Leadership Development

Leadership Development

How to be an Effective Servant Leader

Here at Zingerman’s, we’re keen on servant leadership. The theory was developed and coined by Robert Greenleaf in his 1970 essay “The Servant as Leader”. Paul Saginaw & Ari Weinzweig discovered his compelling ideas in the late 80s. Ever since crossing paths, Greenleaf’s ideas have become deeply embedded into how we train and develop leaders […]

Leadership Development

More Life Lessons from Line Cooking

Many people, wanting to live their lives in more interesting ways, will decide to take the occasional cooking lesson here and there, all the while continuing to do whatever it is they do for a “living.” I went in the other direction. I started cooking for a living, and in the process, ended up with […]

Leadership Development

Life Lessons I Learned from Food and Cooking

There is nothing I can think of in the early years of my existence back in suburban Chicago that would have led me, or anyone else for that matter, to believe that the story of my life would later be transformed by a deep connection to food and cooking. We ate supper together more often […]

Leadership Development

Practical Tips for Better Time Management

Time. Although just four letters, this short word can elicit a lot of strong emotions. Whether we realize it or not, our relationship with time is one of the most intimate we engage in—time is with us everywhere we go. The work we can do to manage our time more effectively can have lasting effects […]

Leadership Development

A Different Approach to Work-Life Balance

Cracking the code on work-life balance can feel daunting at times, especially these days! When thinking about your work life and your home life, as Zingerman’s Founding Partner and CEO Ari Weinzweig has said time and time again, “It’s all one life!” And we couldn’t agree more.  Discover a different (and not-at-all daunting!) approach to […]

Leadership Development

Leadership Lessons From 2020

Remember March 2020?  What were you doing a year ago–in the “before” time? Personally, I was spending a lot of time on the phone.  We were interviewing prospects for a newly available position as a ZingTrain Trainer. Someone who could help pick up the load at the end of July when I would be stepping […]

Leadership Development

How to Manage Energy Through Change

Change is hard. Especially when the change wasn’t your idea to begin with. But change is a necessary part of life. Do you know anyone who hasn’t experienced a change in the past year?! It’s all around us! Deliberately bringing positive energy into the change process ensures that any change you make is not only […]

Leadership Development

“Working Through Hard Times: Life and Leadership Learnings from 2020”

At the end of this week, I have a new pamphlet coming out. Like the pandemic, it wasn’t something I’d planned for. While the idea for the previous pamphlet—“Humility: A Humble, Anarchistic, Inquiry”—had been in the works for over a year, the idea for this one only came into my head a couple months ago. […]

Leadership Development

Working Through Hard Times

What a year it’s been! As we work our way through the marathon of a minefield that was 2020, tune in to hear Ari reflect on the lessons learned in the first ten months of the global pandemic. Each lesson offers a tangible tool for helping get through hard days—both the pandemic with which we’re […]

Leadership Development

Stewardship: Leadership as a Partnership

When we ask participants in our 2-day leadership seminar about their least favorite way to be managed, a common answer we hear is being micromanaged. What is the antidote to micromanagement? Stewardship, which is a type of leadership that we’ve been teaching in our in-person seminars for many years now. As the very smart and […]

Leadership Development

Why We Want to Teach Everyone Here to Lead

There’s a musician whose work I like who records under the moniker “honey the witch.” In her piece “when the world ends,” she sings the line, “what a strange time it is to be alive.” That’s an understatement if I ever heard one. But if strengths lead to weaknesses—and weaknesses, in turn, can later courteously […]

Leadership Development

Another Look at Servant Leadership

One of the most common themes of the last six months is how different things are going to be after the pandemic. I keep hearing how we need new thinking to get out of the current situation. But the interesting thing to me is that there’s more than enough insightful old thinking already out there to help […]