yeah when we talk about safe we're talking about psychological that's right yeah um uh and you can be psychologically safe and still trip over a court that's right yeah um uh so it's it's a great story it's um i i had a business trip to um las vegas a bunch of years ago and the the client was very generous and put me up at the four seasons um which is a lovely hotel and the reason it's lovely is not because of the fancy beds any hotel can buy a fancy bed it's because of the people
who work there that when you roam the halls um and somebody says hello you get the distinct feeling that they wanted to say hello not that they were told to say hello um you know we're highly attuned social animals we can tell the difference i mean it's your idea of being the nordstroms it's like people can tell the difference whether they're forced to give good service or they want to give good service anyway they happened to have a coffee bar at the four seasons in las vegas and uh one afternoon i went and bought myself
a cup of coffee and the barista working that day was a kid named noah noah was funny and engaging and charming and i stood there for far too long just to buy a cup of coffee and so as is my nature i asked noah do you like your job and without skipping a beat noah said i love my job now in my line of work that's significant because like is rational right i like the people i like the challenge i get paid well i like my job love is emotional it's a higher order connection like
do you love your wife i like her a lot right it's it's different right it's not the same right so noah said i love my job so immediately my ears perk up this kid has an emotional connection to his job so i followed up and i said can you tell me specifically what the four seasons is doing that you would say to me you love your job and without skipping a beat noah said throughout the day managers will walk past me and ask me if there's anything that i need to do my job better anything
they could do for me not just my manager any manager and then he said i also work at caesar's palace and there the managers walk around and just catch us when we're doing things wrong there they're just trying to drive performance he says there i just keep my head below the radar i just want to get through the day and collect my paycheck and then he said something magical he said only at the four seasons do i feel i can be myself so think about that for a second this is the exact same human being
right in two different jobs and yet our experience of him will be profoundly different not because of him but because of the leadership environment in which he works in one experience it'll be amazing and one it'll be terrible right and i think so often i hear this all the time leaders ask you know how do i get the most out of my people well people aren't a towel you don't ring them out right how do i get the most out of them it's a flawed question when it comes to leadership the question is is how
do i create an environment in which my people can work at their natural best and the four seasons has figured that out right it's by giving him agency it's by giving him control to to do the job that he wants to do the way he wants to do it and checking in to make sure that leadership isn't there to do his job for him or to overly control but to offer guidelines but also offer support and the same goes in any profession you can take a cop in one agency who will be high performing a
valuable member of the team a valuable member of the community because of the culture you can change the agency they work for and they can be a terrible member of the team because the leadership environment in which they work
