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Monica Rothgery is a natural leader. She trained army soldiers, managed fast food restaurant teams, built international franchise locations and wrote a book about it called Lessons from Drive-Thru: True wisdom for frontline leaders.
Her path to leadership has informed her unique approach to restaurant management and her mission to support frontline leaders. Serving in the military gave her essential skills that the former KFC COO uses to today as an creator and speaker.
“Going through officer training in the U.S. Army is some of the best leadership training,” Rothgery told Shawn Walchef, host of the Restaurant Influencers podcast.
But when she moved from being a military commander to managing a fast food restaurant, there was culture shock. There was no manual for individuals who had no previous job training.
She quickly learned that the expectations placed on soldiers who had undergone weeks of even the most simple training didn’t translate to the world of restaurant crew members. Many were starting their first job.
“When I told the soldiers they had to do something, they had to do it. If I told a team member to do something, they could just walk away, and sometimes they did.”
The lesson she learned was that to guide effectively in a recent environment, Rothgery needed to encourage her team on a much deeper level.
Taking care of those people as individuals, not only team members, was key to helping them care about the restaurant and its customers. This was a big change from commanding a military unit. To encourage in another way, she needed to care in another way.
Storytelling and a passion for recognition are at the heart of Rothgery’s leadership philosophy.
Her profession soon gave her the opportunity to check these skills in different cultures. When she moved to Southeast Asia to assist build a KFC location in Thailand, she got here up with the idea of using stories to encourage and unite. “Does recognition transcend culture?” she asked.
The results surprised her: by focusing on recognition, appreciation and storytelling, she motivated her team to attain results that exceeded even their very own expectations. Language barriers and cultural differences didn’t prevent them from achieving the best results.
Despite her successes, she still had a difficult road ahead of her. The local culture was so risk averse. The pressure of success made the fear of failure immobile. She recalled a particularly humbling moment when her team in Thailand slowly implemented her strategies.
“I told the team, ‘I’ll teach anyone who wants to learn,’” Rothgery said. Of the eight people at the original meeting, only two people showed up for the leadership training.
Over time it worked. One of the people collaborating in this training became the operations director of the franchise group. “It was a victory,” Rothgery thought.
Lessons from Drive-Thru
Rothgery’s book, Lessons from Drive-Thrutakes readers behind the scenes of her journey. She shares hard-won knowledge gained during her hardest days as a frontline leader.
Written with restaurant managers in mind, her book breaks down leadership all the way down to the core: “It’s every mistake I’ve ever made, all the bad shifts and all the late nights,” she explained.
The book focuses on stories from Rothgery’s early profession in the Nineties, especially her time as CEO at Taco Bell.
“Being a restaurant general manager was the hardest job I ever had, much harder than serving in the military,” Rothgery said. “Every day I give up in my mind, but I always come back the next day.”
Her stories are raw and honest. She feels for the restoration teams because she was in those trenches with them. He believes that good leadership can leave a legacy and change someone eternally.
“I wrote this book for frontline leaders,” Rothgery emphasized. “Those who think their job is simply to manage the next shift. But they have the power to shape lives and, most importantly, the lives of the people they manage.”
For Rothgery, the real heroes of the restaurant industry are those in leadership positions who manage the pressures of each day operations, customer satisfaction and team dynamics. “Your job is much bigger than you think. You are changing lives,” she said, encouraging restaurant managers to see the enormous value in their roles.
“You’re not at the bottom of the career food chain. You are a coach, a teacher and a pillar of your community.”
As her book reaches more readers, Rothgery continues her mission to empower restaurant teams and display their value in the industry. “My dream is to lift their spirits and help them realize their potential,” she said. In his next book, he plans to expand on unlocking this potential from the bottom up.
“Frontline leaders often do the work of the person below them, but if we could get everyone to do their own role, we would unlock growth.”
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