Emma Franceschini, head of bars for Swillhouse, shares her experiences in becoming the leader she wanted to be.
Photography by Andrea Veltom
How do you define leadership, and how has that definition evolved throughout your career?
I love this question, it’s actually a really interesting thing to reflect on. When I was younger I probably would have answered by saying something about leading from the front. Obviously that’s a pretty narrow view on it, but being in the mix, doing the hard jobs and setting a pace and tone in service was really where my focus lay as an aspirational young manager.
These days, leadership is about looking after people, it’s a type of service, it’s doing the right thing even when it’s hard, it’s empowering people, recognising other people, being humble and recognising your own limits, taking accountability and hearing people and helping them get where they need to go.
The way I see it now there is nothing inherent in leadership behaviour that requires an official title, but if you are ticking all of those boxes people will tend to come along within you on things naturally.
What were some of the most significant challenges you faced on your path to leadership, and how did you overcome them?
I’m pretty visible as a queer woman, existing in the world this way definitely brought sets of challenges with it that made the early parts of my career and life generally challenging. I gave a lot and put up with a lot to have a seat at the table – I think a lot of women in leadership positions would express similar sentiments.
For me personally pushing against barriers created a certain amount of baggage that just did not serve me well as a leader in any sort of healthy workspace. Adversity breeds resilience. I’m grateful for the resilience I developed as a result of adversity, but I also learned to be really hard, set unreasonable standards on myself and others, and draw poor boundaries with my work and personal life. So for me in many ways the most significant challenges to leadership growth were around unlearning and reframing my instinctive ways of looking at things.
If we want to talk about challenges as a leader that is a whole different conversation. But challenges on the path to leadership, that’s really about inner work and cultivating leadership traits which aren’t necessarily intrinsic. For me there was a lot of reading, learning, reflecting and making active choices.
“Commit yourself to continual growth and development and invest some time everyday to learning. Build a broad knowledge base across lots of different subjects.“
Can you share a pivotal moment or decision in your career that significantly influenced your leadership journey?
I mean, there are few big pivotal moments for me. The one I think on the most came when I was a junior manager training a new team mate on a well during service. I wasn’t doing a great job of it, I was pulling up everything this person was doing wrong and generally being a bit mean, which I kinda rationalised as ok because I was maintaining high standards.
My boss pulled me aside and was like why are you approaching this situation like this? Then he told me that I had to choose if I wanted to be the sort of manager that makes people small or the sort of manager that builds people up. Talk about getting to the core of something. It’s been a long time and I still reflect on that line really regularly, it’s such a simple poignant lesson.
On my best days I find myself reflecting on that challenge and actively choosing to build people up. I went back and apologised to the person I was training by the way – as we all should whenever we realise we’ve acted like a jerk.
How do you foster inclusive and empowering environments for your teams, especially in an industry known for its fast pace and high pressure?
If you want to create an inclusive environment for your team you really have to set clear expectations and talk about inclusivity on a regular basis and then walk your talk. Be brave and critically evaluate yourself, take feedback and listen to and consider diverse opinions. Also recognising that different people have different ways of learning and might need different levels of support to do well, you need to be willing and able to tailor your approach as a leader.
I think it’s really key here that staff at all levels within a team feel like they have a voice and feel comfortable bringing issues to you. In my experience checking in with your team regularly on a one on one basis is the most effective way to make sure everyone has a voice.
Build relationships, ask them how they are doing, what they need to thrive, where they need support, what their goals are and where they need help. The conversations don’t always need to be long but they need some regularity. You’re going to need some sort of way of tracking yourself on this. Even if it’s just a diary note ‘catch up with Billy’.
Hospitality workplaces are really dynamic and fast moving, if you aren’t tracking that you are having these meaningful conversations with your team regularly you’ll likely not realise that you haven’t caught up with someone in a long time, you need to be methodical about this.
If you manage your check ins right, listen to your people, and act on what they raise back to you and walk your talk, then you’ll be on a pretty sound path tracking towards having an inclusive empowering environment.
What advice would you give to young people aspiring to leadership roles in hospitality today?
Cultivate resilience in yourself and learn how to manage stress. Part of being a really effective leader is about being able to make good decisions in stressful situations. Stressful scenarios in service are going to happen sometimes, rude customers, kitchen going down, short staff because of sickness, bar way busier than anyone planned for, hospitality can be challenging.
Thinking about how you are going to manage stressful scenarios and planning before things happen will serve you and your team well. The shot and a cigarette approach to managing stress isn’t sustainable personally or professionally. I draw on a few practical mindfulness exercises in the moment if something rattles me during a busy service, find what works for you and methodise it. Be humble, we all have limits, know yours and own them. People will judge yours less harshly if you take ownership of them.
Commit yourself to continual growth and development and invest some time everyday to learning. Build a broad knowledge base across lots of different subjects. As a leader I think a big toolkit serves you better than a super specialised one. A broader knowledge base is going to help you find solutions to problems more effectively.
Be true to yourself, it’s great to have role models that you wish to emulate but you’ll be more sincere and effective if you are authentic and true to yourself. Look to others, draw on what you admire, but synthesise into your own practice. 