Category Archives: Leadership

Leadership

The Secret Of Effective Communication

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When I started in hospitality I believed myself to be an effective communicator and always made sure that my coworkers and superiors would be up to date with the information that I had so that everyone would stay ahead of the game. Once I moved to management I remember telling my director that he should improve his communication to the team and I was convinced that I could do a better job communicating if I was in his position. It’s not that he wouldn’t communicate what was going on, but I was mostly the one asking him for updates and trying to get myself involved as much as I could to get the information I needed in order for me to be effective…. and I still believed communication to be one of my strengths.

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Continue reading The Secret Of Effective Communication →

Leadership

Characteristics Of A Bad Leader

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You’ve been reading posts after posts on how to become a great leader and how to motivate the people around you.  Unfortunately bad leaders are more common than the great ones, and it can be very dangerous to work for people who don’t know what they are doing. It’s not only dangerous for your business, but for more selfish reasons, it can be very dangerous for your own career and kill the passion for what you are doing. While I strongly believe that you can learn from both, the good and the bad boss, you shouldn’t try to find excuses to continue working for the bad one.

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Office Space

Here are some of the characteristics of a bad boss: Continue reading Characteristics Of A Bad Leader →

Guest Services, How To, Leadership

Kill Complacency Before It Kills You!

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Complacency is your worst enemy! It can damage your business or your career, and the worst thing about it is that you’ll probably be the last one to find out that you became complacent yourself!

Screen shot 2014-01-06 at 9.14.59 PMFrom the outside it’s always easy to judge, if someone is falling victim to complacency. The person doesn’t believe in change anymore, or cannot see the need for it, loses his passion for excellence at every single step of the way, believes that he’s the victim of the incompetence around him, and is not willing to step out of the comfort zone anymore and take risks. Pretty obvious, right? Anyone from the outside can see it.

But what happens if you’re the one who is struggling with complacency without even knowing it? Did you ever had the feeling that it’s not just not right that you have to do all the work, and that people around you should step up to their plate as well, that you’re tired of always going the extra step without seeing the direct impact or outcome of your efforts? Complacency is a slow dead and you need to watch out for the early signs of it:

  • You’re not taking risks anymore
  • You’re too comfortable stepping out of your comfort zone
  • You’re not striving to do your best anymore
  • You’re not trying to think out of the box anymore
  • You’re not taking initiative anymore

Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, said that ‘success breeds complacency’, and ‘complacency breeds failure’, and he’s so right. You look at all the companies and businesses that used to be so initiative and great just a moment ago, and are not even relevant anymore now. But what happened? Well they stopped changing and evolving because of complacency, stood still for a moment, and the world passed by them.

Just have a look at most of the great hotels from the past. Try them and you’ll be surprised by how their service and hospitality lost its edge.

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Guest Relations, Guest Services, Leadership

Why It’s Better To Ask For Forgiveness Than For Permission

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The value of acting promptly and making a mistake requiring forgiveness is greater than the value of delaying to get permission! Let me explain you why…

Most companies fail to deliver excellent customer service because their employees are not empowered to make the right decisions the moment it counts most to make the customer happy. They need to check with their managers first delaying any helpful response, and making it frustrating for the customer to do business with you. Empower your employees to make the customer happy the fast and uncomplicated way. Your customers have a choice to do business with you, or the competition across the street.

Screen shot 2013-12-08 at 6.31.07 PMIf it’s the right thing to do and in the best interest of the customer, your company and colleagues, go ahead and do it. You’re not going to be 100% right all the time, but we’re working in the service industry and are not performing heart surgery, so trust me most mistakes can be sorted out later. We need to go back to the roots and focus all of our energy and efforts on making the customer happy. This is the only way to differentiate ourselves from the competition and ensure that we stay relevant. Continue reading Why It’s Better To Ask For Forgiveness Than For Permission →

Guest Relations, Guest Services, Leadership

Graduated From Hotel Management School? Why You Should Become A Butler!

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Years ago hotel management graduates would mostly apply for a position as front desk agent or sales coordinator at the beginning of their journey in hospitality. Why? Because this is what everyone else applied for and because it seemed to be the most promising path for a successful career in hospitality. Now this is changing…

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Continue reading Graduated From Hotel Management School? Why You Should Become A Butler! →

Guest Services, Leadership

Complexity Is Your Enemy!

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Making things simply for the customer is the essence of great and prompt service! How often do you get frustrated by unnecessarily complicated and difficult service?

Our policy states… I need to ask my manager first… No, I am sorry… You need to… Please hold… let me connect you to…

Does any of this sound familiar to you? Trust me it is happening at your company as well! Our customers do have a choice, and if we don’t strive to make it easy for them to do business with us, one of our competitors will sooner or later!

Listen to your guests and put yourself in their shoes!

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If you want to learn more from Richard Branson and his secrets to provide excellent customer service you must watch video below. My favorite customer service tip to empower your employees to do the right thing the fast and uncomplicated way is ‘it’s better to ask for forgiveness than asking for permission’.

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Development, Leadership

The Ant – A Tale About Micro-Management

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Every morning the busy ant came to work happy and motivated, joyfully singing her song. She loved her job, and spend most of her days working hard. The ant continued being busy and working hard for years, but without anyone to supervise her or constantly tell her what to do.

a-bug-s-life-pixar-67315_1024_768A Bug’s Life Pixar

The general manager, a big fat bug, recognized soon that it could not continue with these unacceptable working conditions and hired a supervisor to enhance control and with it productivity. He hired the beetle with plenty of experience in the work field and excellent references. The first matter of business for the beetle was to standardize the working hours of the ant, and to accomplish this he started compiling reports that would keep track of the working hours of the ant. He purchased and installed a time clock to help monitoring the hours of the ant and to help him with the paper work. Continue reading The Ant – A Tale About Micro-Management →

Guest Services, Leadership

The Butler Is Leading The Future Of Luxury!

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I recently published so what does the butler really do and why butler service is a must in any luxury hotel, and received lots of feedback to talk more about what the butler does, the value added services that come with it, and how it takes luxury to the next level. While becoming a butler requires an education in hospitality management at most properties, and plenty of on the job training, it’s the mindset of wanting to serve others and being passionate about creating an experience that’s second to none, that differentiates a butler by heart from everyone else that believes a bow tie and white gloves cover it.

As butler you are the ambassador of your brand, you are expected to be able to have a sophisticated and intellectually stimulating conversation with celebrities, industry leaders, and head of states and the most distinguished and well-traveled guests, and provide them with an experience that they cannot find anywhere else.

Sounds intimidating? Well, I didn’t say being a butler was going to be easy, every one can put on a tuxedo, a bow tie and a pair of white gloves (well, some will struggle with the bow tie), but only very few can deliver to the promise that we make when offering our guests the finest service that only the butler can provide.

str71ls-85347-ButlerIn so what does the butler really do I talk about that the butler provides a value, that no one can afford to buy, no matter how wealthy, and that anyone strives to have more of, that the butler provides time… time when helping you to unpack your suitcases and having your garments pressed, so you can enjoy your stay at the hotel from the very beginning, time when helping you with your dinner, theater or musical arrangements, and time when not having to worry about anything else but what truly matters to you. Continue reading The Butler Is Leading The Future Of Luxury! →

Development, Leadership

The Greatest Challenge of Any Luxury Hotelier

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The greatest challenge of any luxury hotelier is without any doubt change. Not change itself, but the hesitation to let go of the status quo and the past, and to embrace the future… to embrace the future and with that to stay relevant.

At every single luxury hotel I worked so far, employees would always tell me about the golden past, how everything was better years ago and how things are going down nowadays. They would tell me about the sumptuous flower bouquets in every guest room, the abundance of luxury amenities, and how money didn’t matter. How our guests would all be dressed in the finest suits and dresses, and how glamorous and ostentatious everything was. With the words of Bob Dylan the times they are a changin’… you cannot stop change.

Our guests don’t define luxury in material goods like flowers and amenities anymore, they define it by experiencing and collecting enriching experiences. They define luxury with service that goes beyond.

My wife and I visited the W Koh Samui on our vacation to Thailand at the beginning of the year, and while the hotel was fantastic, it’s not the breathtaking view, nor our amazingly beautiful villa with the private pool, and the fine dining restaurant we keep talking about, it’s the service that stayed in our memories long after our departure. Unfortunately my wife got food poisoning from the food at the airport and got sick as soon as we arrived at the property. In the evening while we we’re trying to eat a little at the restaurant and hoping for her to get better, the waiter noticed that she didn’t feel well and offered assistance.

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W Retreat Koh Samui

While he wasn’t able to help himself, he right away got the director of rooms, who arranged the hotel limousine for us and asked one of his employees to escort us to the hospital to stay with us until we would return to the property later that night. Once my wife got better and we came back to the hotel, they arranged some porridge in our villa with a note for her to get better soon. We felt that the hotel truly cared about us, and that we built a connection with the people working there. Continue reading The Greatest Challenge of Any Luxury Hotelier →

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 →