Tag Archives: opportunity

Training is a waste of time and money!

If you believe in the importance of ongoing and continuous training in your department or division, chances are that more than once in your career your superiors will challenge you and tell you that ‘training is a waste of time and money’, and a luxury that the hotel simply cannot afford at that time.

‘Excuse me… how could you say that?’

Reality is that training can be very expensive and a burden on your operations, if not executed effectively and if you don’t have a process in place of following up on the set expectations of the training. As a trainer it is your responsibility to show your organization the return on investment that it will have, and that you can measure it and how.

Having to convince your financial controller, you’ll need to be able to measure the improvement because of your training and show statistically how it will gain money for the hotel by having more happy employees who will attract more happy guests, who will spend more and stay more often (service profit chain) and not just lose money.

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Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Where to start? Well, first you should start by identifying where your company wants to get even better and where it needs to improve. Don’t design the training first and then try to push it through at any cost, but identify the necessary areas for improvement first and built the training on it. Continue reading Training is a waste of time and money!

Think about your future!

‘Alex do you have a moment, I need to talk to you?’

Ever so often I get approached by one of my staff wanting to talk to me about their future, what’s my outlook on their next career step and the path of their journey. It’s understandable that you want to know what your next position should be so you can start learning the necessary skills and work on improving on your weaknesses, but nine out of ten times this question is solely generated by impatience and the need to compete with friends, colleagues and former classmates. Being ambitious is a good thing and important to be successful, but it shouldn’t stem from jealousy of your friends and coworkers. Continue reading Think about your future!

Stop making excuses and start taking risks!

How can you motivate yourself and get the courage to push yourself out of your comfort zone and take calculated risks?

What motivates you to try something you have not done before? What gives you the courage to take risks, make unpopular decisions, or go against the tide?

I recently attended a leadership training, and one of the exercises was to write a speech that your boss would give about you at your retirement party. What would you want your boss to say about you looking back at your career? Would you not prefer having taken risks and not having to wonder ‘what if’?

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Image courtesy of Teerapun / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Trying to write this speech about yourself feels like a wake-up call (without a snooze button), and you suddenly think of all the things you should have already done by now. It hit me that the best time to start making a change and stop being afraid would have been a long time ago, and that the second best time is right now. It’s like trying to write your own review, you are more critical and tough on yourself than your boss would ever be (unless you are seeing yourself in the victim role in which of course you are right all the time and everyone else around you wrong). Continue reading Stop making excuses and start taking risks!