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foreign [Music] welcome to the Innovative hotelier brought to you by hotels magazine I'm your host Robin trimmingham any great leader understands that learning is a lifelong process and there's always room for improvement because they appreciate the world around them is constantly changing and to stay ahead of the game they must continuously expand their own Knowledge and Skills in the hotel industry however this can be a particular challenge because there's also a Temptation for leaders to micromanage tasks and to Value consistency over curiosity among team members as they strive to deliver a Flawless guest experience my guest today Dr Jeffrey oh is president and CEO of the saint Justine properties and president of the international Hospitality Institute he's an expert in the field of transformational leadership and he's here today to share his thoughts regarding how to inspire and motivate team members to achieve their full potential personally while also transcending their self-interest for the benefit of the organization join me now for my conversation with Dr o FOH is a global food service and hospitality company that manufactures smart commercial grade Solutions headquartered in Miami the company designs and manufactures all their restaurant and hotel products they have showrooms and distribution centers located throughout the globe and their products are always in stock and ready to ship from any of their distribution centers worldwide [Music] come Jeffrey it's great to get a chance to chat with you today Robin is a pleasure to meet you in person to chat with you I appreciate the opportunity um I was watching a couple of YouTube recordings that you've done in preparation for our conversation today and I got kind of intrigued can you tell us very briefly what inspired you to become a leadership coach for the hotel industry in the first place because that's very specific you tears it is I get I've got that question uh thrown at me a few times is an excellent question I found that there was a need I mean I have a lot of uh folks that have been fortunate to work with in the industry and in talking to some of these folks identified in need because I ran into leaders who wanted to be more confident who wanted to work on their public speaking skills who wanted to know how to cope with failure you know I had leaders who were trying to hit certain targets and they were struggling with getting to those targets and instead of questioning themselves like what am I doing wrong am I not good enough what can I do better how can I get better at managing teams how can I be a more effective leader so in talking to those folks I was inspired to want to help in a little any little way that I possibly can I certainly don't have all the answers I don't have many answers but I can ask you a lot of questions and I can have people as themselves a lot of questions and the key to being an effective coach is not to provide answers to people rather is to prompt them you know to push them to ask questions and then looking for answers to those questions they're going to be doing some great work on that journey of self-discovery so it's not really you providing the answers to people but you're prompting them and asking them questions and are going to get them to where they need to get to I had a particular gentleman who failed at a particular Enterprise and he said to me Jeffrey you know I just don't know how to handle this failure that's just happened to me it's just a big blow to my ego and I don't know how to deal with it what I said to them was very simple you know when you fail it's okay to beat yourself up but get the bitching done get it done quickly and then move on with the plan don't just sit around and yourself up day in and day out so I was inspired to do that just from my work in the hospitality industry a mild musician I a child International Hospitality Institute actually has a course that's called the certified Hospitality leadership coach that teaches leader is working on fatality how to do some of the things that I have worked with leaders on for many years you know you have a very interesting approach it really resonates with me personally what you're doing is commonly called transformational leadership and you know as a rule transformational leaders have Clear Vision and they Inspire others to achieve it for themselves so that's all well and good once you have you know the be-all and end-all Clear Vision yourself but what's your advice regarding how to let go of the personal weaknesses that are holding you back from getting there in the first place excellent question I think he starts by us being willing to do his self-inventory you mentioned personal weakness people have to know what their personal weaknesses are and knowing your personal weaknesses it can be your biggest strength just knowing what areas you foreshoot where you need to improve your point so it starts with us doing an inventory a self-inventory finding out what areas we need to improve our point before we can even work on them and to do this other inventory you can do it on your own or you can have people around you participate in the process my wife is great we're telling me what areas I'm spectacularly bad at she tells me you talk too much Jeffrey you dominate conversations a lot of things that I've learned just by listening to her and doing that self-inventory so you're going to get there by doing it on your own or having people that you trust in your circle you can do an anonymous self-inventory when you send them a quiz and they fill it out electronically they don't have to attach their email addresses or names to it or they go to a Google survey when you go in you don't require emails and they tell you what are the 10 things about Jeffrey oh that you don't like you know what is the one area that Jeffrey Owen needs to improve upon you know what is the worst thing that Jeffrey was ever done in your estimation and professionality I mean all of these things you're looking to tease out information I want you to get that information you can use them to work on yourself but what I always said to folks is this don't be afraid to look in the mirror you know there may be days you look in the mirror and you don't like what you see because you know you know whatever for whatever reason but never be afraid to look in the mirror because you have to be able to do introspection if you really want to grow as a leader and as a human being I I think you've just hit the nail on the head right there you know a really great leader is requires bravery and also wanting to be better yourself tomorrow than you are today and not really worrying so much about being the boss and things like that one of the questions that comes up a lot in the hotel industry where we're working with people with very diverse cultural backgrounds how will helping a leader gain a better understanding of diversity a culture ultimately create better guest experiences and the part the hoteliers care about generate more Revenue as a result yeah cultural competence is very important and when you mentioned transformational leadership you've got folks like uh James Burns who really expanded on the concept you've got the guy who originated the concert himself James Dunton and you've got guys like Burnett bass who really did great work on transformational leadership so transformational leaders understand that to get to where you're trying to get to the positive outcomes that you're trying to get to in motivating people and inspiring people you know individual consideration providing that to people to do all of those things you have to be able to have a wide tent you have to be able to bring a lot of people you have to have an umbrella that's big enough to accommodate for some diverse backgrounds right if you're not able to do that you're not able to you know Embrace diversity people come come from different cultures different backgrounds if you're not able to do that you're not going to get the results you're looking for cultural competence is very very important and any leader consider themselves to be transformational has to understand that and I'll give you a very specific example in the hotel industry where you know you and I have worked you know for many years you've got if you go to Japan and you go eat a million in a restaurant and you decide to tick the server that's considered rude right because what it seems to imply is that a person who's serving you is not doing what they should have done or you're disrespecting them when you're giving them a tip that's a culture now when you're dealing with a guest in your hotel and the person happens to be from Japan and you're not aware of this if they don't tip you don't get offended because it may not be plugged into your culture you know you go to a country like Iran and Afghanistan you give someone a thumbs up it's considered very very rude to do that right but we are used to doing that in the U.S where we're based and it goes on and on and on and in some countries Hawks I mean it's all right to hug you know people strangers hogging hug each other in some countries some other countries you don't adopt that level of familiarity with someone unless they're very close to you so this is our cultural norms that we need to be aware of and by teaching our teams to know all these things and be sensitive to them we're going to be more effective because in hotels we deal with folks from all walks of life from different different backgrounds different countries if you're not plugged into those things then you're going to struggle in terms of making your guests happy it doesn't mean that you need to know all this happening in China or Japan or Namibia or India or Uganda all of that you don't have to but it does help to have some passing familiarity some passing knowledge of the Norms the cultural norms that apply to different places it does help it certainly doesn't hurt if you're going to be service and gas serving gas from different countries and different backgrounds yeah I think you're right a lot of what you're talking about is building relationships and at the core of building relationships we're talking really about simply building trust you know building long-term trust between team members building trust for an instant very quickly when you're serving a guest in some capacity or other so in a recent interview that I watched you talked about your own journey to overcoming the idea that you have to do everything yourself talk to us a little bit about that yeah I look at my younger self now and I and I cringe I cringe because so we all do yeah I was absolutely Dreadful really I I thought I knew it all and I wanted to show people how smart I was so Looking Back Now I realized that I was insecure as a leader I was insecure and I was driven by my ego right and I thought I needed to if there was such a procedure as ego reduction surgery I was a prom candidate for it because my ego was this massive I thought I knew it all you couldn't tell me anything and I wanted to let people know how smart I was so I dominated conversations I was a terrible listener if you were talking to me Robin I wasn't listening to you I Was preparing my retort I Was preparing my response to you and I wasn't listening to what you were saying that's how I was and I wanted to do everything by myself you know why because I wanted to keep all the credit I wanted to be the guy who figured out that solution who got it all I accomplished and underlying all of this I did not have enough trust in the people worked with me to believe that they could get the job done and get it done well I thought the only way the job was going to be done properly was if I did it so I took it on myself of course I worked longer hours and I needed it to work and I was stressed out more than I needed to be but I caused all of those problems to myself so it was really arrogant and not knowing what leadership really is about leadership is not about shouting at people from The Mountaintop it's about helping people get to the Mountaintop you know you can't sit there on Mount Olympus and say hey you need to do this you need to do that but you're not going to achieve the kind of results that you're looking for unless you're able to draw them in and that's what's so magical or amazing about the concept of transformational leadership and that's why I actually study that and one of the things I studied in my uh PhD dissertation was transformational leadership my dissertation was actually on leadership ethical leadership and looking at the various leadership styles so excellent point you bring up and I've learned a lot since those days I can tell you I'm no way I need to be but I'm not where I used to be so I'm making progress I'm a work in progress you know life's a journey I would agree with that sentiment entirely it was pretty interesting a few weeks ago I had the opportunity to uh interview a CEO who is still in his 20s he's with one of these AI Tech startup kind of things and I was asking him about you know what's it like to be the boss the leader and he said the most insightful thing to me he said you know I realized that I was making all kinds of mistakes and I had to be patient with myself and then I had the big aha moment which was basically oh I have to be patient with my team too you know and you know I've talked to guys in their 50s who haven't really got it that clearly and this guy's just at the beginning of his career he gets it from your perspective what do you feel is the greatest misconception about effective leadership in hospitality industry and why do you say that actually I have a couple of points I think relate to that one of them it's a style of leadership that folks in Hospitality Shooters adopt I run into many leaders who said to me if you work in Hospitality you need to be tough you need to lay down The rules you need to tell people what to do how they need to do it you need to hold them accountable and that's sort of autocratic leadership in my estimation doesn't work well you don't need to be your leadership style does not have to be directive and autocratic it doesn't have to be I think it should be a participative you should pull people in and I'll use the example of financial Steve Jobs you know and Tim Cook who came after him you know Steve Jobs God Rest his soul was a brilliant brilliant mind no one is going to dispute that absolutely brilliant mind but his leadership staff from what I have read was autocratic right he surrendered himself with people who were you know that he was comfortable with and people that you know he wanted to deal with and he dealt with them in a certain fashion some have said it was very very tough right bring that mind an amazing human being but his style was sort of autocratic that's what's been written about him and never worked with him so I don't know how true that is I'm simply going based on the account that I have read but then you've got Tim cooker took over and to cook style from what I have read also is sort of more a democratic star rather than an autocratic style where you draw more people or any solicit people solicit people's opinions before making a decision and all of that so I think the misconception is that you have to be taught you have to be autocratic you need to lay down the law and all people are accountable you can do all of those things and still have a style of leadership that's Democratic that participative that post people learn it's not a zero-sum game that's how I look at it so I think the second misconception I like to talk to upon relates to Charisma you know people always say that if you work in Hospitality you have to be charismatic you know you're dealing with gas you have to be able to have the guests like you you're dealing with your searches they don't have to like you but I am saying this you can be charismatic and still be a lousy leader a terrible leader and you can be non-charismatic and be a great leader so you don't have to be charismatic to succeed in Hospitality you need to know how to treat people you need to be kind you need to be humble you need to be transparent right you need to be caring you need to empathize you can be all of business and not be charismatic and still deliver results we know about some leaders in history who are very very charismatic where they did really horrible things you know you've got Hitler you've got people like Jim Jones and many others who did terrible terrible things but from all accounts they were charismatic leaders so my point is you don't have to be a charismatic leader to lead in the hospitality environment number one and number two your leadership style does not have to be autocratic for you to be success to be successful so those are the two points I'd like to make yeah I think your second point is particularly true you know it's uh great to have a friendly welcoming inspiring boss but if they're never in their office because they're out you know uh meeting clients Walking the Floor whatever it is that they're doing if they're never available is that a good leader you know I think a good leader has to be able to lead I think a good leader has to be present I think a good leader has to be visible I think a good leader has to engage you can be present without invisible you can be visible without engaging but that's not going to be affected you have to be present but it's not enough to be present you have to be visible and it's not enough to be visible you have to engage as a leader established in 2002 FOH is a woman-old global food service and hospitality company that manufactures smart Savvy commercial grade products including plateware drinkware flatware Hotel amenities and more driven by Innovation FOH is dedicated to delivering that wow experience that restaurants and hotels crave all while maintaining a competitive price all products are fully customizable and many are also created using sustainable eco-friendly materials such as straws and plates made from biodegradable paper and wood and PBA free drinkware FOH has two established Brands front of the house focused on tabletop and Buffet Solutions and room 360 which offers Hotel products check out their collections today at fohworldwide.com [Music] bit of a tougher question at least when I started in Hospitality it was very much a male dominated world and quite frankly plagued by entitlement and I am not what I would call a feminist it's simply what I observed the world's changed a great deal what's your message for those who are still reluctant to give up what I'm going to call the old ways if you're not willing to give up the old ways you are you're sitting on the Titanic on the deck having your drink and the ship your ship is going down you know you have to be able to evolve you know the hospitality industry the lead at the leadership level is still largely male dominated like a rightly pointed out there's been Improvement you know there continues to be Improvement which is great but you look at a report from the Castel project an organization that's done some great work on diverse City on bringing more diversity into the hospitality uh you know field in 2020 for every woman who was an assist Suite they were 5.7 men in the same Suite that's a golf that's a big number that's a big gap that's a disparity right so there's still a lot of work that needs to be done and it can stop Prejudice put out some great reporting in that regard after my mind Partners based in the UK has also done some great work in that regard so we've improved we know we used to be but there's still opportunities to improve to bring more diversity into the city Suite into the leadership levels of hospitality yeah and I think a lot of this stems from realizing how important it is to do a mixture of promote from within uh train from within you know and nurture encourage build lead from within you know the leaders that you're building today are the people who will be the leaders tomorrow they will be the ones best suited most qualified and all of that so true but some hoteliers continue to judge everything every investment in human capital in terms of the ROI where's the revenue how long if I pay for training you know how quickly will I recoup this in room rates or revenue or or whatever increase they're using to measure all of these things so help us out here how does mastering transformational leadership ultimately allow leaders to set high standards and expectations not just for themselves but for the the people that they're leading in such a way that it increases profitability for the hotel yeah excellent question I mean transformation and Leadership really is built on some really solid pillars right you've got individualized consideration you've got immorality component you know all of those things are involved I mean if you want to inspire people to give the best of themselves you're going to have to do it using morality you're going to have to do it using motivation which is another you know pillar the transformational leadership is built in and the only way you do that is by treating them with respect by empathizing showing empathy to them by being honest with them by being transparent with them by articulate a very clear vision and by modeling the behavior that you're looking to see if you are a transformational leader and you do all of these things and your team sees all of the state they're going to be inspired in a positive way and they're going to be able to relate to your guests your customers and give the best of themselves because they're getting the best of you it really does spray it that way so if you are transformational leader you really embody transformational leadership you're going to do things that Inspire your team that motivate them you're going to recognize them you're going to also focus on finance because if people perceive that they're not being treated fairly or the work environment is not fair then they're going to be better they're not going to give the best of themselves so if you do all of those things you're going to create an environment that's very conducive to achieving success because people are going to help you achieve success you cannot do it all on your own contrary to what my younger self thought you can't do it all on your own you know an island you're going to need the people around you to succeed and you're going to be able to get them there if you truly are practicing transformational leadership I always say when there is a problem to be solved who do you really want handling that problem a calm confident person who's friendly and thinks on their feet and that's what transformational leadership will nurture in people absolutely absolutely let's change the conversation a little bit here is all kinds of talk AI chat GPT virtual reality everything in between I I'm fortunate I talk to a lot of the people developing these kinds of things from your perspective how do you see foresee AI applications will impact leadership roles in the near future in the next five years my one of my quotes that I often you know say is that when it comes to technology I see that technology is like a moving train you can get inside of it or you can stand in front of it so you can take the approach that you want to take AI is here to stay it's not going anywhere you can't put the genie back in the boxer you've got people saying oh we need to regulate AI we need to stop AI well you can't stop Ai No at this point it's already out I don't know how you're going to stop it maybe it's possible I don't know how you're going to stop it I think AI is going to enhance leadership I think AI provides Leaders with this Suite of tools that they can use to make themselves more effective as a CEO in a company AI is going to allow you access to predictive analysis tools that you can use you're going to have natural language processing tools that you can use you're going to be able to do a bunch of things using AI to to augment or supplement or support what you're doing so I have no eluded by any means I embrace AI 100 I think it does make sense we have to find ways to use it for the betterment of mankind now could AI possibly have some devious Sinister uses sure it can you can say the same for just about any application or inventional Innovation that man has come up with it has a flip side to it but ultimately I think AI is a good thing I think it's a great thing you've got 25 percent of companies in the US already using AI you've got another I think almost 40 percent saying that they're planning to use it in the near future and Brookings Institute did a recent uh recent study which shows that 25 percent of jobs in the U.S are actually actually endangered by air right so what we have to do is find ways to use AI Without Really displacing people or disrupting lives and there are so many ways that AI can be helpful to leaders I find it to be very useful I'm already adopting it looking at different ways to build it into my work processes and I and I think I think it's a great thing yeah I think it's interesting that it really makes the sky the limit when it comes to you know new ways to work new ways to get your job done uh new things that you can do or explore that an individual person might never have been able to do before for sure but I do believe that we are in a phase of big experimentation you know and seeing what works and what's not a great idea and how how to best proceed with all of this for sure you uh serve the world globally as president of the international Hospitality Institute why you feel that there is a need for Global trainings and standards for the hospitality industry I think there is a real need because we are serving customers who are getting more and more Discerning more and more Savvy you know people are traveling to different parts of the world experiencing different things they've got high expectations post-pandemic we need to be is space where we've got practitioners who truly know what they're doing and are able to maintain a certain consistency because in our industry you can have folks come into Hospitality without a college degree which is amazing I love that right people can come in from different backgrounds how do we make sure that people who are delivering this service let's see a food and beverage manager how do we know that is from Big manager has has a basic has a basic understanding of what they are rolling tells what it's supposed to do how they're supposed to interact with guests how they're supposed to look out for stakeholders how do we make sure that that person has got the training that they need to have to be successful in their role I run into a lot of people every now and then people are in certain positions that you would expect know what it's supposed to do but like you and I know that's not always the case we think that standardization is going to help it's certainly not going to hurt so we've got many programs at ihi for different positions general managers the chgm program food and beverage cfbm programming ton of courses and certification programs that actually help establish a baseline or a benchmark in terms of learning that key leaders department heads you know senior leaders should have in order to be able to acquit themselves well for their stakeholders so we think it's very very necessary it's actually important education is very very important in our industry if people are educated and they know what it's supposed to do they're going to feel better by themselves they're going to feel great about themselves they're going to feel like the company is concerned with investing in them as people so all of these things are important so we think it's really important there's a certain level of standardization if I'm looking to hire someone as a food and beverage manager or a general manager I'm going to feel better knowing that he's certified as a general manager they're certified as a food and beverage manager they certified as a restaurant manager it's like you want to have surgery if you're going to have surgery are you going to go with a doctor who doesn't have a certification in surgery or are you going to go with one who's certified to do surgery there realize your answer you know I I think that's uh an interesting point if you are working for one of the global Brands and you're listening to this conversation you're probably saying well this isn't necessary you know our brand has all of these standards in place and that might well be the case but I think sometimes people forget that there are thousands of independent and boutique operators all over the world in all different kinds of countries and situations who don't have what I'm going to say the luxury of you know brand standard training so for all of the rest of us I I think that's really a great idea we got one or two minutes left here what's your key message for everyone who've used this discussion great question I love that I don't think I've asked someone asked me about before I love that key message I think that's a brilliant one I've got two things that I always say I think the first one is uh what are you doing to improve yourself on a daily basis what are you doing to make yourself a better person right that's the first question I've got the second question is what are you doing to make the word a better place these are two questions I think that on a daily basis we should Ponder as we go about the business of Life what are we doing to improve ourselves as people and what are we doing to improve the world that we live in you know I I think that's a great way to end and I couldn't agree with you more you know I think sometimes in this world with billions of people we lose sight of the fact that we all have two roles to play a local personal individual one and a global one yes we are one raindrop in the clouds but if you want a rain shower everybody has to help search sure Jeffrey I want to thank you so much for your time today very interesting to chat with you you've been watching the Innovative hotelier join us again soon for more up to the minute insights and information specifically for the hotel and hospitality industry [Music] foreign