"Building personal resilience and inner immunity" with Sean Worker - Part of the Hospitality Resilience Series

The Hospitality Resilience Series aims to challenge existing mindsets, exchange personal insights, discuss practical solutions and provide a forum for shared experiences that will help build personal solutions.

“Building personal resilience and inner immunity” marks the launch of the Hospitality Resilience Series. Special guest, Sean Worker, Managing Director of T5 Strategies and author of The ADAPTERS, shared the results of his extensive research examining the importance of adaptability and leadership best practice in the hospitality industry. 

This first session was hosted by Jonathan Humphries from HoCoSo, Chris Mumford from Cervus Leadership Consulting and Jon Hazan from Atlas Coaching.

Resilience is about having a conversation and learning from each other. Humans adapt to change and learn to change according to the conditions they find themselves in. Leaders, nowadays must learn to drop the labels and adjust their expectations. But "this will pass" and it is necessary to look to the future and reshape the way we do things. Remember however we are not alone. Connections are now more important than ever and we must rely on our community, draw on the positivity that surrounds us and ask for help when it is needed.

Watch the recording of "Building personal resilience and inner immunity" here.
Access the slides here.


The hospitality sector is currently enduring huge adversity and is faced with a long challenging road ahead. This environment is placing new burdens and strains on leadership and bringing the need for personal resilience and inner immunity into sharp focus. Be part of our community and join other thought leaders in our journey to resilience
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Transcript

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First of an ongoing development on how to build your resilience and inner-immunity, this is unfortunately come close to home yesterday when I tested positive, thankfully still in fit enough shape to be here with you today. And it's an absolute pleasure. Part of this thinking for this series to give you a bit of backdrop was based out of discussions and brainstorming that Chris Mumford and Jon Hazan and I were having. And we were talking about the need for positive thinking, mental health, wellness and tools and tactics that leaders and people who are in positions that have influence can share with their teams. And we were having these conversations over several weeks and we really wanted to bring it to a wider audience. So this is a the first of our experiments. We really hope you enjoy the time with us today and we encourage you to interact with us in any which way that you would you can with the forum. As you know, the hospitality industry today is going through unprecedented change. I won't dwell on the impact. We all know the impact. However, the rulebook is now, in many instances, being torn up and we can now look to start again from scratch. So there is a need for inspiration. There is a need for ideas. There is a need for solutions for our leaders, for our teams and for our people, for our society and for our community. I would like to say a big thank you to our collaborators who enabled this to happen. And this is Chris Munford from HoCoSo, who recently joined and Cervus Leadership and Jon Hazan from Atlas Coaching and Events. And this is our brainchild to bring this to you. I'd also like to thank the HoCoSo Connect members who've joined today. This is for those of you who are part of the group, we've had a series of sessions lasting over the many months since the start of this crisis on all kinds of topics to help provide solutions to the industry. And we want this also this forum, this format, this discussion today to enlighten and provide inspiration for those in the industry that don't have the opportunity to have access to all of you and to us. And hopefully it can be part of the greater solution. So just as a note, this is being recorded and we will use it for purposes for the industry at large and also for yourselves, you can share with your teams and your people as well. And in the spirit of community, we believe that community is one of the pillars that can help in terms of building resilience. We would like you to choose how you would like to interact, today we have a Q&A that is open to you. And also you're very welcome to just raise your hand and we will be able to come back to you, you do that by clicking on the icon next to you. So without further ado, I'm going to hand over to Chris Mumford, who is going to introduce our fascinating interactive and fabulous guest speaker today, Sean Worker, who's going to talk about his new book. So over to you, Chris, for the introduction to Sean. Thanks Jonathan. Jonathan's a living example of resilience and action, battling C-19 and still being here. So, thanks for being here. Hi, everyone, so I promised Sean that I would say very kind things about him, but he opted to tell the truth. And yes. And the truth is, Sean's had an illustrious career in the hospitality sector spanning Europe, the US for brands such as Interstate, Marriott, Bristol. I first met Sean, he probably doesn't remember, but about 13 years ago when he was heading up Wyndham's international business, after which he went on to BridgeStreet, the serviced apartment operator, where he was chief executive for 10 years, and really where he drove that company's transition from an operator into a online corporate travel platform and through quite a large transition. Today, Sean is the founder of T5 strategies, a Business Transformation Advisory Firm, helping a lot of businesses, particularly in this time as they adapt to the new environment. To my mind, Sean is one of the more progressive thinkers and boundary pushing CEOs in our industry. So I think we're incredibly lucky to have him join us today, especially as I think all the more impressingly Sean, you've just written a book which isn't easy in any times and all the more impressive given the current environment. And we are fascinated to hear more about 'The Adapters', the title of your new book and the work you've been doing. So I think I'll hand it over to you. You're going to kick us off with a quick kind of talk and then we'll jump in and have some scintillating conversation. So. I just don't know how to follow that, you know, you set the bar so high at this, so for those of you out there in Zoom Land, just discount everything he said. So we'll kind of go from there. So thank you, Chris. So I'm just going to share a screen and we're not going to kill you with PowerPoint by any stretch. And you know what I'd certainly suggest as we go through this is this is about community. And these this notion of resilience has just been brought home in many respects by the HoCoSo team and the energy that's gone on behind this. So the next few minutes is super interactive. Each one of the topics that we we explore here for the next 15 minutes or so is largely designed for us to create a conversation. And in some respects, it's creating that getting that conversation, which really listening to the founding thoughts behind this event, the resilience series is probably the essence of a bunch of lads getting together and other influencers and coming up with this and well done to Jonathan, Jon and Chris for for getting this off the ground. You know, resilience is very much about a conversation. It's it's more important probably than ever that we learn from each other. So, you know, think about what we're doing right now is putting chairs in an empty space and we're all appropriately distanced, even considering that Mr. Humphries sadly has has Covid, is that, you know, this is probably the closest you've been to anybody in an hour, Jonathan. So this is great. Certainly is. So, you know you know, this whole Zoom chat concept is often difficult because we can't see each other. Right now, you can hear me, but I can't see you. And that's an empty room. So hopefully we can bring everybody together. And then equally, the adaption that's going on in in all around us is fast, furious and somewhat overwhelming, I'm sure. And equally, over the next hour, we're going to jump around. So please don't expect this to be a linear PowerPoint expression. It's probably going to get interrupted and will jump around as different themes are brought out by the community that's on the Zoom fight today. So this is about personal immunity. You know, it's building immunity and building, you know, the strength and recognising that we have entered a very unusual phase. This is where, you know, you remember way back when the old Ken Blancher thing where somebody moved it, your cheese. Well, they moved the factory, the cheese, the goats, the cows, everything's moved. So that's that that that metaphor is going out the window. We're faced every day, what will Donald do? What will Boris do? What will Emmanuel do? What will Angela do? And now what will Joe do - maybe. And, you know, that's very stressful. You know, I certainly felt it and feel it. And especially now we're in lockdown syndrome. You know, one week you can go to the Canary Islands, ten days later, that's not on. You got the work from home kids syndrome that you're trying to do that, you've got to work from work, which we'll talk about as well. And then the the velocity of technology and everything pressing on everybody. It's a huge weight on a personal level. My dad passed away during this and, you know, it happened, and, you know, just at the beginning of this, in late March, early April. And we you know, we we attended the funeral through technology, which was WhatsApp, very surreal in many respects. And so, you know, that really brings it home to you as to how personal all this is. I mean, two of us on the call at least, that were between Jonathan, myself have been affected by this. And there's millions and millions of others that isn't stopping. So that's very stressful, particularly with all the institutional change. And don't underestimate what damage that does both physically and psychologically. You know, there was a couple of weeks there where the couch looked pretty good and Netflix was on continuously. And I'm not too sure exactly what I watched. So who knows? But this sense of couch surfing is something very important that we I think we've all learnt. This is a very human story and adapting is very human. And it's you know, it's one of those things that when you think about the human side of how we think about these stories, you know, there's a dependency on a community. There's a dependency to be resilient. There's a dependency on how you think about it. And then you kind of think about how do you where do you get it? Well, you know, resilience is such a great term because it's it's a connected sentence in itself. You know, it's the ability to adapt to really difficult situations and find solutions that and, I doubt, in most people's lifetime, apart from the generation that probably came out of some of the wars, that people have experienced this to this level. Between the Great Recession and this, 10 years apart ish, this is this has put a lot of stress on all the systems that we depend on. So, you know, you can imagine we go from, you know, if I could open the thing, I'd ask how many people have put together an IKEA desk? And that's stressful in itself, but I cheated, I got some people in to go do that because it seemed too stressful. But anyway, but thank goodness for them, they were the work from work community that is out there that I think we hear a lot of the work from home, but we don't hear a lot about from the work, from work and how managers are doing that. We'll explore that in a little bit. But, you know, we got to, we were getting back to getting the trains running on time and getting out and about and bulldozing through this in another word, you know, when when looking into resilience is about stamina, the depth that it takes to get out of bed. I mean, I think Jonathan is experiencing some of this right now is, you know, crawling from the bed to the desk to put on the show this morning, takes takes out an immense amount of effort and courage to be able to do that. And that's what I think a lot of us have found. And the the origin of this story of resilience, I think is a great story, because it's it it was built out of a need a need to share it, need to learn. And that's the great thing about looking at your community and smiling behind the mask. And we're also learning all new body language stuff like, are they smiling at me or squinting at me? So even that's cool. So it's a whole new way to to connect with those that matter and gain perspective. You know, perspective is an interesting thing, you know, like I have glasses on right now. So it helps me with my perspective. But, you know, the stress, we don't, my, Andrea and I don't have kids, so, you know, the idea of listening to our friends that maybe have their young daughter on the back of the chair while you were trying to make an important phone call, are, you know, when you go to work and you come home and you have to take all your clothes off so you don't, you know, infect your family and then going to work on an airline to keep the stuff moving. And doctors I mean, there's a whole level of dependency and inter related adaption and innovation that's going on that we tried to capture in the book and try and tell those stories, because this is very much the age of storytelling. Everybody's got a story. And so when you look at particularly the work from home class, a study that was there's an ongoing study that I'd refer you to that is by the National Institute of Research. And we'll put these links up afterwards. But what's interesting is, is that the work from home event is up 48, people are working about 48 minutes longer. It's supercurrent that they're doing this every eight weeks, they've been doing it since the start of Covid. And so, you know, when you look at what's what's being learnt about people working longer, but these meetings on Zoom are getting shorter and they're better attended because you don't have all the rambling going on. So that's a very interesting stat that's coming out, and it's about 30 percent down on meetings, but the quality is going up according to now that, you know, that's up to everybody's interpretation. But who knows? You know, so this this notion of other innovations that have come out of this, you may have heard of Airnorth recently, are delivering their food. Apparently their food is so good. It's a small airline. They're actually delivering the food home to homes. So they, like these customers, are so loyal that they love when they miss the piece of travelling, which was was the food on the plane. I know that's an oxymoron, but they're now delivering it to the house, to a house. You may have heard of Nippon and Singapore doing the, you know, the Go Nowhere flight and Qantas Airlines, you know, flying around for seven hours around Australia. And, you know, I flew one hundred twenty thousand miles a year. Some days I felt I was going in a circle. But at least you're going back to Melbourne or Sydney. So that seems pretty cool. So there's all these things that we need to think about adaption both in our personal life and other places. I might also point out that just in the little corner here on the screen, this is how we're growing our food these days. And this technology has just just exploded. Optic and robotics merging. And A.I. has been around for, you know, a long time, but it's really accelerated in the last five years. So we're now growing our food remotely in some respects. And that's a whole different level of quality and innovation that's occurring that we should be inspired from. Now, I'm going to stall here for a second. And encourage me to stop. So that the community can throw up some questions or observations. So I'm going to pause for a second. Sean, what's the flip side of, you know, the extra 48 minutes, the shorter meetings? You know, what's the kind of negative potential side of that, I mean, if you say a shorter meeting to me, but OK, we may be losing some of the banter, but the banter is sometimes it's the magic sauce, right, in terms of building community, teams bonding people together. Do you see a how do you adjust for that, do you think, going forward? So, you know, we asked, you know, in the book we talked to went out and started communicating, but also interviewing through this whole period 20 leaders with diversity across hospitality, travel and tourism. And we and we were on Zoom, and they're, you know you're asking them the exact same question. OK, so how is your mana how is your managers doing with meetings? So there's two sides of it. Who's organising it and who's on the other side of where we are today, which is a bunch of listeners and community members. And a lot of it is disruption with, you know, trying to manage your family. You know, that people are insensitive to when there's their scheduling meetings. It's when it's convenient, you know, trying to get used to that, which is a huge people not willing to say, no, that's not a good time. Certainly you brought up about the the energy and the creativity about finding a way to do something different. It's very hard to organise a whiteboarding session on Zoom, now you can, but it's probably not as fun as having, you know, a few beers and food around the office and you don't get your best moments sitting in front of a screen. So there is a risk then that you're losing connection with your colleagues and your supply chain or your your the parents. You know, when you go to school and you see them and you hear something or something influences you or you pick up a tad of a little bit of just hanging out in the supermarket, all that's gone. So now it's all about your pod. So however, what's amazing is there's there's thousands of companies been started. And if you take China as an example, they've set out a five year goal regardless of the circumstances of how they become autonomous and independent by starting individual businesses and enabling it. So if you look at the stats that are coming out of in the UK, it's off the chart. Now, some of it is just people getting laid off, which is horrid, and you're starting a consulting business. But out of the thousands will come many that will be, I think, three, four years from now will lead to a boom in innovation and new companies. And there'll be this new reality that comes out of it. But there's a lot of downside to zoom; stress, tired of it, your back, physically. You know, you're on show. You know, it's quite fatiguing. And yeah. And then then you get up and you don't have a break. You don't have a commute. So now you go downstairs and you deal with the family issues or Fortnight, as we were talking about below on your bandwidth and who's fighting for bandwidth. So there's all sorts of new stresses going on and there will be all sorts of upside from this as well. I was just going to say yeah, we've had a great observation from Sandra about part of resilience is the driving ability to see where opportunities exist. But she says really interestingly here about, it's about mindset and looking for opportunity, both personal and business. And you brought that in really nicely. I'm wondering if you can whether anything, was there anything coming out of the interviews about mindset? Where did these guys start? Where do the leaders of this start with a mindset? What do they what do they see is crucial now for facing turbulent times. Right. So we said we jump around and that's what we will do. So Daniel del Omo, so Daniel, I've known for many, many years. So he's currently President at Sage Hospitality Management. And he you know, we talked about this when we when we, got together, you know, and he was right in the middle of dealing with his business, going straight into Covid and cash flow issues, and even at that point his his his his perspective was don't let the common and conventional norms in your industry define you, right at that point. Which I thought was fascinating, so this kind of mindset about, OK, we're going to get through this and yes, I'm going to deal with cash flow and yes, I'm going to deal with the horrendous nature of lay offs and everything else. But don't let that define you, because this, too, shall pass and it will. It's horrendous, but that that perspective of seeing what's in the future and saying, OK, I've got to reshape my business anyway. And what can I turn it into with the colleagues that I have? And it was that very that attitude of being a servant leader came out very clearly from from Daniel. And that was that was inspirational at that stage. And he carries on like that. I mean, he's run, he was at Wyndham for a while, a senior guy, strategist, brand leader was with Dine Equity, you know, with the restaurant business. So he's he's he's a personal angel investor. You know, he's got perspective. But that perspective, tenacity, resilience, mindset about we're going to get through this is the nuclear power plant that his team needed and still needs every single day to get from here to there. That's one example. There's a ton of them. Yeah that's great. We're seeing a lot of that, aren't we. Not a leader as coach becoming a popular way of the modern leadership? And you know, the thing about defining it, there's no barriers. Right? And for a minute, I'm sure everybody's looking at this going, what's wrong with this picture? You know, everything has a mindset. And this was one of those things we found as we were developing the book that says a gate is only a gate if you think of it as a gate. I got to fit my car in the garage. Make the gate fit the car, and that's where we are. Make the gate fit the car. I'm going to try and get these questions out from from people. Steve's put a really interesting question out there. Do you think the second wave will be harder on leaders than the first one? So I'm sure everybody will jump in here, I'll just kick it off with, you know, in some respects, if we compare and I have no idea if this was the same for everybody through my lens and my family's lens and the my business colleagues and family, you know, in some respects, the first wave was ignorance is bliss. You know, you get to lockdown and you turn into a bit of a game and, you know, all of a sudden everybody's baking banana bread, watching Netflix. OK, I'm going to watch all those shows I've always wanted to watch. Or, hey, start writing a book, whatever, which we started pre-Covid, fortunately. But, you know, I think that ignorance in bliss phase has has now passed. And the second wave and I'll take it in this way, the psychological impact of the second wave I would absolutely not underestimate the toll that will take on all of us to dig deep, because now we know. And it's also very unpredictable, and now we know. Sean, I think just to just to come in here, because there's a couple of other questions that I think are related to this. It's around perspective, taking what you mentioned there. It's like now we know. But I I would like to be provocative here that actually, if we if we're talking about resilience, part of resilience is the ability to manage stress. Stress is a consequence of expectation when we have expectations and then suddenly they are not met, they no longer apply. So isn't there a risk here that if we say now we know what's going to happen because we've been through it before, and it doesn't turn out the way that we expect it to happen, it's going to compound our stress and therefore it's going to impact our resilience. So isn't, and I was just wondering if this came out through your interviews and discussions in the book. The ability to adjust expectations to transform expectations is maybe a way of building resilience to be flexible with our expectations. I was just wondering if you could maybe, you know I see the barrier here that you've mentioned. Could you maybe kind of frame that in terms of the feedback that you received from the various people in the book? So, you know, into the range of people we talked to, you know, Glenn Haussman and myself are doing the interviews and, you know, everybody had a different lens, but they're all, every one of them, without question, are gravelly people. This some of them were start ups like Vanessa de Souza Largo at Rentals United. To her, this was just another obstacle as a Start-Up leader. You know, I think there's a big there's a there's a there is a there is a different perspective that Start-Up and founders have versus institutional businesses that have a, you know, an expectation for a vision statement and a vision statement, a mission statement and a strategic plan and a P&L on this date and a balance sheet on this date and a board meeting on that date versus the founder group that seemed to be very magnified between the two groups, so the expectation that this, the expectation that this was going to be a long cycle, we had a couple of leaders think that it was going to be over by June. And so we're doing touch-up pieces to say, what do you think now? And we had others that said this is going to be a long haul, two, three, four years. And so there was the it'll be over and there was the ones that were planning for a long, dark summer. And so that was common. The piece that was common between all of them was this tenacity that we will get through this. And there was also very much my my family and my teams are and I don't care whether you were running an organisation that is 5000 or you're a supervisor running a team of five. That that that I have to show up. I have I have to find a way to get through this, was very common. Which you expect people to be very depressed or they knew the consequences. But you can you can focus on the consequences or you can fight for the outcome. And they were fighting for the outcome. OK, thank you very much, Sean. Thank you. So I think in terms of we'll let you carry on, we've got many other questions so, but I'm just conscious of momentum here and I know we said we go off at tangents, but we'll let you get back on track for a while. There's no on track. We can jump, I'm delighted that we're jumping through this. So, you know, these are this is one of the stories I do want to share. So this is this is a story that we discovered with Omni. And I know Peter Strebel and the team and the team over at Omni Hotels and Resorts based in Texas. You know, what I love about this story is is they took a different attitude, they said they're going to get out into their community, they're going to get out and find a way to connect, and I love what they did with the the notion of a part. And you might for those of you that are looking, you know, if you can have a look at the food truck, you know, stay a part and stay a part of your community, stay a part of your business. And this this story is everything you want from a leader. It's, they, just to give you the back story on it, they decided to get out to see their hotels. They decided to get to see their customers, get to see all their teams and bring transparency and a sense of touch to a touchless environment. They took a number of food trucks and they drove five thousand one hundred and ten miles. And they went to 10 cities and they they they got out there and they and on top of that, not only did they get out there and touch the community, they went and met with their staff, all distanced, to tell them exactly how the company is, what the status of it is, the full transparency, the good, the bad and the ugly, and then rallied the teams around the notion of a hotel or a tourism or hospitality project, I don't care whether you were a rental car agency or an airline, you're dependent on the community you serve. And these guys delivered fifty one thousand meals to feed America in 10 days. So 10 meals for every mile. You know, you don't get better than that. This isn't a this is hard work and that's a hard work PR exercise with authenticity, with energy, you know. Yeah. I think that basically that's the key issue on is the authenticity. I mean, it this is an organisational level, but it's applicable to the individual level. You know, what I'm picking out of this is they have a true sense of purpose and they're living to their purpose as an organisation in this sense. So, you know, I think it's a core part of resilience is your understanding, your purpose, whether that, as I say, an individual or as a team or as an organisation and living up to that and clearly Omni here had a purpose, which then was very much in terms of, you know, serving the community, and living to that which can be hugely nurturing of everyone's resilience who's involved. I think I think that's a nice you know, that purpose element and the authenticity of that to pull up, just pick on that is, you know is vital. Because everybody's experiencing pain, you know, the supply chain, you know, the local community, thousands and millions are looking, you know, can't even get a meal every day that had their, you know, the notion of having six months, you know, cash reserve. Those that really worked hard to put that away is all gone. So oftentimes a hotel is a hub, you know, a place where you get to reside, you know, a place where you get to be a serviced apartment, you know, a meeting place. And those meeting places largely have been closed, a restaurant, community, etcetera, etcetera. So, you know, sometimes you just got to get the food truck and create it. And this was just a great story that that hopefully is inspirational to others that says even when you've got tight cash flows, you can find a way to do great things and accomplish multiple goals. And this is something when you talk about brand building for the future. This is for the future, as well as taking care of the now, and that's very inspirational, you know, when you see that sort of leadership, you know, and just switching gears a little bit is, you know, I thought more about what you challenge us to talk about with resilience is also looking at it as fuel. You know, and what drives adaption and innovation is that fuel, that is that resilience, that tenacity, that that sympathy, that empathy. And, you know, there's probably no, Anthony, when we interviewed Anthony, you might have known him from the creator of Hotel Impossible and he's a he is quite the, he's quite the, quite the dude. Right. There's nothing stopping this guy. And, you know, I loved this, you know, and I won't say the last bit, but I'll read this out. But, you know, you can picture this in a New York heavy accent, right. You've got to picture this on camera. And you know this, and I love this attitude; it's about feeling liberated to do what the hell you want right now. So you're free. Now it's desperate times. We can start whatever you want. And then realising that, you know, walking around with gloves and masks. Yeah, that's it's a pain, there's no question. But if you're not doing what's in your heart right now, what the blankety blank are you waiting for? So some people who are starting businesses like I want to make soap are, I have another friend who's a pretty decent musician, but he suddenly discovered how to use Adobe Pro and now he's doing orchestral pieces and blending musicians from around the world. He would have never have thought of doing that. So, you know, these are the things that we tried to capture in the book and put in and talk about them as gutsy genius thinkers. And they're real people. This isn't about reading Reed Hastings book or Jim Collins's books are all the big business books. You know, Glenn and I wanted to talk to real people doing real things in the space because not many people try and capture what the travel and hospitality spaces. And it's a very dynamic group of people and very little is written about us. And so it was time to write about us and how we connect the world. And you can hear that energy that comes out. I love the positive energy, Sean. There's a lot of really interesting stuff coming out what you said there about authenticity, change, opportunity, I would chuck in as well. And it's very easy to get a bit bogged down in a depressing moment. Michael was putting here a great comment about what what we're saying is that resilience is; don't let what's happening around you get inside you and pull you down. Do you agree? And that for me opens up the question around the positive. You know, should we be seeing this still upstill an opportunity for change, to change the dialogue, to change the way we look at it. Did you get any of that kind of positive energy coming out of those interviews. So maybe I'll just add to this. You know, I mean, based on the the various discussions that I've been having over the last several months, what I what I like about the potential opportunity where people have managed to at least change their thinking, it's it's around zero based thinking. It's like, well, if I could start again, what would I do and how would I do it differently? And and, you know, that's always been kind of a luxury because you've got all these business constraints and you've got these organisation constraints. You've got these rule books, which I mentioned at the very beginning. The opportunity here is that once again, the rule book has just now been ripped up. So there is an opportunity to now say, OK, if I was going to do this differently, how would I do it and how would I implement it? And I think that is in itself a great opportunity for for leaders. But it also connects with the empathy side and the emotional intelligence side. What's in your heart now? I think it's like how do you connect that zero-based thinking with your emotional side that then brings on your team? So I don't know if that that came through because I'm just trying to summarise a few of the questions, because they're all around this theme about connecting with your emotional intelligence, connecting with how do you start again. So I'm just trying to wrap a few of these questions up as well. So there's two things I would say is, is that I think the media generally and a lot of these conversations about companies and people and groups and we forget to talk about the individual opportunity. And the notion of you can you can start as a business of one and have free licence. There is no shame about being getting laid off in this environment. There's no stane. It's not your fault, so it's what you do with it now, even with limited resources, and that that's something that you can do. I mean, I went to America with a few hundred bucks and an Amstrad computer and three suitcases and, you know, you hustle up and you work hard. So what? You work hard! And a lot of people helped me along the way and I had a lot of mentors along the way and finding those mentors now, and not being scared to reach out, I, I, I think this person is is has joined us on the call today, so I won't mention her name, but you'll know who it is. You talk about resilience; laid off and got on LinkedIn and created a community to help others. And out of that she earned one heck of a great job and the company is so lucky to have her, but she created the business of one. And the energy of one that that fed into others, helping others find jobs, putting out titbits on best places to hunt for roles, helping her industry as well. And, you know, she she she was contacted by by the firm to say, come work with us because of her presence and her energy so you can be one or you can be many. But together we're great. And that that came across loudly from this energy that was out through the group. Now, believe me, people are in very tough times. We are in in the darkest of times. And, you know, it's going to be a long road out into a new reality. New normal is kind of question. I don't know what the new normal will be because our institutions are being tested, governments are being tested, firms are being tested. You know what happens when we get to a place where on the move again and all businesses have said, you know, Amazon this week, I'm sure many people have seen this. They they spent one million, one billion dollars less. You know, it sounds like an Austin Powers thing, one billion dollars less in travel in the last eight months. And they committed they're not going back to spending a billion dollars. So you multiply that times, thousands of companies, and we have to learn how to do things differently, and this is a real opportunity for businesses to make a footprint for the future. What and maybe, guys, this is just for Sean, but I'm just thinking around, you know, sometimes the barrier is oneself, right? So you can think about change and adapting and innovation, but, you know, you kind of get in your own way, you don't know where to start. You know, how do I do that? If you're like me, whose, those familiar with an eargrounds or Type six? All I can think of all the problems will go wrong. Why it won't work, right. So, how do I get over that? And is it maybe building the community to then bounce that off and give you that support and strength but other areas, you know, I just feel that some people may say, well, that all sounds great. Yes. And I feel this pressure, I got to adapt, I got to change, but I don't know where the hell to start. And what, I know Sinek, I think Simon Sinek says just start. Just doesn't matter how big or small it is, but just just take a step and see what comes. But do you I mean, anything you've seen Sean or Jonathan, Jon, that relates to that as to how people can kind of overcome their own barrier. I think personally in a coaching sphere at the moment, we're talking a lot about self awareness and I think that's picking up on what you said, the importance to start with self and then move on to others, bit of self regulation. And as Jonathan and Sean both said, if you can work out what's happening in your own head, then you can help what's happening with others, but it's a big goal, isn't it? It is, I'm going to actually Sandra Clary's responded exactly on no barriers. "I've found in my own experience that a key early step was in letting go of old labels and attributed usage to skills and roles. And instead I looked at it all anew and found that there was a new industries and new roles that were great fit for me." This was in the context of a job search and she's now carrying out the mission, in a new role in a new industry."And I extrapolate and I extrapolate it into resilience and companies as well." And I think what I think that is very is, what you were mentioning, Jon. You know, this letting go and I think that's part of, you know coaching helps with that, letting go of old labels attributed to skills and roles. And now it's so much more important, I think, around thinking, mindsets, approach, you know, vantage, view, perspective. So I, Sean, I guess maybe that is something that came out through the various interviews that you had as well. Some other traits, Jonathan was, you know, the need to to be in a community, even now. Greg Juceam, who's president of G6 Hospitality, which owns you know, Motel 6 and G-suites, is, you know, they were they are in a very interesting market, but they're very concerned about, you know, a lot of their hotels are for, often used when, as a cheap bridge or an inexpensive bridge between, you know, rent moving out of their house because they couldn't afford the rent until they can afford it to get back into an apartment and really being helpful with that process right now and maintaining dignity and understanding and really being empathetic and bringing that as a mission to the company was very pronounced. You generally find is a big caring attitude within the broader tourism, hospitality and hospitality industry. And that that comes out, I think, repeatedly. So when you give something before you get it, that's a good feeling. And so going back to your point about where do you start, you start with, I remember when we were transitioning BridgeStreet and, you know, I didn't come from a tech background, so I knew nothing, but I knew where we want to go. So the biggest thing I needed to figure out was pick up the phone and say "hello, I don't know. But I know you know." So after about 10 or 15 of those phone calls, it's amazing how you get good at saying, "I don't know. I think, you know, would you mind having a cup of coffee or some chat or a phone call or whatever way we can communicate". And those doors, I learnt more from saying I don't know than my mouth blabbing off about what I do know. And that that was a big humbling moment. It's a lovely point Sean. And sorry, go on. No I'm just saying, like if, if even of here you know what we're doing and the book also, we're putting all the details, all the contact details of the gutsy geniuses to reach out to. And use them. And call them. And get your network up. And really don't be scared to say to somebody "I don't know, you know, I just want to learn." And it's amazing how, I, I, I was humbled by how many people said"okay, I'm going to help you through this, you idiot" And that was fine. And you were willing to share the vulnerability right, of saying "I know" Yeah, but that took a while, you know after. It's the old labels and the labels. Dump the labels! Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And your ego! Yeah. We have a comment here from, Naoko, apologies, I probably pronounced that wrong, all the way from joining us from Tokyo, which is also mad. And there's a lovely point here about gratitude that he's realised that there's a lot of, there's actually just focus on what we have and what is really important, and as I find that a wonderful comment, gratitude. Chris, you mentioned vulnerability. If we can start out with quite a positive and humble approach, realising what we should be grateful for, then we can build on that. And like you said, a great example offering others to come in and help us and build and not be proud, except vulnerability is an amazing starting point. So. So, yeah. Thank you for that comment, Naoko yeah. Sean, there's another one actually from Naoko as well regarding it's a terrific time to figure out what how innovative hospitality is because it has changed forever. But therein I guess I mean, I'm extrapolating this out, but therein lies the opportunity, the the innovation and the ability to adapt. And so we've got a lot of good questions comming in actually. It's actually interesting, I'll come back to Sloan in a minute. But I do want to add this to your point about how we will adapt to this as a space. Glenn and I have not been uncritical of of the space for being laggards for one reason or another in technology and delivering a user experience that is kind of experientially common in other industries. And we've been a little slow. It's interesting that you know that, am I saying, I hopefully I'm saying the name right Naoko, is that right? So from the, the QR code was invented in nineteen ninety four in in Japan and now it's finding its acceleration rate. So some older technology is actually more current than ever. And and in the short the little bit amount of travel, you know, that I've done in this, this period, you know, I've just been scratching my head going into restaurants where I'm in a small restaurant in Barcelona, and they jumped on it with QR codes, frictionless payment modules, all that jumped on it. Then I go to some places in Ireland and a couple of places in the U.K. and we're still giving out menus while others in the same place are on QR codes and everything else. It's like now is the time to make those changes and it also helps the environment if you're not giving out a bunch of menus and then throwing them away. So, you know, this idea of what is a restaurant, what is a meeting space is all out the window. I mean, on the right hand side here, I found this where these are blow up huts that can be assembled on pallets in less than 20 minutes. Instant meeting room. You know, finally, we're asking ourselves, what's the best use of a ballroom or eating space, you know, hardly ever used relative to a room. So what are we going to do with that? And so we've been pushing, you know, the dialogue about it really is this is the time to really make a leap, not make marginal changes. And look at how other industries are dealing with this and manufacturing. The other thing that we brought up is the last minute we're writing extensively about this, used to be the last mile, now it's about the last minute. We now have a personal relationship with our Amazon driver. And now it's not just about it's not about the the quality of what's in the box. It's like, he knows us. He's actually part of the community now that says a lot about what we're ordering. But nonetheless, you know, he knows it. He drops it. There's three or four lads on the route. They're fabulous. They're like part of our extended community now. That last minute makes a difference. And I wonder what our space will do about making the last minute different. And I just want to highlight one one other gentleman by the name of James Blake and his his wife, Yolly, that, you know, we they're a major YouTuber they are with Spain Revealed they are they've started a number of businesses, very entrepreneur, entrepreneurial, both individual business owners, you know, tours, but equally experiences. You know, he's really latched on to the idea of regeneration. And this idea of using spaces differently and and it came out in New York Times as well recently as well. So this idea of building up our cities again, well, restaurants, bars, hospitality products, museums, airlines, we've cruise ships have all got to think about how what they contribute to cities differently than before. And how do we bring the the the the enthusiasm back into a city without being, you know, overwhelmed. So there's all these different conversations that are going around that is so exciting to see. Sean I wondered if we could go back to one of the points you made earlier about we were talking about community, which is which is kind of we're hearing a lot of the importance of community. There's a lot of strength coming from the people around us, not just ourselves. And I'm guessing, you know, obviously we're talking about leadership a lot today, but we see leadership in in the bigger context, wondering if you know, we've had a few questions around, you know, how do we, how do we communicate to our teams now, the requirements of a modern leader, the more collaborative approach, command and control kind of falling out the window. I'm desperately scrolling down the questions so many of them here are talking about that. Steve made a great comment here about talking to the team on a one to one basis, not a lot of emphasis on community. Is there any, again, any trends that you've see here, the importance of community and any kind of takeaways? So, I mean, first of all, all the questions are so intertwined, right, it's about connection and I love where, you know, earlier on, you know, you said that, you know, dropping the labels. So I love this picture. You know, talk about dropping labels, you know, two tribes, one hangs out in a trenchcoat, the other one hangs out in a studded leather jacket and they're smiling at each other. You know, this is the opportunity to break down what the labels are because we are all in the same boat. Covid does not recognise anything. Apologies for that. Recognise anything that's a label, it just knows that you're a really good place to hang out and they like hanging out in humans. So we have a real opportunity to change those labels. It is really tough as we reshape, you know, just we just kind of pivot to what it being what it means to be a manager, a manager of your home, a manager in your business is dramatically different. This, how do you you know, we removed key senses from how we think about emotional intelligence, smell, touch, full body language, context. We're now looking down the barrel of a, you know, a Logitech camera. And so our expressions need to be very different. People have made a lot of mistakes looking down the barrel of the camera, like forgetting their trousers and things like that. So the cultural norms are all changing. So for a manager, it's so much more difficult. I think one of the things we put in the book as some ideas, is like, you know, find a way to deliver the doughnuts. You know, that's what delivery is for. Or GrubHub, you know, you've got to go that extra mile to go, OK, we're going to get together next Thursday, have a team of ten, and I'm going to have hot doughnuts delivered to everybody so we can have doughnuts and coffee, you know. Exactly for that point in time. It takes that effort to think about this in a very different way about getting family involved. I mean, this is a family event, you know, for a chunk of the population that are working from home. When is Family Day? Get him on the camera. So that they they know where mom or dad or is is hanging out. I make no bones about my cats hanging out now. You know, my entry is down two floors below me and, you know, not uncommon for her to say, what are you up to? So she wants to hang out on the Zoom. That's fine, too. She's very much part of my life. And I of hers and so are my cats. So the dogs, I've got to know a lot of dogs. So how about Dog Day? So it's you know, somehow we've got to bring the coffee, the doughnuts, the cake, the awards into everybody's room where they work and also spend the same amount of time with the teams that are working hard, physically and mentally in offices, hotels, hospitals, airports, and being super sensitive about that. The work from home group is treated differently than the work from work group. And that's tough on managers to be able to juggle both and, you know, I think events like this where we can talk openly about those stresses is and again, getting connected with your community in a way if you can volunteer and do something for someone else. That helps too. So this is a real rewrite of what this is a new reality for all of us and there's lots of tips to do that, that's just some that came out of the book. Okay, Sean, I think we're close to we got about five minutes. There's a couple of questions, which I think you've you've answered about the watercooler chats. We have a question here from Sanjay Nadkarni, who's a professor of innovation at Emirates in Dubai. How does it impact productivity? But I think you've addressed how we can kind of absorb that within our within our communication and also within our. Could I just add something about that very quickly, is, we're redefining what productivity means and also time and capacity and and we've got to get our heads around that, that whatever the previous metrics were are out the window. It's, you know, largely based now. It should be based more on what you deliver versus time served. And that's for a different conversation. So I guess just moving to maybe one of the last questions actually came up first, but I kind of like it and I know that you've got some things you'd like to share before we go. But what keeps you up at night, Sean? Still, and I guess in the spirit of resilience, kind of that's the question here, it says"besides the inevitable, what keeps you up at night?" And I guess in the spirit of resilience, how do you how do you deal with it? So candidly I'm pretty tired and doing a lot of stuff. There's not much that keeps me up at night. So probably what's an honest to goodness so that the things that probably are awarenesses is that we're all reshaping and that's hard work, you know. So how do you find your new direction? I mean, I'm facing it. Many, many others are facing it. It's not like I woke up, you know, two years ago and said, I want to write a book with Glenn Hausmann. And and my wife has edited it and then went off to the publisher. And she did a great job. It was a team effort. We didn't sit down and go do that. This was an outcome as opposed to a preplanned event. So that we have highlighted that, you know, there's big macro stuff that you can you can't control, but you need to be aware of. It is an important event that's happening in in Europe with Brexit and Europe and America with the new presidency. That's a big issue. Can I influence it? No. So that gets a lower priority. The stuff that is important is, you know, when are we going to get a vaccine because the vaccine is the key. And the catalyst for how we recover and create the new normal can influence it, but right now, you know what's going to happen that you can control. So putting that energy into reshaping you. I mean, you know, if we get Greek out right now, you know, know thyself, you know, you brought that up earlier, Jonno, take that time to find yourself because you can accelerate the recovery. The third part that's a big issue is, you know, sadly, the destruction that we think is going to occur, you know, I work some in the work out business administration and bankruptcy business. It's going to get worse before it gets better. You know, we saw this morning that Sainsbury's has announced another thirty five hundred likely layoffs. Airlines are doing the same thing. We're coming off the synthetic bounce that the governments were able to do, fair play to them, unless there is more stimulus. I think we got really big problems in front of us. And it's time for governments to dig in. And this is no time to be worrying about debt. I'm not an economist and you'll read a lot about this, that if you're going to, the European Union has said "dig in it's going to be a long winter" and, you know, we need to be aware of that. That we can influence. And put that energy into it, saving jobs, creating jobs. I don't think there's a more mission led society contributing event, then those that can create jobs because they're new jobs and that that that, you know, those of us that are in that business of creating jobs, that's a great way of giving back. Sean, we got approximately one minute left, there's questions on where to find the book, I'll let I'll just hand over to you in terms of just doing a close and I'll do a final wrap up. And obviously, if Jon and Chris would like to just say some final words, it'd fantastic. Well I'll keep it quick. This is a the book will be coming out in, in middle of January or so because we are not a stocking stuffer for Christmas that I'm sure. So it'll come out then. So we've, you know, we're largely done. And so we'll release it then. And then we'll be happy to share where it'll be on all the normal channels to purchase. And the rest of the time, I'd like to hand back to my colleagues here and thank you very much for the opportunity and to everybody out there in Zoomland for all the great questions. Much appreciated. Well, thank you very much, Sean. It's been an absolute pleasure having you here today. I think we've covered many things from adjusting expectations, going in the last minute, focussing on the last minute, taking time to know yourself. I like this quote by Michael Zager, who's kind of said, "You need to run the day or the day runs you", which, I think is very, very appropriate. Thank you Michael. Big thank you to Jon Hazan from Atlas Coaching and Events and Chris Mumford from Cervus Leadership and HoCoSo. All of the references that Sean mentioned, the link to your new book will be available on the LinkedIn site, which is Hospitality Resilience. I would like to say a big thank you for all your questions. There's been so many it's been thoroughly engaging. I really hope you enjoyed this session, the first of many to come. We hope you join us as part of our community going forward on the LinkedIn page. And we'll keep this discussion and dialogue going and we'll help each other through this this crisis and become more resilient as a consequence of that. So thank you very much, everybody, for your time today. Thank you.