I was searching for inspiration and a pause in my entrepreneur life, so washing dishes in the restaurant of a Swedish friend, Robin E., seemed the perfect thing to do!
Therefore, for one month, I divided my day in two: managing THINKING-BIG from my kitchen's wooden table by the window, or in a cosy, well decorated coffee shop in the morning, and washing dishes, mopping floors, setting tables and preparing coffee in the afternoon and evening!
- Different culture - being a "hugging-touching-looking into-the-eyes" Portuguese, merging for one month in a Swedish "don't-stay-so-close" culture was a good challenge and a wonderful way to put things in perspective. All the contents taught in my "non-verbal communication" workshops were really being applied (and updated).
So, besides learning a lot about brewing coffee, using the super-fast and cool dishwasher and setting fancy tables, I found out that Creativity, Communication and Perspective were some of the strengths I still could apply here! And I started adding some more things to my usual tasks: suddenly I was managing the FB page of Tryne till Knorr, creating mind maps of Wines& Spirits and debating business ideas for the restaurant.
It seems that we can, almost everywhere, find a way to apply our strengths and make them useful! And that definitely increases the feeling of "fitting in".
Day by day I started appreciating his intrinsic skills as an Inspirational Leader.The way his attitude was influencing the team and the work, to the extent that other young chefs were coming to voluntarily work in the restaurant, just to learn and share with him, truly called my attention. So I started systematizing what I was seeing and experiencing (after all, he was also MY boss!).
At that time I was preparing the Workshop to be presented in the European Conference of Positive Psychology on the theme "Inspiring Leadership - the leader from within", and what I learned in the restaurant's atmosphere with Robin inspired me to use him as an example.
Unconsciously, I was using my strengths, learning from close examples, learning how to deal with extreme difficulties (I was even robbed while sleeping alone at home!) and systematizing theories through daily practice.
Getting out of my usual context and role made me learn a little bit more about being myself from another point of view. One more point of view, to add to all those "points" that make us who we are.
Thank you Robin, Agnes and the Team for a complete experience, from nose to tail!
Edite Amorim
*"From nose to tail", a kitchen expression used to explain that, when eating a Pig, we can use all of its parts.
(Text originally written in English)