Overcoming Imposter Syndrome and Embracing Diversity in Leadership - David Kong, DEI Advisors

When David Kong retired from his role as the president and CEO of BWH Hotel Group, he was the longest running CEO of any major hotel company. Today, he's focused on empowering others through DEI advisors, and in this episode you'll learn more about this, including lessons he's learned, advice for overcoming something he calls head trash, making your organization a great place to work, and much more. What does a day to day look like for you these days? How are you spending your time?

Yeah, what I'm doing right now is in my retirement. I am trying to pay back and help women and other underrepresented groups get ahead in the hotel industry, and I try to collect learnings and perspective and advice from accomplished leaders And there's so much wisdom that's out there that people can benefit from in building their own career. So I interview these leaders and I collect their perspectives and thoughts on different things and I share that through our website and through our podcast platform, and I'm also trying to make the information more succinct and reader friendly or user friendly by distilling them down to some key themes and sharing some of the thoughts on those themes.

Well, there's an incredible library on your website, so I'll make sure to link to it in the episode show notes. People should check it out. I mean people across the industry. I'm curious, having done so many of these interviews now, are there themes that have stood out to you from these conversations, in kind of in service of these goals that you have that are top of mind for you?

There are so many, and the first thing that we do normally in these interviews is we ask for the highlights of the career journey. We like to understand how a person got to be so successful And we learn so much from just that story, because frequently you hear how people started out as a dishwasher or busboy like me and they work themselves up to be the CEO of a major hotel company like Wyndham, for example. Jeff Balotti has been a CEO there for a long time And his story is amazing. He almost he actually got fired as a waiter, but look at where he is today. So to be able to listen to those stories and find inspiration is just tremendous. It's exactly what we want to do. But there are lots of themes that have emerged, things like how people network, how they overcome their head trash and how people find strength in resilience to overcome challenges and setbacks, and so on, so forth. There are just so many wonderful themes that we can learn from.

This term, head trash, stood out to me from your website. It's interesting because it's a very vivid descriptor of, i think, what many of us deal with In your words what is head trash and how can we think about getting rid of it?

Head trash is a term that we use to describe the negative thoughts in our mind. We all have this negative nagging voice in our mind sometimes that set us back and prevent us from reaching our potential. Self-talk about not being good enough or it's just too much for me and I need to take it easy, just things that prevent us from reaching our potential that's head trash. And the way to overcome that is, first of all, be strong and resilient yourself And the way and the way, and and I would suggest that you need to take care of yourself if you want to be successful. And that means having good habits, like going to bed at a decent time and eating right and exercising and surrounding yourself with the right friends. You don't want to be a amount of group of people that complain all the time and what was me and man in the whole world? because pretty soon you'd be hanging around them, pretty soon you'd be one of them, and you don't want that. And also, when you do have those attacks like the self-talk that is setting you back, you need to learn to shift the thinking, and I would suggest you ask yourself this question whom do I want to be at this time? Do I want to be a loser or do I want to be a winner? If you want to be a winner, then think constructively about what you can do about the situation. Something's happening to you, we don't like it. Then figure out what you can do constructively to take yourself out of that situation. So that's shifting the mindset. But related to head trash is this imposter syndrome that some of us have in the underrepresented groups. I know many women and many of us in the underrepresented groups have this imposter syndrome, like for me. Initially, when I was CEO, i was invited to CEO panels at these major industry conferences. He sat at the table with four or five other white men. I stick out like a sore thumb. I'm the lone minority at these settings And in the beginning I felt very uncomfortable, very uneasy, like I don't belong And that's the imposter syndrome, like you're not good enough to be there. But you have to learn to overcome that. And the way to do that is be really good at what you do. And if you feel confident that you actually have that capability, then you ask yourself, for example for me, why am I invited to that CEO panel? Obviously they think I'm good enough to be at that CEO panel, and then I try to embrace my own uniqueness. I am different. There's nothing that I can do about that. I was born that way. But so what? I am different. So I'm gonna embrace that uniqueness and say something that's different, because I'm really different, so I express myself in that unique and special way That's me. As an example, i was at a CEO panel at the NYU Hotel Investment Conference, which is one of the most prestigious, most well-attended industry conference in 2020. And the CEO panel was comprised of all the major hotel companies Hilton, marriott, accord, hyatt and so on and so forth And the question was about the labor crisis that a lot of industries are facing, including the hospital industry, and people were talking about all the innovative ways that they recruit talent. And when it was my turn, i said I'm going to say something different. So instead of talking about acquisition of talent, i talked about retention of talent. I made a point that how many people are we actually trying to recruit? 10% of a workforce, 15% of workforce. So what about the other 85% that's working for us right now? I mean, if we had done a good job in retention, we wouldn't have a labor situation to begin with. We wouldn't need to recruit anyone. How about taking care of the people that are working for us first? And so I use that to actually launch into the whole new area of recruitment and what we should be doing to retain good talent.

I want to hear more about that, but your choice of words stands out to me. I was at NYU last week And what really stood out to me was people talking about labor in an almost adversarial sort of way, and words you were using were people and talent. Do you feel like there needs to be a reframe in even the language we use?

Yeah, actually, i really think that's the case. Funny, you should notice that when you say workforce, then it's very dispensable. When you say talent, that means you value that person And it's a totally different mindset. And that's how we need to think about the wonderful men and women that work for us. Because they are talent, they can contribute to our success. They can make us more, even more effective and even more successful.

So I sort of cut you off, though, on something I would love to hear about. You said we need a different approach to recruiting. I have to hear more about that. What are you thinking as it relates to recruiting?

Well, the others were talking about different ways that they could recruit, and so a lot of successful companies are targeting the underrepresented areas that people don't think about recruiting from And they purposely go there because they think there's good talent there, and that is certainly the case. So they've been successful that way. And of course you've heard about the incentive fees that people pay to try to attract new talent into the organization of referral fees and things like that. But I go back to if you take care of your people and they think it's a good place to work, they can refer their friends to come and work for you. And so I go back to if you do a good job retention, you wouldn't have a recruitment problem because you get so many referrals. There's a natural turn to anything, so there's a turnover that anyone is going to experience. But if you have done a good job taking care of your people, you would always be able to attract new talent to fill those vacancies.

In your experience? what does it mean to take care of someone, especially when you're a leader over a large organization? What goes into creating a great place to work?

I think you have to care for people And Hyatt has a wonderful mission statement or purpose statement, and Mark Obamnasium, the CEO, talks about that at times. He said you've got to care for people so they can be successful. He made that the center point of his leadership And I applaud him for that, because he's done such a magnificent job building that culture at Hyatt. And when you genuinely care for people, they know that, they can feel that And they have such a great sense of loyalty towards you. Hyatt has gone out of their way to take care of the people. During the pandemic, every one of us had to lay off so many people 40, 50% of our staff had to be let go because it was a necessity for survival. But Hyatt went as far to offer health care insurance coverage for the people that were furloughed. They raised funds. All the people that were remaining, the executive team, everybody chipped in. They raised millions to take care of the people that were furloughed. I mean they did so many wonderful things to care for people. So I think that's number one If you have it in your heart, they care for your people. The rest will take care of itself. The other things that a lot of companies have done is they target different areas where they can recruit diverse talent. They have development programs so people can actually grow in their career. They provide a career path for people so they can actually build a career with them. A lot of general managers at Marriott were in-grown. They started out being a front desk clerk or other low-level positions And now they are general managers. Hilton has set a target to have 50% of general managers be women, and that's a wonderful thing because now the women are, they feel so much more engaged because there's a career path for them to be a general manager of a hotel. So you have to set those goals And a lot of companies that are publicly traded also publish their reports Hilton, marriott, hyatt, ihg and the like. They all publish their ESG or DEI reports And on there they state their goals, they state their achievements and they hold themselves accountable, and I think that's wonderful too. So all those are just some examples of things that we could do to recruit good talent. And talking about valuing diversity, a lot of companies also have what's called the Employee Resource Group. They might have different names for it, but they have these different groups comprised of, for example, women or Asian Americans, to give these underrepresented groups of voice in the company, and that's another wonderful thing that a company can do.

As we were preparing to have this conversation, i was speaking with a number of people. One of them was Dan Ryan and he asked you know what are some of the big wins or shifts that you see in the future on equity, diversity and inclusion? You spoke to a number of those. Is there any other big shifts that you see or really good examples of innovation progress in this area?

Yeah, i think it starts from the top. If you want a cultural shift, it has to start from the top and it has to start from the board level. So boards need to have a diverse representation. If you have women on the board, the women on the board are going to build the awareness and the other board members to value women and to the value of diversity, equity and inclusion. So you see, the successful companies have a diverse representation on their board, in fact sometimes overweighted. So they have that diverse voice in the boardroom. And you know, that's the beauty about diversity. Diversity ushers and innovation. And the reason is because when everyone has the same opinion, then there's no need for a meeting. There's no diversity in thinking. Why bother? And the diversity and opinion because of the diversity and the makeup of a board or of an executive team gives you lively discussion and gives you the pros and cons of different approaches and different ideas and rounds of your thinking in so many wonderful ways and enables you to make much better decisions And, when it comes time to implementation, so much more effective. So that diversity is really important. So, to answer your question, i think it has to start from the top, of top down. You know the board has to be the role model, and then you have the executive team basically having to have that representation, and then it will flow down. If you have those two pieces, the rest would be easy.

Well, that's great because you've spoken before about how there is many women and other underrepresented groups present in non-leadership roles in the industry, and so you know, when you're hearing from me, you have to start at the top, start at the board, right, and then kind of there's this top down benefit And it also I'm interested to hear about the 50% target for general managers. So it takes it all right. It got a kind of approaches from many different levels.