Leadership Lessons from The Bear Season 2
Imagine the gift of giving someone else the chance to feel inspired. Not by what you say, but by how you lead.
There’s a scene (spoiler alert) in this exceptionally written show, where Richie (played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach), is driving his car home from work. He’s driven home from work before, depressed and burned out. But this time he’s blasting Taylor Swift and singing at the top of his lungs. This moment comes after months, years, maybe even decades of feeling like he had no skills or true contribution to make at work. He was stuck: a word a lot of my clients use to describe a place in their career where things don’t align, but they have no idea which direction to go next. And on this day, where nothing external changed in Richie’s life at all, where he’s working the same job, driving the same car, living in the same town; the pieces clicked for him.
How do you go from stuck and directionless, to being a middle-aged man so inspired after a day at work, that he can’t help himself singing to Taylor Swift?
In this scenario, Richie had a boss who believed in him. This boss, Carmy (played by Jeremy Allen White), saw Richie as someone with exceptional people skills. He saw him as a friend who was loyal and caring and would do anything for the people he cared about. Carmy saw Richie as someone who thrived when he knew he was helping people and making an impact on their happiness. Richie didn’t see any of these skills, nor did he see them as applicable to any sort of job.
After months of Richie creating problems, wanting to help, but ultimately making a continued mess of things, Carmy sends him to work in the top restaurant in Chicago; to clean forks. Richie sees it as a punishment. He feels even more worthless. Until he has a conversation with the owner of the restaurant, while helping her prep the meal for the evening. She tells him that he has potential, and that Carmy believes in him. And with that spark of confidence, he moves up from fork washing, to walking the floor of the restaurant, listening for hints from customers of ways he could elevate their experience. He starts surprising people in beautiful ways. A customer talks about wanting to try deep dish pizza, so Richie tells the chef who modifies the pizza to a michelin star level, iliciting a “fuck yes, microbasil!,” from Richie. His excitement is contagious as he sees the customer’s eyes light up when he delivers the dish to their table, meer moments after their comment about deep dish.
That night, Richie rocks out to Taylor Swift, feeling the pieces finally coming together.
If you brag about your people, if you talk about their potential when they aren’t in the room, and when that message permeates and they hear it from around the way; it somehow feels more true than when you tell them directly. Not unlike parenting. We’re biased, but when that bias is filtered through someone else, it comes out differently and becomes easier to believe.
It’s our job as leaders and managers and coaches to elevate our people and to bring them these beautiful moments of inspiration. Exceptional leaders spend time listening and watching and sometimes even putting their people through a little discomfort (the good kind, not the physical kind) so that those people can come through that growth and discomfort victorious, aligned, seen and understood.
If I asked you about five people in your company who have huge potential but who don’t see it yet for themselves, I would expect you to have an answer. Maybe you haven’t landed on how to help them find or reach their potential yet. But you should have a knowing and understanding about the potential of the people you have hired and decided to keep on your team. If you don’t have time for such things, it might be time to put someone in the position who can do that for your people. That will give you the opportunity to also experience inspiration in filling the role you were meant to fill.
And if you’re someone like Richie, who is feeling stuck, looking for the pieces to fall into place, you deserve to have this kind of leader in your life. You deserve to be seen and to be bragged about and to be believed in. Seek out those people and leave the others behind so that you can start singing in the car after work.
We start our 6-week Leadership Coach Certification Program on April 3rd. Limited number of spots available. Learn more.
Jaime Gennaro is a certified business coach with decades of experience working with and growing start-ups. She’s always been committed to finding creative ways to make money, either by starting businesses or landing interesting roles that helped her pursue her passions. Book a consult call to learn more about her coaching programs here.
For more on this topic, listen to:
