The Secret Life of the World’s Best Hotel Staff

 

Two days ago, I shared an account of how I delivered yet another gold standard pep talk of potentially life-changing inspiration.😃 Today I’d like to complement it by sharing some really interesting insight I read a few years ago in the book on management First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. The job of a hotel room attendant never seems very glamourous or desirable – and few people envy those who are employed to change the hotel room bed sheets, replace the towels, clean the loos, and so forth. But in the book, Buckingham and Coffman offer a particularly insightful section that stuck with me - focussing on what makes the best hotel room attendants - and how it defies conventional wisdom about hiring and performance. 

The authors, gathering data from extensive studies by Gallup, a research-based consulting company, emphasise that the best performers in any role often share rare and unique talents rather than merely learned skills. This is especially true for hotel room attendants, which is a seemingly routine job that still shows huge performance variation based on the individual’s talents, traits and psychological orientation.

Gallup found that the best hotel room attendants weren’t necessarily the ones with the most experience or training. Instead, they had natural inclinations that made them thrive in the job in intriguing ways. For example, these guys really took personal pride in cleanliness and order; they had genuine empathy toward guests and their experience; and they had a strong internal standard for excellence. The research found that the very best members of staff cleaned thoroughly, not because they were told to, but because it bothered them to leave anything out of place. Their internal sense of “how things should be” drives their performance. Their job gave them a sense of purpose that one might not expect in such a role. The best attendants didn’t just see themselves as cleaners. They believed their work made a real difference to a guest’s experience, their customer satisfaction, and whether they would likely return.

I think this is a fascinating psychological interpretation, because it confirms how the best workers are able to reframe their roles to find deeper meaning that onlookers would scarcely expect. Even in low-autonomy, low pay jobs, people who believe they are contributing to something larger tend to perform better and experience greater job satisfaction. This was reflected in the fact that the most outstanding room attendants were attuned to subtle guest signals. If a guest left workout clothes out, they might leave extra towels. If they noticed children's toys, they might adjust supplies, or leave a note, or even in some cases create an imaginative toy scenario on the windowsill as a surprise for the returning family. This indicates high social intelligence and empathy. And although the job of hotel attendant might be easy in terms of fluid intelligence and task learning – being the best in those roles involved traits that are not easy to learn - they come from lateral intelligence, emotional attunement and a profound ability to adapt behaviour accordingly

I believe this is a great lesson, not just for managers looking for wisdom in optimal recruitment, but for anyone in a role that might be undervalued by society. The world needs all kinds of people doing all kinds of roles – and it’s not the prestige of the position that primarily defines the potential of the performance - it’s the depth of purpose, pride, and presence an individual brings to it. In any role, there is always room for mastery – and although it’s harder than most imagine, there are profound rewards attached to thriving in your role. When we bring heart, attention, and pride to the simplest of jobs, we don’t just elevate the work - we elevate ourselves.

The Unexpected Huge Potential in Humble Opportunities

A few years ago, I was giving a pep talk to a young man who was under my management for a while. He was about to start a new job on the till in the shop in Norwich’s train station, and he expressed concern that he’d find the job boring and uninspiring. My first response was to remind him that he’s still in the inception of his work life, and he should expect to have to grow with humility, and hone his skills and talents as he acquires experience in various roles. But then I helped him see just how much intrinsic potential there is, even in a job like that, where he is at the bottom rung of his career ladder. I can’t quote what I said verbatim, but it went something like this.

Even a job like working the till at a train station - which might seem mundane at first glance - holds huge potential for your personal development, and you can really make the most out of this in ways that few people ever consider in these types of role. Even a job like that, it’s a great privilege and a fantastic opportunity to develop yourself beyond what you can currently imagine. Every customer interaction is a chance to sharpen emotional intelligence, to practice empathy, and to become someone who can read people quickly and respond with thoughtfulness.

In turning up each day and being the most excellent shop assistant you can be (and that won’t be as easy as you think), you can turn routine transactions into moments of real connection, into mastering excellence in every element of the role, and into significant personal development. That ability will set you apart, not just here but for the rest of your career. Furthermore, this job gives you a live environment to train your inner standards - how punctual you are, how precise, how kind, how composed under pressure, the lot. You’re not just working a till; you’re learning to be the kind of person others want to work with, promote, and follow. If you want to excel in life, a key part of vocational development is to bring your full self to even the smallest task – and there is way more potential growth even in the so-called mundane jobs that few tap into.

To conclude the story, I think he only lasted a few weeks in that role. Some people are just deaf to inspirational wisdom. 😃

But for some in a similar position, I think it’s a prudent approach to take to a role that might seem small on the surface, but that you can turn into a powerful training ground for growth of character, discipline, and long-term success.

 

Some Truths About Team Management

Traditional management literature has it that team performance tends to follow a bell curve distribution, with the majority of the team being mid-range, a few at the low end and a few up at the high end. That is, most of your colleagues are likely to not deviate too far from the mean (being fairly good performers), with a minority being at each tail end (a few exceptionally good performers and a few exceptionally bad performers).

There is some degree of accuracy in the bell curve statistics, but a higher resolution analysis reveals the distribution to more closely follow a power law, with much greater variation, where a small number of team members are extraordinarily high performers, a large number are fairly good performers, and a small minority are very poor performers. Here the mean becomes less important, because the extraordinarily high performers are disproportionately more influential in the team (or company) than the rest combined.

This phenomenon is closely related to Price’s law, which states that around 50% of some kind of human output comes from the square root of the total amount of human output. In a typical company, 50% of the work (where work = creative influence) is done by the square root of the total number of people in the company. If your company has 10 people, about 3 of them are probably responsible for 50% of the output; if your company has 10,000 employees, then about 100 of them are going to be about half as influential as the rest of the workforce combined.

The difference between a normal distribution and a power law distribution is usually related to the underlying engine of the system in terms of dynamics. For example, normal distributions have constraints that impede very rapid growth over a short space of time, whereas power laws do not have the same impediments. In team management, this accentuates the advantage of having a few hyper performers – they are the ones who will be disproportionately more influential and beneficial to your operation, and they are the ones on whom you as a manger should divert most of your attention.

Unfortunately, the industry model and societal ethos is geared towards the opposite approach (especially in the public sector), where a disproportionate amount of time and resources are spent on under-achievers and people performing badly, while many of the top performers are given too little attention or regard for their contributions and achievements. The excessive time and resources spent on the under-achievers incurs opportunity costs in the shape of valuable time not being spent on your hyper-achievers. Remember, your under-achievers are holding back your team far more than they are advancing it. You should do just enough to stop them holding back progress, and focus more of your attention on the most valuable contributors.

And if your under-achievers still can’t thrive after being given several chances, you should adopt the ‘fail it fast’ method and terminate their contract. Don’t allow them to remain in post a day longer than they ought to be. There are many good reasons why, but here are the two best. The first is that your under-performers are taking up valuable places in your team that could be occupied by hyper-performers. The second is that it’s actually not good for your under-performers to be in roles in which they are not thriving. In other words, it’s better for them (as well as everyone else) if they are moved on to a role in which they can thrive, because they will be more content and more productive, and your remaining team members will be much better off too.