In service, training without rehearsal is pure entertainment!

Essentially when the aim is to change behaviors, reaction patterns, or entire mindsets!

In a recent (still in progress) project, the goal was anything but glamorous: a measurable boost in the hotel’s online score. 

We focused on the only thing truly within our control, the human factor 💜, while the “uncontrollables” (street noise, renovations, parking) were politely aknowledged.

I insisted to be part of the rehearsal phase for the new service skills as I do in each project I deliver.

👩‍🍳 Chefs don’t master recipes by reading them on a slide or role-playing them! They cook, again and again.

Yet we expect front-line teams to remember service behaviors after hearing them once.

Why do I have to insist on rehearsal is a different topic! 

Some clients see the follow up as long, unnecessary, existing in their space for too long, “The workshop alone is enough.”

But, in such projects, I insist to be part of rehearsal daily the first 2 weeks, then bi-weekly check-ins for 2 months, ideally until measurable change is visible: 

- new standards become habits

- new procedures bring results

- reviews climbing above 8/10 and stay there

- success start being celebrated

It’s experience telling me that consuming knowledge does not guarantee shifting a needle in the complex mechanism of “improving guest experience through high quality service”.

That as soon as the workshop hype is over & the stress of a complaint is back in, we resume to default, to the comfortable habit that triggered the need to change in the first place:

😖 that “hard to read and definitely undeserved by the entire staff” comment: “rude staff”

And because the leader who should model this change are learning too!

🔃 I’m rewiring my brain still!

From hotel employee, HR Leader, where my project WAS the training itself, because the employees would go back to a leader fully equipped to oversee the transfer of new behaviors to daily habits.

To consultant, learning how to think “in projects” and “for the clients”, and asume a higher responsibility for the ROI of a collaboration.

☸️ And I did not invent the wheel of reinforcement, but I sure am doing my best to make it the most popular part of my projects!

I am helping my clients shift from serving knowledge and hoping it sticks to building a system where service behaviors are rehearsed, measured, and mastered.

🔦 And for this we have to spotlight rehearsal, not only the training!