#255 - Hospitality Meets Gareth Rees - Mindset, Misfit & Misunderstood

This week, I sat down with Gareth Rees, and this is one of those conversations that feels properly important.Not just for hospitality… but for how we think about people, performance, and what “doing a good job” actually meansGareth now runs ADHospitalityD, with a mission to educate the industry on neurodiversity, breaking down misconceptions, supporting individuals, and helping businesses create environments where people can genuinely thrive.But his story starts where many of ours do…On the floorIn this episode, Gareth and I get into…Growing up in hospitality with both parents in the industryFalling in love with the buzz (and chaos) of a busy service at a young ageOriginally planning a career in sports… before hospitality pulled him back inWorking his way through the industry via the Exclusive Collection grad schemeWhy understanding the full guest journey matters in leadershipStepping into a Head of Department role, and suddenly hitting a wallThe shift from doing the job to enabling others to do itStruggling with admin, pressure, and expectations, despite loving the industryDiscovering ADHD later in life and what that explainedThe concept of interest-based vs importance-based nervous systems (game-changer 👀)Why traditional productivity advice doesn’t work for everyoneAdjusting ways of working to suit how your brain actually functionsAnd ultimately… turning that experience into a mission to support othersSome cracking quote-ables from Gareth“We need to value the strengths, but appreciate the struggles”“I wasn’t failing… I just hadn’t been set up in a way that worked for me”“At Head of Department level, your output changes, and that’s where it hit me”“I could do the job… but I couldn’t do it the way everyone else expected”“You don’t ‘fix’ this, you learn how to work with it”Why this episode is worth your earsIf you lead people… this one mattersBecause it challenges a lot of assumptions we make about:ProductivityPerformanceCommunicationAnd what “good” looks like at workGareth’s story is a powerful reminder that not everyone operates the same way, and that’s not a weakness.In fact, when you understand it properly?It can be a huge strengthAnd for an industry built on people…That’s something we can’t afford to ignore.Contact Gareth through his website at https://adhospitalityd.com/ or InstagramShow PartnersA big shout out to the first of today’s show partner, RotaCloud, the people management platform for shift-based teams.RotaCloud lets managers create and share rotas, record attendance, and manage annual leave in minutes — all from a single, web-based app.It makes work simple for your team, too, allowing them to check their rotas, request holiday, and even pick up extra shifts straight from their phones.Try RotaCloud’s time-saving tools today by heading to https://rotacloud.com/philThis podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy