Leadership Lessons From Truett Cathy, Founder of Chick-fil-A

Tonight I went with my wife to an event called “Live, Love, Lead” put on by Chick-fil-A and the entire Cathy family was there. It was a great event, and it was done very well. Like anything done by Chick-fil-A, it was done with class. I’m a big fan of the company, because I love their commitment to serving others and their out-of-ordinary business practices like closing on Sunday and choosing high-quality and high-character franchise owners and employees. The event focused on three main concepts: Your physical health, your marriage health, and your leadership skills. Here are some highlights and lessons that I took from the event.

2nd Mile is 2nd Nature

This is a customer service concept, but it applie to all of our professional lives. Many companies go the first mile to provide good customer service, but going the 2nd mile is doing something extra special. Going the second mile is pulling the chair out for a pregnant woman or refilling a customer’s drink at a quick-service restaurant. Chick-fil-A sought to make the second mile second nature, meaning they taught all of their employees that the extra special services should be automatic, not something they do every now and then. Apply this to your professional life. Do you only do what’s expected of you or do you go the extra mile to make things perfect or make your work better? Do you take pride in what you do and do you serve your clients/customers with everything you’ve got?

You cannot manage a business if you cannot manage your own household

Cathy has been married for 61 years. He is huge on always improving your marriage and never giving up on it. He believes that since no perfect people exist, no perfect marriages exist either. And if you have problems in your marriage or in your household, it will be a direct reflection on how you run a business. Your family should always come before your business. If they are not taken care of, your business will suffer, plain and simple. This also goes along with the reason he decided to stay closed on Sundays. He believes families need Sunday to spend time together, and his restaurants do better, because his employees work harder for him the rest of the week and they are refreshed for the new week.

Perseverance

Truett Cathy took a huge step in the restaurant business by opening his second restaurant, and it burned down. But, instead of filing for bankruptcy, because he didn’t have it properly insured, he put up tents with grills and continued to serve customers next to the burnt down building until he was able to pay to repair it. That’s perseverance, and that’s the will to never give up, even when the WORST happens.

He never forgot his roots

One comment that Cathy said that stuck out to me the most was when he said, “I feel blessed to have grown up in poverty”. How many people do you know that say something like that? What he meant was that growing up in poverty helped him become the man that he is today. He never takes his wealth for granted, he understands “small town America”, and it taught him life lessons that he would have never been taught if he was spoiled as a child or lived a comfortable childhood. I’m not glorifying poverty, but I thought that if more people who grew up in poverty would take that approach, we would see a true revolution in the war on poverty. Feeling sorry for ourselves will never get us anywhere. I also liked when Dan Cathy, his son and current president, said that their children must work for two years outside of the family business before they are allowed to work in the family business. The idea behind this was that the Cathy’s don’t want their kids assuming that they are automatically given a big-wig job with Chick-fil-A from a golden spoon. They want them to experience what every other college graduate experiences, finding a job on their own.

If you apply these four principles to your career and professional life, you’ll naturally succeed, because you’ll be putting yourself aside and others in front. This is how you get ahead in life, but many people think it’s the other way around. Many people still believe that they must only look out for themselves in order succeed and get ahead in their careers, but it’s a huge lie. Serve others and give back. The rewards will be three-fold.

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