I found this note and a bottle of perfume in my hotel room, given as a gift by the housekeeper, one with whom I had a short interaction.
I don’t know if this was something that he did on his own or was asked to do this as part of a process. Irrespective of that, I felt good.
I wrote a thank you note, told the cashier when I was checking out, shared this story with at least 10 of my colleagues and now I am sharing it here.
If this was a personal initiative of Kunal, it shows that he has the trust of his leader. If it was part of a process, it is a result of good leadership (identify and put in place a creative idea that doesn’t cost much but delights the customer and makes the employee feel good about it).
This is the true value of good leaders and their leadership.
In contrast, during the same trip I stayed at another hotel and I saw the housekeeper being yelled at by his leader, in front of me.
He asked me to pay for my room service bill. I told him that I can pay while checking out as the hotel already had blocked extra cash on my credit card as is the usual practice.
He insisted that he has been instructed to collect cash when serving the food. I asked him to check with his boss and when he did he got yelled at and was asked to leave me alone.
One of two things could have happened here. Either the person was new and wasn’t trained well or he was telling the truth about being asked to collect the cash.
Either ways it was the failure of the leader. She should have picked the right person for the job; trained him well or backed him up and not yell at him, at least not in front of the customer.
This made me feel bad, made the employee feel bad and definitely the leader feel bad. The effectiveness of the leader and the culture they create transcends their immediate experience.
This is the true impact of leadership. Good leadership leads to everyone feeling good about themselves and bad leadership leads everyone feel bad about themselves.
