One of the privileges I had while working in the brewing industry is meeting and working with some fantastic individuals, one of which is Christian Barden from Kegstar.
Coming from a background in brewing and hospitality working with companies such as Whitbread, AB InBev and Cott Beverages, along with active involvement in companies such as BrewBroker and Kegstar, Christian is an entrepreneur who is a keen advocate for creating a working culture that aims to get the best out of a team and maintain a healthy, dynamic, honest and open working environment.
While this episode touches upon a few beer industry points, such as SBR and alcohol consumption, we mostly centre our conversation on leadership skills, personal development and creating the kind of atmosphere and teams where people feel valued, known and rewarded fairly for their contributions.
Personal development and betterment is key to hiring people, gracefully letting people move on, building a successful business, motivating people, understanding them, communicating clearly and well; the most successful businesses and organisations I’ve ever been privy to have leaders who embody both humanity – in its most virtuous sense – and draw the best out of people by challenging them.
This conversation I had with Christian a few weeks back is a bit different than you may be used to on this podcast; in its simplest form, it’s two mates discussing a topic we’re both passionate about… but if you allow yourself to really think through what you’re hearing – to look at our own behaviours and mentality and take note – I think together we can build a better, brighter industry for everyone involved.
You might not be into ‘all that “management crap”’ but if bettering yourself and building a healthy and dynamic team doesn’t have anything to do with brewing or being involved in a beer business, I genuinely don’t know what does!
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