The last couple of months I’ve had the opportunity to speak to different groups of hospitality professionals on leadership topics in Vermont, New York City, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Two were groups of leaders within the same hospitality company and two were network organizations for women leaders in hospitality. Communities like these have a tremendous opportunity to influence the professional development of leaders. Looking back to the different networks and communities I’ve participated in over the years and the ones I’ve spoken to, the best communities are those that share a number of common characteristics including purpose, connection, inspiration, learning and fun.

Shared goals or common purpose
Communities are born when individuals come together for a common cause. Whether its to improve collaboration and team work within a company or to support women leaders like New York City Women of Hospitality or Accelerate Women Leaders in Travel, goals and purpose bring people together and support the development of a shared bond amongst them. 

Create and facilitate connection
How well a community creates and facilitates connection is probably one of the most important determinants of the value participants attach to it and what keeps them engaged and committed. Professionals and leaders are eager to hear the experiences of their colleagues and learn from both their successes and failures. Connection also contributes to a feeling of solidarity that is critical for leaders who might feel isolated or overwhelmed. Communities that do this best provide a “safe space” container or structure and programming that fosters interaction, dialogue and sharing.

Inspire and motivate
Let’s face it, sitting in our offices day in and day out or working at the same venues with the same people can be a grind. We can also get stuck in patterns of thinking and behavior and only see narrow solutions for our challenges. Communities provide opportunities to hear new experiences and information that can trigger renewed enthusiasm and dedication.

Provide actionable learning
One of the questions I ask myself when thinking about joining a community is: What will I learn here that will contribute to my career goals? I strongly believe that an educational component is critical for successful communities. I’m looking for opportunities to learn industry trends, solutions for challenges and actionable strategies that will help me grow personally and professionally. These learning opportunities can come from within the network from leaders who have a different set of skills, experiences and expertise than I do or from outside thought leaders.

Integrate fun and energizing experiences
You know what they say, "all work and no play"….professional relationships are founded on more than shop talk. These relationships can become stronger when individuals share experiences that bring in some form of “play” whether its an outdoor adventure, a volunteer activity or a mix and mingle event. To perform at their best, leaders also need periods of rest mixed with work.

When I created Accelerate Women Leaders in Travel in 2019 it came from a very personal need to connect with other leaders like me. Accelerate has evolved and grown from a one off event into a community of connected and like-minded women leaders in hospitality and travel. I have found that each of the elements above have supported our growth and evolution and that they work interdependently to create an experience that our leaders come back to year after year. 

Are you looking for a leadership community in the hospitality and travel industry? Check these out! Each of these communities has regular conferences,  events and/or networking calls and groups. 

Accelerate Women Leaders in Travel
American Hotel and Lodging Association/ForWard
hertelier
HSMAI
New England Inns and Resorts Association
New York City Women of Hospitality
Travel Unity
Women Leading Travel and Hospitality
Vermont Lodging Association (or your state hospitality association)

Earlier this year, I found myself not as the boss, but working for someone else on a freelance/consulting basis—a situation I hadn’t been in for over 12 years. I was working with other consultants on a project, setting up a new initiative and creating new processes and deliverables. As I collaborated with other partners, I started to notice something about myself. Once we were given our responsibilities and goals, I was ready to execute. I rarely waited for products of the project to be reviewed before they were launched. I also became frustrated if the process became bogged down in decision making.

I am sharing this experience not to promote a particular behavior in consultancy; in fact, this trait could potentially make me a less than ideal consultant! However, the capacity to take initiative and proceed without needing approval, even if it might unsettle some, I believe is a unique leadership quality of business owners and entrepreneurs. One that I believe could be vital for professionals aspiring to climb the career ladder and take on more significant leadership roles and responsibilities. 

Being on the other side of the desk, so to speak, offered me the unique opportunity to see a new perspective on leadership. It led me to ponder upon other possible traits that differentiate entrepreneurial leaders. What unique qualities and behaviors set them apart, and how can these traits aid individuals in achieving unparalleled leadership success within their organizations?

I quickly realized I was not treading on uncharted territory. My research led me to some invaluable resources that delve into the realm of entrepreneurial leadership such as the work of Joel Peterson:

Entrepreneurial Leadership: The Art of Launching New Ventures, Inspiring Others and Running Stuff. 

Drawing from my own journey as an entrepreneur, I've identified specific behaviors and actions that epitomize entrepreneurial leadership. Entrepreneurial leaders:

• Study industry trends to develop a visionary outlook
• Pursue opportunities for growth, expansion, and innovation
• Demonstrate decisiveness and pro-activity
• Possess comprehensive understanding of the business, leverage strengths, and supplement areas needing improvement
• Take calculated risks
• Identify challenges and strategizes to overcome them
• Assume responsibility for the financial stability and security of the business

I look forward to exploring these leadership behaviors more in my writing, interviews on The Travel Leader and with my clients. In the meantime, check out these resources:

Video with Joel Peterson Are you an Entrepreneurial Leader?

Article 7 Characteristics of the Best Entrepreneurial Leaders

Welcome to the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI)! It’s a thrilling time in the hospitality and travel sector, with AI reshaping the way we experience the world. For the leaders steering the ships in this vibrant industry, it’s time to embrace a fresh set of skills and mindsets. Let’s dive into the essential leadership competencies like curiosity, adaptability, growth mindset, creativity, and empathy, and explore why they’re the keys to success in our AI-driven world.

1. Curiosity:
Curiosity isn’t just about asking questions; it’s about asking the right ones. It’s the spark that ignites innovation and exploration of AI’s endless possibilities. Imagine a hotel leader with a curious streak, delving into AI to discover chatbots that can make guest interactions smoother or data analytics that can fine-tune pricing strategies, giving their brand a unique sparkle in the market.

2. Adaptability:
In the ever-evolving landscape of AI, being adaptable is like having a superpower. It’s about embracing the new and tweaking strategies to make the most out of the AI tools at our disposal. Take the airline industry, where adaptable minds are using AI to craft flight paths that save fuel and enhance passenger experiences, making the journey as enjoyable as the destination.

3. Growth Mindset:
Having a growth mindset is like having a love affair with learning. It turns challenges into stepping stones, fostering a culture where exploring new AI applications is a thrilling adventure. A travel agency led by someone with a growth mindset might play around with AI to whip up personalized travel plans, refining their approach based on what they learn from customer feedback.

4. Creativity:
Creativity is the magic wand that turns ordinary into extraordinary. It’s crucial for dreaming up novel ways to apply AI that captivate customers’ imaginations. A creative leader might envision an AI-driven concierge service that not only answers guest queries but also recommends experiences based on their preferences, adding a sprinkle of wonder to their stay.

5. Empathy:
In a world buzzing with tech, empathy is the human touch that makes all the difference. It’s about balancing AI’s efficiency with a warm, human connection. Think of a hotel where leadership values empathy; they might use AI to speed up check-ins but also encourage staff to spend the extra time truly connecting with guests, creating unforgettable moments.

Why These Competencies Matter in the AI Era

Crafting Memorable Experiences
AI opens up a treasure trove of opportunities to tailor customer experiences. Leaders blending curiosity, adaptability, and empathy can implement AI solutions that resonate with guests on a personal level, ensuring every interaction is a memorable one.

Innovating with a Twist
Leaders armed with creativity and a growth mindset are the architects of innovation, designing unique AI applications that set their organizations apart. By nurturing a playful and experimental culture, they’re not just keeping up with the competition; they’re redefining the game.

Building a Better World
Leaders who are adaptable and empathetic are the builders of a more sustainable and ethical future. They’re using AI to make smarter, eco-friendly decisions and ensuring that technology is used with respect and care for customer privacy and data.

Wrapping It Up
In the exhilarating world of AI, leaders in hospitality and travel need to be curious explorers, adaptable innovators, creative thinkers, lifelong learners, and empathetic connectors. These are the ingredients for leveraging AI in ways that enchant customers and pave the way for a future where technology and humanity dance together in harmony.

Whether it’s a hotel creating magical guest experiences with AI or an airline finding smarter routes through the skies, the future is a canvas waiting to be painted by those ready to lead with creativity, curiosity, empathy, adaptability, and a growth mindset. So, let’s embrace these competencies and ride the AI wave to a future filled with wonder and possibilities!

​At my recent high school reunion, I asked an old classmate how his summer was going. He looked at me straight on and said “quite honestly, its hard. Summers are hard with the kids in an out of camps, at home and trying to work at the same time.” I empathized with him as a fellow parent, business owner and community leader, and also took a bit of comfort in knowing I wasn’t alone. It was also healthy to see a man expressing some of the same sentiments I hear mostly from women.

Work-life balance is a common topic of conversation and one I hear frequently regardless of the circle of colleagues and friends I’m in. The challenge increases with age and upward career moves as the demands of children, care-giving, home and work responsibilities seem to pile up exponentially. Its not only the volume of demands but the quality of those experiences that can make anyone feel less than satisfied.

Like many people, I’m not a fan of the term “work-life balance". It suggests inherently that balance is possible and as we all know, it really isn’t. And contrary to common belief, those experiences aren’t compartmentalized. Feeling stress at work influences home-life and vice versa. Further, there is a more nuanced cause of those unsettled feelings.

The Gallup organization (of the Gallup Poll), has found in its research that the work-life balance conversation can be better framed around the idea of overall well-being. They break down well-being into five categories.

Career - you like what you do every day
Social - you have strong relationships
Financial - you manage your money well
Physical - you have enough energy to do the things you want
Community - you like where you live

What most attracts me to this framework is that it takes away the focus on time as the most significant factor in how we measure our lives.  Instead, the measure of overall well-being is the quality of each area.

So what’s the connection between leadership and well-being? The old way of thinking is that how someone feels about their well-being is a personal matter. That belief doesn’t hold up according to the Gallup poll research. They have found that how someone feels about their career is the most significant factor in how they measure their well-being. Second, how someone feels about their career is largely impacted by their work environment and especially the quality of their manager. Third, a poor working environment leads to dis-engagement and ultimately costs the global economy upwards of $8.8 trillion according to the latest State of the Global Workforce: 2023 Report.

The evidence is clear: addressing well-being is critical for company success. And the first place leaders can start is with themselves.

At the 2023 Women Leading Travel and Hospitality Summit in Nashville, Tennessee I gave a workshop on how to start addressing well-being called Banishing Balance: A New Paradigm for Personal and Professional Success. Sign up for my complimentary course which includes the workshop background presentation and practical information and exercises to get you started on a path to improved well-being. 

I often ponder the question, “what makes a great leader?”. This is a question that I’ll probably never answer because there isn’t really just one good answer. Jacob Morgan, author of The Future Leader, asked hundreds of leaders what their definition of leadership was, and all came up with different answers, and all of them right. There’s no doubt that themes emerge about the foundation and core competencies of good leadership. However, a big part of leadership is unique to each individual and the experiences that shape them. Its these experiences that make leaders authentically who they are. The more they are used to distill meaning and purpose, the more powerful they become. One such kind of experience has been called “crucible experiences”. Researchers Warren G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas write about it in their article “Crucibles of Leadership.”

Defining Crucible Experiences:
A crucible experience is an intense, transformative event or period in our lives that demands our utmost emotional, mental, and sometimes physical fortitude. It often involves a significant personal or professional setback, loss, failure, or a life-altering decision. Crucible experiences push us beyond our comfort zones, challenging our existing beliefs, assumptions, and capabilities. They can arise from various sources, such as a career setback, a health crisis, the end of a relationship, or a profound personal loss.

Elaine Macy, one of our guests on The Travel Leader Podcast, recalled an early experience of hers that had shaped her as a person and as a leader. In our episode together, she described how one day her husband up and left her with nothing more than a can of soup in the cabinet.

The Significance of Crucible Experiences:
While crucible experiences can be daunting and distressing, they also offer remarkable opportunities for growth and self-discovery. These challenging moments force us to confront our fears, face our vulnerabilities, and question our beliefs. They act as catalysts for transformation, pushing us to redefine our priorities, reassess our values, and learn valuable lessons about ourselves and the world around us. Crucible experiences have the power to reshape our lives and bring forth qualities such as resilience, adaptability, and empathy.
Elaine Macy’s story illustrates how crucible experiences can be turned into powerful agency. She tells how she had to make a conscious choice on how she was going to continue her life after her husband left. The set back not only drove her to succeed in life and her career, but also has fueled her purpose to mentor and empower the young women who have come across her path.

Crucible experiences may test our limits and push us to the edge of our comfort zones, but they hold immense potential for personal growth and transformation. By embracing these challenges with resilience, a growth mindset, and a support system, we can emerge stronger, wiser, and more compassionate individuals. Embracing crucible experiences not only allows us to overcome obstacles but also helps us discover our inner strength, refine our purpose, and lead a more fulfilling life. Remember, it is within the crucible that diamonds are forged.

The Power Humility
As a hospitality leader, there has been more than one occasion when I don’t see our business achieving a specific outcome, and I think: If only employee x would do y, we would get the result we want. And then I ask, why isn’t employee x doing it!? It’s easy to jump down the rabbit hole and analyze all the reasons why said employee is behaving the way they are. In reality, there’s a big chance that if I looked myself in the mirror, I would get the answer I’m looking for.

Many times, undesirable outcomes result from undesirable behaviors that stem from less than stellar leadership practices. This can stem from anything like poor communication, lack of setting expectations or systemic cultural problems in an organization. And most of these can be attributed to the leaders at the very top.
​
Ask any leader how strong their competencies are in any of these areas, and more than likely they will rate themselves better than someone looking from the outside in. For his book “The Future Leader”, Jacob Morgan surveyed hundreds of employees and leaders about different leadership mindsets and skills. For every one, leaders scored themselves as more proficient than their direct reports. This phenomena is referred to as the Dunning-Kruger effect by social scientists: “a cognitive bias whereby people with low ability, expertise, or experience regarding a certain type of task or area of knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge.” Adam Grant talks about this in his book “Think Again”.
Feeling deflated? Don’t worry! We are all guilty of it. There’s an antidote for it as well – the metaphorical mirror, or in other words, humility.

Jacob Morgan defines humility as “the willingness to obtain accurate self-knowledge. Keeping an open mind and being willing to constantly learn and improve”. Humility is a powerful mindset and practice. First, it paves the way for all other leadership competencies. Humility is first the belief that we are all fallible human beings with the potential for improvement. It is a “modest self-portrayal”. Humility also includes self-awareness – the ability to look in-wards, self-reflect and accurately assess your strengths and weaknesses. Humility is so powerful that Jim Collins found in his research for “Good to Great” that it was the most important factor that separates truly great companies from all the rest.
 
So where do you begin to practice humility? Break out the mirror and ask yourselves these questions:

• What did I do to contribute?
• What are my strengths and weaknesses?
• How could I have handled that differently?
• What could I do to improve results?

 
Start with asking yourself those questions and the sky is the limit for your own leadership growth and the organization for which you work.  

(The following blog is based on the opening of a panel discussion I moderated at the Travel Unity Summit in Auburn, New York on December 7 and 8, 2022)

Learning starts early and doesn't stop
Recently, my 12 year old son came home one evening and shared his day at school. After a few minutes of recounting encounters with friends, games during gym and boring math classes, he became more serious. He played back an exchange in one of his classes when they were doing an assignment to describe a character in a book. A boy sitting next to him got in trouble for something that he had written on his paper. My son recalled that when the teacher walked by and noticed that the boy described the character as “colored” the teacher became agitated and in an angry tone told him what he had written was wrong and that he needed to change it. My son’s reaction was one of confusion and emotion, not understanding why his friend had “gotten in trouble”. After a long discussion with my son about the historical context around the word, I also thought, wow, this really is confusing.

I was also 12 years old when I first became aware of the deeper meaning of skin color. The language we  use today didn’t even exist. We didn’t use words and phrases like anti-racism, bipoc, social justice, and global majority. I’ve noticed how much and how rapidly the vocabulary has changed just in the last 3 years, let alone 25.  There’s no doubt that I have gotten it wrong and still do today.

Making mistakes leads to growth
Along the way I've had moments I’m not proud of.  In 2018, in the aftermath of the Pittsburgh synagogue murders in which 11 congregants were tragically killed, I attended a vigil at our local synagogue that was open for the general public. Following the event, I was deeply moved but also confused and a bit angry. After talking to some others who had similar feelings,  I wrote an anonymous letter to the synagogue leadership about how I felt about the proceedings.  I expressed to them that I had experienced the vigil as polarizing and politicized. Two years later, when I was identified as the anonymous letter writer, I was persuaded to discuss the matter with the Rabbi and others involved. I realized through this process that how I reacted was a prime example of my white Christian privilege and that it was not about me, or how I experienced that event.

That moment was one of many defining moments on my DEI journey and very humbling. I always considered myself well versed on the issues. I spent my early years in high school and college studying civil rights and participating in campus race dialogues and went on to study abroad in South Africa to learn about Apartheid. But it wasn't until more recently that I realized that this work is just as much if not more about the inward learning and reflection than it is about the outward.  I've struggled with my own questions of identity and how to use my voice as a business owner in the tourism and hospitality space on behalf of DEI. The last few years of reflection, training and dialogue on anti-racism, diversity, equity and inclusion have coincided with my development as a leader and a leadership coach. What I have learned more than anything, is that this work is fundamentally about leadership and how I show up as a leader.

A call to action
A few months ago the moment came when I was called to show up. I received an anonymous email through our hotel website contact form with the following message: "Hi, one of your employees, recently harassed and threatened a beloved member of the local transgender community who also happens to be a combat veteran. For proof see this link...  Is this what your hotel stands for??? I’ll never consider staying here again unless action is taken to terminate this persons employment immediately . Everyone else in the lgbtq community is aware of this too and will not stay at your establishment until he is fired."

Receiving this message was deeply upsetting and uncomfortable. But I knew this was the moment that all my work had until now been leading up to. While I couldn't respond to the anonymous person who brought this to our attention, there was  public post on instagram to which I could respond. I drafted a response in which we publicly acknowledge the harm done to this member of our community, denounced the act and also committed to addressing the situation internally. While the employee in question had been fired for other reasons already a month before the incident, we took it seriously as a moment to reflect and publicly decry acts of hate such as this one.

Lessons I've learned
There are so many lessons I've learned over the last few years.

1. When mistake are made, shame - whether self-inflicted or by others - is an obstacle to learning
2. Fear, the source of anonymous acts, damages relationships
3. While language is important, how we intentionally show up is what brings real change
4. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is the work of leadership. Its the "being" vs. the "doing"

With these lessons I've learned I'm committed to being more humble, curious, vulnerable and brave.