The Hospitality Cancer? Routine.

This is about curing a kind of workplace cancer

I am in week two of a ten-week sprint for my company, in which we are bringing the one-two punch of Aloha and Ho‘okipa to a collection of Hawai‘i businesses in two-hour sessions. The goal of the class is to define the true art of exceptional customer service through the lens of these two Hawaiian values, in a way that will get all participants charged up and feeling good about being Mea Ho‘okipa and delivering on their companies’ promise.

Up to now, we have largely concentrated on coaching managers and leaders at Say Leadership Coaching, and this has been one of only two classes we have done in which we teach a whole work team together, regardless of where they may sit on their firm’s org chart (the second one is on Kākou and Lōkahi, the values of teamwork.)

Why the classes work

Both classes are very popular with the participants involved, and both have very high re-booking rates, and the reason has become pretty clear to me: The managers in attendance get to watch us coach their staff, and their staff get to watch us coach their managers. We keep it safe, and we keep it positive and charged with learning, and they love it.

You can probably tell that I am quite proud of these classes, because I feel good about the value we deliver with them. They are great fun to do.

“New” might just mean “different”

Most of the service and hospitality ideas we collectively come up with for them in our Aloha and Ho‘okipa class, are not new and they are not complicated. They do not require resources they don’t have, and for the most part they don’t cost a dime. What their new ideas have in common most of all, is that they are different— for them.

Before each class I devote about an hour of telephone time with my client, to get clear on their reasons for hiring us, and for wanting the class. I have long lost count of the conversations that have some iteration of this symptomatic phrase; “Well, there are several people in the group who’ve been with us a long time now, and they don’t like change.”

During the class, what we discover is that they are in fact starving for change. They are starving for fresh and for different. The cancer that is sickening their spirit is routine. They have become complacent and apathetic (and thus their service levels are mediocre) because they don’t have permission to be original, and to try different (or they think they don’t).

Your first instinct is probably to say, “hey, I’m not stopping them!” and maybe not intentionally.

Never, EVER say “Yeah, but ...”

If you have ever told your staff, “well, we’ve tried that before, BUT …” you are killing their spirit, and you are the complacency cancer’s lackey.

Our Aloha and Ho‘okipa class works for us because of a simple and effective coaching technique. When someone in the class volunteers, “well, how about if we … ?” no matter what the idea is, we say something like, “that sounds like a terrific idea, tell me more!” If a doubting-Thomas look crosses the face of any manager in the room we walk somewhere to divert attentions so that manager will not be in anyone else’s line of sight.

We prod, we encourage, we seed the idea with a some kind of twist, and no wet blankets are allowed.

Ideas are catalysts --- ALL of them

In asking people to “tell me more” they begin to cook up and create, challenging themselves to tell us something pretty fabulous as they keep talking. Their peers start to chime in because they want to help them please us, and long-suppressed ideas which WERE in their heads before we ever showed up, start to get remembered. Hands start shooting up for a turn to speak, and we get really good at calling on the arm raisers based on the rest of their body language; we keep the positive ideas flowing.

Bring your empathy to work

If you feel your staff has become complacent, put yourself in their shoes. If you’d be bored doing their job, chances are they are too! Routine work days are a cancer. They snuff out the warm spirit so necessary in giving hospitality to others, for your staff cannot light that candle if they have no fire of their own.

I sincerely believe that Mea Ho‘okipa are not that rare. They can be found in virtually every company (or they won’t be in business very long). It is entirely possible you can’t “see” them because they are bored.

However this is one cancer every manager can cure.

 

Comments

[Joanna Young]

Hi Rosa

It sounds like you're fired up for these sessions - I'm sure the participants will be in for a treat.

In my experience people are said to be 'resistant to change' when change is being imposed on them, when they are being shoe-horned into a 'new' way of doing things that a manager or a consultant or someone external to them - perceived as not knowing too much about how things are really done round here - starts telling them what to do.

If managers want change to happen they need to encourage it not impose it, listen out for it, watch for new ideas, and be ready to change what they do as well as looking for change in other people.

As you say - it's really about changing your point of view as a manager, and being alive to possibilities...

Joanna

[Rosa Say]

That is a terrific distinction Joanna, thank you for adding it. There is a quote by Richard Beckhard I read often to remain myself of its wisdom. I had pulled it from Peter Senge’s book The Dance of Change; Beckhard shares “People do not resist change; People resist being changed.” In other words, get your idea to be my idea and I’ll stop fighting you on it!

You are also quite right about full context, and the need to value what people bring to the table (i.e. the complete knowledge of what they know about their work and their workplace) and not be the know-it-all big-whip consultant with a better answer. It’s that subtle distinction between coaching and consulting we chant daily around here: If we coach by asking good questions, we rarely have to consult and sell answers.

As Trevor Gay of the Simplicity blog likes to remind us, “Simplicity Tip Number 1 - Staff at the front line know ALL the answers ALL the time.”