Category Archives: Leadership

Leadership, Recommended Books

Great Companies Focus On Great Products and Service, Not On Profit

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Two of the greatest leaders in the technology industry, the late Steve Jobs of Apple and Jeff Bezos of Amazon build their companies around great products and customer service, and based their companies’ values on delivering to these expectations.

Steve Jobs built a company focused on end to end control with hardware and software fully integrated to create the most beautiful designs and perfect customer experience. His intense focus on perfection and his inspiring vision of creating products that would ‘make a dent in the universe’ changed the world, and I strongly recommend reading his biography by Walter Isaacson.

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Steve Jobs never focused on money and profit as a motivator, but on doing something that’s great, and I believe he best said it with ,being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me… going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me’. Too many companies fail to have a compelling vision, and if they do, they fail to follow and deliver to it, and they just end up designing products or offering services with the goal in mind to make profit and gain market share. They don’t build products that they would enjoy using themselves, or offer services that they would love to experience themselves. How often do you feel your company is run by the numbers and politics, and that decisions are being made for the wrong reasons? Steve Jobs was known for his brutal honesty and that you were either ‘a hero or a shithead’ and sometimes both on the same day, but he was always clear about what he stood for, and never held back giving feedback and did not accept poor performance or product quality. While his leadership style was often criticized for being too harsh, people wanted to follow him because they believed in his compelling vision and understood that he was only trying to push his people to achieve what they didn’t know that they were capable of.

Jeff Bezos, while completely different compared to Steve Jobs in his character and leadership style built another great company with Amazon that’s second to none (Jeff’s leadership tips on Forbes.com). His intense focus on customer service made Amazon what it is today, a company with over 90 thousand employees that beats profit expectations again and again, but more importantly a company that’s known for its great service and obsession with customers.

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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, Leadership, Restaurant Reviews

Maison Kayser’s New Opening And A Friend’s Journey to Leadership

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Nothing is more rewarding than seeing the people who worked for you and that you believe in succeed. One of my former employees recently returned to New York for a position as food & beverage management trainee at Maison Kayser, and now got promoted to manage its new opening in the Flatiron building. She invited me and my fiancée to the soft-opening to experience what the newest addition to the Maison Kayser portfolio would be all about and to give our feedback to the kitchen and service.

She did well when working for me as a floor manager two years ago, and I expected her to do great that evening as well.

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I was taken with the food and service of Maison Kayser and can strongly recommend you trying it for lunch or dinner, or just to pick up some delicious pastry and bakery, but I was deeply impressed by her performance in managing the soft-opening and the many challenges that come with it. Most leaders in the making have a hard time evolving from being a micro-manager to delegating things to their employees, and letting go of control to empower and grow those around them. She graciously did the introduction, ensured we settled in well, and stepped back to let her people take over and be in control. A successful evening and a leader by heart! Continue reading Maison Kayser’s New Opening And A Friend’s Journey to Leadership →

Development, Leadership

Jeffrey is Leading the Dance to Perfection!

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Have you ever experienced pure service excellence? It’s when you get asked exactly the right questions, being offered the right products, it’s when everything feels so right, and it feels like you are dancing while being led by a true professional! It happens when you walk into the Apple store on 5th Avenue, dine at Per Se in the Time Warner Center… the experience is perfect from beginning to end, a perfect dance!

Getting your pictures taken by Jeffrey Bennett of JLBWEDDING.COM is no different! My fiancée and I decided to get our engagement pictures taken a few months ago and wanted to have Vintage New York as our theme. New York is where we first met, fell in love and it would always have a special place in our heart, so we figured we should invest in making this a lasting memory.

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Click on the picture above for more!

We googled for the right photographer, but most of them were pretty much the same, they all offered to take beautiful pictures in exchange for money… that’s it, and nothing more. Until we found Jeffrey Bennett‘s pictures of a couple in New York that he took a few years ago online, and both of us agreed instantly that we loved how he was able to capture the moment in its pure elegance and simplicity, not just a beautiful picture, but a real emotion. Why do I write about this?  Not because I am getting paid for it or because I want him to take our wedding pictures as well and am already trying to bargain for a good price by doing this… hold on, on a second thought, no I am kidding. I am writing this because my fiancée and I were so amazed by how he was able to lead us through this experience and come up with this breathtaking pictures as a result of it.

My greatest fear was probably how uncomfortable my fiancée would always get by anyone taking pictures of her, and how she could possibly make it through the day by getting her pictures taken all day long in New York City dressed up in vintage cloths. But Jeffrey arrived and any worries or concerns were gone within minutes. Not only did he know exactly what we wanted, but he also was able to lead us there with confidence.

Being able to lead people is necessary in any business if you want to be successful. Being able to show empathy and putting yourself in your customers shoes, while infusing comfort and confidence is what differentiates good from great artists. I strongly believe that Jeffrey‘s personal skills are what led to this beautiful product. His technical and artistic skills may enable him to be a good photographer, but his people skills that can be seen in his pictures shown in the comfort and confidence of his customers make him in my opinion an artist second to none!

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Development, Leadership

Steve Jobs’ Most Memorable Speech

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Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment of failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

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Above is a taste of Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address and one of the Top 10 Commencement Speeches of all times. It’s also most motivating and encouraging when having to face the uncomfortable situations in life and when having to make the tough decisions that really matter and make a difference. Watch the full speech by clicking on video below.

Continue reading Steve Jobs’ Most Memorable Speech →

How To, Leadership

How to Fire an Employee

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Having to fire an employee is never an easy or pleasant thing to do. You spend a lot of time and efforts searching for the right person for the job, conducted numerous interviews, focused a lot of attention and resources on the training of the new-hire, and strived to grow and develop the employee to help you in return growing your business. That being said firing an employee should only happen after you tried to counsel and help the employee to improve.

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Once you tried every avenue and termination is the last option, it’s the right thing for your organization, the other employees and in many cases for the employee being let go as well. Continue reading How to Fire an Employee →

Development, Leadership

The Power of ‘Thank You’

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I first heard about the power of frequently writing ‘thank you’ notes a couple of weeks ago at a training about leadership. The instructor of the training made a point of highlighting the power of saying thank you for a job well done, and how effective ‘thank you’ notes are for appreciation and recognition.

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Motivated and inspired by the training I started writing these notes for a couple of days until my excitement started fading away, and I just stopped doing it. I felt that it really wasn’t that important, and that people wouldn’t care anyway. Until last weekend… Continue reading The Power of ‘Thank You’ →

Development, Leadership

What I Learned from ‘The Startup Kids’

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The Startup Kids is an excellent documentary about young entrepreneurs starting their own businesses. It talks about entrepreneurship and how successes are the consequences of failures.

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So what does it take to be a Startup Kid and build your own business? Continue reading What I Learned from ‘The Startup Kids’ →

Development, How To, Leadership

How Do You Get People To Like You

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Working in the hotel industry just like any other service industry it’s all about people, it’s about one person respecting another person.

It’s about people trusting each other, because if there is no trust between people, efficiency and productivity will go down to zero.

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Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So how do you get people to like you, or better yet, how do you get people to want to work with you and for you? And I am not talking about a popularity contest, I am talking about respecting another person, respecting his or her values and beliefs. Continue reading How Do You Get People To Like You →

Development, Leadership, Recommended Books

Are You Really Busy or Just Lazy?

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Being busy is just another form of laziness!

‘Excuse me? I am running around the entire day putting out fires and getting things done!’ This would have most likely been my response to above statement just two years ago when working more than 12 hours a day and seven days a week. Two years ago I honestly believed that I added value every minute of all those extra hours worked.

As Tim Ferris describes it in The 4-Hour Workweek ‘Being busy is a form of laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action’, and what this means is that being busy is only a sign of not being able to prioritize tasks and being able to focus on the important stuff.

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Continue reading Are You Really Busy or Just Lazy? →

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, Leadership

You Are The CEO of You!

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Congratulations on being the CEO of what should be the most important corporation for you, congratulations on being the CEO of ‘You’! Understanding yourself as a business, that requires planning, investment and exercise is the foundation for a balanced and fulfilling professional and personal ‘career’.

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Image courtesy of imagerymajestic at FreeDigitalPhotos.Net

What’s important to keep in mind as the CEO of ‘Yourself, Inc.’: Continue reading You Are The CEO of You! →

Development, Leadership

212° the extra degree

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At 211 degrees, water is hot. At 212 degrees, water starts boiling. With boiling water comes steam, and with steam you can power a locomotive. It is that one extra degree that makes all the difference, and it is that one extra degree that separates the good from the great!

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Image courtesy of Victor Habbick at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

How often did you have the feeling of frustration and lost motivation because you couldn’t seem to achieve your goals, and that no matter how much efforts you put in and how hard you tried, nothing was going to change? … chances are that you were sitting right at 211 degrees, and all it would have taken for you to succeed was that one extra degree.

Much too often we give up right before that moment when we would have accomplished everything what we strived for, and we just needed to keep trying. If you want to get ahead, become great at what you do and be successful in achieving your goals you’ll need to keep going when it seems to be the toughest and not turn around.

Development, Guest Relations, Leadership

The 30 most important minutes of your day

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It’s your 30 minutes lunch break! You either believed it to be an interruption of your day as you had so much work to be done, or the highlight as you were able to step out of your busy day for a moment to take a deep breath!

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Image courtesy of sirikul at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

But one way or the other, it turns out that you were wrong. Talking to my dear friend McKinley the other day, who follows this blog loyally from the beginning, and listening to him talking about the importance of not only never sitting alone while having lunch in the staff canteen, but also making a point of always sitting with different people, and use this half an hour to connect with people and build or strengthen relationships, opened my eyes. Continue reading The 30 most important minutes of your day →

Development, Leadership

If You Want Your Business to Improve, Do It the P&G Way!

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Are you just pretending that you want to know what’s wrong in your business that you can improve it, or do you really want to hear the hurtful truth and are ready to make the uncomfortable decisions that are necessary?

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Image courtesy of nokhook_buchachon at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Either your managers are conducting superficial meetings pretending that they want to learn what’s wrong in their business so that they can learn from it and fix it, or they really want to know what’s wrong but their middle managers are filtering reality and telling them only what they want to hear so they can look good in front of their bosses. Either way any necessary progress and healthy change is being made impossible. Continue reading If You Want Your Business to Improve, Do It the P&G Way! →

Development, Leadership

8 Reasons Why You Should Start Cross-Training Now

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You’re conducting the daily pre-shift meetings and your employees cannot stop complaining about the other departments and venting their frustrations. You feel that the lack of trust between your departments makes progress and greatness impossible. No matter how well you’re trying to explain how the other departments work and what their challenges are, your employees don’t want to hear you.

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If this sounds familiar to you, cross-training is the right solution for you! Continue reading 8 Reasons Why You Should Start Cross-Training Now →

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? →

Leadership

As Middle Managers We Are Great at Filtering Reality

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You’re doing a great job in putting out those fires every day and in running around saving the world. You look good in front of your bosses because whenever you’re on duty they don’t hear about any guest complaints or service breakdowns. In the eyes of your bosses operations are doing well and everything seems to be running as smooth as it possibly could thanks to you, and when asked if all is under control, you would simply smile and nod. But bottom line is that you’re only doing a great job at filtering reality!

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Inception

….and without even noticing or wanting it you are seriously damaging your organization! Continue reading As Middle Managers We Are Great at Filtering Reality →

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 →