Leadership Beyond the Kitchen
What if some of the best leadership lessons aren’t coming from business schools, CEOs or Silicon Valley? What if they’re coming from a kitchen?
I met Asma Khan in London last year, and she did not disappoint.
I expected our conversation to be about food. Instead, I found myself thinking about leadership. About identity. About belonging. About courage. And about what happens when you stop trying to become the leader everyone expects you to be and start leading from who you are. Asma, founder of Darjeeling Express, hasn’t succeeded by following the traditional model of leadership.
Here are six lessons I think executive leaders can learn from her.
1. Don’t leave your identity at the door
For Asma, authenticity isn’t a leadership technique. It’s the starting point.
Her food is inseparable from her heritage, family, memories and experience of building a life in Britain. She didn’t strip those things; she’s created her own.
Too many senior leaders spend years learning how to look like a leader, how to speak, behave and occupy a room. But leadership isn’t acting. People are remarkably good at detecting the difference. The better question isn’t “How should I behave like a leader?”
It’s: “What do I stand for, and am I brave enough to lead from it?”
2. See potential before it becomes performance
Asma has created opportunities for women who might easily have been overlooked.
Not everyone arrived with the conventional credentials. Some had little restaurant experience. Some had been outside the workforce. But she saw something a CV can’t always reveal: potential. Organisations are very good at identifying people who have already succeeded. Great leaders also ask: “Who could become exceptional if I invested in them?” The first approach finds talent. The second creates it.
3. Belonging comes before high performance
We talk endlessly about high-performing cultures. Perhaps we should talk more about belonging. People rarely do their best work when they’re spending their energy wondering whether they fit in. What strikes me about Asma is the humanity in her approach. People aren’t simply employees filling roles. They are people with stories, histories, talents and ambitions. The best leaders create environments where people can say: “I belong here. My contribution matters. I can be myself.”
4. Psychological safety isn’t soft
If people are afraid to challenge the boss, admit a mistake, ask a difficult question or say, “I don’t know,” you don’t have a high-performing organisation. You have an organisation where people have learned to stay quiet. Silence can look like alignment. It isn’t always alignment. Sometimes it’s fear. Respect isn’t a reward for performance.
It’s the foundation for it.
5. Leadership is about noticing
Hospitality offers a powerful metaphor for leadership. A great host notices.
Who hasn’t been served? Who has become quiet? Who needs help before they ask?
The same is true of leadership. The strongest leaders notice the talented person being overlooked. The exhausted team still delivering. The invisible work that never appears on the dashboard. Leadership isn’t only about setting direction. Sometimes it’s about paying attention.
6. Purpose gives leadership staying power
Darjeeling Express has never seemed to be simply about food. It’s about women. Heritage. Opportunity. Memory. Belonging. That sense of purpose matters because leadership gets difficult. When the path becomes uncertain, your “why” becomes an anchor. It’s what you’re willing to protect when it would be easier not to.
The question I would ask every executive
What happens to people because they have worked with you?
Do they become more confident? More courageous? More capable?
More themselves? Or simply better at delivering your agenda? Titles disappear. Strategies change. Organisations get redrawn. But the impact a leader has on another person’s sense of possibility can last for decades. That’s what stayed with me after meeting Asma. She hasn’t built her leadership around hierarchy, ego or conformity. She’s built it around identity, opportunity, dignity, belonging and purpose. And perhaps that’s the leadership lesson we need most right now: You don’t have to become the leader the system expects you to be.
You must become the leader people can trust.
That’s leadership beyond the kitchen.