Summary:

In this episode, Dr. Jim interviews Yogi Mueller, the VP of Leadership and Talent Development at Blue Green Vacations. Yogi shares his insights on breaking the trauma cycle and creating a culture of excellence and engagement in the hospitality industry. He emphasizes the importance of developing and retaining talent, especially in an industry with high turnover rates. Yogi discusses the need for leaders to be present and attentive to new hires, ensuring they feel valued and appreciated from day one. He also highlights the significance of aligning leadership culture throughout the organization and creating an environment where employees can thrive.

Key themes: talent development, retention, culture of excellence, engagement, leadership presence

Key Takeaways:

Leaders in the hospitality industry must focus on developing and retaining talent to build a high-performance organization.

Igniting the potential of new hires is crucial for their engagement and long-term success within the company.

Leaders need to be present and attentive to new hires, creating an environment where they feel valued and appreciated.

The culture of an organization is defined by the experiences and perceptions of employees at all levels, not just the leadership team.

Building a strong leadership culture requires alignment and consistency throughout the organization.

Chapters:

00:03:00 The challenge of finding and retaining talent in hospitality

00:06:00 The right time to ignite the desire for career advancement

00:10:00 Marketing the value of L&D and gaining leader trust

00:13:00 Guiding leaders to understand the problem and outcome

00:18:00 Valuable leadership presence in onboarding and culture

00:21:00 Leaders need to be present in the new hire's experience

00:24:00 Leaders need to act on their words and prioritize their people

Connect with Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk

Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung

Connect with Yogi Mueller: linkedin.com/in/yogimueller

Music Credit: winning elevation - Hot_Dope



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That's the argument that Yogi Miller makes. So who is this Yogi guy? Let me tell you a little bit about Yogi when he's not ransacking picnic baskets. He has been a learning and organization leader and a human potential locksmith. He's got over 30 years of experience in the hospitality industry.

He's currently serving as the VP of leadership and talent development at Blue Green Vacations, a leading vacation ownership company with over 60 resorts over the US and Caribbean. Additionally, Yogi co founded and runs the Give Till It Rocks, an event production and promotion company specializing in fundraising for nonprofit organizations.

Yogi Miller, welcome to the show.

Yogi Mueller: Thank you. Thank you. I did have the mouse for the 10 years of my life as my boss. So I have a few of them lying around the house.

Dr. Jim: Nice. I know we covered a lot of ground in the bio, but what I'd like you to do is share what the audience, some of the other things that you feel is going to be important for them to know and learn about you.

That's going to inform this conversation.

Yogi Mueller: I didn't set out to be an L and D guy. I was and I found out that's true for a lot of people in our industry. We find we're passionate about it. We have a pension for it. We love it. We get something out of it and we fall into it. And I originally started as an operator in hospitality.

Dr. Jim: there's a lot of interesting things about your background that I want to get into, but one particular thing is what you just talked about your entire career, or at least big chunks of your career have been in the hospitality industry. And one of the things that I know about that industry, is that it's got a massive amount of churn.

Now you've been in the L and D function for big chunks of your career in the hospitality industry. How does that all fit together when you're dealing with basically an employee population that has a high level of turnover within the industry?

Wow. That's an amazing looking hotel. I'm thinking, how are they going to staff it? Because staffing is so difficult in the hospitality industry and post COVID, a lot of people left the industry. They felt that it was too volatile when something like that happens and left for something which they felt was more.

More secure, for a lack of a better term. And so it's about finding the right people coming in. That's going to have that longevity engaging them while we're here. And especially our young folks if they spend three years in an organization, that's a lifetime. And aiming for that, hoping for more, but hoping for at least that minimum three years.

That you see as that norm with folks coming out. So it's about the people, 100%.

You don't often hear people in hospitality emphasize development or retention. It's more common, at least in my experience, to hear people talk in terms of, Oh, we can always hire our way out of it. So tell me a little bit about it. How that emphasis in development and retention formed throughout your career, because this is not something that I often hear from people in the hospitality space.

Yogi Mueller: A lot of it came from my personal experience growing up in the hospitality world, whether it was retail or theme parks or and in that world, you. You get to a point in your development in your career path, and a lot of times you hit this brick wall and it often it's going from hourly management to salary management and then on and on and you get to that brick wall and you beat your head against it a couple of times.

And as they've been famous for that since 1955. They've started developing programs to help people skip over that. And not skip it but see a more surmountable. To it. So when I got into L and D roles where I had a, an opportunity impact strategy and in product productivity, I wanted to look for those stepping stones.

And in, in our current world, we call them career accelerator series, because it. A lot of them, there's no guarantees of a promotion, but because of the exposure, because of the work that they do in the networking and the growth arc that they have, we see 60 plus percent promotion, even though it's not guaranteed within the first year.

And what that does is it shows them possibilities. And that's all we need to do. We just started a new program called Ignite, which focuses on our frontline associates that maybe didn't even consider a career path or growing into leadership. Maybe they didn't think they were capable or didn't think that it was a possibility or never even considered it.

You lay out this roadmap for him and they see possibilities. It's when that shining city on a hill in terms of that right seat on the right bus of where they need to be, where they feel valued and appreciated is behind a cloud. That's when people leave. So you want to make sure that it's visible, it's tangible, and it feels possible.

Dr. Jim: I like the concept of Ignite. And if we're carrying that theme forward, When is the right time to spark that conversation about what the future looks like?

Do you do it at the onboarding phase? Do you do it? Past probationary period, give us some guardrails on when you should be having that conversation.

And that's not something that's necessarily seen right off the bat. You're hired for your potential a lot of times, and then you see that grow. So we want to make sure that the seeds that we're planning are going to be in a soil that's going to produce. In terms of the right time, the individual has to be willing and able to understand their potential.

And those are two separate things,. There are people that, I've always said, the worst, most disappointing part about leadership is the disappointment. And what I mean by that is when you see somebody, they have that Genesee quad, they have that's something that, there's they're capable of so much more and to do so much more, but they have the inability or the unwillingness to accept that and do anything about it.

So when you take a step forward, you're not taking a step off a cliff. There is a net to catch you every step of the way, and we're going to help you grow, . And so when you, I think it's that spark moment and that comes in different parts of people's. I've had associates that have been with me two months and I'm like, boom, that's the person that, that has that that certain something others take a little bit of time to grow into that.

So as a leader, you have to be observant. It has to be down on that individual level because one equation will not work. For anybody else

Dr. Jim: If I'm going to draw a parallel to maybe some of the people that might be listening to this, what you're describing, at least from a marketing and sales perspective is that talent that you are working with? Are they potential aware or potential unaware?

Let's let's dive deeper a little bit as we as we continue the conversation. Now you've been at Blue Green for almost 12 years and we. Talk to HR leaders all the time. They talk about the need to embed. Whatever their core values are, their why all of these, sort of stuff on the wall stuff into their organization. And I'm going to pose the same question to you as I post to other people.

That sounds great in theory, . How did you actually get to the point where that was actually woven into your environment?

So I had a leg up, . There had to be some education. There had to be some propagation of the culture. But if your leader doesn't get it, You're not going to get it. They're not going to get it. And a lot of times, learning events or learning programs, whether it's a micro learning or a three day session class.

Sometimes it's a box to check. Sometimes it's a nice to have you get a leader said we need training or why because they enjoy it, and you also have to have leaders that, understand that L& D professionals have to ask those tough questions. Why isn't it working? The problem might be you,.

And so when you have that leeway to ask those questions, and that trust of not just you, but the industry and your practice, that helps out a lot. So that's always the first place you start.

So that's how I translated your get it phrase. And my Two cents as an armchair quarterback would be if you as an HR leader or people leader or whatever, are trying to execute some sort of transformation within your organization and you don't have a leader that gets it, do not move forward until they are in a place where they actually quote unquote, get it.

Yogi Mueller: I'm going to come back to your comment about marketing. How many products and services do you have to market the value of the product that you're creating before there's a market for your product? And I've been in organizations where you have to say, this is what we can do.

And so there, there is a hill to climb before you climb the other hill . Like I said, I was a little bit farther up the hill in my particular department, and that was very helpful. But o others I know have to start from ground zero.

Dr. Jim: when we're looking at how do we guide our leaders? To the point or place where they quote unquote, get it. My argument or my advice would be instead of the product and demonstrating value in the product, you need to be centered on the problem.

What is the problem that you're trying to solve? That's how you get your leaders, just like any other customer to quote unquote, get. What it is that you're trying to do and what you want to do. So if you're not problem focused, and if you're not focused on the outcome that you're trying to deliver, you're never going to get that leader to the point where they get it. Yogi. I think I think we've set the stage really well.

What's the story behind that?

Yogi Mueller: I think that to tie back into our earlier conversation where we have in some parts, an oscillation of tenure in an organization, and especially post COVID where people look for more intrinsic value in the work that they do and not just come punch a clock and go home. They're looking for worth.

They don't know how to operate. They're scared to death. When you see those PETA videos where the dog is in the back of the corner and they won't eat because they're going to get beat. Hopefully that's not happening in previous organization, but the proverbial sense is the same.

We have associates that join a great culture and they don't know how to act. They don't know how to act around leadership. They're looking over their shoulder. They're, re questioning everything. There's a lack of trust going into it. And I had a, I had one new hire at one time. I do a 45 day check-in with our new hires leaders, and they said they wasted the first three months of their tenure waiting for the Gotcha.

And it never came. And that was a light bulb for me. Okay, we need to figure out how to identify these individuals that are struggling to really get in the culture because they're not feeling connected. And if they're not feeling connected, there's no productivity, there's no engagement on that individual side.

And. We may lose them a lot more quickly because they don't understand truly what's going on.

And it's really surprising that you're mentioning that in a hospitality setting. You might as well be telling me to go fly to the moon using duct tape and super glue to build my vehicle. How do you actually pull that off? What are some practical things that people need to do to break that trauma cycle?[00:16:00]

Yogi Mueller: I think the secret there lies in as a leader of somebody that's coming into the organization, and maybe, maybe you don't know the environment that they came from. They may not have shared, but if you are a present leader. In their experience, especially within that first 90 days, it's a critical period of time that you're meeting with them on regular basis.

You're conversing with them. You're listening to them. You're watching them interact. You're watching how they phrase emails,. Those little things can give you clues. In terms of the environment they came from, if they seem afraid of their shadow, if they don't, if they can't walk five steps ahead without getting your permission,.

Things like that are those amalgamation of a go, okay, they didn't come from the most healthy environment. So one of the things that I think you and I talked about is you can't tell them what a great culture you have. All you can do is show them and let them experience in the self, . You can't give that puppy in the back corner of the kennel a bowl of food and expecting to be You know You see videos of the person sitting next to him and eating and then giving him some of that, .

And you can be so busy as a leader, you're going to miss it. And if you do, their impression of the engagement, the culture of your company is going to be in concrete and might be extremely difficult, if not possibly possible to undo. So you don't want to miss that opportunity to ensure they understand what you're truly about .

Dr. Jim: I want to dig a little bit deeper into your comment about leaders need to be present. That could mean all sorts of different things to all sorts of different leaders. Define for me what actual valuable leadership presence looks like in the context of getting somebody onboarded quickly into an organization and having them experience and understand what the culture looks like.

Make sure you schedule all those one on ones with their clients, with their partners, with their vendors, whatever it is. And demonstrate, right? The only way that new hire is going to see. What your culture is how you demonstrate it. You are the thermostat of that department, of that business unit.

You are the thermostat of that individual's experience and one key does not unlock every door, . So what you do for this particular new associate, it's going to be vastly different that you're going to do for somebody else, but you have to be present in their experience, not in their physical space, but in their experience, especially within that first 90 days.

Is that really meaningful? Is that going to move the needle or are there other things they should be doing that has more concrete impact in that onboarding experience in that cultural experience that you're talking about.

And feel engaged, which could lead to other production errors, . So you have to look at, here's a word, you have to look at the holistic approach of that person's onboarding experience. And you've got to take the individual, especially these days. With everybody's priorities different than they were in 2019 and really make sure you're checking on those boxes [00:20:00] that they'd say, in fact our orientation program, the goal of that orientation program is to reinforce on day one.

This was the best decision they could possibly make. And it starts there.

Dr. Jim: I think we've covered a lot of ground here and it's a lot of stuff to deconstruct, but I think there's going to be people that are in the audience that are going to be listening to this and wondering, Hey, that sounds great.

How do I get started? So how would you answer that question?

Yogi Mueller: When I was trying to get a handle on what the leadership culture is, I interviewed a lot of leaders from the, let's say the four corners of the organization. What did they feel were the most important things that they do? What was the culture that they feel that propagated? And on paper, it sounded pretty close.

And, nothing says powerful culture, like alignment in all four corners of the organization. But I'll tell you Jim, it wasn't completely evident to me until I was hosting. These 45 day check ins from new leaders from across the company and for different, parts, different organizations in the company, different business units, geographic, all over the place, never have interacted with each other before.

There was so much support and desire for them to succeed. And whether you were in this department, they're like, yeah, that was what I saw too. And they came back and everybody in the debrief. So that's the culture and you have to sit back and go, that's pretty powerful because you, because we know that doesn't exist in a lot of organizations where there's that consistency that current that underflows and when you can see that, that is 100 percent L and D ROI, that, that leadership culture.

Has permeated really what you are as an organization and how you operate.

Is saying the same thing. That's when you know that you've actually embedded a culture. So I think if we're saying, Hey, what's the litmus test. That a leader needs to have to determine if they've embedded the culture. What you just described is the thing. Go to the furthest reaches of your organization.

And what are they talking about in terms of what it's like being here? That'll give you a signal on if you have something that's real, or if it's more of a paper mache culture,. I think we covered a ton of ground in this conversation. And when we think about all the stuff that we talked about, what are the big things that you want listeners to have?

Yogi Mueller: I just posted something on LinkedIn this morning and I said, leaders, there's just one thing that you need to really think about. And that's your people. And I said, and that is all right. Because these days, people are a commodity. in your organization. Walt Disney said you can build the most amazing thing in the world, but it takes people to make it a reality.

And when you look at that and you understand without people, you have nothing, you have a building, you have an unbuilt product, you have an untended service, whatever it is, you need the people. And the more you can dig into the hearts and minds of those individuals, especially post COVID, you're going to get longevity, engagement.

And you're going to get just a tremendous sense of well being from them, which will translate to that. Because your best, your brightest, your smartest are going to want to be a part of your organization because your priority is where they want it to be.

It doesn't show up in how they act. And that's the other part that I would add to what you said is that it's not enough to say it. You said it earlier in the show, people have to experience that and feel it. If people want to continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Yogi Mueller: LinkedIn. Love it. It's it's inspirational. It's a great communication and networking tool. You can find me at Yogi Miller, M U E L A R,

Every organizational leader needs to be taking back and applying. And the reality of it is that we've gone through years where leaders on the business side of organizations have thought if there's a problem, I can hire my way out of it. That growth at all costs mentality that is rooted.

In a talent attraction. First mindset has ended up burning so much cash and so many great people. Maybe leaders are finally starting to get it that the emphasis needs to be on keeping the people that they have and developing them to the next level.

For those of you who have been listening to the conversation hope you enjoyed the discussion, leave us a review and let us know how it went tune in next time where we'll have another great leader joining us to share with us the game changing insights that they had that helped them build a high performing