why we read old books to young people.
You know, we wanna teach them how the world really works.
So if you wanna become that next level leader,
the big question you can ask yourself is,
what promise are we keeping to our customers?
What are they entrusting to us?
And how can we put those stories first
and become next level leaders?
I hope you enjoyed that.