Ability is what you're capable of doing.

Motivation determines what you do.

Attitude determines how well you do it.

--Lou Holtz, former Coach of Notre Dame's Football Team

Recently, I met with a reader who asked me the question 'How do you remember all the details in your Weblog stories?' I didn't have a good answer, but this week is a story I didn't have to remember since it is an article published in the now defunct Restaurants and Institutions Magazine in 1998.

It is a story of what today is called 'allyship' but then it was just common sense to me. It is a story about how someone in power can make a difference. It is the story of Starting with Women, a program at Reading Restaurants, that I'm pretty sure changed some lives for the better.

A little more than a year ago, Ed Doherty made Leslie Ballhaus an offer he thought she couldn't refuse: a General Manager position in one of the Perkins Restaurants he runs. "You have what it takes to be a great store manager" he told the young woman, citing her poise and stamina. To his great surprise, she disagreed.

"Ed kept telling me I could do it, and I kept telling him I couldn't," says Ballhaus, who had spent 18 years with Perkins, most of them as a server. Ballhaus really can't explain her lack of confidence. "I know I'm a hard worker; I'm not a quitter, she says. It just never crossed my mind to go into management."

Think this is an isolated incident? So did Doherty, President of Reading Restaurants which operates 22 Perkins franchise units in Ohio and Northern Kentucky. But after half a dozen similar conversations with female employees he wanted to promote into management, all of whom worried they didn't have what it takes, Doherty recognized a pattern.

"I was surprised and disappointed that the women I thought would be successful in restaurant management didn't have the confidence to believe in themselves" Doherty says. I was looking for an 'I can do that' spirit, and I got an 'I'm not sure I can do that' attitude.

In response, Doherty created Starting with Women, a program aimed at making it easier for women at Reading to advance into management and to cope with unique factors, including childcare, lack of confidence, and male resentment, that affect them in the workforce. The group, open to all women in management in the company, meets one afternoon a month for educational seminars, guest lecturers, and lunch.

Today, 12 months later, Doherty is thrilled with the success of the program, which he says is easy to quantify.

One year ago, there was one female General Manager: today there are seven, or 35% of the total. In addition, 50% of all managers are women. (In 1997 women accounted for 44.8% of all management positions in foodservice and lodging, according to the National Restaurant Association.) Also, women make up the majority of candidates in Reading's GM Training Program. "This was not the fact before," he says simply.

For a company that tries to recruit from within its ranks, it is well worth the $75,000 per year the program costs. "When you recruit internally, you find someone who already understands your guests, values, food and culture,' Doherty says. "They have the attitude; all you have to do is train them on is the skills."

When Doherty first presented the idea to the few women then in management at his company, they were both excited and skeptical. "I wasn't sure we would get a lot of participation because most women in restaurants are servers, not management," says General Manager Michelle Budd, who was a Kitchen Manager at the time. "The women I knew had the same insecure thoughts: 'There's not a lot of women in management, so why should I make it?" Budd's view was shared by other women, some of whom wondered whether Reading created the program simply to recruit more women in management to fill a quota.

"But as the program grew, what they had to offer us became more appealing," Budd says, citing the female managers who came in as guest speakers from Perkins' Headquarters, including Toni Kottom, Director of Training and Management Development and Bobbie Mellard, Director of Purchasing--and the outside management classes that Reading helped the women attend. "If we took the tools Ed gave us and used them, we became better managers."

Still, the benefits of the program. Budd says, extend beyond the workplace. "It makes me feel special that someone has gone out of his way to help me make myself a better person, and I've never felt special in a professional environment before. It gives me confidence and self-esteem."

Nancy Murphy says she cried when Doherty promoted her to GM about a year ago. "When he offered me the position, he said he'd help me relocate closer to the restaurant, he'd help me with daycare, whatever he could do to enable me to become a GM," she says. She cries now when she tells the story.

"I know it sounds silly, but I never thought I had what it took. I came from a lower income family, and I had no more than a high school education. I had two daughters and for ten years I was a server. I just didn't aspire for more."

It might surprise and disturb some in the restaurant industry to hear a woman speak this way in the late 1990s. But the reality for many women, without higher education or families who encourage them to aspire; many of whom are mothers, some of them single, has not changed much in the past few decades.

"There are two kinds of glass ceilings," Doherty says, There's the kind that others put above your head that you can't see. Then there's the kind you put above your own head, which Starting with Women is meant to address."

Ask the female managers at Reading what they find most helpful about the new program and the answer echoes across the phone lines like an unexpected shout in lonely canyon. "I like getting together with my peers, feeling open to discussing my problems and discovering that someone else has dealt with this exact thing before." Budd says.

Along these lines, Doherty makes sure that each meeting, attended by about 50 women, features a guest speaker--a woman who, having already risen through the ranks, is an apt role model. "Since there are no women in senior management at Reading, we imported them," he says. In addition to the speakers from Perkins home office in Memphis, speakers have come from distribution and advertising companies that work with Reading.

"To get where they are, some of these women have sacrificed family life, personal life, work life; some haven't sacrificed anything.; some raised kids, and felt great about it, some raised kids and didn't." Doherty says, "portions of the audience related to every single one of them."

The guest presentations take the form of an interview, like on a talk show, Doherty explains, where the guest answers a prepared set of questions asked by Danielle Carlisle, Reading's Communications Manager. Afterwards the women in the audience are given the opportunity to pose and ask any additional questions they may have. "We ask them how they got started; how their careers affected their families and how they dealt with them; how they cope with men in their field and what their bosses are like," says Leslie Ballhaus, who became a GM last November.

The answers are illuminating: "You often hit a bump in the road and think: "I bet this has never happened to anyone else before. So, it's helpful to hear that other people have dealt with the same problems as you."

To continue the support from meeting to meeting, the members of Starting with Women pair up and mentor each other. "The woman I am matched with has the same concerns," says Ballhaus, explaining they talk every few days. "She asks me how I handle different situations," such as a server not showing up for work or a rise in food costs.

Murphy, too, appreciates the mentoring aspect of the program. "If I'm having a tough day, I can pick up the phone and get some support, and it's nice to know we are there for each other: we really are a team, making each other better."

Although the program is designed for women, some men, those in Reading's senior management attend the first half of each meeting. The idea is for them to show support and learn about the issues of concern, while still leaving the women some time to themselves, Doherty explains. Their presence is not taken for granted.

"Ed has passed his support down to the other men, which really makes a huge difference," Ballhaus says. "After all, I'm not sure the program would work if the men resented it."

"Still, it's nice to have that time alone," Budd explains. "I don't feel pressured because there is a man sitting across the table. I feel I can be more open with my comments and ideas if it's just women."

By now, Ed Doherty is accustomed to people's surprise that a man started a program for women. "It would be a lot simpler to talk about my motivation if I were female."

It comes down to this: Doherty, at 47, sees his wife, mother, and sisters as inspiration. "I think alot about the women in my world," he says, "They are confident, they aspire, and I respect them. So, this attitude is nothing unusual for me." It was for this reason that the lack of confidence of some of the women in his company astounded him.

"Ed is doing so much for these women professionally and making them feel great about themselves at the same time," says Perkin's Bobbie Mellard, who spoke at one of the program's meetings last year. "Plus, just think of the loyalty it inspires. It's just a win-win situation."

Mellard is not the only one who sees positive results. For Murphy, going from $2.13 an hour as a server to a GM's salary was a major accomplishment, and not one she could have anticipated. "Three years ago, I wouldn't have known what a budget was, other than to go to the grocery," she says. "And the fear of it would have made me think I never could be in this position. She credits the program for making her aspire for more and she expects to be a regional manager soon.

"But it's not just my success I'm happy about," she says. "It's seeing other people promoted, seeing more women move up the ranks that is really inspiring." (Today, two regional Managers, the Communications Manager and the Controller are all female. All have been promoted or hired in the last year.)

Perhaps the ultimate result of Starting with Women is that the original members of the program are now encouraging women under them to aspire. "My dining room manager recently told me that I was her inspiration," Ballhaus says. "And I told her that if I could do it, she could do it." The other women repeat her refrain.

Even Murphy's eight-year-old daughter has taken note. "She came to work with me for mother-daughter day and wrote a report about all the different things I do" she says. "She wrote that I was the boss, and do a lot of work, from talking to servers to cleaning dishes to running the cash register. "

Murphy, who recently learned her own capabilities, and who is raising her children alone, has a real note of satisfaction in her voice. "My daughter now says she wants to be a GM when she grows up.

Internal Communication