101: Agency - Line Check
1 101
[00:00:00] Time check it's 30 minutes for service and it's time
for your line check. Welcome back to the show.
Agency
(noun) The capacity of an individual to actively and independently choose and to affect change; free will or self-determination.
https://sociologydictionary.org/agency/
[00:00:50] Checking your station & your head
[00:01:28] Stand Up Meeting - Taking to the crew about 'Agency'
[00:03:03] Acknowledgment
[00:03:29] Laura Brenkus
[00:05:54] Calling you on your shit
[00:07:05] You made a choice
[00:08:05] Deep Breath
[00:08:36] Chef Life Radio Creed
Realignment Media
Time check it's 30 minutes for service and it's time for your line check.
Speaker:Welcome back to the show.
Speaker:And in this episode, I'm gonna talk to you about agency and why it's so critical to
Speaker:your professional and personal success.
Speaker:I'm your host, chef Adam Lamb, and I'm dedicated to helping you build
Speaker:the skills to overcome any obstacle in your culinary career and to face those
Speaker:challenges with confidence and resilience.
Speaker:But right now, I need to review you station, you know, inspect what I
Speaker:expect or as ed Manassian the meanest front of the house manager ever to
Speaker:work in Chicago would tell me lamb, plan your work and work your plan.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:So lemme check it out.
Speaker:How's your me and plus coming.
Speaker:Where's your backup?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Let me smell that fish.
Speaker:72 hours out of the water and you can still smell the salt.
Speaker:That's lovely.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Got enough proteins for the shift.
Speaker:Have you tasted your sauces?
Speaker:No, there's a spoon.
Speaker:No, you tell me what they need.
Speaker:Nice garnish prep.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Now let me check your head.
Speaker:You good?
Speaker:You don't tell 'em frosty.
Speaker:How's your heart?
Speaker:Yeah, open or closed?
Speaker:Open.
Speaker:Good.
Speaker:Remember angry cooks.
Speaker:Make shitty food, right?
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Now let's get everybody together for a few minutes before service starts.
Speaker:I wanna discuss an important topic with you.
Speaker:May I?
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:I wanna talk to you about agency.
Speaker:The dictionary describes it as a noun and it's the capacity of
Speaker:an individual to actively and independently choose and to affect
Speaker:change free will or self-determination.
Speaker:Another way of saying that is agency is a means of exerting power or
Speaker:influence instrumentally, like in actual fact, changing the circumstances.
Speaker:Listen, I don't know anybody who hasn't at some point or another during the last
Speaker:two and a half years felt overwhelmed or helpless as the whole world shut down
Speaker:because of COVID and then reopen just as abruptly as if the pandemic never happened
Speaker:or the virus has miraculously disappeared.
Speaker:Even more people, friends, family, relatives, coworkers gotten sick and died.
Speaker:And most of us had not even had a chance to grieve those losses
Speaker:because for the most part, couldn't see 'em in the hospital nor
Speaker:could we attend their funeral.
Speaker:If they had one at all, for those of us working, you know, we're struggling
Speaker:just to keep our noses above the water.
Speaker:And for those who are out of the industry for the time being.
Speaker:They're just trying to figure out how to get bread on the table or afford
Speaker:how to fill up their tank of gas.
Speaker:I just want to take this moment to acknowledge and look at me.
Speaker:Look.
Speaker:No, look at me.
Speaker:I wanna acknowledge and honor, don't look at the ground, dude.
Speaker:I'm talking to you.
Speaker:Look me in the eye.
Speaker:It's important that you hear me.
Speaker:I just want to acknowledge and honor what you all have.
Speaker:So courageously pushed through.
Speaker:Although I admit that sometimes might not feel like courage at all.
Speaker:I get that everything that's going on can make you feel helpless, frustrated,
Speaker:hopeless, like what the hell to do when there's so much coming at you.
Speaker:So let me illustrate the point for you.
Speaker:You're not the only one who feels this way.
Speaker:There have been times in my career when I've felt betrayed by my passion
Speaker:taken advantage of victimized.
Speaker:I remember specifically one particular time when I went down to the general
Speaker:manager's office, the great Laura Brus.
Speaker:Who sat there in her office chair while I paced back and
Speaker:forth bitching about my staff.
Speaker:My sous chefs, the customers I went on and on and on and on.
Speaker:And she sat there during my entire rant with a bemused, look on her,
Speaker:face, a smile, curled up at the end of her mouth as I just pasted back and
Speaker:forth and just let her have it about how bullshit I thought everything was.
Speaker:And she let me run outta steam until I had nothing left.
Speaker:And I plopped down in the chair.
Speaker:As I sat there making love to my pain.
Speaker:She just looked at me and said, but Adam, don't, you see the God in what you do?
Speaker:And I said, God, like, what the fuck do you mean God?
Speaker:And she said, Adam, because of what you do, you provide an opportunity
Speaker:for families, friends, people who haven't seen one another in a long
Speaker:time, come around a table to share some food, but more importantly share
Speaker:what's been going on in their lives.
Speaker:Right now you go to the bank and uh, you go to the ATM.
Speaker:There's no person, there you go to the gas station, you feed the pump.
Speaker:There's no person there in our world of limiting and diminishing human contact.
Speaker:You provide an opportunity for people to come together
Speaker:and be in relationship ified.
Speaker:I sat there and I went, God, sanctity, like I'm doing something that's honorable.
Speaker:And I walked out thinking, well, maybe I am.
Speaker:It's not always the way that I think it is.
Speaker:It's the story that I'm telling myself after a while that story becomes a
Speaker:truth, but it doesn't make it true.
Speaker:Now I could have been a victim of that situation.
Speaker:I could have let it take my power and my energy and my playfulness.
Speaker:And close down my heart until there was nothing left, but a stone.
Speaker:But I realized pretty quickly that the path to leadership goes
Speaker:through the pain, not around it.
Speaker:And the first step was to accept my own bullshit and to realize that just
Speaker:because I thought it didn't make it true.
Speaker:But once you embrace agency, your capacity for.
Speaker:You understand that at all times you have the capacity to choose
Speaker:actively and independently to either affect change in your lives or not.
Speaker:Your personal power comes from the truth that you have at all times,
Speaker:free will and self determination.
Speaker:Now, listen, I'm out on smoke doc.
Speaker:You know, I'm on the back dock.
Speaker:I hear conversations over my shoulder.
Speaker:I get things are shitty, but bitching about it is not
Speaker:gonna make things any better.
Speaker:Once you activate and fully own your agency.
Speaker:Then you become a sovereign human being with dominion over your body,
Speaker:mind and heart, no one or no thing will ever be able to victimize you
Speaker:ever again, without your expressed consent, you had a choice this morning.
Speaker:When you woke up, you could stay at home, smoke a bowl, watch
Speaker:a Netflix, or come to work.
Speaker:You may have convinced yourself that you had no choice, but to come to work
Speaker:because of familial responsibilities.
Speaker:Or other circumstances, but I need you to realize that this is just a story one.
Speaker:You may have been telling yourself so often that you've come to believe
Speaker:it's the truth, but it's not.
Speaker:You chose to come to work today because deep within you, you wanted to affect
Speaker:some type of change for yourself, for your customers, for your peers and your family.
Speaker:Right now, you can choose to do the very best or do just enough to get by.
Speaker:Either way.
Speaker:I want you to realize that it's your choice.
Speaker:I came here today because I deeply want to affect a change in you for you
Speaker:for no other reason than I see you.
Speaker:And I believe in you, I trust you to do your very best, because I know when I
Speaker:do my best, regardless of the outcome, I feel pretty good about myself.
Speaker:And I know you wanna feel good about yourself, your decisions and
Speaker:your efforts towards those ends.
Speaker:Now just a bunch of words, right?
Speaker:Until you actually take him into your heart and realize that at any
Speaker:particular time and place, it's the way you feel about what's going on.
Speaker:That matters.
Speaker:Not what's going on everyone right now.
Speaker:Just take a deep breath.
Speaker:What's your eyes.
Speaker:Hang your body loose.
Speaker:Shake it out a little bit.
Speaker:Let all of this end, you are the author of your own story.
Speaker:How the chapter of today ends it's up to you.
Speaker:Once you own and act on your agency, you are no longer the victim and you are
Speaker:one step closer to becoming the leader.
Speaker:Others want to follow.
Speaker:Thank you for letting me take some of your time.
Speaker:I know you guys are busy.
Speaker:We got a big night.
Speaker:Lots of rezos everybody's tuned up, but I want you guys to be tall and frosty
Speaker:loose and enjoy yourself tonight.
Speaker:Now, before we split up, let's do like we always do.
Speaker:And repeat after me, we believe that working in a kitchen should be demanding.
Speaker:It doesn't have to be demeaning.
Speaker:It should be hard.
Speaker:Doesn't have to be harsh.
Speaker:We believe in more solidarity, less.
Speaker:Suck it up.
Speaker:Sunshine.
Speaker:More compassion and less cutthroat island.
Speaker:We believe in more partnership and less put up or shut up more community and less.
Speaker:Fuck you.
Speaker:Pay it forward.
Speaker:Have a great shift.
Speaker:I'll see you on the other side.
Speaker:And that's it for this episode of chef life radios line check podcast, join
Speaker:us every week where we go over topics designed to assist you to become the
Speaker:leader that you always wanted to follow.
Speaker:The show was written, produced directed by me, Adam lamp at the dish pit
Speaker:studios in Asheville, North Carolina.
Speaker:And it's a production of realignment media.