The Perfect Mix

The Perfect Mix:  Everything I Know About Leadership I Learned as a Bartender by Helen Rothberg, PhD, ATRIA 2017

Bartenders -  they hear everything, see people at "special" times, but somehow know how to make a living filling and collecting and washing glasses.  The names of the drinks are the ticket but the operating mode is savvy and observant. In The Perfect Mix there are many survival lessons to be learned about how to deal with customers and protect your job and your boss's job.   And that's where Dr. Helen Rothberg earned her credentials, bartending as she earned her business sand behavioral science degrees, observing and commenting on the NY bar scene.  

The chapters tell the continuing story through which Rothberg conveys her leadership and management lessons - "Working with Assets, "Turn On the Lights," "Own What's Yours, " What Did You (Not) Say?," "Love Your Barback," "Standing in Your Own Shoes," and "Advice:  Shape-Shifting".  She's a great writer - colorful and great with dialogue - I'd like to see her next book. 

But in "Chapter 4:  Integrity:  Own What's Yours" and "Chapter 5, Advice for Leaders, Communication:  What Did You (Not) Say?", her story of the guy who walked into a bar, a Midwestern oaf who soon himself with the New York Five Guys, regulars who jumped to her defense, got me. 

It all started during a full moon, that time of craziness when characters fill emergency rooms and police stations.... and bars.    From the moment the New Guy sat down to a plate of crabs and a beer, he started in - on the bartender, the Five Guys, the owner -  one piercing dig after another - political, personal, whatever he thought would raise the temperature of the room.  Here we see the containment techniques Rothberg tried - and failed, as the escalation crept upward.  Trouble was in the air.  The crack of a full beer mug over the outsiders head ended with the EMTs and police arriving.  The fall out was intense - one of the New York Five Guys, a financial type, nearly lost his broker's license.  The trouble cost the bar paying customers.  It seemed that no matter what Helen the Bartender or the other observers could have done, the results were going to be bloody.  But what, she asks, would have been the ideal management leadership reaction to the entire episode?

Here's where the author talks communication, communication with two ears and one mouth.  It's a tough job right from the beginning, and that's exactly what she learned should have happened.  

The Perfect Mix contains more than this one real life bar tending story that could only have come from an insider - engaging leadership reading, great stories.   

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers, pemoody@aol.com, patriciaemoody@gmail.com, tricia@patriciaemoody.com,