The Origin of Thoughtful Leadership
By Mathis Thoerrisen
Thoerrisen Rizk Group
There is a place off the west coast of Sweden where the mainland begins to feel very far away.
Väderöarna sits out in the archipelago, exposed to the sea. The landscape is mostly rock, rounded and worn smooth by water and weather, with very few trees. The old pilot station still gives the island a sense that people were once stationed there because they needed to be, not because it was convenient. In the off-season especially, there were moments when it felt as though there was almost no one else around.
I worked there at Väderöarnas Värdshus, an inn built around that old island community. In the summer, it could be extremely busy. Boats came in and out, the marina filled, the café and restaurant served hundreds of people, and the staff expanded to handle the season. The rest of the year was different. The team became much smaller. Guests often arrived for a weekend, a conference, a dinner, or simply for the experience of being somewhere that felt removed from ordinary life.
When the staff was small, roles became less important. I ran the kitchen, but I also cleaned rooms, tended the bar, helped with hot tubs, renovated things, greeted guests, carried bags, and went out on the boats. Sometimes another chef and I would bring out guitars and play with the guests in the evening. If something needed to be done, whoever was there did it.
What stays with me most now is not the food, even though food was the reason I had built my career. It is the feeling of inviting people into our world.
During lobster season, we would take guests out on the water and let them work. They could help pull the traps, handle the bait, get wet, get cold, and take part in something that was not especially polished. We loved doing it ourselves, so the experience did not feel like a performance we had invented for tourists. It felt more like bringing friends along to do something we would have wanted to do anyway.
Afterward, we would boil crab and lobster and eat on the dock. It could be cold. People were bundled up in heavy overalls. There were times we cracked rab shells with rocks because that was simply what was available. It was informal, messy, and probably not what most people picture when they hear the word luxury.
And yet guests would sometimes tell us that this was the best part of their stay.
That has stayed with me because it changed the way I think about hospitality. Hospitality is not just about delivering something correctly. It is about paying attention to another person and asking what might make them feel welcome, included, comfortable, or cared for. Sometimes that means refinement. Sometimes it means precision. Sometimes it means a beautifully prepared meal. But sometimes it means inviting someone into something genuine and giving them enough of yourself that the experience becomes personal.
Years later, I began to recognize how much of my approach to leadership came from that same instinct. Thoughtful Leadership, as I have come to understand it, means paying attention to people's experience, taking responsibility for our effect on it, and using that understanding to help them become more capable. The experiences that shaped this view also taught me how much it requires: judgment, clear standards, and the willingness to examine my own behavior.
WHEN HOSPITALITY CONTRADICTS ITSELF
The hospitality industry also taught me something harder.
Some of the most extraordinary guest experiences I have ever seen were created in environments that were not particularly hospitable to the people working inside them.
Professional kitchens can be demanding places. At their best, they cultivate discipline, craftsmanship, curiosity, and exacting standards. At their worst, the pursuit of perfection becomes a source of fear. People learn not only how to do the work, but how not to get in trouble. They become very good at reproducing the exact process expected of them.
I do not want to simplify that experience into an argument that strict environments cannot create excellence. They can. I have seen it firsthand.
At Noma, for example, the standards were extraordinary. The environment was strict, and there were certainly elements of fear in it. But there was also something deeply inspiring about working around people who cared so intensely about what they were doing.
I remember a large delivery of different varieties of apples arriving one day. One of the chefs asked what he was supposed to do with them. The reaction was frustration, but the lesson underneath it was curiosity. Why would your first instinct be to ask for instructions? You have all of these apples in front of you. Taste them. Compare them. Figure out what is interesting about them. Care enough to want to know.
The staff ended up tasting them together. That lesson stayed with me. There is something powerful about being around someone who cares so much that they make you want to care more too. What I valued was the curiosity and commitment to the craft. I also came to question whether frustration and fear were useful ways to encourage them.
High standards and clear processes matter. There are environments where exact execution is part of the promise being made to the customer.
But there is a tension here that I have continued to think about.
If hospitality is ultimately about understanding another person and creating an experience around them, what happens when the people creating that experience are treated as interchangeable parts of a process?
A highly controlled system can produce consistency while narrowing the judgment people are allowed to exercise. A chef or artist may have a particular vision that customers come to experience. Even then, executing that vision depends on others noticing problems, contributing ideas, and taking responsibility.
The leadership question is which decisions require consistency and where people need discretion. When every choice belongs to the leader, the organization loses opportunities to develop the judgment of everyone else.
Over time, I began to believe that the experience an organization creates internally eventually becomes part of what it creates externally. If people are trusted, supported, challenged, and genuinely cared for, they are more capable of creating that same experience for customers and colleagues. If they are afraid, disengaged, or treated as disposable, some organizations may still produce excellent outcomes for a time, but they are leaving talent, judgment, and human potential unused.
This is one of the reasons I have come to believe so strongly in putting employees first. The people doing the work shape the experience customers receive and the results the organization can achieve. How we support them matters to both.
The lesson I took from kitchens was that the way we pursue standards matters.
WHAT IT MEANS TO BE BELIEVED IN
Being a chef was part of how I understood myself from childhood. Some of my earliest memories are of cookbooks, plating food, and making meals for friends after school. Leaving the kitchen meant changing a story I had told myself for most of my life.
Going back to school was surprisingly enjoyable. Years of work had changed the way I learned, and subjects that once felt intimidating became manageable. Building a new career was harder. I could no longer rely on the experience and hierarchy I already understood, and entering a new industry later than many of the people around me brought uncertainty.
My wife, Cynthia, believed in me with a consistency that I did not always have for myself.
It was not one dramatic speech or a single turning point. It was a pattern. If I had an idea, she treated it as something worth considering. If I wanted to pursue something, she did not begin by explaining why it might fail. When I finished school during COVID and entered an uncertain job market, there was no panic or pressure from her. Her message was essentially that I would be fine, that I should keep going, and that she believed I was capable of figuring it out.
Her support gave me space to say what I wanted and begin acting on it. An ambition can remain private and uncertain for a long time. Saying it aloud gives someone else the chance to respond and gives us something to make choices around.
Knowing that Cynthia would meet my ideas with belief helped me take that step. It did not make confidence permanent.
I have been overconfident too early. I have had setbacks that reminded me how much I did not know. I have also looked back several years later and realized that I am far more capable than I understood at the time. Even now, there are moments when I have to look at the facts and remind myself that I belong in the room and that my contribution has value.
Confidence, at least for me, has not been a destination. It has been something built and rebuilt through experience.
What I learned from being believed in was that another person's confidence in us can give us enough room to discover evidence for our own. When I became responsible for developing others, I began to understand how much it mattered to turn that belief into opportunity and support.
FROM BEING CAPABLE TO CREATING CAPABILITY
I have always liked leadership more than I have liked being in charge.
Growing up, I was often perfectly comfortable letting a more assertive person take the formal lead. If someone strongly wanted to be in charge, I did not necessarily feel a need to compete with them for the position. In hindsight, I think that was useful. It taught me to follow. It also separated leadership, in my mind, from status.
Some of my earliest leadership memories in kitchens had nothing to do with titles. They were about taking responsibility because something needed to be done.
Sometimes leadership meant taking on the worst cleaning job. Sometimes it meant staying longer. Sometimes it meant handling the task everyone else was avoiding.
I also remember the first time I truly ran a kitchen service. I was still relatively early in my development and no one had formally taught me how to do it. I was calling dishes, coordinating the timing, talking with the wait staff, keeping the kitchen moving, and trying to bring everyone through the service together.
It went well.
What I remember most is how good it felt to bring a group of people together and help everything work. It was different from the satisfaction of cooking something well myself. The outcome depended on everyone, and my role was increasingly about helping all of those moving parts succeed together.
In kitchens, development often happens through proximity. You work next to someone. You watch. You imitate. They correct you. You get faster. You become more precise. There may be teaching, but much of the learning happens through doing.
Corporate leadership forced me to become much more intentional.
I had to think about what I was saying, what responsibility I was giving someone, what they needed from me, and how my choices might help them develop over time. I could no longer assume that simply working alongside someone would teach them what I knew.
That has made developing people one of the most rewarding parts of my work.
Often, the difficulty is that someone is ready for greater responsibility before they feel ready. They doubt whether they belong or whether they can live up to what others see in them. That feeling of being an impostor can keep them from taking a step they are capable of taking.
When I am confident someone is ready, I ask them to trust my judgment of their capability, even if they cannot yet feel that confidence themselves. I explain why I believe they can do it and assure them that I will be there to help. That reassurance often gives them enough confidence to take the leap.
Then I have to give them room to do their own thing. If I become too involved, prescribe every step, or take over as soon as they struggle, I undermine the confidence I have just expressed. I may protect the immediate outcome while removing the experience that develops judgment.
Giving someone room to fail is part of that responsibility. I want them to feel safe trying, making an honest mistake, and asking for help without fear of punishment or losing my trust. When something goes wrong, my response needs to make that support real: understand what happened, help them address it, and learn from it together.
The room I can give depends on the stakes and their readiness. Clear expectations, agreed points to check in, and an understanding of when to ask for help make independence possible. The aim is for them to own the work while knowing they have support.
The most satisfying moments are often when someone takes on something they were unsure about and performs exceptionally well. Eventually, they may become the person other people go to. They may begin teaching me things.
That has changed my definition of my own success. Earlier in my career, success was easier to measure personally: what I produced, how hard I worked, and how well I executed.
Now I increasingly feel successful when I can brag about someone else.
My value as a leader is not primarily that I can solve the problem myself. It is that I can help create the circumstances in which other people can solve problems, make decisions, and eventually do things without needing me.
That is a different, and often harder, definition of performance.
THE DISCIPLINE OF THOUGHTFULNESS
For a long time, many of these behaviors were instinctive. Over the past few years, reflection has helped me understand why I do them and where my instincts are incomplete.
That is where the word thoughtful became important to me.
In hospitality, thoughtfulness means considering the other person's experience. You do not only ask whether the meal was served. You think about how the guest arrived, whether they felt welcome, what they might need before they ask, how the environment feels, and what could make the experience more meaningful.
Leadership requires that same outward attention, but it also requires an inward one.
How am I affecting the people around me? What assumptions am I making? What does this situation look like from the other person's position? What part of this outcome belongs to me? What am I failing to notice because I am too certain that my interpretation is correct?
Thoughtfulness, as I understand it, is partly the discipline of interrupting instinct.
That does not mean leaders should become hesitant or incapable of making decisions. There are times when a situation requires decisiveness. You may have incomplete information and still need to act.
Being thoughtful does not mean waiting forever.
It means that even when you have to act quickly, reflection does not end. You can make the best decision available to you and still come back afterward and ask whether you got it right, what you missed, and what you should do differently next time.
That self-reflection can be uncomfortable. When an outcome goes badly, there may be an obvious explanation: someone missed a deadline, misunderstood an expectation, or failed to take ownership. I try to look beyond the immediate explanation and examine my contribution.
Did I explain the expectation clearly and provide the right support? Did I follow up when I should have? Had I made it safe to tell me there was a problem before it became a larger one?
This does not mean other people have no accountability. It means I should not use their accountability as an excuse to avoid examining mine.
That matters especially as authority increases. I do not experience myself as particularly intimidating. I may ask someone casually, “Can we talk?” and think nothing of it. But a team member may immediately wonder whether they did something wrong. Positional authority changes how my words are received.
The same thing happens in meetings. I may have a strong opinion about what we should do. If I say it first, I may unintentionally make it harder for someone else to offer a competing idea. My intention may be to contribute. My effect may be to close the conversation.
Good intentions do not protect us from unintended effects. Empathy asks me to consider the other person's experience. Reflection asks me to examine my own. Ownership asks what I can change once I understand both.
WHEN SUPPORT REQUIRES HONESTY
Some of the most thoughtful things a leader has to do are uncomfortable. This is an area where I have had to grow.
In kitchens, difficult feedback was often direct. If someone showed up late, did not complete a task, or was not keeping up, the conversation could be blunt.
When I moved into corporate leadership, I had to learn a different form of candor.
At first, I sometimes found these conversations harder. I did not want to become unnecessarily disciplinary. I wanted to understand what was happening and why someone was struggling. Those instincts were useful, but empathy can become avoidance if we are not careful.
If I believe my responsibility as a leader is to help someone grow, then honesty is part of that responsibility.
Sometimes the supportive thing is to say that the work is not good enough, or that someone is capable of more than they are demonstrating. Sometimes it means discussing whether the path they want suits their strengths.
Someone who is not ready is not necessarily incapable. Someone who is struggling may need support, and someone poorly suited to one responsibility may thrive in another. People should have a voice in deciding what they want to pursue. My responsibility is to help them see the situation clearly, while making the decisions about assignments and performance that belong to me as their leader.
I have misread people. I have seen someone take on a difficult responsibility and assumed that their willingness meant they would follow through. I have believed that capability would translate into ownership. Sometimes it did not.
It is frustrating when the work falls short of what I believed someone could do. But that gap alone does not tell me why it happened. I need to understand whether expectations were clear, whether competing demands or capability got in the way, and whether motivation and follow-through were there.
I also have to be willing to revise my assessment. Seeing someone's potential should not prevent me from responding to the evidence of what they are doing.
Making room for honest mistakes still leaves us responsible for addressing persistent problems. Teams need reliability, and customers need results. Sometimes a leader has to change an assignment or make a difficult performance decision because others are carrying the cost of a continuing problem. Empathy should shape how we make and communicate that decision.
The same is true of trust.
I have trusted people who did not fully honor that trust. I would still rather accept that risk than build an environment around suspicion and deny everyone else the opportunity to grow. I need to respond to evidence without letting isolated disappointments define what I expect from every person who comes after them.
Support without honesty can become permissiveness. Honesty without empathy can become cruelty. The harder work is learning to practice both.
WHY THOUGHTFUL LEADERSHIP
Over time, these experiences have become parts of the same philosophy. Service, empathy, authenticity, and ownership each capture something I value. Thoughtfulness connects them through attention to how people experience our leadership and the responsibility we take for its effects.
It begins with the hospitality question: How is the other person experiencing this?
Then it turns inward: How am I contributing to that experience?
And then it becomes action: What responsibility do I have for making it better?
Leadership carries the responsibility to create conditions in which other people can do more, become more capable, and eventually need less from us. That requires empathy and a desire to help, alongside standards, honesty, and judgment.
I am still learning how to do it. Reflection helps me recognize the gaps between what I believe and how I behave, and take responsibility for changing.
Thoerrisen Rizk Group exists to help people develop that capacity: to understand their effect on others, build confidence in their judgment, and put thoughtful leadership into practice. Defining this work has also made me more deliberate about examining my own leadership.
Leadership multiplies.
The way a leader supports, challenges, and trusts someone becomes part of that person's experience of what leadership can be. When they take responsibility for others, they have something to draw on and improve. A development conversation or an opportunity to try can influence more than the work immediately in front of us.
That is the possibility behind TRG: helping one person become a better leader can improve the experience of the people they lead and the leadership those people go on to practice.
My understanding of leadership began in kitchens, in hospitality, in relationships, and in the gradual realization that the conditions we create around people matter. On that island, care meant paying attention to what would help someone feel welcome and included. In leadership, that attention carries a responsibility to help people grow.
Thoughtful Leadership means taking that responsibility seriously, in the decisions we make and the capability we help others carry forward.
