"A Category of One"...(On Great Service)

"Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap",.  "Tap, tap, tap, tap".

We heard a series of them shortly after takeoff though they soon ended and we forgot about them as our breakfast was served.  Until I noticed that for the very first time, after eating hundreds of similar airline breakfasts, this one was different...The lid was off of my yogurt.  Not only that, but my fruit cup was in a glass instead of its normal plastic cup...

I asked my American Airlines commuter flight attendant Tom McCarthy why the lid was off my yogurt.  "I've seen too many people get squirted when they open them because they don't know they're pressurized, so I tap them and take the tops off before I serve them". (I'm one of those self-inflicted victims).  I asked him if he'd been instructed to do so. "No, I just do it".  Then I asked about the fruit served in the beverage glasses. "I just think it looks better".

During our short flight I watched Tom McCarthy find time to crouch down and individually engage every single first class passenger in a conversation, beginning with a "thank you".  He was friendly, a little bit corny, certainly self-effacing.  He came over and brushed off the seat and arranged the seat belt straps of the old man across the aisle from me who went to the lavatory.

There have been many flight attendants who have thanked me for the business (not including the recorded video), but only Tom McCarthy crouched down so that he could look me right in the eye and mean it.  Hundreds of attendants have served me the same breakfast, but Tom McCarthy is the first to anticipate the likelihood of me squirting it all over myself and acting proactively.  Tom McCarthy is the first flight attendant I've ever seen brush the crumbs off a customer's seat when they stretched their legs, let alone arrange the seat belt so it would be easier to fasten when they sat back down.  Tom McCarthy is one of very few flight attendants who cared enough about pleasing his customers that he put their fruit into a beverage glass just because he thought it looked better.

I am a fan of flight attendants - they have a truly difficult job, and I've met some great ones over the past 1.5 million miles.  But as far as I'm concerned, there is ONE attendant that is in a class by himself - or as Joe Calloway refers to it in his book,"Becoming a Category of  One" (read it): Tom McCarthy.

Thats our job - yours and mine:  To become the Tom McCarthy's of our  respective worlds.  

Not good, not great:  A "Category of One".  

To observe, to listen, to look at the world through the eyes of those we would serve -  that's how it's done.    It isn't about technology, although technology may play a role.  It's about spending time contemplating, dreaming, imagining how we can DELIGHT, and then finding a way to deliver.  It may involve a grand scheme, but more than likely is comprised of a series of small, subtle, elements.

Like removing the yogurt lids before you serve them.

Delighting the people we serve is the real work of Leaders.

LEAD.