Show full transcript 1:03 than almost anyone else. This signature stay. Think about what happens when 1:09 and you walk into a really great hotel. 1:12 Before you ever arrive, 1:14 somebody has thought about your experience. 1:17 They've thought about what the entrance looks like. 1:20 They've thought about how you're greeted. 1:22 They've thought about how quickly you get checked in. 1:25 They've thought about the cleanliness of the room, 1:27 the temperature, the smell of the lobby, the lighting, 1:30 the bed, the towels, the breakfast, 1:32 the way the phone is answered, 1:33 and what happens when something goes wrong. 1:36 Great hotels don't leave the guest experience to chance. 1:40 They design it and then they train people to deliver it. 1:45 And here's the leadership question I want you thinking about today. 1:49 What is the signature stay in your business? 1:53 Because you have one. 1:54 You may own a restaurant. 1:56 You may run an EMS organization. 1:58 You may manage a bank, lead a construction company, 2:01 operate a hospital. 2:03 You may work in manufacturing. 2:04 you may lead a corporate office where nobody has ever used the words guest 2:08 experience in their life. You still have customers walking through your version of 2:14 a lobby every day and they're having an experience. The only question is whether 2:19 you designed that experience or whether your employees are making it up as they 2:24 go. That's a huge difference. Imagine checking into a hotel in the front desk 2:30 employee says welcome. We don't really have a standard for how we do things 2:34 around here. Everybody pretty much does whatever works for them. You'd probably 2:39 be concerned, yet that's exactly how a lot of businesses operate. One employee 2:45 answers the phone one way, another answers it completely different. One 2:50 person goes out of their way to solve a customer's problem and other says 2:54 that's not my department. One employee understands what great service 2:58 looks like another employee thinks great service means completing the 3:02 transaction without making the customer angry and management wonders why the 3:07 customer experience is so inconsistent. The answer is training. You cannot demand 3:14 a signature stay from people who have never been taught what your signature 3:18 stay looks like. That's where hospitality gives us a powerful leadership 3:23 lesson. The best hospitality organizations understand that service cannot live 3:29 inside a mission statement hanging on the wall. It has to become behavior. If you 3:35 want your people to greet customers a certain way, train it. If you want 3:39 employees to take ownership of problems, teach them what ownership looks 3:44 like. If you want people anticipating customer needs, give them examples. If you 3:50 want your organization to become known for something. Everybody needs to 3:53 understand what that something is and please don't hand somebody a 70 page 3:58 employee manual and call that training. That's corporate BS. Training is showing 4:05 people. Training is practicing. Training is coaching somebody after the 4:10 interaction and saying, here's what you did well and here's where we can 4:13 make the experience better next time. That's how standards become normal 4:18 behavior. And here's where this gets even more interesting. Your signature stay 4:24 isn't only for customers, it's for employees too. Your employees are staying 4:31 with you maybe for six months, maybe five years, maybe 20 years. And during that 4:36 time they're having an experience with your organization more specifically 4:40 they're having an experience with you. So what's it like to work for you? Think 4:47 Think about that as if you were running a hotel. 4:50 What's employee check-in like? 4:53 That's onboarding. 4:54 When somebody walks through your door on day one, do they feel expected? 4:58 Does somebody know they're coming? 4:59 Is their uniform ready? 5:01 Is their email account working? 5:02 Does somebody show them around? 5:04 Do they understand what success looks like? 5:06 Does the team know their name or do they arrive at eight o'clock Monday morning and 5:10 somebody says, oh yeah, you're the new person. 5:13 Hang on. 5:14 I think Dave is supposed to train you. 5:16 that's not a signature stay that's walking into a hotel and finding out they 5:21 lost your reservation. Now think about housekeeping. In leadership that's the 5:27 everyday stuff. Is the workplace organized? Do employees have the equipment 5:31 they need? Are schedules handled professionally? Are problems addressed? 5:35 Are standards maintained? Do people know what's expected? Nobody books a 5:41 beautiful hotel because they're excited about housekeeping. Yet 5:45 Housekeeping can absolutely destroy the experience when it's bad. Leadership 5:50 works the same way. A lot of employee experience is built through ordinary 5:54 things done consistently well. And then we have guest services. That's you. When 6:01 an employee comes to you with a problem, what happens? Can they talk to you? Do 6:05 you listen? Do you follow through? If you say I'll look into it, do you 6:10 actually look into it? Do employees have confidence that when 6:14 and something matters, their leader will respond. 6:17 Every interaction is another moment in their stay. 6:20 And eventually comes checkout and employee leaves. 6:25 Maybe they're retiring. 6:26 Maybe they found another opportunity. 6:28 Maybe the organization wasn't right for them anymore. 6:32 What does checkout look like? 6:34 Some companies treat departing employees 6:36 like criminals escaping the building. 6:38 They immediately become the enemy. 6:40 That's a mistake. 6:41 a former employee can still become an ambassador for your organization, they 6:47 can recommend your company to customers, they can send future employees your way, 6:52 they can even come back someday with more experience and become one of your 6:56 best hires again. The signature stay matters from check-in through checkout. 7:02 And there's something else great hotels understand. Sometimes things go 7:08 wrong. The room isn't ready. The reservation gets messed up. The air 7:11 conditioning quits. Somebody makes a mistake. A signature stay does not 7:17 require perfection. It requires a trained response. That's where great 7:22 organizations separate themselves. When something goes wrong, employees don't 7:27 hide. They don't point fingers. They don't make the customer chase five 7:30 different people. They know what they're empowered to do. Your employees 7:35 need that same confidence. Teach them how to recover an experience. And leaders 7:41 need to know how to recover an employee experience too. You're going to make 7:46 leadership mistakes. You're going to communicate poorly sometimes. You're 7:51 going to miss something. You're going to have a day when you're tired, distracted, 7:55 and not at your best. When that happens, own it. Fix it. The recovery 8:01 becomes part of the experience. So here's something I want you to do. Walk 8:08 through your business mentally as if you were a first-time guest. Call your own 8:14 phone number. Walk through your front door. Look at your website. Read the 8:18 emails customers receive. Watch how employees greet people. Look at how 8:24 problems are handled and ask yourself one question. Is this the experience we 8:29 want people to remember. And then do the same thing from the employee's perspective. 8:34 Imagine today is your first day. Nobody knows who you are. You don't know the 8:39 unwritten rules. You don't know who the good managers are. You don't know where 8:43 anything is. You don't even know where you're supposed to park. Walk through 8:47 the employee experience from that perspective. And then imagine you've 8:51 worked there for 10 years. Does anyone still invest in you? Does anyone 8:55 still coach you? Does anyone ask what you want to do next? Do you still feel like you matter? 9:02 That's your employee's signature stay. This concept is bigger than hospitality. 9:09 It's intentional leadership because every customer who interacts with your company 9:16 is going to leave with a story. Every employee who works for you is eventually going to leave 9:22 with a story too. You have an opportunity to influence what that story sounds like. Maybe 9:28 the greatest compliment somebody can give your business isn't, they have a great product. 9:34 Maybe it's this, you need to experience how they treat people. And maybe one of the greatest 9:39 compliments someone can give you as a leader isn't your title, your accomplishments or 9:44 your resume. Maybe years after they work for you, somebody says, working for that 9:50 person changed what I thought leadership could be. That's a signature stay. 10:00 So this week, take a walk through your organization, like a guest, and then take the same walk 10:08 like an employee. Look at every interaction, every standard, every handoff, and every
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