Let’s get one thing straight from the start: if you’re

looking for a TED Talk on the ten core principles of leadership, you’ve clicked on the wrong article. What you will get here is a slightly embarrassing, wildly honest, and hopefully hilarious story of how I stumbled into leadership like a deer learning ballet—in a foreign land, with basic English, not much hospitality experience, and absolutely zero clue what “leadership” even meant.

Back then, I could do the job with my eyes closed and one hand behind my back. I knew the operations like I knew my mum's potato pancakes recipe—flawlessly. But managing people? Leading a team? Ha! That sounded like something out of a superhero movie. And I wasn’t even wearing a cape… just a wrinkled black shirt and dreams stitched together with ambition and guesswork.

My career ladder? Oh, that thing was built by a madman during a hurricane. It wasn’t even leaning against the right wall. Some steps were missing. Others had nails sticking out. And whoever built it, I’d like a word with them—preferably a long one with heavy sarcasm. But my determination? Unbreakable. I was going up that death trap, even if I had to crawl up with one leg and duct tape.

Then came the legendary “development sessions” with HR. Now, BIG shoutout to Della Fanning and Niki Fincham —absolute angels with clipboards. But for me, those sessions were like walking into Hogwarts on my first day without knowing any spells. Everyone was throwing around words like “empowerment,” “resilience,” and “emotional intelligence.” I was sitting there hoping they wouldn’t call on me. I wasn’t a manager—I was a scared kid at the back of the class, trying to merge into the wallpaper.

The first day I put on a suit… oh boy. I thought it would make me feel like a boss. Instead, I felt like a bouncer at my own wedding. Everyone I worked with knew me already. Nothing changed—except suddenly I was the manager. And the suit? It came with invisible bricks of pressure sewn into the lining. I nearly tripped over responsibility before I even made it to the office.

But over time, I learned. Slowly. Painfully. Hilariously. I discovered that no training manual could teach me what my stubborn character and ridiculous mistakes could. I fumbled, got back up, led badly, then a bit better, then finally found my own style. Not something out of a book—but something very me.

Eventually, I opened my own restaurant. Then a few businesses. Then I started helping others fix theirs. Did I become a leadership guru? Absolutely not. Did I start quoting Simon Sinek and color-coding people into personality types? Nope. But here's something that stuck with me forever: when I left a job, my team cried. And not because they were throwing a party—these were actual sad tears.

And that? That meant something. It meant that in all my awkwardness, bad grammar, and clumsy management, I had somehow touched people’s lives. I had made them feel seen. I had led with heart, not hierarchy.

So here’s my unsolicited advice to anyone learning first steps of leadership:

Be humble. Stay human. Don’t just manage by checklists. Don’t lead like you're acting in a role you memorized from a PowerPoint. Connect. Really connect. Find the person behind the uniform. Hire people for their attitude and sparkle in their eyes. Skills can be trained. Souls can’t.

And the moral of the story?

Leadership isn’t a title. It’s not the suit. It’s not the HR buzzwords or the meetings with fancy snacks. It’s that quiet moment when someone believes in themselves because you believed in them first. It’s when they cry, not because you're gone, but because you were there in the first place.

So to all the misfits, the outsiders, the foreign accents trying to lead teams with Google Translate and guts—keep going!

You don’t need to fit the mold.

You just need to care.