Integrity, role modeling and culture in hospitality
Most dictionaries define ‘integrity’ as “the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles that you refuse to change”.
Everyone seems to want integrity from their leaders, but…there appears to be great uncertainty about what it is or how to cultivate it. They suggest that we consider integrity as alignment between words and actions—that is, promise-keeping and the ratification of advocated values. This notion of integrity is one of an “adjunctive virtue,” one that, like courage, is not essentially morally good or bad. To illustrate a negative example, one can show integrity by promising great harm and then delivering on that promise. In most workplaces, the contrast between work with integrity that no one notices and compromised work that everyone has seen has narrowed with the passage of time.
I once worked at a 5-star hotel where the Financial Controller who used to tell us “I don’t care what you think, but I will get this done by whatever means” and he invariably got things done! Never mind the methods he employed - which included the use of coercive power and the threat of force to compel behaviour rather than influencing through reasoning and persuasion.
I actually despised him and his methods but at the same time have to admit, (grudgingly though), that he ‘walked the talk’. If an employee didn’t obey his orders, he followed through with his threats of negative appraisals, demotions, pay cuts and other forms of harassments unrelentingly. He thrived in a culture of punishment, where failure was not an option.
Only later, did I realise that his dictatorial style of management left him no other choice. Had he failed to follow through on his threats to punish, his ‘buzz word’ of getting the job done by whatever means became meaningless and employees would cease to respect the legitimacy of his authority. Unsurprisingly, those who worked under him for long, over time treated subordinates under them in the identical toxic manner. This was role modeling at its worst.
In Tony Simon’s book “Role Modeling, Culture and Integrity”, some excerpts of the interview with Peter Kline, the former CEO of Bristol Hotels & Resorts, then the largest independent hotel management company in North America, were absolutely fascinating – which I wish to share here.
This one is on role modeling: Specifically, Kline says: “One of the biggest mistakes that happen over and over again, particularly in big companies, is that senior management expects behavioral patterns or attitudes to originate in the middle of the company, as opposed to from the top of the company. They try to operate with two different sets of rules. But the behavior of the entire company is going to reflect the behavioral pattern of the people at the very top.”
He goes on to add “At Bristol, we took open doors to the nth degree. This approach was key in role modeling the first step in the ‘service profit’ chain—truly valuing employees. Ultimately, we developed totally open offices in the home office and most of our hotels. This started with the CEO and included all team members. After all, transparency is key to integrity, at least in my estimation, and to employee satisfaction. Bristol’s ‘open office’ began when I embarked on my first GM job. One day, while mentioning to Pete the overbearing, we-they atmosphere that I inherited, he said, “Why don’t you take your door off, John?” In those early days of Bristol, we still had fixed wall offices. While “open door” philosophies were in vogue and certainly embraced, ‘open door’ had become taken for granted, and in fact didn’t necessary promulgate transparency at all. Indeed, it had become somewhat passé. The day that I called chief engineer Tommy Foster into my office and told him to take my door off, a virtual tsunami of culture change was begun. Employees stopped whispering about what was going on behind closed door meetings, because there weren’t any closed door meetings. For those rare times when a truly sensitive discussion needed to take place, it would often take place during a walk around the hotel—affectionately termed ‘dumpster walks’. As we saw the guest satisfaction scores rise, we knew we were on to something. Eight years before The Service Profit Chain was written, we had created our own ‘Hotel Profit Chain.’
Kline contends that although role modeling empowers corporate culture, it is not possible to ‘teach’ culture nor can one simply export the ‘culture of service’ across hotels. It can only happen with GMs who believe in the culture of service, and those at the very top need to support that philosophy in the way they do business at the home office – through role modeling.
He reminisced on the time Bristol Hotels & Resorts acquired a portfolio of over 100 hotels; “Among the new general managers that we inherited, generally speaking we found three different types: (1) those that had servants’ hearts and believed that by treating employees’ right, the employees would treat the guest right. These GMs enthusiastically embraced the “new culture” because they already believed in it. (2) Those who understood the words and the concept of the service-profit chain, which establishes relationships between employee satisfaction, guest loyalty, and profitability, but were somewhat skeptical. They were willing to give it a try but not so sure. (3) Those who believed that it is the manager’s job to tell employees what to do and it is the employees’ jobs to do it.
The group 1 managers were inspired to achieve even greater success, and they did. I described their reaction as having been “set free” to treat people the way they thought was right, but had not been able to in the prior organization. Many of the folks from group 2 did as well as the group 1s. In rough terms, I would say that about 60 percent of the 2s adapted to the new culture. As you might expect, the group 3 general managers almost across the board either self-selected out (quit), or did not make it in the new company and culture”.
Ilzaf Keefahs is a freelance writer who enjoys focusing on hospitality related matters that he is passionate about, and likes to share his views with hoteliers and customers alike. He delves into the heart of hospitality to figure out both customer service and consumer trends that impact the industry.
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