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What could Gordon Ramsay possibly have to teach business leaders from outside the restaurant industry? This was the question on everyone's lips as they filed into the Peacock Theatre for this London Business Forum event.

It seemed most of the 500-strong audience were there out of curiosity. They had seen Ramsay's temper froth over during TV shows such as ITV's "Hell's Kitchen". They had winced as he hurled imprecations at a hapless worker, or grinned inwardly as he threatened to julienne a D-list celebrity. Now they were keen to discover how such an excoriating management style could produce so much success.

As Ramsay took to the stage to rapturous applause, his face projected across the vast screen behind, he instantly came across as affable, approachable and even a little self-deprecating. In the hour-and-a-half that followed, he spoke wistfully about his childhood dreams of a footballing career, which were wrecked in his late teens by a torn cruciate ligament and shattered cartilage, and his subsequent move into the restaurant world. He recalled an early career characterised by phenomenal commitment levels in which he “… virtually never had a day off until the age of 26.” As he talked about his career since then, an unmistakable affection and consideration for each of his many employees came through.

The Gordon Ramsay Group now consists of pubs, bistros and restaurants both in the UK and across the world. "Any time a good new restaurant opens up, anywhere in the world, we check it out," he said. "I send teams of 4-6 people to these places - not just chefs but waiters too - and they check out everything: even delicatessens and cooking stores. Then, as soon as they're back, we start incorporating the best ideas they've picked up into what we do."

Talent is by far the most important ingredient of Ramsay's business, and he described at length his approach to successful talent-management. One of the keys, he insists, is to ensure people air grievances before they can fester - at a recent management meeting he gave everyone two minutes to answer the question: "What pisses you off every day?" This ironed out so many problems that he repeated the process with his waiters and sommeliers: "They'd never been asked that before, and it acted like group therapy."

Continuous development is another high priority: Ramsay operates a skills centre with fully equipped kitchens at his group HQ in London. "It runs induction courses two days a week, and is otherwise outsourced to other companies," he says, "so it's now self-funding." He also uses his restaurants as training environments, most notably via the "Chef's Table", a seating arrangement that allows diners to see inside the kitchen as their food is being prepared. "Again, this removes the intimidation for the customer," he said. "It's a theatre... and we use it as a bit of masterclass." The chief aim of the table is to improve the social skills of the chefs, who must each present a course of their own design in under one minute. "It turns them into dynamic young leaders," he says. "The effect on confidence levels is staggering."

Other initiatives ensure all members of staff have an holistic view of the business - for example, he recently forced the chefs to swap jobs with waiters of equivalent ranks for an entire week, to demonstrate that life was equally tough on both sides of the hotplate.

Perhaps the most transferable advice of the evening was Ramsay's ultimate guiding principle: "Never take customers for granted – the Customer is king again.”