A head chef I worked with had a reputation that travelled faster than the food leaving his kitchen! He was technically excellent, fast, precise, experienced across high pressure environments and could run a busy service with his eyes shut. From a distance, he looked like exactly the kind of person you want leading a kitchen.
But the atmosphere behind the pass told a different story.
He shouted, constantly. Not occasional raised voices during a rush, but a steady background of pressure, criticism and sharp instructions that cut through every service. New starters quickly learned to keep their heads down and experienced team members adapted, but not in a way that improved performance. They became faster at avoiding attention and staying out of the Head Chefs way, not better at their jobs.
What stood out wasn’t just the noise, it was what the noise did to the team.
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
Peter Drucker
People stopped asking questions. That sounds minor until you see the consequences.
- A junior chef unsure about a garnish choice didn’t check. They guessed, and got it wrong.
- A commis chef who couldn’t find an ingredient the recipe needed, didn’t speak up. They improvised and it didn’t work.
Small gaps turned into mistakes, and mistakes turned into more shouting. The cycle reinforced itself and became a vicious cycle.
Over time, the kitchen developed a kind of tension that never fully left the room. Even during quieter services, people moved quickly but not confidently. They were focused on avoiding criticism rather than producing consistent quality. You could see it in how they reacted when something went wrong. Immediate defensiveness, no discussion, no learning in the moment, just damage control or avoidance.
The irony was that the chef believed he was driving standards up. In his mind, pressure created performance.
- If people were pushed hard enough, they would improve.
- If mistakes were called out loudly enough, they would stop happening.
That logic is common in environments where speed and accuracy matter. Kitchens, military settings, emergency services. Places where consequences are immediate and visible.
One day I asked him about it, I asked a simple question about why he always shouted at the team and what impact he thought that had on the team. His response was immediate and certain. He said he had done his chef training in the army, and that was simply how he had been taught. It worked for him and so that’s how he led. There was no hesitation in his view that this was the correct way to get results.
That’s where the real issue sat, not in his experience, but in the assumption that experience should remain unchanged. The challenge with “this is how I was trained” is that it locks behaviour in place. It removes reflection and turns a method into a justification. If something worked in one environment, at one time, under one set of conditions, it is assumed to be universally correct. No adjustment for context, no consideration of the team in front of you, no space for evolution.
The problem is that most workplaces are not static environments.
- Teams change.
- Expectations change.
- People enter the industry with different backgrounds, different learning styles, different thresholds for pressure.
What produces discipline in one setting can produce silence in another.
What produces speed in one moment can produce hesitation in the next.
In that kitchen, shouting didn’t improve performance, it narrowed it. The team stopped focusing on quality or consistency and started focusing on avoiding mistakes that would trigger a reaction. At first, the shift is barely noticeable, but over time it settles into how the place operates. New starters pick it up quickly and copy it without question. Communication reduces to the minimum needed to get through service. Standards stop being about improvement and progression, and instead become about getting through the shift without drawing attention.
When behaviour is driven by fear of reaction, you get compliance, not ownership.
“The art of communication is the language of leadership.”
James C. Humes
There was also a hidden cost in retention and capability. Talented chefs don’t stay long in environments where they feel constantly on edge. Those who do stay often stop contributing ideas. They stick to instructions, even when they see better ways of doing things, because speaking up carries risk. Over time, the kitchen becomes dependent on one voice and loses the collective problem solving that strong teams rely on.
When I challenged him further, the conversation came back to the same point. “It worked for me when I was trained.” And that was true, in his experience. But what worked in one environment doesn’t automatically translate into effective leadership in another. The military context he referred to is built on hierarchy, structure and clear command chains. Even there, leadership has evolved significantly towards communication, coaching and debriefing, not just instruction and correction.
The key question is not whether someone has a successful past method, but whether they are willing to adapt it to the outcomes they want today.
In this case, the outcome wasn’t just food leaving the kitchen. It was consistency, staff retention, development of junior chefs and the ability for the team to operate without constant correction. Shouting delivered short term compliance, but it undermined long term capability.
The turning point in conversations like this is often reframing what leadership actually means. It isn’t about intensity or control but about creating conditions where people can perform at a high standard without constant correction. That requires clarity, not volume. It requires feedback that can be used, not just heard. It requires managers to separate urgency from communication style.
The alternative approach we discussed was not about removing standards or lowering expectations. It was about changing how correction happened in real time service. Instead of shouting across the kitchen, feedback would be direct but contained. Issues addressed at the pass, not broadcast across the room. Mistakes discussed after service in short, specific debriefs where the focus was improvement rather than blame.
It also meant building in structure so the same issues didn’t keep appearing. If an ingredient was repeatedly missed or a station consistently slowed down service, the solution wasn’t louder instruction. It was clearer process, better preparation, and confirmation checks built into the workflow.
None of this reduces standards. It reinforces them in a way people can actually respond to.
What often gets missed in these environments is that behaviour sets culture faster than any written standard. You can have the best processes in the world, but if the daily experience is fear based communication, that becomes the real operating system of the team.
The hardest part of this kind of leadership shift is not understanding the alternative. It is letting go of the belief that your way is the only way because it worked for you once before. Growth in leadership requires accepting that effectiveness is measured by current outcomes, not past experiences.
Shouting can feel like control, whilst in reality, it often signals a lack of it. Control in a kitchen isn’t the volume of your voice. It is consistency, communication and a team that can perform without being driven by reaction.
Once that changes, performance changes with it, not overnight, but steadily, as people stop working under pressure and start working with clarity.
