In this issue:

• Beth Levin, Owner, Brothers' Restaurant

This is our regular e-message to people who are interested in leading their lives with passion. We will send you a short note with information, stories, examples, and practical things you can do to lead your life, work, and organizations with passion. Leading With Passion We like the term 'leading with passion,’ because it has two very significant, but related meanings. The first suggests leading off with passion. That is, making the very first priority in your life to live, work, and play passionately, and to fully embrace every possible moment. Second, it means that we can lead our organizations, teams, and projects with passion - creating passionate work environments by transferring our own enthusiasm for the organization to all others who come into contact with it.

Beth Levin, Owner, Brothers' Restaurant

Beth Levin
Some folks sit around their whole lives talking about what they're going to do, and never do it; or about what they didn't do, and how they regret it. Not Beth Levin. She and her boyfriend (and later husband) Bob came to Ashland, Oregon one weekend to have fun and to play and fell in love with it. They returned to Eugene and asked themselves if they were going to be the kind of people who are living in one place and talking about someplace else. They returned to see if they could find work and Bob got a job that would start in three days. They didn't hesitate. He took the job and lived in his Volkswagen bus in someone's driveway until he could rent a house. She wrapped up her commitments and arrived a month later. That was 20 years ago.

It's all about the place
Place has a good deal to do with passionate living. For Beth, Ashland has both a physical and a spiritual beauty. Home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the town also is a place that just seems to feel artistic and maybe a little bit magical. We interviewed her on the grounds of the Festival and were regularly interrupted by actors who came by with a hug and a hello.

"That's what has kept me here when times were rough," she says. "It's a bit of an island I think to what is going on in America and the world. It really is an idyllic community that way, with like-minded people who care about the quality of their life, the quality of their relationships, and the quality of the environment they are surrounded by."

It's all about the work
Six months after the move, Beth and Bob, still in their twenties, owned a restaurant. They found it via an ad in the paper. Brothers' is where we first met and were drawn to Beth because she exudes passion for life.

When we first spotted her she was working the cash register on a busy Sunday morning, taking orders, and making every customer feel like the most important person in the world. Lots of people find that work grinds them down over the years and the food business can be grueling. Work has become more enjoyable for Beth over time.

"I think it's because somehow miraculously or gracefully that I'm able to bring a lot of myself to work, more and more over the years. Our work is extremely public. If I'm in a bad space that's a hard place to be because I'm totally out there. But I love connecting with people and it's a tremendous format for doing that and bringing my energy into that."

She's made the work into something that reinforces what she cares about. They support green programs and participate in renewable energy activities like recycling their grease, giving it to a friend who makes bio-diesel to run cars. "That is inspiring, I think, to young people who are working for us, though we don't do it for that reason," she says.

It's all about the environment
"Over time we have very consciously chosen to create a work environment in which we, the owners, want to show up to work, the kind of environment that is nurturing to us; a real one where people care about each other and truly treat each other with respect," she says. The relationships at Brothers' are fulfilling and they are real.

The pay-off? Restaurant turnover can be sky-high. Not so for Brothers'. Their 15-18 part-time employees stick around for a long time. Abby has worked there ten years; Jessie 12 years; and Duane started as a dishwasher in the 1980s, left, and came back as a cook, asked to wait tables and now is their manager. It is not uncommon for employees to talk about Brothers' in family terms and to return after leaving for a while.

And why not? Beth and Bob don't live by the "shoulds" that characterize generally accepted "good management practice." They do fraternize with their employees. Abby, Beth says, knows her personal life, her ups and downs. Brothers' doesn't have a time clock. Employees often socialize together and organize activities without any direction from the owners. Three waitresses had just returned from a 6 week trip together to Honduras about the time of our interview with Beth, and over the years there have been monthly "girls nights out."

"In the daily moment I probably don't do such a graceful job, but in the bigger picture I definitely work with the realization that we, to a very great extent, create the emotional reality that we instill or enjoy and I generally just really choose to take responsibility for that," Beth says.

It's all about being who you are
Society often gives us painful lessons about exposing who we are to others, and managers are often taught to keep employees at a distance. Not so Beth. "I am very willing to show my vulnerability in the workplace even with employees, which is supposedly inappropriate yet it shows to them this is a safe environment. They are human beings and I'm a human being." The employee whose mother had just died could come to work and cry and have someone hold her and not have to worry about her customers right then. "A lot of places don't do that," Beth says, "people can bring their real lives with them."

She tries to live by the "film clip" she carries in her mind of a parking lot attendant she spotted at a Safeway in Hawaii years ago. "I go to it all the time," she says, "and it inspires me to remember what is important at work." It was a man who directed cars in the parking lot with enthusiasm and presence. "He was dancing all over, gesturing, sending hugs, sending kisses, doing this massive amount of personal connection, definitely channeling bundles of love, making people feel good, beaming," she recalls. "He could have been a parking lot attendant who hates his job. Instead he was standing there in an asphalt parking lot in the heat of Hawaii in total joy and bliss and sharing every bit of who he is with everyone. Totally inspiring. That's my model, my reminder that it's way less what you are doing than how you are doing it. It's way less what life does to you than what you do with it."

"It's just that whole idea that wherever you are is just an arena for whatever you want to create."

Beth followed her instincts and made a choice about how to live her life. Are you choosing your life or are you allowing it to be decided for you?

Are you choosing to live and work in a place that resonates with your personality?

Have you modified what you do to represent who you are and what you love to do?

What kind of life are you creating for yourself? What kind of environment are you creating for others?

The next time you're in Ashland drop in to see Beth at Brothers' Restaurant. That'll give you a film clip of your own.

Leading with Passion is a regular communication from Michael Kroth and Patricia Boverie. Michael and Patricia have been researching passionate work since 1999, and their book, Transforming Work: The Five Keys to Achieving Trust, Commitment, and Passion in the Workplace, is about the indispensable necessity of passion for personal and organizational success in the workplace.

© Copyright 2005, All Rights Reserved Patricia Boverie and Michael Kroth