Page 239 - The New Gold Standard

Aspire, Achieve, Teach
areas of hotels including general managers, hotel managers, and
even salespeople.”
In addition to offering keynote speeches, frontline staff can
participate in employee panel discussions for outside business
leaders that offer a textural sense of the Ritz-Carlton culture.
One of the participants in these panels, Tricia Chiang, a seam-
stress at The Ritz-Carlton, Washington, D.C., shares, “Speak-
ing on panels adds great variety to what I do. Don’t get me
wrong; I love my job in the hotel, but it’s an unusual change of
pace to answer questions from important business people dur-
ing a panel discussion. They ask questions about why I decided
to work at Ritz-Carlton, how lineup is done, what my job as a
seamstress is like, or if I’ve ever used my $2,000-per-guest credit
on a given day. Sometimes I stop and realize that I am working
at a very special place. I like being able to honestly answer ques-
tions, and I am amazed that so many leaders from different types
of companies want to know my answers.”
Training at the Leadership Center also allows participants
the opportunity to see the lineup process firsthand. Kevin Walsh,
senior director of customer relationship management, notes, “I
always welcome the chance for the students at the Leadership
Center to observe lineup. If you lead lineup, you always want to
do the best job you possibly can, and when students are there,
you know that you are affording them a special view of our cul-
ture in action. That makes the opportunity all the more impor-
tant.” From the vantage point of course participant Donna
Brewer, director of learning and development at Saskatchewan
Gaming Corporation, “Attending lineup and having the Ladies
and Gentlemen present in panel discussions was particularly
valuable to me, as it took what I was hearing in the lectures and
made it real and genuine. You see that this is not philosophy as
much as it is the way they do business.”
Mike Figliuolo, managing director of thoughtLEADERS,
LLC, attended a multiday leadership program through a joint

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