We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Norwood Pryor a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Norwood, so great to have you on the platform and excited to have you share your wisdom with our community today. Communication skills often play a powerful role in our ability to be effective and so we’d love to hear about how you developed your communication skills.
I feel like I have built good communication by first listening and then not using a one size fits all response method. If you take a moment to listen then you can get a good feel for what types of communication will be best for that person. Listening isn’t just with your ears too, you can visually get cues and pickup on a person’s “vibe” by being receptive to social cues, that persons mood (these change and your communication methods should too!) and the situation the communication is happening in. At the Chase Center, the managers I led and I had a staff of upwards 250 people during busy event days and with groups that large you have a ton of variety in the people you interact with, which was an amazing experience. My managers and the teams we managed were all multi-cultural so we pooled our knowledge and made a point to speak to our staff in their native tongue as often as it would allow.. I’d regularly have days were I was greeting my staff in 5 different languages and it took trust and prior communication to empower my managers to have these conversations and even problem solve in other languages that I may not be fluent in with our ESL staff (which was well over half). The pay off was that our staff saw we celebrated and respected each and every one of them and they in turn bought into the goals and responsibilities we entrusted them with which was huge when you’re serving 18k people a night!
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I’m a chef and am opening my first personal restaurant, Baby Bear Biscuits Southern Cafe, here in San Luis Obispo on the Central Coast as well as being a consulting partner with another space, Adventurer’s Table, outside of Charlotte back on the East Coast. I’ve opened 2 billion-dollar properties for both Apple and the Golden State Warriors and had lots of great write ups on the local up to the national level doing fine dining back in Charleston SC and am extremely happy to have landed in SLO with my amazing fiancé as we return to the town she grew up in. The Central Coast is a very exciting spot to be opening a restaurant as the wine and food scenes here are exploding. My food story is one that started in busy kitchens in Charleston getting a foundation that was based in French techniques glued together with the soulful cooking of the south. Whether cooking for 2 or 25k, I’ve always focused on authentic representations of the cultures I’m cooking recipes from using the most high quality and local ingredients I can. With our upcoming restaurant I’m excited to bring the snout to tail and leaf to root style of cooking of Carolina recipe to California and show off what made Charleston the “Top Small City in the World” to visit and an American culinary icon. I’m excited to blend the most modern tools like automation, restaurant management software and delivery drones with our classic techniques and recipes, our farm space and our local farming, ranch and fishing partners to showcase a new and more modern way to successfully run a culinary establishment.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I made a few smart choices in between lots of dumb ones when I was a very young cook. One of the first was to learn how the grandma’s of the world cooked their dishes. It was a general philosophy that meant respecting the people who came before me and their hard work, shutting my mouth and opening my eyes, and asking meaningful questions and taking these lessons to heart. Another early choice was that knowledge is never proprietary and is meant be shared. We are in an industry where the mentor mentee relationship is crucial in molding future chefs into great cooks and great leaders and it’s your duty to always pay it forward. Another benefit to this is I’m never resting on my laurels. It’s always important to grow and keep re-inventing yourself while keeping yourself hungry for new knowledge. When you stop this kind of attitude, the joy involved with cooking usually leaves soon after. Thirdly, our differences should be celebrated not feared. I’m quick to make friends and love sharing a beer and stories with anyone willing to share either with me. This leads to being invited into new kitchens and sharing in some new products or techniques, great local recommendations when traveling, and has opened up a lot of doors. Some people call it networking but I call it growing my community. So in summary; keep learning, be respectful of others, and share what you’ve learned
Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?
Robert Greenleaf’s “The Servant Leader” and Danny Meyer’s “Setting the Table”
These books taught me to be a respectful and thoughtful leader, with the basic philosophy of the servant leader being that your team can do its job without you but you can’t do it without them. Your goal should be to build these people up and support them in the goals you have laid out for them to be successful. That success is a journey we take as a group, not a journey done on your own. Danny Meyers teaches a similar empathetic style to leadership and to have an attention to detail. Danny Meyers attention to detail doesn’t just go for work but for the things you are enjoying yourself. Enjoy the small aspects as well as the large and make sure you’re enjoying experiences that have all of these details so you can look at presenting a higher level of service to your guests.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.babybearbiscuits.co
- Instagram: @babybearbiscuitsca
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Babybearbiscuits/
- Youtube: Baby Bear Biscuits @babybearbiscuits
Image Credits
Norwood Pryor
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
