Helen Rothberg - The Perfect Mix: Everything I Know About Leadership I Learned as a Bartender

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Copyright 2017 by Helen Rothberg, PhD

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Atria Books hardcover edition June 2017

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Interior design by Amy Trombat

Jacket design & illustration by Ella Laytham

Author photograph by Al Nowak

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-5011-2782-3

ISBN 978-1-5011-2784-7 (ebook)

Certain names and other characteristics have been changed. In addition, some people portrayed are composites.

Thanks, Dad

AS AN EDUCATOR AND consultant, I have been training leaders and future leaders for more than twenty-five years. I have worked with undergraduate business majors and MBAs as well as with executives of Fortune 500 firms and not-for-profits, government officials, and entrepreneurs in technology start-ups. Over that quarter century I have worked in organizational change, helping people accept that something in their work lives will be different; strategic planning, helping organizations choose a course for the future; and competitive intelligence, the very deliberate gathering of actionable information about industries and competitors. This is not spying but sleuthing. Not Dumpster diving or bugging boardrooms. Instead, I engage in detective work: investigating, discovering, integrating, and analyzing information from people and published sources about companies and the business environment. Competitive intelligence facilitates strategic planning, which itself may be an impetus for organizational change.

Through all these pursuits I came to realize that, even more than from academic credentials or experience, everything I know about management and leadershipeverything essential I know about becoming successfulI learned as a bartender.

I was in the garden section of Lowes on a warm July afternoon, considering how big a pot I needed to replant my ficus trees, when my phone buzzed. I accepted the call, and before I could even say hello, I heard, Dr. Rothberg, can you talk? It was Gabe Gambino, a recent graduate with a BS in business. No matter how many times I told him that he could call me Helen, the familiar title stuck.

Gabe and his crew of friends had planned and prodded their way into and through my strategic-management class. They had taken full advantage of my office hours, scheduling weekly meetings for themselves and their teams working on projects. If they saw my door open or the light on, theyd come in for encouragement, counseling, and chocolates. One month before his capstone analysisa thorough, real-time strategic plan for a publicly traded companywas due, a distressed Gabe sat in my office and admitted that he didnt think he could complete it. He had waited too long to beginhe actually had not yet started writing at alland the job felt too big. I knew from experience that half of his anxiety would be relieved just by starting and I put him on the Aunt Helen Plan: He had to e-mail me every evening and tell me exactly what he had accomplished that day. When I didnt hear from him by 10:30 one night, I e-mailed him: Wheres Gabe?

Gabes final plan was excellent and after graduation hed gotten a corporate sales job where he thought he was joining a full-service advertising agency with established clients. The reality was that he had to hunt for clients to represent, but the clients he could approach didnt have resources to even consider buying what he was selling. Ergo, his call to me.

Dr. Rothberg, I hate my job, Gabe said, and, without taking a single breath, went on to tell me that he got up every morning at 5:00 a.m. to catch the train, sat at a desk all day cold-calling, and worked on commission. Im losing money going to work, I get rejected all day, I dont relate to the people in my office. I dont see this leading to anything. This isnt what I went to college for. Im not good at this. I am miserable.

Quit the job, Gabe, I said as I put down the pot Id been considering and walked to another aisle.

I cant quit my job. I am the first in my family to graduate from college. I have bills to pay. What am I going to do? I dont want to get up in the morning anymore.

Quit the job, Gabe.

I cant.

I understood how Gabe felt. I remembered my first real job, waitressing at a Catskills deli/American-Chinese restaurant. The most senior waitress, a lifer, got all the best tables: couples who had cocktails with dinner. As the youngest, I got the worst tables: multigenerational families who could never order everything they wanted at the same time. One evening the lifer dropped mashed potatoes outside the kitchen door and left them without a warning. I came barreling through with a full tray, slipping and falling on my butt in front of my table of eight, who watched their food land on me and everywhere else but in front of their hungry selves. The week before that, an angry chef chased me with his meat cleaver because I wouldnt bring him a whiskey sour during the dinner service. I hated the place but was afraid to quit. No one wanted to hire a kid. I needed the experience and I needed the money. But the potatoes in my braids were the last straw.

Not every job is a good job. After I quit, I was able to find a better restaurant where there were tablecloths, nicer chefs, and better tips. A few years later, when I realized that waitresses tips reflect many things outside of their controlhow quickly the kitchen gets the meal ready, how good the food is, how many times a water glass is filledI moved to bartending, where there was a more direct link between my effort and reward. This was a better fit for me. And because of that I blossomed.

It took forty-five minutes of coaxing and searching three aisles of flowerpots, but Gabe agreed to quit his job and I found the right pot. Within two months he began a new career as a sales coordinator and moved out of his parents home to his own place in Brooklyn. Within two and a half years he was promoted to account executive.