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?
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?
Image courtesy by stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net Continue reading What’s all the Fuss about Leadership anyway?
‘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.
Image courtesy of dan at FreeDigitalPhotos.net Continue reading Take care of the Big Rocks first
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.
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
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
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!
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?
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
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 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?
