Red Lobster’s 37-year-old CEO waited tables before joining the C-suite—he says it was a crash course in managing ‘difficult people and situations’

Years before Damola Adamolekun was tapped to serve as Red Lobster’s CEO—and save the brand from an endless shrimp-induced bankruptcy—he was tasked with mastering a smaller version of pretty much the same job: keeping tables happy and well-fed.

The 37-year-old first began his career like the thousands of his employees: as a server. While in high school, Adamolekun worked at Clyde’s, a local chain at the time located in suburban Maryland. He said it was there that he learned how to read people quickly, smooth over tense interactions, and make a customer feel even better than when they first walked through the door. Those were early lessons in a leadership skill he now considers indispensable.

“People come to the restaurant as an escape from whatever’s going on in their lives, and your job really is just to put a smile on their face and engage with them,” Adamolekun told Fortune in an interview on the sidelines of Jobs for the Future’s Horizons conference.

“You become good at managing difficult people and situations, which is an important skill. You learn how to lift people from one mindset to another one.”

Thanks to that crash course in human behavior, Adamolekun said today he’s applying those skills to a far wider audience as he wins back guests, reassures investors, and leads Red Lobster’s 30,000 employees in what he’s called the “‘greatest comeback in the history of the restaurant industry.”

From Zimbabwe, HBS, and Goldman Sachs to C-suite

Born in Nigeria to a neurosurgeon father and pharmacist mother, Adamolekun spent his early childhood on the move, including stops in Zimbabwe as well as the Netherlands before landing in........

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