The most important thing I learned in my career is that it is all about your attitude and that you have full control of it – no one else does.
Continue reading The #1 Most Valuable Thing I Discovered In My Career
Tag Archives: leadership
A Must Read Guide To Leadership
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
Leaders Vs. Managers? What Are You?
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?
The Only Thing Standing Between You And Your Goals Is…
The only thing standing between you and your goals is more than what the Wolf of Wall Street is trying to tell us.
It’s not just being afraid to follow your goals for one reason or another, it’s having a clear understanding of what your goals really are to begin with.
‘What are my goals’, is one of the most important questions you can ask yourself at the beginning of your journey and your career in hospitality!
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 The Only Thing Standing Between You And Your Goals Is…
Do You Have The Right Attitude To Succeed?
You come to work on Monday morning after a rejuvenating weekend with your loved one, and get confronted by a coworker with a negative attitude within the first ten minutes… you kept working endless hours over the weekend to complete the project in time for the upcoming presentation and put in endless efforts, but your peers missed the deadline and your presentation got cancelled… you always try to do your best and work hard, and the person next to you is sleeping on the wheel, yet there is no sign of accountability… other people in your organization have ulterior motives and employ unethical techniques to advance themselves…
Does any of this sound familiar to you?
Don’t get yourself in the victim role and develop a negative mindset, but rather continue to focus on yourself and on doing the right thing. I am not saying that you shouldn’t hold people accountable to their behavior, actions and performance (without it your business cannot succeed), but you cannot make it personal either, get emotional about it, or let it change anything of who you are and what you believe in. If you believe in Karma and that one’s actions always have consequences, even if you yourself are not able to address it or do anything about it, you can trust that no one gets away with cutting corners or unethical behavior. Focus on being at your best every day and on growing the people around you the best you can, and you will always have a feeling of accomplishment by the end of the day.
I have come across a lot of smart people with the skill set to be very successful in their role, and who yet fail to work as a team, fail to get the best out of their teams and coworkers, and fail to deliver the expected results because of their attitude.
If you believe that 10% in life is what happens to you, things that you cannot control, and 90% your attitude about it, you know what you have to focus on first – yourself and your outlook on things!
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Do You Have The Right Perspective On Your Career?
What’s my career 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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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 Have The Right Perspective On Your Career?
Step Out Of Your Comfort Zone!
Your comfort zone is your worst enemy if you want to grow and move ahead.
This is the place that you feel most comfortable, and it’s the area where you know exactly what to do and what not to – chances for you to make mistakes are very small, if you just remain there! Continue reading Step Out Of Your Comfort Zone!
The #1 Rule Of Housekeeping – Inspect What You Expect
I recently went to a training about leadership and rooms operations, and one of the facilitators stated that if we want our teams to be effective and successful that we need to ‘inspect what we expect’. Continue reading The #1 Rule Of Housekeeping – Inspect What You Expect
Are You Just Busy Or Are You Making A Difference?
If you are a manager in operations in any unionized hotel in NYC you are most likely working a lot of extra hours every day and find yourself busy from the moment you walk into the door to the moment you realize that you worked again over 12 hours and on top of that even forgot to take lunch break… and yet you still don’t have the feeling that you accomplished anything meaningful on your way home. Continue reading Are You Just Busy Or Are You Making A Difference?
Give Me Solutions Not Problems!
I strongly believe that constructive feedback is a must and I want my team to come to me with solutions to opportunities rather than just problems.
Most companies have a culture of complaining and I believe that it’s their leaders’ fault for accepting this. It’s essential to share feedback with your boss and I understand that sometimes it’s important to simple vent, but keep in mind that the goal is to make things better. Chances are that most problems are not news to your boss and that rather than being part of the problem you want to be part of the solution.
What You Must Know Before Training Your Employees
I attended a training this week with focus on rooms (front desk and housekeeping) operations within the hotel industry, and was amazed by what I learned. It was not so much the knowledge and expertise shared by the instructors, but the way how it was shared with the group. We had over 80 attendees in the training, and the instructors would divide the group into smaller teams of five to ten participants maximum and rotate them from one exercise to the next, so that the training would be much more intimate and personal, and everyone could try hands on what was discussed and learned just a moment ago. Continue reading What You Must Know Before Training Your Employees
We Have Always Done It This Way
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.
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
My Day As Director of Housekeeping
My day as director of housekeeping usually starts the night before when I go over my Outlook schedule for the next day to make sure that everything that I wanted to accomplish the next day or week is covered. It’s important that I don’t overload my schedule and set myself too many tasks to accomplish. I try to stretch my goals and get as much done as possible, but if it’s unreasonable, I’ll only feel frustrated the next day when things don’t go as planned.
Now if you were ever working in operations before you know that things can and will change all the time, and fires can come up all day long that require you to put them out quickly and move your schedule around… and that’s expected! It’s fine to make changes to your plan, you just need to have one in the first place to make sure that you don’t lose focus and get off track. Continue reading My Day As Director of Housekeeping
The Secret Of Effective Communication
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.
Characteristics Of A Bad Leader
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.
Here are some of the characteristics of a bad boss: Continue reading Characteristics Of A Bad Leader
Kill Complacency Before It Kills You!
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!
From 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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Graduated From Hotel Management School? Why You Should Become A Butler!
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…
Les Roches International School of Hotel Management
Continue reading Graduated From Hotel Management School? Why You Should Become A Butler!
Complexity Is Your Enemy!
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!
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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The Ant – A Tale About Micro-Management
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.
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
Can You Learn Leadership?
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).
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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