Performance is contagious, poor performance especially - Chef Guillaume Siegler

Chef Guillaume Siegler - Foto: https://www.cordonbleu.edu

If you can’t stand the heat stay out of the kitchen - #1 The belief is that working for Michelin Chefs is like entering a military hierarchy where big egos shout, swear and hurl food at you. In reality they lead magnificently creative teams in dangerous and stressful situations often without any formal leadership training.

At 54, Sheila Struyck vacated her seat in the Boardroom of a French multinational and finished a 9 months French chefs-training at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Here are fresh views of Chefs on leadership and innovation. Let’s start with poor performance in the workplace. .

‘The best predictor of how a team performs is not how great the best performer is or what the average member is like. Most often it comes down to what the worst team member is like. Poor performance is especially contagious’, says Erin Meyer, professor of cross cultural organisational behaviour at INSEAD, who recently published “No Rules rules” about Leadership at Netflix.

She mentions Will Felps, who investigated the asymmetric negative effects of bad apple teammates. Two similar groups get two similar tasks. One of the groups had an actor -Nick- posing to be an MBA student. Nick was scripted to behave poorly. He was texting friends during group tasks, yawning and seemed distracted. Nicks whole team performed 40% worse on the tasks. Felps found that negative behavior outweighs positive behavior — that is, a “bad apple” can spoil the barrel but one or two good workers can’t unspoil it.

“a “bad apple” can spoil the barrel but one or two good workers can’t unspoil it.”

Therefor, Professor Meyer says: ‘at Neflix poor performers and even mediocre performers are invited to leave the company’. I wonder, is that really the way to get great performance? How do demanding Michelin Chefs manage performance with the unruly bunch that tends to work in cuisine?

Chef Guillaume Siegler is one of the best instructors at Le Cordon Bleu. He is also the one we fear the most for his all-seeing eye by our class. Chef Siegler worked as a chef de cuisine in two star Michelin palaces in Paris and Tokyo. He co-owned Le Pré Verre in Japan and became Japanese champion in charcuterie making.

Le Cordon Bleu chef providing feedback to students. Are the pommes alumettes crispy and not burned?

I wonder: “what is Chef Siegler’s to manage poor performance?” Our superior cuisine class consist of 48 young men and women from all four corners of the world. Most have not followed the traditional academic route and many had their struggles with discipline, authority and obedience. The school is what some would call ‘old-fashioned strict’. Students wear the same baggy school uniforms, there are no status symbols to hide behind. The seating is in rows with 1,5 meter (Covid) distance. The chefs are strict: no messing with phones, no coffee, no eating, no talking. Except to ask questions. After raising your hand. An education style a millennial ánd an ex-board member find difficult to accept. And may make them behave negatively, which would influence the performance of the rest of the class. 

Chef Siegler demo’s two complex preparations. We watch him in the mirrors overhead. He works at the speed of light, manages to keep his uniform and workbench spotless and presents pristine looking elegant plates. His ease makes us believe it should be easy to replicate in the practical class. .

During practical the teaching-Chef usually paces and encourages us to finish in time and asks us to work in silence. Not today. Today some students get jolly and start talking and messing around. We all join in. Chef stays quiet and lets it happen.

The result is that students get behind schedule, make mistakes,  run around and end up late with our plating. Chef gives us bad notes and a debrief. ‘You messed up. The customer would have received a mediocre plate after a long wait. I want you to be silent when you work. Only with great concentration you can do great things.’ 

Chef Guillaume Siegler demonstrating the mystery of Wasabi at Le Cordon Bleu - Paris

So that is what Chefs do. Chef Siegler catches poor performances out every single day and every single moment. he does not wait for a formal evaluation moment. He ensures we ‘feel’ the learning. He will always notice the ‘poor performance thing’ you are trying to hide. He points it out and tells you what to do next time. He is also delighted when you serve a beautifully balanced sauce. And then shows you a way to make it even better next time.

“Great Chefs roll up their sleeves and show their skills and knowledge to the people on the floor”

‘Most chefs stand at the pass and don’t prepare dishes themselves anymore. I do believe a chef needs to be present in his or her kitchen, you need to be seen and heard. Your work and skills have to be visible”, Siegler told me when I interviewed him after class about leadership.

Great Chefs roll up their sleeves and show their skills and knowledge to the people on the floor. They accept you make a mistake, but not when you mess up. By actively correcting poor performance every single time they see it, they raise the bar of the whole team.  They are present and still work alongside the team with great concentration and fun. In our class there was no poor performer allowed to influence all the others. As a result, we all did well at the final exam.