Six years ago, Dale Bullotta was the lowest performer among Chili’s 120 area directors. Three years later, he jumped to No. 1 and received one of Chili’s Above Restaurant Leader of the Year awards.

I caught up with Bullotta recently to delve deeper into what led to his remarkable transformation. What I learned surprised me, because the success factors responsible for propelling him to the top aren’t typically on the list of leadership behaviors.

What he told me can provide valuable lessons for anyone who wants to elevate their personal performance, for themselves and for their organization.

Get vulnerable and solicit feedback.

After 25 years at the company, Bullotta had moved up the management ranks and went from managing a single restaurant to overseeing dozens of locations. Having made it to the managerial ranks, it would have been easy to coast and take things for granted. That’s exactly what he did, and he slid all the way to the bottom.

He really didn’t see the need to change. But numbers don’t lie, and he knew he was at the bottom of his leadership cohort. Instead of dodging tough professional feedback, he got vulnerable. Bullotta sought it out from everyone he could find: his boss, colleagues, employees and his wife.

He opened up about his own fears and concerns about his lagging performance. He asked for blunt feedback about his blind spots. He solicited advice about what he should start doing, stop doing and continuing doing.

What he learned was that he was stuck in the old way of doing things and that he needed to re-assess everything he did. Dialing up the vulnerability resulted in a personal call to action.

Let purpose drive perspective.

Around the time that his performance hit bottom, his youngest son, Hudson, was diagnosed with myriad intense and lifelong learning disorders. With this jarring news, it became incredibly clear that Bullotta’s purpose in life was less about getting the next promotion or raise and instead about supporting his son and family.

The effect of reframing his personal purpose had a surprising impact on his leadership at Chili’s. Letting go of the ego-centric stuff to focus on the big picture elevated his daily work from tactical to strategic, such as how to give Chili’s guests the best possible overall dining experience and how to coach his employees to see the big picture themselves while performing their individual jobs.

He shared his personal insights about life’s priorities with his team, which helped everyone gain perspective on how and when to forge ahead full bore at work, and when to head home and take care of themselves and their families in order to be 100 percent.

Use well-being to do well.

Working in food service requires long hours on your feet. The last thing Bullotta wanted was to be physically wiped out at the end of the day and unable to fully enjoy family or personal time, the exact opposite of the balance encouraged by Chili’s corporate.

He decided to enhance his team’s well-being. Instead of hosting corporate offsites in hotels, he rented houses and encouraged his team to cook meals together. He hired chefs to come to his home to cook and teach about clean eating. He held meetings over hikes in the California hills, and used Yoga and CrossFit classes to support team-building.

Not only did his team’s physical stamina increase, people became more resilient overall.

Grow people to grow

the business.

When Bullotta received his award for becoming the top performing area director, Chili’s CEO Wyman Roberts emphasized that great leadership isn’t just about individual results.

His accolades included the fact that numerous Chili’s managers and leaders had once worked under Bullotta. Wyman talked about “the shadow of a leader” and what that meant to him and the company.

Rather than feel threatened by the career success of his team, Bullotta had helped many others advance up the ranks. Recognizing this publicly truly elevated the importance of leaders growing leaders.

Create a challenge

to create focus.

Today as vice president of operations, Bullotta focuses most of his time on what the company internally calls The Challenge. The Challenge states that all employees should embrace the concept that “we better be better,” each and every day.

To support this, Bullotta and his colleagues simplified Chili’s menu from 124 items down to 75 of its top sellers, improved the quality of its ingredients and are working to enhance the guest experience through better service.

Given the disruptive trends facing the restaurant market, such as competition from fast-casual chains and changing consumer preferences toward healthier choices, Chili’s recognizes it must reinvent itself to both survive and thrive.

Bullotta’s story shows that taking proactive steps to shift mindsets and behavior will make culture and performance follow.

Soren Kaplan is the author of “Leapfrogging” and “The Invisible Advantage” and the founder of Innovation Point and UpBOARD.