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THE ICONIC LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE 2021
Getting the best from staff, encouraging them to stay and recruiting future stars are all down to how you manage, as Lisa Jenkins discovers
I can tell you, having visited most of the hotels in the UK Iconic Luxury Hotels collection, that the success and reputation of the brand is down to its calibre of people and the commitment the senior management team put into ensuring their teams are engaged.
This has become increasingly important in recent months as the hospitality industry struggles to fill vacancies across the sector. The UK has fewer skilled workers available to fill these positions and the requirement to retain talented staff and create a pipeline of future stars is now a necessity.
Iconic Luxury Hotel’s strategy to attract and retain the choicest staff was demonstrated recently when Andrew Stembridge, executive director, of Iconic Luxury Hotels, and his senior management team gathered more than 50 of its managers together for a 24-hour conference including an evening soirée in The Kitchen at Chewton Glen.
Senior managers from across the Iconic family were represented, including The Mayfair Townhouse, London, Cliveden House in Taplow, Berkshire; Chewton Glen, in the New Forest in Hampshire; The Lygon Arms, Broadway, Worcestershire and 11 Cadogan Gardens in Chelsea, London.
The theme for the conference focused solely on people and how to get the best from them, especially
when operating under pressure. “Never has the need to motivate and lead our people efficiently or effectively been greater than the present,” Stembridge told his managers. “The employment landscape is changing ever more rapidly, as are the expectations and priorities of our workforce.”
A line-up of motivational speakers included Rob and Paul Forkan (the Gandy brothers), talking about their journey ‘from survival to success’, and Manley Hopkinson, winning skipper of the BT Global Challenge, the world’s toughest yacht race, who spoke on ‘compassionate leadership’. Craig Prentice, founder of recruitment company ‘mum’, delivered a heartfelt talk on ‘mum, mental health and me’ and entrepreneur Stefan Wissenbach on the subject ‘time to engage’. Iconic Luxury Hotels’ HR director Anita Bower and talent development director John Hollywood wrapped up the day alongside conference facilitator and trainer Mary Jane Flanagan.
Rob and Paul Forkan talked about lessons learned outside the classroom, travelling as children and launching and growing the Gandy travel-inspired fashion brand. The brothers lost both their parents during the Sri Lankan Tsunami on Boxing Day 2004 and their business contributes to building campuses for underprivileged children around the world.
The brothers ‘Don’t just exist’ ethos is at the forefront of everything they do. Paul said: “You have to maintain perspective and keep looking forward. Our experiences have taught us that, but you must
keep evolving too. Ask for help when you need to, and if you want the respect of your teams, be prepared to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in.” Rob added: “Don’t be afraid to let people use their creativity – you don’t have to have huge budgets to encourage people to get involved.”
Hopkinson said when he was faced with a report of a hurricane that would reach 26 knots, gusting at 30 knots during the BT Global Challenge, he had to motivate his team by “setting a positive future – and defining a team ambition”. His advice for the managers was to always be aware of how you are imparting information: “It’s not what you say that matters – it’s how you are heard that resonates.” He reiterated Paul and Rob’s mantra of getting stuck in. “How can you lead if you can’t relate?”
Craig Prentice and Stefan Wissenbach both spoke about personal life experiences that had impacted their careers. Prentice’s story of his mental health struggles led to the launch of mum recruitment, nowpause.org and Walk for Calm that united many hospitality workers during the pandemic.
Wissenbach spoke of his 25-year-old son, Oliver, who in 2019, whilst on a family holiday suffered from sudden adult death syndrome. Oliver wrote under the pseudonym of Sam Leaper and his family have turned his musings into a book called The Little Book of Wisdom. The family has also set up The Magic Future Foundation, which raises funds to build schools overseas.
THE SEVEN CS OF LEADERSHIP
Stefan Wissenbach works with Iconic Hotels on their engagement programme, Engagement Multiplier. His presentation was based on the seven ‘Cs’ of leadership:
Commitment, Courage, Capability, Confidence, Connected, Consistency and Caring. These form the basis for creating a sense of engagement and leadership within teams. “It’s important as a leader to have a defined purpose,” said Wissenbach. “An engaged team equals an energetic team.”
Iconic Luxury Hotels uses Engagement Multiplier as a confidential online engagement survey for the team, where staff rate engagement on their head of department, general manager, team members and guests. The surveys are competed three times a year alongside the use of a confidential suggestion box.
“In the spirit of ‘if you measure something you can improve it’, we’ve been using Engagement Multiplier (EM) as a tool to help us track engagement in our hotels and also our Iconic central reservations office for nearly five years,” explained Anita Bower. “Understanding how our people feel at work has never been more important and working closely alongside Stefan, we were inspired to create a Team Charter, which illustrates clearly to current and future employees how we want them to feel, regardless of where they work in the business, and how they feel about us as an employer.
“Launching this new commitment at the 2021 Leadership Conference was powerful, as it dovetailed perfectly with one of the key objectives of it, which is to give every member of our team a good boss,” added Bower.
“Stefan’s view is that in the backdrop of Covid and Brexit we need to be putting as much effort into retaining and attracting staff as we do guests, and to ensure this philosophy is embedded throughout, we also updated our Iconic Purpose by adding ‘to make every member of the team want to stay’ to our existing Purpose ‘to make every guest want to return’.”
