Creating a Culture of Excellence

Several years ago, while working as the General Manager for a luxury hotel in Atlanta, I had the honor of receiving the American Hotel & Lodging Association's General Manager of The Year Award. A month later I found myself on a stage in Phoenix, Arizona, accepting the award, looking out over the faces of the who's-who in the hotel industry; presidents of major hotel chains, and peers in the industry. In that moment, I realized that I had the responsibility to shape the future leaders in the industry, and share what I had learned from the great leaders that had taught me. I began the journey of detailing out what I had learned about leadership and why it worked.

Great leaders focus on CREATING A CULTURE OF EXCELLENCE. They know that they must put the needs of others first. Often referred to as Servant Leadership, the core idea is that while traditional leaders see leadership as a rank to obtain, servant leaders instead see leadership as an opportunity to serve others. Jim Collins, bestselling author of Good to Great, refers to these individuals as Level Five Leaders. Regardless of the title used to describe a leader who focuses on others' needs before their own, this core concept of serving others, is the basis for all the leadership work that I have done, including the model described below; CREATING A CULTURE OF EXCELLENCE. I have taught this 6-step model at several Universities over the past fifteen years, and continue to use it to build positive cultures within the teams that I lead....to drive results. In addition to the model listed below, more leadership tips can be found in the final chapter of 450 Things Every Hotel General Manager Should Know.

6 Steps To Creating a Culture of Excellence

1. Define your COMMON PURPOSE

3. Create CLEAR EXPECTATIONS that support your common purpose

2. PASSIONATELY COMMUNICATE your common purpose

The first step in creating a CULTURE OF EXCELLENCE is to become very clear on what you are trying to accomplish. This is where you really differentiate yourself from everyone else that offers a similar product or service as you do. Understand what your customers, clients, or community expects from you, both today and in the future. What is the defining principle that you want to be known for? This is not about fancy mantras or a vision posted on a wall that's collecting dust. This is about creating a COMMON PURPOSE that is communicated over and over by you to everyone on the team. Something that your employees can rally behind; a true north. Your common purpose cannot be to grow sales by 10% over last year…. employees can't rally behind that. We all want something that's bigger than just the task that we are doing. Make your COMMON PURPOSE meaningful!

2. PASSIONATELY COMMUNICATE your common purpose

3. Create CLEAR EXPECTATIONS that support your common purpose

2. PASSIONATELY COMMUNICATE your common purpose

PASSIONATELY COMMUNICATE that common purpose. The more a vision can be expressed in a variety of unique ways, the more it will motivate people to action against it. Simply creating a vision is not enough; you must communicate it with passion and conviction. Bring people along on the journey. Explain the 'why'. The more passion and conviction you show for your common purpose tells your team that this work matters to you. Your enthusiasm will become contagious. The manner in which the vision is communicated is key. Leaders must show that the common purpose is important and find numerous ways to engrain it throughout the organization.

3. Create CLEAR EXPECTATIONS that support your common purpose

4. Develop TRAINING & REINFORCEMENT programs to constantly review those expectations

Create CLEAR EXPECTATIONS that support your common purpose: Create standards for everything. This is where you get into the in the details, into the minutia. This is where you have to really roll your sleeves up and take the time to detail out exactly what your standards and expectations are for everything in your organization. These are the small, exact details that make all the difference in how your customers, your clients, or your community views your organization.

4. Develop TRAINING & REINFORCEMENT programs to constantly review those expectations

Don't just TELL people how they contribute; SHOW them how they contribute by immersing them in what it’s really like to experience your organization as a client or a customer. Develop TRAINING & REINFORCEMENT programs that constantly review the expectations that you have set. Find dozens of high-quality communication methods to constantly reinforce the expectations. Initial training is important, but reinforcement over time is just as important. As a leader if you know what your Common Purpose is, and you know that you have Passionately Communicated it, and have Created Expectations for everything, it is critical that you ensure there is a solid Training and Reinforcement plan in place, so that your employees are always reminded of what truly matters.

5. Trust but VERIFY

4. Develop TRAINING & REINFORCEMENT programs to constantly review those expectations

6. Create a system of CONTINUOUS QUALITY IMPROVEMENT

At this point, you have a Common Purpose. You have Passionately Communicated it and Created Expectations around it. You have a system in place for Training and Reinforcement of those expectations. The next step is to TRUST BUT VERIFY. This is anything that you come up with that will tell you if the standards and expectations that you created, and that you trained everyone on, are still in place. The Verify part will look different depending on the organization, but at its core, it is a system of checks and balances to ensure that everything you have worked so hard to create, does not simply fade away with time. For some that may be a checklist that has to be completed every day where someone has to verify and check off that they did the standard, or perhaps a leader is checking off that they saw the standard being done. Or perhaps it is a daily audit, or a report with data on all the key metrics for your organization. How you TRUST BUT VERIFY is up to you, but it is a step that cannot be missed.

6. Create a system of CONTINUOUS QUALITY IMPROVEMENT

4. Develop TRAINING & REINFORCEMENT programs to constantly review those expectations

6. Create a system of CONTINUOUS QUALITY IMPROVEMENT

A system of CONTINUOUS QUALITY IMPROVEMENT simply means that you are constantly listening to your customers, your clients, or your community. You are constantly looking at data on your key performance indicators, you are constantly improving your standards. It is a never-ending process of improvement. This is the step where you look at your client/customer feedback on challenges they experienced, and as you spot issues, you look into the root cause and create standards to ensure that issue never happens to anyone ever again. This is the step where you must ask yourself constantly ‘Does everyone on our team know what our common purpose is’?, ‘Have I done enough to passionately communicate our common purpose?', ‘Does every expectation I have set have a tracking system so I can verify it is happening consistently’? This final step is where I spend the majority of my time, ensuring that my team, and my organization are constantly focused on improvement.

By combining these six steps with an overall Servant Leadership approach, you will be able to consistently drive a CULTURE OF EXCELLENCE.