Reported for the Flatiron Hot! News by Eric Shapiro – Edited by the Flatiron Hot! News Editorial Staff
For Bryan Williams, hospitality is not just a profession; it is a passion and a state of being. When he speaks at his workshops and consulting gigs there is an almost spiritual resonance to his words. His dedication to customer service and fostering what he calls a “culture of excellence” in the workplace comes across as sincere, heartfelt and inspirational, which are perhaps not words that one would associate with corporate culture. But for Williams, hospitality is not just a business term; it is a noble calling. To serve others, he implies, is to elevate oneself.
Bryan Williams: About His Concept of Service!
Williams acquired his passion for serving others as a child on St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, known for its thriving tourism sector. His parents both worked in the tourism industry and imparted to him the value of providing good service. Williams got a job at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, where he worked from high school until he received his doctorate. During that period. he held 17 different positions, from front-line to management. He recalls his time at the Ritz Carlton as a formative experience. As much as Williams appreciated his time working and thriving at one of the world’s most renowned hotel chains, he felt called to do more.To this end, Williams founded his own company, BWEnterprise, He recently gave a workshop for ALICE at the NYC Seminar Center’s Flatiron Event Hall. Flatiron Hot! News had the privilege of speaking to Bryan about his life and career.
Q: How did your experience on St. Thomas informed your views in to your views of service and hospitality?
St. Thomas is one of the U.S. Virgin Islands where tourism is the number one industry. Most people’s jobs are in the service sector or the government. Both of my parents worked in the tourist sector. My father had his own town cars, taxi, safari type business. My mom initially worked for airlines and then she moved to work in hotels. As the youngest person in my house, I was always being told to do stuff: “get me that, get me this.” Naturally and organically as I grew older, I started to really enjoy doing things for other people. So what happened was when I got into the hospitality industry [inaudible] I happened to be in my high school guidance counselor’s office in 11th grade when she got a phone call about doing a job reference for another student about a job at a local hotel. She said: “I have another kid right here next to me who’s looking to get a part time job washing dishes or whatever.” And that’s how it all started. I just definitely fell in love. I felt like I was plugged into an outlet like “this is where I belong, this is what I’m meant to be doing.”
Q: Can you talk about your experience working with a manager who was your mentor?
This was my senior year in high school. The gentleman was the general manager of the hotel. Basically, he noticed how I was working – I was a beach and pool attendant serving drinks and food at the beach – he noticed how I was working with passion and pride and so he called me to his office and asked me basically: “what is your purpose? What is your purpose in life?” I didn’t know, because no one had ever asked me that question. So I said, “I don’t know.” So he challenged me to go home and think about it and in a week come back and tell him his purpose. I told him, “I love to serve people. I think I was put on Earth to do for other people and to help other people, to inspire and encourage and help.” He said, “great, what is your goal?” which I wasn’t prepared for. I said, “well, you know, I want to finish high school.” He kept essentially insisting that I tell him bigger goals. I joked that “I want to get a doctorate” and he took me seriously, he wrote it down.
Addressing The Industry on How to Delivery the Best Service …
He asked for more goals, I said I wanted to travel the world. He asked me for more goals, basically I want to start my own business, more goals… He asked me to articulate goals that were essentially, in my mind, completely unrealistic. Completely unrealistic, in my mind. Every week we met for a couple of minutes in his office to go over my progress to reach my goals. He was only there for a year. By my late 20s, I accomplished all the goals.
When I share a story, Eric, the whole point is to not only share personal testimony, but really to drive home the power of believing in someone – not just saying you believe in them, but actually doing something about your belief and how that transformative power can change people’s trajectory in life.
Q: Can you talk about your experience at the Ritz Carlton? What was your experience there and how did it play into your message and your decision to be a consultant and a motivational speaker?
I worked at the Ritz Carlton from my high school years all the way until I got my doctorate. Working at the Ritz Carlton was the best possible university in terms of service, design, experience, how to engage your workforce, how to engage you staff, how to engage your guests, how to follow up, how to run a business. It was all there. I started at the very, very bottom, front-line job and when I left I was a corporate executive and I had 17 jobs in between. That company is so iconic, so world-renowned for what excellence is. It enhanced or catapulted my viewpoint on service.
A lot of people, unfortunately, view service as quote unquote “common sense.” “Just be nice to people, right?” It’s much more than that. A lot of businesses fail because they don’t treat their customers well. You can get on the best marketing programs and the best advertising platforms in the world, but if you don’t treat your customers right, your business is going to fail. The Ritz Carlton put so much structure and rigor and seriousness and PASSION behind this thing we call service and hospitality. So [working at the Ritz-Carlton] was a huge milestone in my career and my life working there.
Q: What made you decide to go from working in the hospitality industry to taking the knowledge and wisdom you accumulated and starting a brand new venture based on spreading the word about what excellence and hospitality means to you? Was it a natural progression? Did it feel like taking a risk? What was that process like? That seems like a really big transition.
Both my parents are very entrepreneurial. They both had their own businesses. I was always encouraged, especially by my mother, to “don’t work for other people all the days of your life,” I remember that so, so well. “The same things you do for other people, you can do for yourself.” I’ve always been an entrepreneur on some level, I’ve always had some business here or there going, even as a small kid. At the Ritz-Carlton, I got to a point where I knew I wanted to have my own business, my own training firm, my own consulting firm. I wanted to share what I learned, shared what I was passionate about without any restrictions. A lot of times when you are working in an organization, a corporation, there are barriers to doing the things your really, really want to do. Because it’s not yours, right? You have to abide by the rules of where you work.
Q: But you still have to own it, right? Isn’t that a big part of your message?
You still have to own it. To be successful anywhere, you have to have an entrepreneurial mindset. But it’s not the same as having your own thing; you don’t have to get approval.
I am so grateful for my time at the Ritz-Carlton, but there was definitely a natural progression, it was an organic goal to take everything I had learned, married to everything I had been learning from my own experiences, my own passions, my own knowledge and create something unique.
Q: There are a lot of consultants out there. What separates your approach from the many options people have? What distinguishes your brand and you as a person?
The thing that I offer that’s distinctive is: service and hospitality is not about work, it’s not about a job, it’s not about turning on your service switch and then leaving work and turning it off. It’s who you are. What I bring to the equation is I believe that every human being ought to be treated as a VIP, whether that human being is called a co-worker, or customer support, or a supervisor, or someone who reports to you, or a customer, or a guest, or a patient or a client or a tenant or a passenger or a student or a stranger or someone who’s not even patronizing your business.
I believe that everything I discuss, I’m not really talking about work, I’m talking about life. I’m talking about how you treat people, how you treat your family, how you treat your spouse, your children, how you treat people in the grocery store. I take it to that level. I think that’s how my thing is distinctive. I’m not talking about, necessarily, customers. I’m talking about how you treat people. And you can apply it wherever you happen to be.
Q: Your approach seems almost philosophical, or religious or spiritual. You quote Gandhi and you seem to have a real grasp of human psychology. Were there any particular interests outside of hospitality – books you read, thinkers – that resonated with you and played into your humanistic take on a subject that a lot of people think of as being very corporate, or “just a job”?
There’s quite a few influences. I’m a big fan of psychology, particularly positive psychology. My doctorate was in organizational leadership and my focus was heavily on positive psychology, which is focusing on works.
Really and truly, the underlying theme for me personally in my life and in everything I write and talk about is my relationship with God. In my case, I’m a Christian. The things that truly inspire me or educate me come from reading the Bible and my relationship with God. That’s where the underlying spiritual tone comes from. When I’m training, or consulting, or writing, I’m really not trying to just reach your intellect; I know you’re going to understand what I’m saying. That’s a given. I prepare my lectures in such a way that you’re going to have to really try hard not to understand what I’m saying because how I present it is really basic and simple. That’s on purpose. I’m trying to reach you on an emotional level, even a spiritual level. I want the points to resonate so deeply that you feel compelled to do something about how you learned.
One thing you refute implicitly is the idea that the relationship between the manager, the boss, the clients and co-workers is inherently adversarial and fraught with tension. I’ve even heard people say: “the relationship between management and labor is inherently exploitative.” But you make the point that within the capitalist system, there’s room for a lot of self-growth, mentoring and a lot of positive relationships to develop. Do you see the relationship between management and labor as something that’s mutually beneficial when it’s working properly?
Absolutely. There are countless examples of organizations where that’s true. When you look at any company that’s thriving, that’s successful and has high employee morale, low turnover, high productivity, high customer satisfaction; it’s not an exploitative relationship. Think of Southwest Airlines or all these companies that are renowned for having a strong organizational culture, it’s not exploitative. If you take any situation and you take a person or organization that has bad intentions, you’re going to get a bad result. If I’m in a leadership role and you report to me, but I’m an exploiter – me personally – I’m the type of person who just tries to get as much as I can from other people and I don’t care how hard they work, I just want to get the end result. If that’s the kind of person I am, that’s going to affect my job, that’s going to affect how I treat you. It’s not about the organization; it’s about people and how they view relationships.
If you have a person like me, let’s say I’m a CEO with that mindset, I’m going to hire other people with that mindset. Now you have senior leadership with that mindset and that will affect the culture of that organization. It’s not because inherently ownership and labor or front line and leadership are naturally adversarial. When you start getting into the “us and them” and you start labeling levels of organizations, that by itself creates a level of separation.
Q: What is a culture of excellence? What does it mean to you and what does it mean to CEOs, managers, employees etc. How do you foster a culture of excellence?
A culture is absolutely a way of life. I like to define a culture as a group of people in the same place with the same habits. When I say excellence, to excellence, means to go beyond meeting expectations. Beyond doing what’s expected. In an organization, a critical mass of the workforce does more than they have to regularly. Essentially, it is an organization that is known for people not just doing the bare minimum, they’re known for people going above and beyond, anticipating needs, helping others, giving more than they have to. Honestly, in most companies, if you do more than you have to you don’t get paid extra. So you can’t “make” people excel. You can’t “make” a culture of excellence happen. All you can do is really, really articulate and outline what you want your culture to be, envision what you want it to be and then you start to attract and recruit people who think that way already. And then you have a work environment where people like that are supported and they feel appreciated and the leadership takes really good fair of the front line; every level should take care of each other and the culture of excellence happens organically as a result.
Q: How would you define a ”wow moment”?
When I’m describing it, I jokingly say, “you know the customer is wowed when the customer says ‘wow’) A wow moment is anything that creates a lasting, positive memory. An emotionally powerful event that you help to create in the minds of the customer. It could be anything. For example, if a customer is leaving a restaurant and it’s raining and they realize that they forgot their umbrella. The host or hostess says: “allow me to walk you to your car, allow me to walk you to your Uber, allow me to walk you to your taxi with this umbrella.” That’s a wow. A wow moment is something when the customer is so blown away, they’re so emotionally moved by the level of caring that you’re showing them.
The inverse of that is the bare minimums (BMs) and weeds, negative habits that are built over time. Your comparison of these habits to gardening is an interesting analogy
I have to write a book or article on it, because people never forget that analogy. Essentially what I do is equate gardening to leadership or culture. Let’s say you’re trying to grow tomatoes – the one’s with all the drama – the tomato is the outcome, that’s the result; it’s what you get after treat the soil, you water it. You can’t make it grow; it comes out as a reward. The “wow,” the “excellence,” is the reward; it’s what happens organically as a result of treating the garden well. And the garden is the team; the soil is the work environment, the soil is the unique contributions of each person and the outcome is the excellence. If you have a garden and you allow weeds to grow, it stifles the probability that you will get tomatoes, flowers, or potatoes because the weed sucks up nutrients, it sucks up things out of the soil that could have gone to the tomato. The weed is not the person doing the bad thing; the weed is the undesirable behaviors. In a garden where there’s weeds, you’re not going to get many flowers. I say whenever you see a weed, it’s a sign of neglect.
Q: Not of the employees, but the managers?
100% If you’re driving by someone’s house and you see a whole bunch of weeds, you’re not saying: “oh my God, those are such inconsiderate weeds.” No, you’re going to blame the gardener for not pulling the weeds. The presence of a weed is a sign of neglect; it is a signer that the gardener is not attending to the garden. Weeds are allowed to grow. When you see someone coming in late all the time, or leaning on the desk, or not answering the phone properly, or not smiling, or having a bad attitude – those are weeds. And the more brazen the undesirable the behavior is, that means the weed was able to grow for a while. Weeds don’t start big; they start very, very small.
Q: Can you talk about your “Lift Me Higher” poem? In the best possible sense, it reminded me of performance art. I found it to be one of the most memorable parts of the presentation. Can you talk about how you came up with that and how you put it into words?
It’s from the perspective of the people you are leading. The ones who are looking up to you who need assistance from you. Whether you call them your children or your line employees – whatever you want to call them – in my work as a speaker, trainer, consultant, writer etc. I’m always trying to provide resources, information and inspiration for how to create this culture of excellence. I go to organization after organization and I see that there are employees who are frustrated, who don’t get the support that they need. I see, equally, leaders who don’t get the responsibility they have in the lives of those they’re privileged to lead and serve. I don’t really write poetry. These ideas come to me and I have to write them down before I forget it.
Q: Like a dream?
Like a dream yeah. I was sitting down and thinking “leaders don’t understand the impact they have on people’s live” and then it just hit me and I had to write it down before I forgot it. I wrote it down, I turned it into a poster. And then I recited it to – you mentioned performance art, I’ve never heard anyone describe it that way-
Q: I meant it as a compliment.
I know, thank you for that. What I wanted to do was shift modes. I wanted to shift modes and make it resonate very deeply in the hearts and minds of those in attendance. Essentially, I wanted to turn into the employee. As an employee, I was telling them what I needed from then.
Q: I think that one section conveys a lot of what you’re trying to say. You talk a lot about gratitude. Why is gratitude so important both within the customers service setting at work and also when you wake up in the morning? Why is it so important to feel gratitude and how does one go about cultivating gratitude?
It’s intentional. I really started to understand – not intellectually, but spiritually and emotionally – gratitude and humility around the same time. They are words you don’t hear often enough in our country. You hear them, but they’re not a part of the culture. In fact, humility is sometimes considered weak in American culture. But when I traveled to Indonesia, I travelled to Bali and humility and gratitude are big parts of the culture. It really moved me and changed me. It made me think gosh, the kinds of service I was receiving in those countries, particularly in Bali, the people were so grateful for life. They’re so grateful that they’re alive and that they have food. I could FEEL that gratitude in how they were treating me and how they were serving me. It wasn’t a begrudging thing, but they were grateful for their life and that was affecting how they were serving and I felt it.
I included gratitude in the presentation because, listen: if you have a deliberate conversation with yourself or with your creator that your grateful to walk and talk and see and help and do that can’t help but affect the authenticity and the sincerity of how you do for other people. Because you know it’s a gift because you are even here right now.
NYC Theater News
Hospitality Consultant Extraordinaire – Bryan Williams Talks About the Zeitgeist of Giving First-Rate Service!
Reported for the Flatiron Hot! News by Eric Shapiro – Edited by the Flatiron Hot! News Editorial Staff
For Bryan Williams, hospitality is not just a profession; it is a passion and a state of being. When he speaks at his workshops and consulting gigs there is an almost spiritual resonance to his words. His dedication to customer service and fostering what he calls a “culture of excellence” in the workplace comes across as sincere, heartfelt and inspirational, which are perhaps not words that one would associate with corporate culture. But for Williams, hospitality is not just a business term; it is a noble calling. To serve others, he implies, is to elevate oneself.
Bryan Williams: About His Concept of Service!
Williams acquired his passion for serving others as a child on St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, known for its thriving tourism sector. His parents both worked in the tourism industry and imparted to him the value of providing good service. Williams got a job at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, where he worked from high school until he received his doctorate. During that period. he held 17 different positions, from front-line to management. He recalls his time at the Ritz Carlton as a formative experience. As much as Williams appreciated his time working and thriving at one of the world’s most renowned hotel chains, he felt called to do more.To this end, Williams founded his own company, BWEnterprise, He recently gave a workshop for ALICE at the NYC Seminar Center’s Flatiron Event Hall. Flatiron Hot! News had the privilege of speaking to Bryan about his life and career.
Q: How did your experience on St. Thomas informed your views in to your views of service and hospitality?
St. Thomas is one of the U.S. Virgin Islands where tourism is the number one industry. Most people’s jobs are in the service sector or the government. Both of my parents worked in the tourist sector. My father had his own town cars, taxi, safari type business. My mom initially worked for airlines and then she moved to work in hotels. As the youngest person in my house, I was always being told to do stuff: “get me that, get me this.” Naturally and organically as I grew older, I started to really enjoy doing things for other people. So what happened was when I got into the hospitality industry [inaudible] I happened to be in my high school guidance counselor’s office in 11th grade when she got a phone call about doing a job reference for another student about a job at a local hotel. She said: “I have another kid right here next to me who’s looking to get a part time job washing dishes or whatever.” And that’s how it all started. I just definitely fell in love. I felt like I was plugged into an outlet like “this is where I belong, this is what I’m meant to be doing.”
Q: Can you talk about your experience working with a manager who was your mentor?
This was my senior year in high school. The gentleman was the general manager of the hotel. Basically, he noticed how I was working – I was a beach and pool attendant serving drinks and food at the beach – he noticed how I was working with passion and pride and so he called me to his office and asked me basically: “what is your purpose? What is your purpose in life?” I didn’t know, because no one had ever asked me that question. So I said, “I don’t know.” So he challenged me to go home and think about it and in a week come back and tell him his purpose. I told him, “I love to serve people. I think I was put on Earth to do for other people and to help other people, to inspire and encourage and help.” He said, “great, what is your goal?” which I wasn’t prepared for. I said, “well, you know, I want to finish high school.” He kept essentially insisting that I tell him bigger goals. I joked that “I want to get a doctorate” and he took me seriously, he wrote it down.
Addressing The Industry on How to Delivery the Best Service …
He asked for more goals, I said I wanted to travel the world. He asked me for more goals, basically I want to start my own business, more goals… He asked me to articulate goals that were essentially, in my mind, completely unrealistic. Completely unrealistic, in my mind. Every week we met for a couple of minutes in his office to go over my progress to reach my goals. He was only there for a year. By my late 20s, I accomplished all the goals.
When I share a story, Eric, the whole point is to not only share personal testimony, but really to drive home the power of believing in someone – not just saying you believe in them, but actually doing something about your belief and how that transformative power can change people’s trajectory in life.
Q: Can you talk about your experience at the Ritz Carlton? What was your experience there and how did it play into your message and your decision to be a consultant and a motivational speaker?
I worked at the Ritz Carlton from my high school years all the way until I got my doctorate. Working at the Ritz Carlton was the best possible university in terms of service, design, experience, how to engage your workforce, how to engage you staff, how to engage your guests, how to follow up, how to run a business. It was all there. I started at the very, very bottom, front-line job and when I left I was a corporate executive and I had 17 jobs in between. That company is so iconic, so world-renowned for what excellence is. It enhanced or catapulted my viewpoint on service.
A lot of people, unfortunately, view service as quote unquote “common sense.” “Just be nice to people, right?” It’s much more than that. A lot of businesses fail because they don’t treat their customers well. You can get on the best marketing programs and the best advertising platforms in the world, but if you don’t treat your customers right, your business is going to fail. The Ritz Carlton put so much structure and rigor and seriousness and PASSION behind this thing we call service and hospitality. So [working at the Ritz-Carlton] was a huge milestone in my career and my life working there.
Q: What made you decide to go from working in the hospitality industry to taking the knowledge and wisdom you accumulated and starting a brand new venture based on spreading the word about what excellence and hospitality means to you? Was it a natural progression? Did it feel like taking a risk? What was that process like? That seems like a really big transition.
Both my parents are very entrepreneurial. They both had their own businesses. I was always encouraged, especially by my mother, to “don’t work for other people all the days of your life,” I remember that so, so well. “The same things you do for other people, you can do for yourself.” I’ve always been an entrepreneur on some level, I’ve always had some business here or there going, even as a small kid. At the Ritz-Carlton, I got to a point where I knew I wanted to have my own business, my own training firm, my own consulting firm. I wanted to share what I learned, shared what I was passionate about without any restrictions. A lot of times when you are working in an organization, a corporation, there are barriers to doing the things your really, really want to do. Because it’s not yours, right? You have to abide by the rules of where you work.
Q: But you still have to own it, right? Isn’t that a big part of your message?
You still have to own it. To be successful anywhere, you have to have an entrepreneurial mindset. But it’s not the same as having your own thing; you don’t have to get approval.
I am so grateful for my time at the Ritz-Carlton, but there was definitely a natural progression, it was an organic goal to take everything I had learned, married to everything I had been learning from my own experiences, my own passions, my own knowledge and create something unique.
Q: There are a lot of consultants out there. What separates your approach from the many options people have? What distinguishes your brand and you as a person?
The thing that I offer that’s distinctive is: service and hospitality is not about work, it’s not about a job, it’s not about turning on your service switch and then leaving work and turning it off. It’s who you are. What I bring to the equation is I believe that every human being ought to be treated as a VIP, whether that human being is called a co-worker, or customer support, or a supervisor, or someone who reports to you, or a customer, or a guest, or a patient or a client or a tenant or a passenger or a student or a stranger or someone who’s not even patronizing your business.
I believe that everything I discuss, I’m not really talking about work, I’m talking about life. I’m talking about how you treat people, how you treat your family, how you treat your spouse, your children, how you treat people in the grocery store. I take it to that level. I think that’s how my thing is distinctive. I’m not talking about, necessarily, customers. I’m talking about how you treat people. And you can apply it wherever you happen to be.
Q: Your approach seems almost philosophical, or religious or spiritual. You quote Gandhi and you seem to have a real grasp of human psychology. Were there any particular interests outside of hospitality – books you read, thinkers – that resonated with you and played into your humanistic take on a subject that a lot of people think of as being very corporate, or “just a job”?
There’s quite a few influences. I’m a big fan of psychology, particularly positive psychology. My doctorate was in organizational leadership and my focus was heavily on positive psychology, which is focusing on works.
Really and truly, the underlying theme for me personally in my life and in everything I write and talk about is my relationship with God. In my case, I’m a Christian. The things that truly inspire me or educate me come from reading the Bible and my relationship with God. That’s where the underlying spiritual tone comes from. When I’m training, or consulting, or writing, I’m really not trying to just reach your intellect; I know you’re going to understand what I’m saying. That’s a given. I prepare my lectures in such a way that you’re going to have to really try hard not to understand what I’m saying because how I present it is really basic and simple. That’s on purpose. I’m trying to reach you on an emotional level, even a spiritual level. I want the points to resonate so deeply that you feel compelled to do something about how you learned.
One thing you refute implicitly is the idea that the relationship between the manager, the boss, the clients and co-workers is inherently adversarial and fraught with tension. I’ve even heard people say: “the relationship between management and labor is inherently exploitative.” But you make the point that within the capitalist system, there’s room for a lot of self-growth, mentoring and a lot of positive relationships to develop. Do you see the relationship between management and labor as something that’s mutually beneficial when it’s working properly?
Absolutely. There are countless examples of organizations where that’s true. When you look at any company that’s thriving, that’s successful and has high employee morale, low turnover, high productivity, high customer satisfaction; it’s not an exploitative relationship. Think of Southwest Airlines or all these companies that are renowned for having a strong organizational culture, it’s not exploitative. If you take any situation and you take a person or organization that has bad intentions, you’re going to get a bad result. If I’m in a leadership role and you report to me, but I’m an exploiter – me personally – I’m the type of person who just tries to get as much as I can from other people and I don’t care how hard they work, I just want to get the end result. If that’s the kind of person I am, that’s going to affect my job, that’s going to affect how I treat you. It’s not about the organization; it’s about people and how they view relationships.
If you have a person like me, let’s say I’m a CEO with that mindset, I’m going to hire other people with that mindset. Now you have senior leadership with that mindset and that will affect the culture of that organization. It’s not because inherently ownership and labor or front line and leadership are naturally adversarial. When you start getting into the “us and them” and you start labeling levels of organizations, that by itself creates a level of separation.
Q: What is a culture of excellence? What does it mean to you and what does it mean to CEOs, managers, employees etc. How do you foster a culture of excellence?
A culture is absolutely a way of life. I like to define a culture as a group of people in the same place with the same habits. When I say excellence, to excellence, means to go beyond meeting expectations. Beyond doing what’s expected. In an organization, a critical mass of the workforce does more than they have to regularly. Essentially, it is an organization that is known for people not just doing the bare minimum, they’re known for people going above and beyond, anticipating needs, helping others, giving more than they have to. Honestly, in most companies, if you do more than you have to you don’t get paid extra. So you can’t “make” people excel. You can’t “make” a culture of excellence happen. All you can do is really, really articulate and outline what you want your culture to be, envision what you want it to be and then you start to attract and recruit people who think that way already. And then you have a work environment where people like that are supported and they feel appreciated and the leadership takes really good fair of the front line; every level should take care of each other and the culture of excellence happens organically as a result.
Q: How would you define a ”wow moment”?
When I’m describing it, I jokingly say, “you know the customer is wowed when the customer says ‘wow’) A wow moment is anything that creates a lasting, positive memory. An emotionally powerful event that you help to create in the minds of the customer. It could be anything. For example, if a customer is leaving a restaurant and it’s raining and they realize that they forgot their umbrella. The host or hostess says: “allow me to walk you to your car, allow me to walk you to your Uber, allow me to walk you to your taxi with this umbrella.” That’s a wow. A wow moment is something when the customer is so blown away, they’re so emotionally moved by the level of caring that you’re showing them.
The inverse of that is the bare minimums (BMs) and weeds, negative habits that are built over time. Your comparison of these habits to gardening is an interesting analogy
I have to write a book or article on it, because people never forget that analogy. Essentially what I do is equate gardening to leadership or culture. Let’s say you’re trying to grow tomatoes – the one’s with all the drama – the tomato is the outcome, that’s the result; it’s what you get after treat the soil, you water it. You can’t make it grow; it comes out as a reward. The “wow,” the “excellence,” is the reward; it’s what happens organically as a result of treating the garden well. And the garden is the team; the soil is the work environment, the soil is the unique contributions of each person and the outcome is the excellence. If you have a garden and you allow weeds to grow, it stifles the probability that you will get tomatoes, flowers, or potatoes because the weed sucks up nutrients, it sucks up things out of the soil that could have gone to the tomato. The weed is not the person doing the bad thing; the weed is the undesirable behaviors. In a garden where there’s weeds, you’re not going to get many flowers. I say whenever you see a weed, it’s a sign of neglect.
Q: Not of the employees, but the managers?
100% If you’re driving by someone’s house and you see a whole bunch of weeds, you’re not saying: “oh my God, those are such inconsiderate weeds.” No, you’re going to blame the gardener for not pulling the weeds. The presence of a weed is a sign of neglect; it is a signer that the gardener is not attending to the garden. Weeds are allowed to grow. When you see someone coming in late all the time, or leaning on the desk, or not answering the phone properly, or not smiling, or having a bad attitude – those are weeds. And the more brazen the undesirable the behavior is, that means the weed was able to grow for a while. Weeds don’t start big; they start very, very small.
Q: Can you talk about your “Lift Me Higher” poem? In the best possible sense, it reminded me of performance art. I found it to be one of the most memorable parts of the presentation. Can you talk about how you came up with that and how you put it into words?
It’s from the perspective of the people you are leading. The ones who are looking up to you who need assistance from you. Whether you call them your children or your line employees – whatever you want to call them – in my work as a speaker, trainer, consultant, writer etc. I’m always trying to provide resources, information and inspiration for how to create this culture of excellence. I go to organization after organization and I see that there are employees who are frustrated, who don’t get the support that they need. I see, equally, leaders who don’t get the responsibility they have in the lives of those they’re privileged to lead and serve. I don’t really write poetry. These ideas come to me and I have to write them down before I forget it.
Q: Like a dream?
Like a dream yeah. I was sitting down and thinking “leaders don’t understand the impact they have on people’s live” and then it just hit me and I had to write it down before I forgot it. I wrote it down, I turned it into a poster. And then I recited it to – you mentioned performance art, I’ve never heard anyone describe it that way-
Q: I meant it as a compliment.
I know, thank you for that. What I wanted to do was shift modes. I wanted to shift modes and make it resonate very deeply in the hearts and minds of those in attendance. Essentially, I wanted to turn into the employee. As an employee, I was telling them what I needed from then.
Q: I think that one section conveys a lot of what you’re trying to say. You talk a lot about gratitude. Why is gratitude so important both within the customers service setting at work and also when you wake up in the morning? Why is it so important to feel gratitude and how does one go about cultivating gratitude?
It’s intentional. I really started to understand – not intellectually, but spiritually and emotionally – gratitude and humility around the same time. They are words you don’t hear often enough in our country. You hear them, but they’re not a part of the culture. In fact, humility is sometimes considered weak in American culture. But when I traveled to Indonesia, I travelled to Bali and humility and gratitude are big parts of the culture. It really moved me and changed me. It made me think gosh, the kinds of service I was receiving in those countries, particularly in Bali, the people were so grateful for life. They’re so grateful that they’re alive and that they have food. I could FEEL that gratitude in how they were treating me and how they were serving me. It wasn’t a begrudging thing, but they were grateful for their life and that was affecting how they were serving and I felt it.
I included gratitude in the presentation because, listen: if you have a deliberate conversation with yourself or with your creator that your grateful to walk and talk and see and help and do that can’t help but affect the authenticity and the sincerity of how you do for other people. Because you know it’s a gift because you are even here right now.