Leadership is a vital component in the culture of the hotel industry. I have been working in the hotel industry for 10 years, all the international companies I worked with valued leadership. In the learning and development department, the set of programs that are required for all supervisory, mid-career and senior-level employees is called Accelerated Leadership Development Programs (ADPs). This set includes 10-15 programs that talk about leadership topics such as Fundamental leadership, situational leadership, delegation, change management and many others.
In my job as Director of Learning and Development, I was leading the learning and development team in addition to departmental trainers, who are selected employees from every department in the hotel, responsible for delivering the on-job training for their colleagues. I worked closely with the hotel leadership team in order to analyze the organization’s training needs, and develop strategies that address the needs of our employees, presenting them in a form of a training business plan. My job was all about coaching, counselling, and disciplining employees, and providing constructive feedback to enhance employees’ overall performance. Therefore, leadership was a core aspect of my role.
As I reflect on my leadership throughout the 10 years, I believe two leadership theories helped me the most in my role; adaptive leadership and reflective leadership. From my experience, I consider the hotel environment very complex. A defining aspect of the hospitality industry is that it focuses on ideas of luxury, pleasure, enjoyment and experiences, as opposed to catering for necessities and essentials. Therefore, change always occurs in hotels in order to fulfill the demanding nature of the job. In my opinion, being an adaptive leader in the hotel industry means you are a forward-thinker who always seeks solutions in a fast-paced environment to achieve transformative goals. Khan (2017) argues that “An adaptive leadership approach allows institutions to consider situations uniquely and select actions based on what is needed currently rather than on past traditions” (p.182). From my experience, leaders in the hotel industry are always required to find solutions, whether for employees or customers, instantly to solve continuously evolving problems. Leaders need to be innovative when it comes to providing solutions in the hotel complex environment. Yesterday’s solution may not be applicable to today’s problem.
Reflective leadership can help leaders to be innovative. Castelli (2016) states that reflective leadership is based on “Internal characteristics such as critical thinking, long-term planning and finding innovative ways to solve problems with an equal focus on people and profit” (p.8). Leaders who practice reflective leadership are therefore able to understand themselves, their team, and their organization and come up with innovative solutions to constant problems. Castelli (2016) provides examples of Reflective practices such as “self-awareness, mindfulness and personal wisdom” (p.2019), these practices allow leaders to connect with people since leaders are purposefully questioning and altering their behaviours to influence employees and organizational outcomes.
On another note, a combination of adaptive and reflective leadership helped me with introducing a digital learning environment in the hotels I worked in. In 2016, I participated in the pioneering phase for launching a new Learning Management System (LMS) where we shifted from the traditional way of delivering training to a blended learning environment. We had to manage change in the learning methodology of our hotel. Adaptive leadership which focuses on the leader (hotel leadership) –follower (hotel employees) relationship helped us overcome the initial resistance the employees had, in addition to managing the environmental issues that affected the launch of the LMS such as the technical and financial challenges. The reflective leadership approach helped us question our behaviours as leaders in terms of enforcing the new change of learning methodology. In each stage of the launching project, we asked ourselves questions like: Are we pressuring and overwhelming our employees at this stage? Is there a need for refresher training at this point? Are we too fast or too slow? Is the instructional design clear? Do we need to change the content? Reflecting on our behaviours and the ability to understand the emotional state of our employees helped us introduce a digital learning environment more smoothly.
References
Castelli, P. A. (2016). Reflective leadership review: A framework for improving organisational performance. The Journal of Management Development, 35(2), 217-236. doi:10.1108/JMD-08-2015-0112
Khan, N. (2017). Adaptive or Transactional Leadership in Current Higher Education: A Brief Comparison. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 18(3). Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v18i3.3294
Attribution
February 9, 2020 at 10:31 am
Hi Tala – thanks for sharing! In your final example you talk a lot about managing change related to the LMS implementation (which is a great transition to the next unit) and highlighted a variety of possible challenges (resistance, technical/financial). From a leadership perspective, looking back, is there anything you would do differently? Thinking about the different attributes we have been considering in the course, which ones do you think really led to the successes (such as overcoming resistance?).
February 9, 2020 at 10:44 pm
Hi Michelle,
Definitely there is! The launch experience was a very humbling one, the change was new to both leaders and followers. We took away a lot of learned lessons!
For example, before cascading the training to the employees on a hotel level, the leadership team was trained on how to use the system, how to pull out reports, how to navigate through the system. Some of the department heads started cascading the training to their teams without being 100% confident about their skill level using the system, and this resulted in lower completion rates with their teams. As I reflect back, if I do the launch again, I would focus more on the readiness level of our leadership team and on their competency. Employees were able to sense uncertainties and hesitancies and therefore, it was harder for them to follow their leaders. This is only one example, I do have many 🙂 The good thing that we all learned, the hard or the simple way, as I said it was a very humbling experience that had a very positive impact on our hotel after all.
February 9, 2020 at 11:36 am
Hi Tala, you bring up a good point Tala and it is in alignment with Kouzes & Posner view where a vision does not belong only to a leader. It must be a shared vision that attracts everyone to sustain high levels of motivation and withstand challenges. According to The Leadership Challenge, by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, leaders can envision the future by imagining the possibilities and finding a common purpose. In addition, leaders must spark a sense of meaning and purpose in those around them.
Also, your take on reflective and adaptive leadership style speaks fair-mindedness and accountability with compassion. A true leader passes praise and shares the blame, lifting up those around them.9 Without followers, great leaders cannot lead.
The advantages and disadvantages of the adaptive leadership styles do place the employee first. They focus on what people need to carve out their own path toward success. To reach that goal, each worker must be personally motivated to be productive. If workers need exterior motivations to keep going, they may find it difficult to be successful under the supervision of an adaptive leader. I wonder how you feel about this in your environment as the hospitality industry?
Tehreem.
February 9, 2020 at 10:31 pm
Thank you so much Tahreem for your comment. I agree with you, leaders should take into consideration that people are not equally motivated and what motivates someone, may or may not motivate the other. In our case, department heads were extremely involved in the success of their team’s completion rates because after all, they know their employees better. Some department heads created a competition contest and rewarded top achievers. Other department heads, chose to personally engage with their employees while attending online training. I truly believe that a good leader is someone who knows his/her team, their needs and wants.
I would say the launch was successful because the leadership team of our hotel worked as a team and provided continuous feedback about our employees and the new system, this transparent communication and the continuous feedback that took place made us understand our teams and understand what motivates them. I have to be honest, there was a lot of trial and error at first because, after all, this change was new to both leaders and followers!
February 9, 2020 at 9:11 pm
Hi Tala,
I think it’s an amazing accomplishment that you were able to change your training program from purely face-to-face to a blended program. I based our last assignment in LRNT 524 on this change (but it was fictional of course. We haven’t done this at my company). I’m curious how did you choose which parts to make digital first? And after seeing some employees go through the digital training, were any of the benefits of traditional training lost? What innovations or digital tools were used in your new blended program?
February 9, 2020 at 10:14 pm
Hi Susan,
Thank you for your comment. The launch of the LMS, the content and the selection of the programs were all determined by our corporate office. We started with part of the orientation, and 902% of the on-job training. As to off-job training which included leadership program, they remained the same…traditional training delivery.
Introducing a digital learning environment was extremely beneficial at our hotel, using videos and visuals made it much easier for employees to follow standard operating procedures (SOPs). For example, watching a recipe in restaurants and how to clean a room in housekeeping helped employees remember all the steps involved and accordingly, their performance has extremely increased!
As for the leadership programs, I think it was a wise decision to keep them as they are due to the complexity of the programs. The instructor-learner interaction is really important, especially that the change in the learning methodology at the hotel level was really new and it had to be implemented gradually! We still used videos and visuals in blended programs but they were not the primary tools, we heavily relied on group projects in blended programs.
February 9, 2020 at 11:30 pm
Thanks Tala. That’s helpful and good to know! I was thinking of suggesting to my boss soon that we change orientation from face to face to a video.
February 13, 2020 at 2:41 pm
Hi Tala,
I enjoyed reading your post! One of the elements of our MALAT program that I so appreciate is the diverse professional community that makes up our cohort. We come from different public and private sectors, with the common interest of “learning and technology” – and have many common goals. Many of our experiences with learning and technology are very similar, albeit in different professional contexts. For example, it struck me how your leadership style and focus on adaptive and reflective theory and practices, are precisely what I value in my K12 educational context (from my leaders, and from myself as a leader – in the role of “teacher”).
Thanks for sharing!
Leigh
February 16, 2020 at 10:54 pm
Thank you Leigh for your comment. I feel honoured that I get to engage in such a diverse learning environment… having the ability to learn from different perspectives and experiences is what makes the MALAT journey so interesting! Thanks to you and other colleagues, I now understand K12 educational context more than I did before I joined and I think it is important to learn from other industries in order to grow and build new skills 🙂