This week I’m in Chicago at the AHLA ForWard conference.
If you’re not familiar with it, ForWard is AHLA Foundation’s initiative to advance women in hospitality. The last time I attended this conference, there were fewer than 200 people in the room. This year, there are nearly 900.
That growth statistic alone is enough to knock me off my feet. The other huge difference between ForWard five years ago and ForWard today is the huge range of experience and levels of women and men in attendance. Five years ago, I felt like companies sent what we would call “emerging leaders” to this event. In other words, young women in the first decade of their careers who could benefit from some leadership basics.
Today this event is for everyone, and everyone was here. CEOs, new hires, women of all age groups, races and backgrounds formed the audience. And there are more than just a handful of men here, too. This event reinforced to me what we all know and rarely see: Our industry is comprised of So. Many. Different. Types. Of. People.
And the agenda centers around giving women the space to be leaders, learn about leadership and share their stories around it.
It’s incredibly powerful.
It’s powerful because it’s about leadership first, not the trials and tribulations of womenhood first and leadership second. It’s an environment that acknowledges that women have unique traits that factor into their leadership, and that embracing those traits creates a more effective and powerful workplace.
Sounds pretty ideal, right?
But one of the phrases I hear in the breakout sessions is, “the people who really need to hear these messages are the people who would never come.”
And no, that doesn’t mean “men” in this case. Not at all.
It means upper-level managers — the people who design workplace hierarchy and culture (or lack thereof) from the top down. The people who glorify the hustle, who brandish the stick and who are content to keep things status quo because they’ve always been done that way.
And while that’s true and kind of disheartening, it’s also wonderful and powerful to realize this. Why? Because it means that this industry group — who happen to be mostly women — are recognizing that leadership can be different and empathetic and fully present while also driving incredibly productive and successful teams.
These are the present and future leaders — many of whom happen to be women — who are poised to change their teams, their companies and the industry as a whole.
After hearing from these speakers and leaders for the past two days, I think I’ve unlocked the secret around why this is an effective leadership conference: It’s because women moreso than men in my experience have no problem sharing their mistakes, their errors and their challenges in front of a group of nearly 1,000 people.
Acknowledging the mistake is the only way we learn how to improve, how to change and how to deal. And women — sorry, guys — are often the ones who are more open to improvement, change and getting things done.
It is incredibly powerful to hear important people talk about lessons learned. … And that is so rarely something we hear from our managers or other industry impresarios on main stages. If we do, those “obstacles overcome” stories are mawkish tropes that lean in hard on the “I pulled myself up by the bootstraps” mentality.
Pass.
Instead I’ll share one story from today’s main stage from hotel owner and business owner Tracy Prigmore, the founder of She Has a Deal. She talked about how her first attempt to buy a hotel failed, so she walked away from the industry.
“People told me, ‘Oh, it’s not really a failure! You tried and you got far,’ but I had to recognize that no, it was a failure. The deal didn’t close. That’s a failure,” she said.
Just chew on that. Recognizing a failure is so, so difficult. But Prigmore came back and a couple years later closed her first hotel deal.
And even though she’s a success by any standards today, Prigmore still gets nervous. And I love her take on that: “The nerves are what’s telling you you’re doing something that really matters. So keep doing it,” she said. “I continue to manage the fear, instead of avoiding the fear. If you avoid the fear you avoid the progress.”
What do you think? Email me, or find me on Twitter or LinkedIn.
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