R.O.T.Y. Competition 2007

Winning the AICR UK Receptionist of the Year award was an incredible experience. It gave me the opportunity to attend an Executive Summer Management course at the Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne. Being one of the most prestigious hotel schools in the world, it was an exciting challenge and a unique experience.

The Executive Summer Management courses encompass several areas of the hospitality industry. Courses are offered in the Operations, Finance and Marketing, Leadership and Management and Strategy fields. There is a good balance in the difficulty of the courses and the level of knowledge one must have to enter these classes. As I am only in the early stages of my career, I decided to concentrate on a Leadership and Management course. After much debate the course that seemed to suit me the most was “Managing Personal Effectiveness.”

The description for the class stated that it was a course on how to improve communication skills and to learn about each other and ourselves. One aspect that makes the summer programme so unique is its focus on small class sizes. In my course there were only fifteen students.   The greatest aspect of this experience was the wide variety of people attending this course. There were people from all over the world and from all different walks of the hospitality industry. It was very intriguing to share a course with a student, a Rooms Division Manager and an entrepreneur, among others. It was also a benefit that not all of these individuals came from the hotel industry.

The course itself was intense. In three days we learned a vast amount of information. The course focused on the theory surrounding the “Insights Wheel.” This theory was developed by Carl Jung and is used worldwide to create personality and communication profiles for employees within a company. More intricate than the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the Insights Wheel focuses on three dimensions; Extrovert vs. Introvert, Feeling vs. Thinking and Sensing vs. Intuition.

Throughout the three days we examined ourselves individually and as a group. We learned more about the people that we are and how we communicate with each other. The power of interpretation and how different people respond to different situations was also a major focus point for us. I was truly amazed at how different my interactions are with people who communicate in a similar manner to myself and how different these are with people who do not have the same style. It made me aware of others around me and how we sometimes might think that we have interacted in a positive matter, yet to the person on the receiving end it might have been a truly negative experience.

As I was promoted to supervisor only recently, this course proved to be invaluable. I have more responsibility and I am expected to perform. Communication is something we do every day with our guests and our fellow colleagues. I have learned new skills and can better judge when and how to communicate with certain individuals. The course also made me aware of some of the pitfalls of poor communication and how our own personalities and perceptions affect how we communicate with each other.

I thank the AICR for this tremendous experience. I learned new skills, made a new network of colleagues and enjoyed some time away from the hotel. This experience has left me with a yearning for more and I hope that some day soon I will be able to visit EHL once again.