Episode Details

Chris Deferio: Keys to the Shop

Chris Deferio is the host of Keys to the Shop, a podcast that helps coffee service professionals to advance their careers by discovering more about barista work, management, leadership, and the operational knowledge to run a coffee shop.

Chris has decades of experience managing teams of part-time staff in a high turnover industry. In this episode, he shares the most practical tips his team has discovered for helping leaders be most effective with part-time employees.

Key Points

• You can only go so far with positive feedback, you should also seek feedback on how you can improve.
• If you have a failure, just learn the lesson from it and apply that knowledge in the future.
• When hiring, focus on finding people who share your core company values.
• A lot of people know how to give good answers for the normal interview questions, so you have to ask different, more creative questions to really get to know them.
• Rather than view scheduling as a burden, look at it as a way to serve people.
• Doing a great job scheduling employees is a good way to show employees that you care about them.

Resources Mentioned

• The Leadership Challenge* by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner
• Mindset* by Carol Deck
• It’s Okay to Be the Boss* by Bruce Tulgan
• Keys to the Shop podcast
• How to Master Your Workflow on Keys to the Shop
• Leadership & Management Master Class on Keys to the Shop

Related Episodes

• How To Lead The Millennials, with Chip Espinoza (episode 158)
• What to Do When Somebody Quits, with Molly Moseley (episode 251)
• How to Manage Former Peers, with Tom Henschel (episode 257)

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