Tag Archives: leader

Leadership

The Only Way To Succeed

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The most important thing that I have ever learned in my career is that it is all about having the right attitude and giving your best every day and at every turn – nothing can replace that.

Manuel Martinez

Frankly you can be the most talented, skilled and knowledgeable professional, but if you are not willing to leave your sweat, blood and tears on the floor for it, you will not succeed… and even if you are the hardest working person in the industry, you might still not succeed. The secret ingredient to success is, to not only work hard but also to believe that anything is possible and to make everyone else around you believe that as well. Continue reading The Only Way To Succeed →

Leadership

A Must Read Guide To Leadership

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I always used to believe that if one person can learn to do something, anyone should be able to learn it provided the proper training and guidance. I used to believe that anyone can evolve from being a micro-manager to becoming a great leader.

I now believe that while you can learn certain leadership techniques and skills and evolve to become average at leading other people, you’ll never be able to make a true difference and change things. Continue reading A Must Read Guide To Leadership →

Leadership

Leaders Vs. Managers? What Are You?

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Everyone is talking about leadership, and how we need to evolve from managers to leaders, but only few really get the difference! It’s a beautiful word and the thought of leading people is very appealing, but how can you make the step from managing to leading? And how can you get people wanting to follow you?

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Continue reading Leaders Vs. Managers? What Are You? →

Leadership

We Have Always Done It This Way

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You know how every other leadership article is always about change, and how we need to evolve and do things differently to stay relevant and competitive. It always made perfect sense to me, and it seemed the right and logical thing to do. Of course you need to be able to change, evolve and adapt as effective leaders.

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Well I never really took a moment trying to truly understand why it would be so difficult for others to make that change, to adopt to new things and to evolve. I never really tried to put myself in the shoes of others who couldn’t seem to make that change. Continue reading We Have Always Done It This Way →

Leadership

Can You Learn Leadership?

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I always used to believe that if one person can to do something, anyone should be able to learn it provided the proper training and guidance. I used to believe that anyone can evolve from being a micro-manager to becoming a great leader.

I now believe that while you can learn certain leadership techniques and skills and evolve to become average at leading other people, you’ll never be able to make a true difference and change things.

Why? Because I believe that the core values of leaders have a passion for what they are doing, a desire to grow other people and a vision that people want to fallow… and these values cannot be learned by choice, they are embedded in your character. Simon Sinek explains on TED how great leaders challenge the status quo and think different (click image below to get to his blog).

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True leaders must have:

  • A passion for your product or service. If you’re not truly passionate about what you are doing, you’ll never be able to overcome all the challenges along the way, move mountain like obstacles and remain focused, even when everyone else around has already given up.
  • A desire to help others. People want to work for people who support them and have their interested at heart… no one wants to work for a boss who has only his next promotion in mind. People always work for people, not companies, and will go above and beyond if they believe in the person they’re working for. If they don’t trust their leaders, the simplest task will be impossible to accomplish.
  • A vision. We all want to believe in something, believe that we are part of something great, bigger than us, and that our efforts can make a difference. We want to give meaning to what we do.

Check out Simon Sinek’s take on why leaders must have a vision on TED

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Development, How To, Leadership

How To Make Feedback Effective

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Giving and receiving feedback can be a gift, as it can help you build or strengthen a relationship, if done right, or it can damage a relation, or be career hindering and de-motivating.

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Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Concerns with giving & receiving feedback:

When receiving feedback our potential concerns are that we fear criticism or our reaction to feedback and that we are nervous about having to hear something that might make us feel uncomfortable. When giving feedback we could fear that we hurt the other person’s feelings or that the other person might get defensive… and just like when receiving feedback, we could be nervous about giving it. Continue reading How To Make Feedback Effective →

Development

Do you know what your goals are?

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What’s my goal, is one of the most important questions you can ask yourself at the beginning of your journey and your career in hospitality!

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Image courtesy of pakorn at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I am recruiting graduates from hotel management schools for the position of housekeeping floor manager now for years, and my experience is that many, if not most, do not have clearly defined goals and are rushed to get promoted as fast as possible, and definitely faster than their peers from school. Continue reading Do you know what your goals are? →

Leadership

What’s all the Fuss about Leadership anyway?

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Everyone is talking about leadership, and how we need to evolve from managers to leaders, but only few really get the difference! It’s a beautiful word and the thought of leading people is very appealing, but how can you make the step from managing to leading? And how can you get people wanting to follow you?

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Image courtesy by stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net Continue reading What’s all the Fuss about Leadership anyway? →

Development, How To

Who Else Wants to Know the Secret to Happiness?

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Does a truck full of money, a celebrity status, or a designer suit buy you happiness?… and if it does, how long does this moment of happiness last?

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Anyone who says money doesn’t buy happiness should talk to a homeless person, and anyone who says money does buy happiness should talk to Bill Gates! The difference in happiness between a person making 5 k a year, and 50 k a year, is huge, as it is a matter of security and covering the basic needs. The difference in happiness between a person making 50 k a year and 50 million a year is minimal. Money does not buy happiness, but it’s a necessity to cover our basic needs as shelter, food, clothing, medical care and so on. Continue reading Who Else Wants to Know the Secret to Happiness? →

Development

Why would anyone pursue a career in hotel management?

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Why pursue a career in hotel management? Is this the right profession for me?

If you’re asking yourself these questions and are yet undecided, if a career in hospitality is the right choice for you, I hope you’ll find this helpful in making your decision.

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Image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

If you’re looking for becoming a millionaire, working regular hours, having every weekend off, or for a healthy work-life balance, chances are that this is not the right business for you! Continue reading Why would anyone pursue a career in hotel management? →

Development, Leadership

Take care of the Big Rocks first

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‘The Big Rocks’ theory is by far one of my favorite lessons in leadership, and it took me some time to really understand. I am sure that you must have heard about this story in some way shape or form before, but there is a difference between just hearing and understanding it, and truly believing in it.

My boss loved to tell me his lessons in leadership in vivid stories, some of them made sense right at the beginning, some of them needed lots of fine tuning, and some are better off never told again.

Regardless of how busy I thought I was in my role as housekeeping manager in a unionized property putting out the fires of the day to day while making everyone happy in being always responsive and helpful, my boss reminded me at the end of each day that I accomplished nothing, as I did not do anything to make anything better for the next day. He said that I was so focused on the small rocks that I could not possible take care of the big ones.

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Image courtesy of dan at FreeDigitalPhotos.net Continue reading Take care of the Big Rocks first →

Development, Leadership

The hidden powers of delegating

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Developing from being a good manager who is excellent in executing tasks like scheduling, payroll, and managing his team members by setting expectations and holding them accountable, to a leader who delegates tasks to his team member and focuses more on developing and growing his people, is necessary if you want your organization and yourself to succeed.

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Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The obvious power of delegating is that by ‘delegating’ tasks and responsibilities to your team you can focus on the vision and long-term goals of the organization. Continue reading The hidden powers of delegating →

Leadership

On edge

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Did you ever ask yourself why we make the most mistakes when the occupancy is low and operations are quiet, or why our service scores are falling down during the slow weeks of the year?

It’s December and we are fully committed with no rooms left to sell, every guest is paying rack rate, and the guest expectations are the highest of the year. Yet everything seems to be falling into place, operations are mostly smooth (exceptions proof the rule as always), and our guest satisfaction index goes up.

How is it possible that we do better when we have less time and resources at hand and are expected to do more compared to when we seem to have all the time in the world and people standing around only waiting to serve a guest? Continue reading On edge →

Development

Changing the culture

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Changing the culture is the basic requirement for any enhancements or achievements. If you are aiming to improve your associate or guest satisfaction, reinforce you standards of excellence or improve your star ratings, the first step is to establish a culture with a mindset wanting to be the best at every turn.

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Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

How exactly do you change a culture? Continue reading Changing the culture →

Leadership

Support is everything!

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At one of the hotels I worked at we faced the challenge of being consistent in how we assigned room upgrades to our guests, and were not in line with the directions of our loyalty program. We had over 70 percent of return guests and were giving upgrades left and right, not just to the next room category, but to junior suites and up as well. This not only reduced the feeling of being special and recognized when receiving upgrades, it also caused our guests to feel entitled to the upgrade and to complain whenever we could not accommodate them. Even more we were not able to up-sell any of our guests that were actually willing to pay for a nicer room. We had a change of GM’s and our new leader made it very clear from the beginning that we would honor the guidelines of our loyalty program in assigning upgrades, and even assigning very frequent guests to the rooms booked, and that we as managers would be expected to be consistent with this. As expected it was a bumpy start and we had to deal with plenty of unhappy guests for a couple of months. Many of them asked to speak to the Hotel Manager and General Manager to express their unhappiness and to complain about the individual providing the service and denying the upgrade. To our surprise the GM stayed consistent with the message given by his managers and front line staff, and supported us 100 percent. After a couple of months the guest complaints disappeared, guests started appreciating upgrades again, were giving us higher scores on guest satisfaction surveys and started to book suites at a higher rather than always hoping for an upgrade. Continue reading Support is everything! →

Leadership

The Cost of Bad Leadership

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Do you believe that you can learn as much from a bad boss as you would from a good one? Wouldn’t you learn how bad judgement, behavior and management has a bad impact on your organization, what not to do and how you could make a difference?

Having worked for a good boss and leader is invaluable for your career, as you understand the importance of integrity, respect and moral values and principles. What is the take-away from having worked for a bad boss?

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Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

You can argue that you learn from both, the good and the bad boss, but at the end of the day you are just finding excuses to keep yourself motivated if you’re working for a bad boss. Continue reading The Cost of Bad Leadership →

Leadership

The smoke screen!

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The difference between an effective and ineffective manager in addressing poor performance and holding people accountable is the ability to look right through the smoke screen to the root cause of the problem and to see things for what they are.

I remember my first real review, and I say real because it was the first time one of my supervisors actually took the time and invested the efforts to tell me things I did not want to hear, tell me that I was not perfect and the areas that I needed to improve and how I could do that with his help. Believe me I was able to give my boss tons of good reasons (and truly believed in them) for why I did things that way and how this was not my fault and so on… sounds familiar to you?

Well, my boss did not let go, kept pushing and went after me until I gave in. It took me a couple of days to truly understand and accept his feedback, and looking back, I will be forever thankful that he invested the energy to help me change and improve. Continue reading The smoke screen! →

How To

How did I become a micro-manager?

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How did I become a micro-manager?

Yes, without noticing it, wanting or being able to admit to it, I developed to be a micromanager with my first managerial roles. Thankfully I had a mentor that pushed me to see my leadership path for what it was, ineffective.

Well, in order for me to be able to change my leadership style, delegate responsibilities, empower my employees to make their own decisions, grow and learn from their own missteps and successes, I first had to understand how I became a micromanager. I was very successful in my previous positions as line associate, always exceeded expectations, and a perfectionist with great sense for details. So what happened?

I didn’t change my power alley. I didn’t understand that I had to develop and that what got me into the position of a manager wasn’t automatically going to make me an effective leader as well.

I didn’t want to accept that I had to change. Now I understand that everyone needs to make this change at one point, and many never make the jump from (micro-)manager to leader.

Most micro-managers were very successful at one point in their career, and never developed their power alley, never took the risks of making the jump.

Starting to delegate responsibilities and empower employees to make their own decisions (and not asking at every single step of the way for approval) isn’t easy as it comes with accepting and supporting the missteps of your employees along the way. But it will make your team more effective, and enable it to go beyond. Continue reading How did I become a micro-manager? →

Leadership

Who are ‘they’?

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I don’t know why ‘they’ did this. ‘They’ asked me to tell you. ‘They’ want us to do this now. Does this sound familiar to you?

Who the heck are ‘they’? Not only in the hotel industry, but in any business, if anything went wrong, an unpopular decision was made, or simply anytime someone didn’t want to step out of the comfort zone, accept ownership or responsibility, it’s ‘they’. Convenient isn’t it?

Simply put you will talk about ‘they’ when you don’t want to accept responsibility, and even more importantly, when you don’t identify yourself with your organization, or better yet, with the leaders that you are working for and their decisions.

So whose fault is it that our employees and us talk about ‘they’ every time it’s not pleasant, favorable or popular? By the way it’s not just our employees, you hear them talking about ‘they’ at any level of the organization. For our front line employees, ‘they’ is their managers, and for those managers, ‘they’ is their directors and executives, and the buck never stops…

So whose fault is it again? Well, the easy way out is that ‘they’ are the top leaders or top brass of the organization for not encouraging their employees to take responsibility and ownership, and hindering trust and empowerment by micromanaging from the top down. The cost of this dysfunctional environment caused by this lack of ownership is unbearable, and the only reason why a hotel fostering this mindset is able to stay in business is that this mindset was allowed to become an industry standard. Continue reading Who are ‘they’? →

How To

How to achieve Harmony

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Establishing a harmonic work environment isn’t easy, and I learned that you can only achieve harmony once you stop trying to and worrying too much about it. When I started as a manager a couple of years ago I remember experiencing plenty of conflict every day caused by a changing leadership team, inadequate staffing levels, and unexperienced managers (myself included). It took us about twelve month to get to a setting that allowed us to improve and accomplish greatness as a team. I recall coming to work and I could not believe to experience a day without any conflict, and I clearly remember my hope and concern that it would not last and stay like that… almost to a point that I wished I would be able to avoid any possible conflict only to guarantee this just achieved harmony. But it never worked, I wasn’t able to turn a blind eye either, and the conflict didn’t stop.

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Image courtesy of stockimages / FreeDigitalPhotos.net Continue reading How to achieve Harmony →