Ali Khan Lalani
Founder & CEO, General Assembly Pizza
Interview by Nicole Di Tomasso
Q. What are the most valuable qualities you demonstrate as a leader?
Strategy and direction. I can look at the business as a whole and steer it into the future to get from where we are today to where we want to be tomorrow.
Q. What were the biggest challenges facing leaders in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic?
The biggest challenge was having limited resources and capital. Another challenge was adapting to a virtual working environment to continue pushing a vision, strategy or project forward.
Q. How have those challenges changed (or have they) as we move into the re-opening stage?
By fall 2020, we adapted into our new working environment, and I learned how to effectively lead the organization both in-person and virtually. Dealing with finance, real estate and legal from a virtual standpoint saved us a lot of time and made us more efficient.
Q. In this new normal, what are employees looking for in a leader?
Employees are looking for guidance. They’re also looking for someone who can focus on other things besides P&Ls and EBITDA. Specifically, my team looks for direction on culture, technology, diversity and sustainability.
Q. How have you had to adapt your leadership style during these trying times?
I’ve learned to listen and trust our team. It’s given me the confidence to take a step back and focus on the direction and strategy of
the business knowing that I have a team that’s capable and comfortable moving things along.
Q. How does good leadership translate into more engaged employees?
Connectivity is so important. We have town halls every month where I share our successes with employees. I also have open office hours during the week for one-on-one meetings. I want my team to be confident that their leader is present and they have access to me whenever they need to.
Q. What are you doing to ensure you continue to grow and develop as a leader?
I make time for my team — whether it’s a cocktail hour every other week or a team lunch once a month. As for my personal growth, I have a coach. I’ve learned to ask for help and surround myself with other thought leaders to help me carve out a path for GA Pizza.
Q. What are the most important decisions you make as a leader of your organization?
Changing the course of a company from a restaurant to an omni-channel brand was a big decision. Any decision that involves a lot of capital and time invested is important. Ultimately, as a leader you need to do what’s best for your business, and while it might be difficult in the short term, deep down you know that it will be much better long term.
Q. What is one mistake you witness leaders making more frequently than others?
Doing things too fast. I also think having a smaller group of advisors is better than a larger one. If you’re a leader, you’re a leader for a reason. Trust yourself.
Q. What advice would you give to someone going into a leadership position for the first time?
Trust your instincts. Understand what you do well and understand your gaps. Find the right people that will support you and what you’re trying to create.
Peter Mammas
President & CEO, Foodtastic
Interview by Nick Laws
Q. What are the most valuable qualities you demonstrate as a leader?
I listen a lot. I take the advice of the people I hire. I try to hire the best possible people for the job. I try to be very open to any suggestions, or ideas from other people. It’s not like I know everything and it is my way — I feel that leading by example and listening are my best attributes.
Q. What were the biggest challenges facing leaders in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic?
The biggest challenge for us was that 60 per cent of our system was dine-in based and that came to a halt almost immediately. So, right away, we shifted to online sales and third-party aggregators.
Q. How have those challenges changed (or have they) as we move into the re-opening stage?
Now that we’re re-opening, and praying that we don’t close again…we have to pivot to focus on how we are going to manage our offsite business with our onsite business. Our biggest challenge right now is staffing and co-ordinating. With the government subsidies, it’s been really hard to recruit people and get them to come back to work.
Q. In this new normal, what are employees looking for in a leader?
The biggest things they’re looking for is direction, stability and a leader that listens and understands them. Over the last 10 to 15 years, the role and perception of leadership has changed. We don’t want soldiers that are just going to execute what we tell them; we want people who are going to think for themselves and propose their own ideas. The old way of ‘do this, do that’ is no more.
Q. How have you had to adapt your leadership style during these trying times?
It comes down to listening to your employees and that hasn’t changed for me. It helps that our employees are so loyal and it was more of a family environment. If COVID-19 changed anything, it was that it brought us all closer together — we realized we all depend one each other and are better together.
Q. How does good leadership translate into more engaged employees?
I always tell my kids the most important thing is that you love what you do, so as a leader, the most important thing is that you can identify with each employee what they love to do at work. Make sure you put them in the right position with the tools to succeed.
Q. What are you doing to ensure you continue to grow and develop as a leader?
What I do is I listen and I learn, and that goes for every aspect of my job. The most important thing for a leader is not to stop learning, while also not stopping teaching.
Q. What are the most important decisions you make as a leader of your organization?
I can’t say this enough — the most important decision is hiring the right people and hiring them for the right reasons. You need people that love what they do. Get passionate people and they will do it properly and the whole company will benefit.
Q. What advice would you give someone going into a leadership position for the first time?
Listen to your employees and hire the best people possible. Sometimes people don’t hire or promote the best people as possible, because they view them as a threat… but if we hire the best people they will make your job easier and, in turn, make all of us better.
Q. What is one mistake you witness leaders making more frequently than others?
Doing the same thing and expecting a different result…you have to adapt. Unless you make a change, the end result will be the same.
Ritou Maloni
Co-founder, president & C.O.O, Eat It Brands Inc.
Interview by Amy Bostock
Q. What are the most valuable qualities you demonstrate as a leader?
I would love to say patience, but it’s tough sometimes. The qualities that I have are
charisma and energy — I have a lot of it. I love what I do and I’m very passionate about it. It’s important to love what you do, but just as important to love people and treat everybody with respect and kindness and show compassion. That’s probably what got me through the pandemic and got a lot of my franchise partners through the pandemic .
Q. What were the biggest challenges facing leaders in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic?
The uncertainty of what was going to happen created the biggest challenge. We would get calls [from] franchise partners that had signed deals and are now wondering what’s going to happen. But I was always available; I was always picking up the phone and telling them ‘whatever you’re going through, we’re going through it together. We’re not leaving you alone in this.’ And instead of letting people go, we hired during the pandemic to show people that [the company has] a long-term vision and [the pandemic] is not going to stop us from succeeding.
Q. In this new normal, what are employees looking for in a leader?
They’re looking for energy and passion; they want to lead; they want people that lead by example. I’m actually the best dishwasher I know and I have no problem jumping in to clean toilets.
Q. How have those challenges changed as we move into the re-opening stage?
The new challenges is that people forgot how to operate the restaurants for dine in and that we lost a lot of staff that were extremely well trained but no longer believed the restaurant industry was something they wanted to be a part of due to the insecurity and the uncertainty of it. We lost a lot of our talent — people that were excited in the hospitality industry — so our biggest challenge now is re-training and re-vitalizing the industry as a valid career choice.
Q. How have you had to adapt your leadership style during these trying times?
I’m more hands on than I’ve ever been. What I have to do now is show my face [in the restaurants] and show [my staff] that we’re here and whatever they need, we’re going to do our best to accommodate. I was always present — but always behind the scenes — but the coaching I like to do now is more hands on again, and seeing them face to face where we weren’t able to travel for so long.
Q. How does good leadership translate into more engaged employees and better bottom line?
[Employees] are looking to leaders to be able to help them, not just tell them what to do. And that helps the bottom line, because staffing has been the biggest issue. A lot of people feel alone because instead of six people in the kitchen, now we’re running with four. And if they know the leader of their restaurant or even myself, will jump in and be a dishwasher, that’ll create loyalty.
Q. What are you doing to ensure you continue to grow and develop as a leader?
I’m learning from my peers — from my franchise partners and their teams. And I’m learning a lot from my guests again. As a leader, if we stop learning, we’re going to stop growing. So, I really try to take the lead from any person that is willing to offer it.
Q. What are the most important decisions you make as a leader of your organization?
One of them is sourcing the right franchise partners and making sure they have the passion, the sustainability and the financial sustainability. People used to want to be in the restaurant business because it was exciting — and it still is — but now you need somebody that actually has the resilience to be able to withstand any kind of challenges the world throws at us.
Q. What advice would you give someone going into a leadership position for the first time?
Be true to who you are. It’s very easy to get drowned out by a lot of negative and being positive is an important [quality for] a leader. Be confident in your own skin and try not to doubt yourself. Every leader is different. You don’t need to model after somebody else, you have to be your own best leader.
