Most managers think that motivating employees is the #1 part of their job. Or they make the distinction between managers, who attempt to get things done by delegating and motivating employees through incentives and discipline, and leaders, who create a compelling vision and motivate employees through empowerment and inspiration. But everyone seems to feel that motivating employees is the critical aspect of any supervisory position. If I think about my [...]
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A Balanced Approach to Positive Leadership
Earlier this year, I taught my first semester of a new online course on Positive Leadership in Spas and Hospitality for the UC Irvine Extension certification program in Spa and Hospitality Management. Because it was an online course, it attracted an incredible diversity of students from all over the world. There was a good mix of students from Asia, Europe and North America. And the experience of the students varied [...]
Why First Impressions Don’t Matter Much
A great article by Andrea Petersen appeared in the Wall Street Journal Travel section last week outlining the “Hidden Ways Hotels Court Guests Faster.” The article focused on all the ways that different hotel brands are trying to dazzle their guests with an excellent first impression. Hotel industry executives (myself included) were likely to be very interested in this article as we often talk in this business about the importance [...]
Innovation Lessons from the Idea Factory
Before Twitter, before Facebook, before Google, and before Apple, there was Bell Labs: “From its beginnings in the 1920s until its demise in the 1980s, Bell Labs—officially, the research and development wing of AT&T—was the biggest, and arguably the best, laboratory for new ideas in the world. From the transistor to the laser, from digital communications to cellular telephony, it’s hard to find an aspect of modern life that hasn’t [...]
Four Ways to Enhance Workplace Wellness
I met Rachel Permuth-Levine, a Senior Director of Research for Sodexo on a Workplace Wellness discussion group on LinkedIn and was fascinated by some of the research they were developing. This article was written by Stephanie Andel, a toLive Research Scholar at Sodexo and a senior at Bradley University where she is studying Psychology and Spanish. She is pursuing her PhD in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. We keep hearing about wellness in [...]
Economy Goes Down, Health Goes Up
Questions about the economy have consumed the world media of the past few years. We ask, “what is wrong with the economy?” and “How can it be fixed?” But few people have asked the question we should be asking . .. “What’s the economy for, anyway?” This is the question that authors John De Graaf and David K. Batker ask in their new book (aptly titled,) “What’s the Economy For [...]
Positive Peformance Evaluations
The end of the year is drawing near again and it’s time once again to begin thinking about those dreaded year-end employee performance evaluations. These meetings, usually accompanied by some kind of documentation, are a kind of report card for employees—a chance for managers to assess the performance of their workforce, and a chance for employees to learn how they are doing in the eyes of their employer. The problem [...]
Positive Leadership on Display
Last week, at the International Spa Association annual conference, the spa industry got a good immersion in what positive leadership looks like. The first day’s keynote speaker was Bert Jacobs, the CEO (Chief Executive Optimist) of Life is Good. In case you aren’t already familiar with the Life is Good brand, it is a clothing line that features “Jake” the smiling character with a short, optimistic message, “Life is Good.” [...]
Lessons on Culture and Service from Zappos
This week, I am at the International Spa Association annual conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. I’ve been excited about this year’s conference because Tony Hsieh will be the keynote speaker on Wednesday. I’ve been a fan of Tony’s for a while (see “Why Zappos is the Workplace Utopia of the 21st Century” and my article on “Psychology Lessons from the CEOs”. I also wrote a review of his book, “Delivering Happiness: [...]
The Social Contract at Work
Most employers understand their relationship with their employees as being based on a simple employment contract. The employee is provided with a compensation package including a living wage and a certain amount of benefits and in return they are expected to fulfill certain functions of the job, usually outlined in an employee handbook and/or a “standard operating procedures” (SOP) manual. This relationship is usually fraught with a certain amount of [...]
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