The truth is, everything I know about behavior I learned in one night, working in a 4-Diamond restaurant in Charleston, SC.  

I was in my early 20s, covering a shift in a short staffed kitchen alongside one of my closest friends, Ryan.  Memories are fuzzy and the debate is ongoing of how I ended up with the Talking Heads lyric stuck in my head, “And you may ask yourself.  Well, how did I get here?”  I maintain Ryan had dropped a boat trailer on his foot and couldn’t walk.  Ryan says he worked this shift with me.  I don’t remember, but regardless, we were both idiots, and I needed beer money, so I was up for anything.  

So, I found myself thrown into a chaotic symphony of swashbuckling misfits, decorated with burn marks and improvised band-aids, and who cursed in a manner I had only dreamed, yet expertly curated the culinary stage for all of life’s moments, night in and night out. 

During this shift, I sugared vegetables (instead of salting), burned at least $100 in prime steak, and the only thing I did correctly was clean the kitchen floors. It was the most stressful and intense job I’ve ever had and although they never said it, I think it was the only time I’ve been fired.  

However, it was an absolute masterclass in understanding behavior and I learned more in those eight hours in a kitchen than I ever did in any graduate school classroom.

In the almost 20 years since I learned chefs touch the back of their thumbs to determine the temperature of a steak, I’ve come to realize Ryan isn’t an idiot. He is a genius.  Inside the blistering heat and roaring sounds of a kitchen, works a man who possesses an innate and complete understanding of human behavior.  

Not just of the unhinged social interactions of kitchen staff, but of the most important people in this world: the people in the dining room. He knows why they are there, their wants and needs, and their expectations. He understands them so well that he comprehends and predicts their behavior even though he never actually talks to or sees them. 

Many of the lessons I learned working in restaurants lend themselves to better understanding people and their behavior. So, I asked Ryan, and another dear friend (and cousin), Marc, who has also made the hospitality industry his professional home, what the keys to success are in serving others. As I had hypothesized, their answers supported my long-held theory that at the intersection of behavior and hospitality lies a better understanding of people. 

You Have to Care  

Do you want to understand why your kids won’t put on their damn shoes?  Do you want to better understand why men can spend an entire weekend together and never ask about a recent, drama-filled separation? Do you want your aging family members to age gracefully and without pain?

Of course, you do. And it starts with caring. Sympathy, empathy, and genuinely caring are the fundamentals of better understanding behavior and serving others. Ryan called it “unwavering dedication.”  Marc called it “giving a shit.”  

I believe that understanding behavior requires an unwavering dedication to giving a shit about people.

Anticipation of Need  

When we interact with others, we need to be attuned to their wants and needs. People  rarely tell us these things with words, but rather with their behavior.  So, we must become better observers of people and their interaction with the environment.   

Too often, we rely only on what people say to understand what they mean.  Words lie; behavior is truth. In behavior analysis, we refer to this as precursor behaviors or the actions a person does that tell us a certain behavior is more likely to occur. 

For example, if I have my arms crossed, scrunched my face, and poked out my lip, what would these behaviors tell you about me? Would recognizing them change your behavior and how you interact with me?  

When we understand behavior, we are using people’s actions to anticipate their needs. 

Problem Solve  

If you’ve ever been to a music festival, football game, or catered wedding, you’ve likely eaten from a kitchen that Marc built. Marc designs mobile commercial kitchens for chefs who work large events. 

When he builds kitchens, he does so with the intention of solving problems before they arise.   He builds them based on his knowledge of the organizational behavior of kitchens and how chefs act when they’re working. He understands what the folks cooking need hours and days before it happens, but also how plans can change in a split second and how that will impact the behavior of the people in the kitchen. 

Marc is using behavior analysis to solve future problems through the concepts of setting events and antecedents.  In behavior analysis, one way we work to understand behavior is by identifying and analyzing factors that happen hours, and even days, prior to a behavior occurring. We call these setting events.  

We also look at environmental, social, and internal factors that influence behavior immediately prior to a behavior occurring, which we refer to as antecedents. When we understand the factors that lead to specific behaviors, we are then able to better understand why the behavior occurs. 

* Author’s note: Marc understands how chefs behave, not why.  For more insight into why, please enroll in an abnormal psychology course.  And therapy.  

There is a System  

When I train staff members in healthcare communities, I frequently say, “What we are doing here (behavior analysis) is not a bag of tricks.  We can understand why people do the things they do.”  

We do this through an evidence-based system that can assist with identifying the functions of behavior.  Identifying the functions of all behaviors is the universal fundamental needed to understand behavior, and there are four of them.

●  Access to items/activities (e.g., food or drinks in a restaurant)

●  Access to attention (e.g., having dinner with friends, access to wait staff)

●  Escape/avoidance (e.g., you don’t want to cook)

●  Sensory (e.g., you’re hungry!)

As Ryan said, “there is no such thing as cutting corners” when providing first-class hospitality and serving award-winning entrees.  The same is true for understanding behavior.  

We have to put time and effort into refining our approaches that allow us to effectively and efficiently understand people.  When we have a better understanding of behavior, it improves our communication, relationships, and overall quality of life. 

Understanding Our Own Behavior  

Understanding the behavior of others requires that we have a clear grasp of our own behavior and how it affects our interactions with people in our environment. If behavior is a form of communication, what are we telling other people?

Check in with yourself. The goal of understanding people through effective communication isn’t done when the conversation or interaction is over.  For more robust and important interactions, such as those with a colleague or romantic partner, we need to reflect on these interactions to self-evaluate ourselves.  

Learning behavior takes practice, and part of this practice is identifying the traits of our own behavior.  Were you attuned to their behavior?  Did you change your behavior based on what they were telling you (with their behavior)?

Behavior is fluid and constantly changing, based on numerous factors, many of which originate within us.

Beyond recognizing our own behavior, we must be willing to change our behavior if the goal is to more effectively communicate, better understand others, and improve the quality of our relationships. 

All of Ley’s work is original and no form of AI was used to write this blog. 

Never disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking medical treatment because of something you have read in this article.