Wingstop is a buffalo-style chicken wing restaurant, founded in Texas in 1994. Today, there are more than 1,500 restaurants globally. Known for its unique recipes, delicious food and superior customer service, Wingstop began offering franchises in 1997. As the company says, “We’re not in the wing business. We’re in the flavour business.” Wingstop continues to progress with its ambitious expansion plans, as we are thrilled to be a part of its success.
Developing our people has always been central to both our operational and commercial success and working with Lee and the team at MMU has taken our development approach to an entirely new level.
Craig Benson, Senior Talent Manager, Wingstop UK
Challenges
Wingstop was growing rapidly, and with growth comes complexity. Complexity also brings a very real challenge: how do you support brilliant General Managers as they step into multi-site leadership roles, without simply expecting them to figure it out?
Unfortunately, that’s what often happens in our industry. Strong single-site operators get promoted, handed more restaurants, and left to learn through trial, error, and exhaustion.
This is exactly what the Wingstop District Manager Step-Up programme aimed to overcome.
Actions
From the outset, the intent was clear. Wingstop didn’t just want better business reviews or sharper financial conversations. They wanted consistency, clarity, and a more professional, structured approach to how district managers lead their areas.
Not just what they reviewed, but how they reviewed it. Not just financial performance, but also people, standards, customer experience, and long-term capability.
That ambition was championed internally by people who genuinely care about developing leaders, including Craig Benson (Senior Talent Manager), Emma O’Neil (Learning and Development Manager) and Faye Ryder Humphreys (Head of People), with strong operational sponsorship from Matt Sheppard (COO), and support from CEO, Chris Sheriff.
This level of involvement and alignment matters, and it’s typically the key ingredient in determining what sticks. Here’s a flavour of what we covered:
1/ Starting with the mindset shift: we began by helping people understand that this role is fundamentally different. The phrase Leader of Managers isn’t accidental. It’s the title of a book written by Chris Muller, whose work has shaped so much of the thinking in this space, and which we’re proud to reference in our programmes.
His work, particularly the Phases in Multi-Unit Manager Development Model and the idea of the super operator trap, captures the challenge in just three words. These leaders are no longer:
- leading team members
- leading in one location
- or winning through their own technical brilliance.
They are leading other managers. And that requires a shift towards more strategic, longer-term leadership. We spent time helping district managers recognise where the super operator trap shows up. That instinct to be the hero; to jump in and to fix things personally!
Anchoring this back to Chris Muller’s work gave people the language and the permission to step back, trust more, and lead differently.
2/ Building leadership adaptability: early in the programme, participants also completed the SLII® experience, which gave us a shared leadership language we could return to. As Blanchard-authorised partners, we were able to deliver the full experience as part of the programme.
District managers began to see that leadership isn’t just about who you’re leading, but what you’re leading them through. The same General Manager might be highly capable in one area (perhaps classed as a development level 3 or development level 4 in SLII language), and much less confident in another.
That insight became particularly powerful during period reviews, planning conversations, and site visits, where district managers could consciously adapt how directive or supportive they needed to be.
3/ Creating consistency through the period review: one of Wingstop’s core aims was to create a consistent way of reviewing performance, regardless of which district manager was working with which General Manager. This is where the period review comes in.
Using The Mastering Multi-Units Model, we introduced a structured review that looks across the four operations lenses: quality of operations, customer experience, employee growth and performance, and financial performance.
Wingstop’s own subject matter experts played a key role here, particularly from a finance and commercial perspective, ensuring the financial analysis was grounded, relevant, and consistent.
The employee lens flowed naturally into both the period review and proactive planning, reinforcing that performance and capability development are inseparable.
What really brought this to life was Wingstop’s 360 Action Tracker. Despite the name, this isn’t just an action list. It’s a tool designed to help district managers and General Managers take a true 360-degree view of the business, across all four lenses.
We also introduced the Three ‘I’s model: understanding the incident, quantifying the impact, and generating insight. In many cases, this naturally led to a fourth step, implementation.
The subtle but powerful shift here was ownership. General Managers began leading more of their own analysis, while district managers focused on coaching, challenge, and perspective.
4/ From review to momentum: proactive planning and achievement plans: reviewing performance only matters if it leads somewhere. That’s why we followed the period review with proactive planning, using what Wingstop refer to as achievement plans.
We explored the difference between lag measures and lead measures, and why real performance improvement nearly always comes from changing behaviours, not just chasing numbers. We then layered in elements of Full Focus Productivity, particularly the 60-30-10 rhythm.
Nothing was over-engineered: it’s simple, repeatable habits that help leaders stay focused on what matters most. Sixty minutes a quarter to identify quarterly goals. Thirty minutes a week to review priorities and progress. Ten minutes a day to identify the actions that make achieving those priorities more likely. For busy district managers, this cadence provided both structure and breathing space.
5/ Making site visits truly high impact: everything in the programme is designed to connect to what district managers actually do, particularly when they’re out in restaurants. That’s where critical impact visits come in.
Using our five-step visit model, we helped district managers think more deliberately about preparation, alignment, observation, coaching, and closing the visit with purpose. This is also where Radical Candour really landed as a practical framework for feedback and difficult conversations. District managers practised how to challenge directly while caring personally, how to dial those two dimensions up or down, and how to avoid either micromanaging or disappearing altogether.
Visits became less about inspection and more about value-adding conversations that General Managers actively wanted.
6/ Developing people, not just performance: threaded throughout the programme were practical tools that supported delegation, development, and succession.
Performance agreements helped clarify expectations and accountability. Delegation planners encouraged district managers to think not just about what they delegate, but why and to whom. People inventories and the Rule of Seven helped leaders think more deliberately about who they were developing and what they were doing over the next 30, 60, or 90 days to build future capability.
This wasn’t theoretical. It was grounded in real restaurants, real people, and real conversations.
Outcomes
The success of the Wingstop District Manager Step-Up programme came down to a few things. This was a genuine partnership. Wingstop’s internal experts brought brand context and operational reality. MMU brought structure, frameworks, and a multi-site leadership lens.
Everything was practical. Every tool had a clear purpose.
Most importantly, the programme respected the challenge of the role. Multi-site leadership is hard. This programme didn’t pretend otherwise. It gave district managers a clearer path, a shared language, and the confidence to lead differently.
Developing leaders of managers isn’t a one-off intervention; it’s a commitment, and Wingstop has shown what’s possible when that commitment is taken seriously.
Feedback
MMU has been instrumental in shaping and delivering our District Manager Development Programme, from which successful alumni are already leading districts of their own. Beyond that, MMU’s ongoing support at our conferences, including powerful sessions on SBI feedback and Professor Chris Muller’s Phases of Multi-unit Management Development Model, has elevated the way we develop and inspire our leaders. MMU doesn’t just deliver content; they create programmes that land, content that offers practical skills and tactics that can be taken into the field from day one. MMU has helped raise the capability and confidence of our leadership teams across the country. Their partnership has been invaluable, and I would highly recommend them to any organisation looking to truly elevate their leadership culture.
Craig Benson, Senior Talent Manager, Wingstop UK