Episode 869 - The Signature Stay

0:04 Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of performance through strong human relations, team building, and goal achieving. This is the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast with your host, Paul Falavolito.

0:22 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast. It's episode 869. Today I want to talk about something the hospitality industry understands better than almost anyone else, the signature stay. Think about what happens when you walk into a really great hotel. Before you ever arrive, somebody has thought about your experience. They've thought about what the entrance looks like.

0:50 They've thought about how you're greeted. They've thought about how quickly you get checked in. They've thought about the cleanliness of the room, the temperature. the smell of the lobby, the lighting, the bed, the towels, the breakfast, the way the phone is answered, and what happens when something goes wrong.

1:06 Great hotels don't leave the guest experience to chance. They design it, and then they train people to deliver it. And here's the leadership question I want you thinking about today. What is the signature stay in your business? Because you have one, You may own a restaurant. You may run an EMS organization. You may manage a bank, lead a construction company, operate a hospital. You may work in manufacturing.

1:34 You may lead a corporate office where nobody has ever used the words guest experience in their life. You still have customers walking through your version of a lobby every day, and they're having an experience. The only question is whether you designed that experience or or whether your employees are making it up as they go. That's a huge difference.

1:57 Imagine checking into a hotel and the front desk employee says, welcome, we don't really have a standard for how we do things around here. Everybody pretty much does whatever works for them. You'd probably be concerned. Yet that's exactly how a lot of businesses operate. One employee answers the phone one way, another answers it completely different. One person goes out of their way to solve a customer's problem. Another says, that's not my department. One employee understands what great service looks like.

2:29 Another employee thinks great service means completing the transaction without making the customer angry. And management wonders why the customer experience is so inconsistent. The answer is training. You cannot demand a signature stay from people who have never been taught what your signature stay looks like. That's where hospitality gives us a powerful leadership lesson. The best hospitality organizations understand that service cannot live inside a mission statement hanging on the wall. It has to become behavior. If you want your people to greet customers a certain way, train it.

3:09 If you want employees to take ownership of problems, teach them what ownership looks like. If you want people anticipating customer needs, give them examples. If you want your organization to become known for something, everybody needs to understand what that something is. And please don't hand somebody a 70-page employee manual and call that training. That's corporate BS. Training is showing people. Training is practicing. Training is coaching somebody after the interaction and saying, here's what you did well, and here's where we can make the experience better next time.

3:46 That's how standards become normal behavior. And here's where this gets even more interesting. Your signature stay isn't only for customers, it's for employees too. Your employees are staying with you, maybe for six months, maybe five years, maybe 20 years. And during that time, they're having an experience with your organization.

4:10 More specifically, they're having an experience with you. So what's it like to work for you? Think about that as if you were running a hotel. What's employee check-in like? That's onboarding. When somebody walks through your door on day one, do they feel expected? Does somebody know they're coming? Is their uniform ready? Is their email account working? Does somebody show them around? Do they understand what success looks like?

4:36 Does the team know their name? Or do they arrive at eight o'clock Monday morning and somebody says, oh yeah, you're the new person. Hang on. I think Dave is supposed to train you. That's not a signature stay. That's walking into a hotel and finding out they lost your reservation. Now think about housekeeping. In leadership, that's the everyday stuff.

4:58 Is the workplace organized? Do employees have the equipment they need? Are schedules handled professionally? Are problems addressed? Are standards maintained? Do people know what's expected? Nobody books a beautiful hotel because they're excited about housekeeping... Yet housekeeping can absolutely destroy the experience when it's bad. Leadership works the same way.

5:21 A lot of employee experience is built through ordinary things done consistently well. And then we have guest services. That's you. When an employee comes to you with a problem, what happens? Can they talk to you? Do you listen? Do you follow through? If you say, I'll look into it, do you actually look into it? Do employees have confidence that when something matters, their leader will respond? Every interaction is another moment in their stay. And eventually comes checkout. An employee leaves. Maybe they're retiring. Maybe they found another opportunity.

5:58 Maybe the organization wasn't right for them anymore. What does checkout look like? Some companies treat departing employees like criminals escaping the building. They immediately become the enemy. That's a mistake. A former employee can still become an ambassador for your organization. They can recommend your company to customers. They can send future employees your way. They can even come back someday with more experience and become one of your best hires again.

6:28 The signature stay matters from check-in through check-out. And there's something else great hotels understand. Sometimes things go wrong. The room isn't ready. The reservation gets messed up. The air conditioning quits. Somebody makes a mistake. A signature stay does not require perfection. It requires a trained response. That's where great organizations separate themselves. When something goes wrong, employees don't hide.

6:57 They don't point fingers. They don't make the customer chase five different people. They know what they're empowered to do. Your employees need that same confidence. Teach them how to recover an experience. And leaders need to know how to recover an employee experience too. You're going to make leadership mistakes.

7:17 You're going to communicate poorly sometimes. You're going to miss something. You're going to have a day when you're tired, distracted, and not at your best. When that happens, own it. Fix it. The recovery becomes part of the experience. So here's something I want you to do Walk through your business mentally as if you were a first-time guest. Call your own phone number. Walk through your front door. Look at your website. Read the emails customers receive. Watch how employees greet people. Look at how problems are handled and ask yourself one question. Is this the experience we want people to remember? And then do the same thing from the employee's perspective. Imagine today is your first day. Nobody

8:07 knows who you are. You don't know the unwritten rules. You don't know who the good managers are. You don't know where anything is. You don't even know where you're supposed to park. Walk through the employee experience from that perspective. And then imagine you've worked there for 10 years. Does anyone still invest in you? Does anyone still coach you?

8:27 Does anyone ask what you want to do next? Do you still feel like you matter? That's your employee's signature stay. This concept... is bigger than hospitality. It's intentional leadership because every customer who interacts with your company is going to leave with a story. Every employee who works for you is eventually going to leave with a story too. You have an opportunity to influence what that story sounds like.

8:58 Maybe the greatest compliment somebody can give your business isn't they have a great product. Maybe it's this. You need to experience how they treat people. And maybe one of the greatest compliments someone can give you as a leader isn't your title, your accomplishments, or your resume. Maybe years after they worked for you, somebody says, working for that person changed what I thought leadership could be. That's a signature stay. So this week, take a walk through your organization and like a guest, and then take the same walk like an employee. Look at every interaction, every standard, every handoff, and every leadership moment. Ask yourself, what do we want people to remember about being here? And then

9:51 train your people to deliver that experience consistently. Because people eventually check out, customers leave, employees move on, but a truly great experience travels with them. This has been the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast, and I thank you for listening.