Listen to the Lead out Loud podcast on Apple, Spotify, and Amazon.

For more than a century, the maxim ‘if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen’ has framed restaurants as places where raised voices, blistering tempers and the cult of the domineering chef were as essential as knives and frying pans.

The mythology of the shouty chef lingers not just in television caricatures but in wider assumptions about what leadership under pressure should look like

But as renowned celebrity chef Glynn Purnell, known to his 140,000 Instagram followers as the ‘Yummy Brummie’, makes clear, the real craft lies in something far less glamorous: the discipline of communication.

“If you have to raise your voice and threaten someone, you’re not doing your job properly,” said the Michelin-starred chef on the latest episode of Lead out Loud.

The 51-year-old, who came of age in an era when “shouting and grabbing of the aprons” was common practice, believes those days are finally fading.

Pressure and stress, he conceded, still push some chefs into old habits, but he argued that is not a style of leadership for today’s top restaurants.

Leadership under pressure: Navigating crisis and wicked problems

Joining Mr Purnell on Lead out Loud was Keith Grint, Professor Emeritus at Warwick Business School, who felt such “command” style leadership working in emergency situations, but shouting should not be needed.

His work on ‘wicked problems’ – the type of issue for which no one person knows the answer, like climate change – has become a touchstone for modern leadership thinking.

Professor Grint argued there are three kinds of problems: tame, critical and wicked.

In Purnell’s kitchen, tame problems, where the solution is known and leaders can delegate, might include producing a sauce; while a critical problem might be a fire – where command by a leader is essential. Wicked problems, however, require collaboration rather than authority.

“You, as the formal leader don’t know the answer, and you have to basically ask your collaborators, your crew, your staff to help you,” said Professor Grint. “It is here that leadership becomes less about control and more about the courage to admit uncertainty.”

Both agreed that the way a leader behaves is shaped partly by context and partly by cultural inheritance. Some leaders shout not because the situation requires it, Professor Grint suggested, but because “some people get into the habit of shouting and they like shouting - it makes them feel more powerful”.

Purnell has seen similar behaviour in kitchens and believes it typically masks insecurity rather than strength.

“Once somebody starts shouting, you’re not going to win by shouting back,” he said. “The communication barrier is broken down.”

What Glynn Purnell’s kitchen can teach us about leadership

Mr Purnell’s culinary career, culminating in a Michelin star at 28, was built on discipline, graft and, crucially, being treated with respect, something he now insists on extending to his own staff.

“Speak and treat your staff exactly how you would like to be spoken to,” he said. “You should appreciate the fact that they’re following you.”

The hospitality sector, both men agreed, is full of wicked problems: structural, economic and behavioural. Restaurants cannot control VAT, food inflation or macro trends, and must instead adapt.

Professor Grint described this as a systems challenge, one leaders cannot solve by force of will.

“It’s really hard to address,” said Professor Grint. “So then you have to start thinking about what is within your capacity and how you can change it.”

Instead of heroic certainty, he urged leaders to ask better questions.

“Stop trying to assume you have to have the answer,” he said. “Start thinking about what would be a really good question that would make us go a bit further forward.”

The pair agreed that effective leadership demands humility, clarity and an ability to listen.

As Mr Purnell said: “I don’t have to stand there and crack the whip, they know what to do.”

And when wicked problems arise, the strongest leaders are not those who shout loudest, but those who ask "why" and listen carefully to what comes back.

Further reading:

D-Day leadership lessons for business

Three strategies for transferring ownership in family firms

How female founders can overcome investors' gender bias

AI may be making companies less creative, new study warns

 

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