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Asking great questions to your team members is a great way for true engagement to occur with your employees. This is a key strategy discussed by our guest expert today, Lindsey Ueberroth. Lindsey is the President & CEO of Preferred Hotel Group and has a 10 year history of bringing innovation and creativity to Preferred Hotel Group’s position as an iconic hospitality brand and a preferred partner for independent hotels and resorts. An international traveler, learn how Lindsey still manages to maintain contact and grow relationships on this episode of the Manager Mojo Podcast.
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Steve:
I want to welcome everyone to the Manager Mojo Podcast and today I’m honored to be interviewing Lindsey Ueberroth. Lindsey is the President and CEO of Preferred Hotel Group, she joined Preferred Hotel Group in 2004, was named President in 2010 and was promoted to CEO in February 2014, so she just was promoted. Congratulations, Lindsey.
Lindsey:
Thank you, Steve.
Steve:
And her growth as a leader in the company is now approaching ten years and throughout her ten years in the company, she’s helped solidify Preferred Hotel Group’s position as an iconic global hospitality brand and a preferred partner for independent hotels and resorts. And under her leadership as President the company launched the points -based iPrefer loyalty program, introduced the Sterling Design and Summit Serviced Residences brand, and actually created a first-time presence in twenty new countries. Lindsay is a proud graduate of Wake Forest University and has traveled to over one hundred countries and Lindsay, welcome to the Manager Mojo Podcast today.
Lindsey:
Thanks, Steve. It’s a pleasure to join you, looking forward to it.
Steve:
Awesome! Well I know we’re all looking forward to hearing your insight today and the first thing I’d like for you to do is just share a little bit about Preferred Hotel Group and what you guys do and just tell our listeners a little bit about your brand, if you don’t mind.
Lindsey:
Sure, I’d be happy to. So, Preferred Hotel Group is a collection of over six hundred and fifty independently owned a one-of-a-kind, unique properties in over eighty-five countries around the world. So what would that mean you and what’s the difference with an independent and a chain? Really, an independent hotel is a hotel doesn’t fly; a Ritz-Carlton, Marriott, Hyatt, Four Seasons, Flag. It’s an owner that’s decided that they want to run their own property and what our company does is we partner with them to give them a global footprint, we give them quality assurance standards to abide by, we do global sales, marketing, we have things like the loyalty point program that rewards points to consumers, frequent flyer program. So we really do everything that a chain would do for an owner that wants an independent hotel, and then from the consumer’s standpoint, really this caters to the traveler who is just really looking for a unique, one-of-a-kind experience. It’s very authentic, the destination that they are going to and it doesn’t fit into this cookie-cutter formula that the chains have mastered; every hotel looks the same usually when you go into a chain, so it’s a very unique, fun, dynamic business and a fantastic group of hotels.
Steve:
Awesome, I know from personal experience. I’ve had an opportunity to stay in some Preferred Hotel properties and I highly recommend it to our listeners because it’s always so fun; I totally enjoy every single experience that I’ve had.
So, Lindsay, I’m so glad you’re here and what I’d like for us to do is to share a little of your leadership tips to our audience and what I’d like to start with is when you started your first experiences as a manager and trying to work with other people, did you find that an easy thing to do? Was it kind of in the middle? Was it difficult? Just tell us a little bit about your first experiences, as you began to lead people.
Lindsey:
Sure, my first experience with leading people and having to manage teams was actually when I was at Andersen Consulting which is now Accenture, so that goes to show that it was long enough ago; the company has changed names. One of the biggest challenges that I found was, I was fairly young in my career and I was given the opportunity to lead and manage teams where I was managing either peers or people that were sometimes significantly older than me. And really the challenge sometimes has to do with your own internal confidence, not really them because sometimes it’s hard to imagine that anybody who’s technically had more years in life and more experience than you, would follow and listen to you. And I found that to be the first personal challenge was getting out of my own way, my own head and realizing that I had a job to be done and I’d been given this responsibility, and really learning to build relationships with that team so that I could manage.
Steve:
So, you’ve got these people that are older than you are and more experienced probably, in a lot of ways so tell me, how did you actually start to navigate that confidence gap that you had?
Lindsey:
I learned something really quickly and my father was really good at this was listen, listen some more, listen a lot more. I found that the more you listen to people that they begin to trust you and they really start to divulge a lot of what was at the heart of, not only their personal issues with maybe having a younger manager but at the heart of what was going on in the company. We were a consulting company at that time so the goal was to resolve, I was in change management, to resolve the change management issues. So, I learned pretty early on, don’t run your mouth, they probably do know a lot more than you do, it’s just my job to synthesize it and figure out how to communicate that back and execute on change.
Steve:
What a great lesson to learn early in your career. I know I didn’t have that luxury, I thought that it was my job to run my mouth all the times. So congratulations on learning that early in your career.
Lindsey:
My father was very good mentor and I watched him do that very well.
Steve:
Cool. Well I know that you’ve continued on with that listening, so let’s dive into that just a little bit. So when you say that you listen to other people, what do you really mean when you tell, for our listeners that are really learning themselves, what does that mean? What are you actually listening for?
Lindsey:
Well, it’s not just listening, I think part of it is asking questions and asking a lot of clarifying questions because if you just walked into somebody’s office and said tell me how it’s going. Some people might open up to you, but if you get good at art and asking relevant, appropriate questions that are open-ended too, not yes, no then I think that you’re able to really get at the heart of whether it’s a challenging conversation or I’m just trying to get to the bottom of the solution and I think people like to be asked questions and whether that’s personal nature about themselves, they feel like you’re trying to get to know them or about what’s happening in their specific job, department or role. I’ve found that it’s really about the questions that you ask and taking the time to listen and then being able at the end of that to synthesize it back so that they actually really believe that you heard what they did say.
Steve:
Yeah, that you’re not just giving them lip service.
Lindsey:
Steve:
You didn’t ask and then like you’re a hundred miles away; you’re actually paying attention to what they tell you.
Lindsey:
Right
Steve:
I find that so many people really don’t understand that really the key to growth is those open-ended questions that you were describing.
Lindsey:
Absolutely, because it’s too easy to ask yes/no questions. Yes/no answers don’t get you very far.
Steve:
Yeah, they kind of want to get rid of you sometimes as fast as they can, so if you do that yes, no you haven’t really learned a thing, have you?
Lindsey:
No, no.
Steve:
So, do you have a favorite open-ended question?
Lindsey:
Oh gosh, you’re putting me on the spot! I don’t have a favorite but I do, my friends tease me the call me Lindsay Winfrey sometimes because
Steve:
What a great compliment
Lindsey:
Depending on the scenario, but I don’t have a favorite question, it just depends on the situation but I do think kind of a good generic one is, and sometimes I ask it when someone is changing roles or even potentially moving on to do something; if you could give me one or two things that you wish the company did more of and one or two things you wish the company did less of, what would those be? Because I think it’s good to understand areas where they, and it’s a non-threatening question because it’s very open-ended, it gives them a lot of room and usually tells you where your weaknesses are and where there’s some opportunity to get more enthusiasm from your associates.
Steve:
That’s a great question, and the reason I asked you about a question, is because, it’s been my experience that managers really struggle with the concept of open-ended questions, they really haven’t prepared themselves and that’s the real problem. They haven’t really thought through what good open-ended questions sound like, and so I really appreciate you sharing one that you use because that gives a different perspective for people, but open-ended questions get other people talking. Which kind of brings us to a communications principle, does that mean that you kind of believe that it’s more important for them to do most of the talking, or would you prefer, since you’re the boss, to do the talking?
Lindsey:
I definitely prefer for them to do most of the talking.
Steve:
And tell people why.
Lindsey:
Why? Well, I’ve learned through trial and error that if I do most of the talking generally, I’m the only person that leaves the room happy and that may not actually further the success but when you let them do most of the talking not only does it give you a chance, it gives you a lot of things. One is you can understand their challenges, you can understand where they’re really succeeding and then you can also figure out where you can add value. AndI think that’s my job as manager or leader; to figure out how to get out of their way but help in the process of helping them succeed and you’re only going to do that if you can hear what they think are the stumbling blocks or where they are really succeeding and they want you to know that. It’s also an opportunity to get some praise.
Steve:
That is awesome and that’s truly great advice for all of us. Well I want to change just a little bit and I’d like for you to share, if you don’t mind, what have you considered to be your greatest challenge as a leader of people?
Lindsey:
To me it’s very simple; it’s it’s hiring the right people and then recognizing when you haven’t and firing them quickly. I think those are very hard to do because it takes time to hire the right people and especially when you’ve got a void, I think there is this tendency to want to hire fast, get a body in that position. And as a leader I’ve done that and it’s ninety-nine percent worked out very, very poorly for me, so then it’s figuring out how to make that change as quickly as possible.
Steve:
Totally get it. Well, another question I want to hear your comment on is what do you like the best about being a leader?
Lindsey:
I love being able to set a vision and a direction and build passion around that. That to me is the exciting part, you want to build something, and you want everybody else to believe in that and then being able to help everybody, help you get there. It really is fun to see your team get behind that vision and then be able to support them in their successes.
Steve:
Nothing like it is. It’s never just about you, it’s about them, isn’t it?
Lindsey:
Yeah, absolutely because everybody wants to be a part of a winning team.
Steve:
Lindsey:
And that doesn’t mean that they won’t rally around you when things aren’t going well but I think if you create a vision and you got the passion, your people will follow and they’ll enjoy it. I’ve always said this to me is fun because, I want the people who work here to be proud of where they work, I want them to feel that they’re part of a growing company, I’d want them to recommend us to their best friend; I think that that’s an important piece of it.
Steve:
Absolutely and that bills so much goodwill, not only for your brand, but also for you individually as the leader. That other people are just comfortable of with sharing you and your ideas and your vision with their friends and family.
Lindsey:
Absolutely
And it’s a great policy for all of us to follow. One of things about leadership is that we are required in leadership to make decisions and I’d just like to know your take on the importance of decisions and was that something that you felt like you were able to do fairly well or did you have to develop it over a period of time?
Lindsey:
Interesting question. I always felt like I was very thoughtful in my decision-making, most of my life, I think I was in some ways you could consider me almost conservative in how I made decisions. But what I have learned as I’ve progressed in my career, as I moved up the leadership chain is, I don’t make decisions in a vacuum anymore. I think before I used to rely on this is my gut, this is what I should do and I find myself now, because I’ve surrounded myself with a really great leadership team that has very unique and different skill sets to my own. That I spend a little bit more time making sure that I vet my decisions with a couple people that I think will add value and I change who those people are too because I don’t want there to ever be a group of “yes people” telling me
Steve:
Lindsey:
Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great decision. And as a matter of fact I have quite a few that love to be contrarians. So that always creates some good dialogue but I think I’ve always been good at it but I’ve learned now to include a little bit more people because the decisions become a little bit more important the further you move up in the leadership scale.
Steve:
Right, right. That’s a great comment about decisions. Thanks for your growth in that and the fact that you do reach out your team.
Now, you mentioned just a moment ago that you built your team, but you didn’t build everybody just like yourself. I heard that very clearly in your comment, so what advice would you give to managers that? You know there’s a tendency to just hire people you like.
Lindsey:
Steve:
So, share your philosophy on that because that’s quite interesting to say, hey I want people that have different skills than I do. So tell your opinion about that.
Lindsey:
Well I think I know what most of my strengths are and I’m painfully aware weaknesses. And so I definitely wanted to surround myself with people that had strengths to complement what I would perceive as weaker areas and whatever those skill sets are. And I don’t think that that means you can’t surround yourself with people you enjoy working with because I do think that that’s important. But I’m one of those people, you can just put an Excel spreadsheet in front of me and that makes my eyes glaze over and I want to die. But I want to hire somebody who really loves the details and the numbers and is good at it, but also knows how to synthesize it to have a conversation with me, that they understand I want an executive summary of that. I’m thrilled that they’re doing all that behind-the-scenes and you know you need somebody who’s going to be the hard-core operations person and can be the toughie and deal with all the legal stuff. I actually think it’s incredibly important to surround yourself with people that have very different skill sets and different temperaments because let’s face it, if everybody were like you, I think we’d go in circles quite a bit, we’d all have a lot of fun but, we may not get anywhere.
Steve:
Exactly and the goal of business is to continue to grow and acquire new customers and really make our customers raving fans of what we do.
Lindsey:
Absolutely! And there’s nothing, and this will sound hard to believe, but I do enjoy when somebody challenges me and really questions the decision I’m making and gives me enough time to come back and say you were right and let’s go with it. Because I think that’s a very healthy thing in an organization, especially in a leadership area because I find it very dangerous if everybody doesn’t challenge you.
Steve:
Yeah, I do too. And I want to point out something to our listeners right now, Lindsey because you just demonstrated something incredible valuable and I don’t want our listeners to miss it. Lindsay just told us, when she started that she had this lack of confidence as an early manager and she’s got these people that are older than she is and they’re listening to her and why would they would they listen to her and listen to how far she’s come. Now she’s saying I want you to challenge me, I’m comfortable with that; you see, that’s leadership, that’s understanding your role and that people are entitled to have opinions and they should voice them in a way that benefits the business. So congratulations, that’s pretty awesome!
Lindsey:
Well thank you.
Steve:
I want to change the subject just a little bit because people don’t talk about this as much as I think they should, and you already know this, but just to remind my listeners. I’m a proud father of two daughters, I didn’t have a son. I just have two daughters, and they’re both very successful business women of their own and Lindsay as a female business executive, I know that you have faced challenges that are really oriented toward females, and yet you’ve succeeded. And so what I want to know is, if you don’t mind, would you share a little bit of advice and wisdom to our listeners that they can kind of take your example as a role model. What did you learn and what did you have to overcome?
Lindsey:
You know I often get asked what’s it like to be a female business leader and my usual answer is, I think it’s pretty much the same as being a male business leader. That you get out of bed the same way, you tackle some of the same challenges. I do think one of the biggest challenges that women leaders face is the ability just to speak up and lead with confidence inside; I find that we sort of tend to sit in the background a little bit. What I’ve learned though is, I’m very, very comfortable being in a male-dominated situation or business opportunity because I also find that men are actually very open to when a woman finally does speak up and say something that they really do listen and take it with value because we just have a different style most of the time. And I would just encourage any female leader to, I don’t think you have to be any different than how you are naturally because I think you feel like you’ve got to be more aggressive or you’ve got to speak louder, you have to take on more male like tendencies to be a good, strong leader. I don’t believe in that, I think you can be very authentic to who you are and just have some confidence in what you’re doing. I truly feel that way, every time I’ve tried to be somebody else than I was in a situation, all I did was feel uncomfortable and I’m sure it just came across as very unauthentic.
Steve:
And how wonderful that you’re sharing what I have told my daughters from the time that they were children, you can only be the best you, you can be. You don’t have to be anything different, you’re already talented, just be yourself. People will respect that, won’t they Lindsay? When you’re being yourself.
Lindsey:
Absolutely. It doesn’t serve you well to try to be somebody else and it’s certainly not sustainable, that’s the other thing about that.
Steve:
It always amuses me when people believe that they really would be better off pretending that they’re somebody else. People can just sense it, you’re either are yourself or you’re not.
Lindsey:
Steve:
And people are going to like you because of your ability to be yourself in every situation and that’s great advice for every leader.
Well, let’s transition just a little bit and I want to ask you a question about productivity, personal productivity. Now, you are an incredibly busy lady, you travel all the time, you’ve got people all over the world that you’re interacting with so, if you don’t mind, give us a few of your personal tips on how people can be productive.
Lindsey:
Yeah, it’s a challenge especially for those that travel a lot and so I’ve got different tools, depending on what part of my travel schedule I’m in. But I’ve definitely identified when I work best in terms of breaking your day down into when am I going to address e-mail? When am I going to take phone calls? When am I going to do face-to-face meetings? Because I think that that has really helped me maximize my productivity. So, for me, it’s getting into the office early to be able to tackle forty-five minutes worth of e-mails because I pretty much know beyond that the rest of my day is going to take on a life of its own. I certainly take advantage of long airplane flights because to me that’s golden time, it’s quiet time; nobody can get to you, you can be very, very focused on it.
But the other thing I’ve learned that’s been really important is that there’s never going to be enough hours in the day. And I have learned that the days where I was trying to get caught up and I was working twelve, fourteen hours didn’t serve me any better because all I did was progressively get more tired over the week and less efficient. So I’ve learned that yeah, I kind of have my cut off point, seven o’clock call it quits and start up the next day because I really found that it wasn’t serving me well trying to do things late at night. And I was distracted and trying to multitask which we know is impossible, at this stage.
Steve:
So many people believe that it is possible, though, and they don’t realize that the brain just can’t handle.
Lindsey:
No! It can’t. And the other thing I do is, for all my direct reports I keep a sheet; so I have a sheet for each of them that I got a binder and as things come up that I am thinking I want to remember to ask them about that, I just jot it down so it really helps me organize my thoughts for each of the people that works for me, because otherwise I think you lose track of it and that makes my time with them a lot more productive.
Steve:
Yeah, that’s great advice for all of us to do no matter, whether we travel or not.
Lindsey:
Yeah.
Steve:
To be able to know exactly where we are with each person.
Lindsey:
Steve:
That’s great, great tip. You know you mentioned getting rest and I know that that was, what a tough lesson that was for me to learn because I know in my own career, early in my years I just seemed to have more energy than other people, and I was such a driver of myself that I went until I, the time I learned it was when I finally collapsed. I went down with the flu for two weeks, and I realized at that point, I am not a machine; we have to have rest, don’t we?
Lindsey:
Well, that happened to me, I was sick off and on for six months. I’d gone to the doctor and I finally went in and he called me, he said, I had done all these tests and he says I’m going to tell you something and you’re not going to like it and I was prepared for something really bad.
Steve:
Lindsey:
And he said to me, “You can’t travel for six weeks”, that was what he said, “You can’t travel for six weeks, you’ll never get better and we can’t figure out what’s wrong” and I broke down in tears. I was hysterical, this was the end of my world and I’m thinking that makes no sense now that I look back at it. Somebody’s telling me you need to stay home, you need to take care of yourself, you need to get some rest and I think that was a good learning lesson for me because as a leader I think we can get very caught up; that our identity is very, very tied to our career. And I think I went through a midlife identity crisis of but if I’m not on the road and I’m not doing all these things, what does that mean? I quickly got over that after about a week and a half being at home, I thought this is the greatest thing on the face of the earth! But having some balance and some routine, but you’re right, your body will eventually tell you, no more.
Steve:
Yeah, it just stands up and says, okay, enough of this. I’m going to teach you, one way or another.
Lindsey:
Steve
And that’s the hard way, so I would prefer people to do it the easy way and to schedule that nice rest and sleep. The benefit that I found, and maybe you felt this yourself was that, when I am rested, I’m somewhat sharper the next day in solving problems, did you find that same thing?
Lindsey:
Absolutely. Absolutely! I woke up with a lot more energy, lot more clarity, yeah, before I just didn’t want to get out of bed. It’s very different, I forgot one of the things about productivity, and this was hard for me. I don’t go into meetings with my IPhone anymore.
Steve:
Yay!
Lindsey:
I leave that behind because that’s really hard to resist the temptation to go look at something while you’re meeting with somebody and that is a huge productivity.
Steve:
I am so glad you brought that up because it’s one of the things that I’m really passionate about helping people understand. I love technology and I use it all the time as you well know, but when we go into meetings, the meetings are there for us to interact with our people
Lindsey:
Steve:
And I am absolutely a hundred percent convinced that companies would increase productivity if they would ban those devices while they’re in the meeting.
Lindsey:
I agree.
Steve:
Just make it a shorter meeting! If you can’t be away from it that long.
Lindsey:
Steve, you hit, I don’t even know where I’ve heard this but I heard a great saying recently and that was “forty is the new sixty and twenty is the new thirty”, and the concept was that a sixty minute meeting should now be forty and a thirty minute should now be twenty.
Steve:
Lindsey:
If everybody shows up and then you’ve got twenty or ten minutes on either side to get caught up on your stuff before you go to the next thing. I loved that, I’ve been trying to preach that in all my meetings now.
Steve:
I absolutely and highly recommend on that to all of our Manager Mojo listeners and participants because we don’t realize how much time we’re wasting and if your meeting is really planned efficiently then you don’t, it’s rare you need sixty minutes.
Lindsey:
I agree.
Steve:
No distractions, have a plan, have an agenda, follow it; you can get in and out. And I don’t know about you, but I’ll bet you that most all of us really we just despise sitting in a long hour-long meeting where nothing’s getting done.
Lindsey:
Yes and half the people are on their phone so
Steve:
Drives you nuts, doesn’t it? Well, you’ve given us and awful lot of tips today and one thing that I really want to hear your comment about is, I’d like your personal opinion on this question. What do you believe that it really takes to be an outstanding boss? What would be your advice?
Lindsey:
I think that the crux of that, I think it comes down to really excellent communication skills. I think if you can build trust with your associates and you’re a good communicator and you’re open to getting their communication and you communicate frequently and regularly, I think that’s just the basis of it and I believe in giving people a lot of autonomy, but with autonomy comes accountability. I think if you’re clearly communicating what you’re hoping gets done then I think you can be not only an excellent boss but then you’re building great associates as a part of that.
Steve:
Right. Communication, meaning that conversation back and forth between each other because that doesn’t just mean, okay I’m just talking to you in e-mail, does it?
Lindsey:
No. no, no. I think, email is the toughest. Obviously face-to-face is always ideal but I work in a global company so half the people I work with it’s a phone call but having that time to talk to somebody goes back to asking the questions, clarifying what you think you’ve heard and or what you expect from them is really important.
Steve:
Absolutely, great tips, thank you for giving that. Now, I want to ask you one final question, we covered a lot of ground today and what would you tell our listeners today that they could begin to do right now, just list one or two things that they could do today that would lead them toward a more successful management and leadership career.
Lindsey:
Well in summary I would definitely say if you don’t know your team well, get to know them really well; take a day, do a team building exercise, make it really fun, make sure that you surround yourself with people that are good counterbalance to you, I think that’s incredibly important. And the other thing I really believe in is praise your team, praise them often, give them credit. You take a backseat to any of the successes that the team has because it really is about them, without them you wouldn’t be successful so I think that’s incredibly important. I think that not only will they respect you but you’re just building respect amongst your team, so I think that those are easy to do and they’re fun. I think that it’s very fun to spend time with your team and I think it’s a lot more fun to give praise and thanks than criticism and other things.
Steve:
Awesome. Well Lindsey, I’ll tell you, thank you so very much for those words of wisdom today and it’s been such a pleasure to have you with us and I recommend that everybody check out the Preferred Hotel Group and thank you again for being such a great guest on the Manager Mojo Podcast. Best wishes to you in your business and your travels.
Lindsey:
Thank you, Steve. It was so good to speak with you and best wishes to you as well.
