Building a High-Performing Culture through Offsites and Leadership Development Programs - Loretta Macke, Remington Hospitality

One of the best ways to get my attention is to show me a photo of a Jeep, and that's exactly how I got connected with our guests today. After seeing some amazing photos on LinkedIn of an off-roading adventure, we ended up talking about how to create programs and incentives to build and scale a culture performance. Stick around if you'd like to learn how they did it. Our guest today is Loretta Macke, the Senior Vice President of Sales at Remington Hospitality. In this episode, you'll learn about a recent incentive trip she hosted, how she thinks about building a culture of performance, mentorship, the program they created to develop leaders at scale, and her advice for how to thrive in your career in hospitality. Tell me a little bit about Pinnacle. I saw on LinkedIn there's a lot of Jeeps involved, a lot of off-roading. What is Pinnacle?

We started our Pinnacle incentive trip back in 1997. Very proud to say that we had our 24th Pinnacle in Palm Springs. It's actually the second time that we've had the trip in Palm Springs. For the first 18 years we actually held the trip in Key West But we just decided a few years ago that we wanted to kind of spread it out. We've got a lot of hotels and great locations and wanted to get more exposure across all of our hotels and have the opportunity to show our sales leaders all the great hotels that they can refer business to. It's been very successful that way.

Why do you do this trip?

The reason we do it is because when we first launched it we wanted to focus on the really top performers. We do so many things within our sales organization. Obviously we have sales incentive bonuses, we do monthly recognition on our commercial strategy calls. We do a tremendous amount of recognition across the board, but we really didn't have a program to highlight the top of the top. Our incentive trip is really focused on the celebration, recruiting retention around those top performers that consistently drive great results.

In your experience. You mentioned doing this for a while. What's been the impact on the culture of your organization as you have thought about planning and hosting these fun events?

It's been phenomenal. The one thing that we're very proud of is how we turn this event into an opportunity that keeps living throughout the year. These winners are part of our future. They're the people that we lean on. when we have new programs, new initiatives, we use them to help recruit. This past trip, we did something different. We actually videoed some clips of our winners, asking them what pinnacle means to them, in a way that we can use those videos to continue to celebrate and recognize throughout the year and be able to use that as part of our culture and be able to help drive great associates to join the company.

What's the role in recognizing excellence for everybody in the organization? What does that do for you?

I think it definitely separates When we talk to. I talk to a lot of potential candidates that want to join the organization and I hear so often about how impressed they are with what they're seeing, whether it be on LinkedIn Sloan's very active our CEO, Sloan Dean, is very active. Chris Green, Raul throughout the organization. We're very active in engaging and it's all around the associates. It's all around our people and that's what we really focus on. People want to work for our organization. They want to be a part of it. They feel that it's something special. The sales incentive trip is just a small piece of that, but it's very impactful for the sales culture, commercial strategy culture. I think that that's something that will continue to drive great people. Most importantly is, the people that work for Remington and that will work for us in the future feel a part of something very special.

Tell me a little bit about how you design these trips themselves to get this output that you want.

One thing that we do is we involve our teams. The very first thing that we do is we survey the field. We survey all the sales managers, catering managers, everyone that's going to be a part of the program. We also include revenue management, digital marketing, so it's a full commercial strategy incentive trip. We want to get their feedback. We survey the field, ask them what can we do differently? Number one is where do we want to have the trip? We get a lot of great feedback on that. From that point, we enlist some of our key leaders within the organization that want to continue to grow and develop to help participate in it. We're very collaborative Remington across the board, especially in commercial strategy, but really throughout the organization. We're very collaborative. We want to get all of the associates involved in the decision of planning. We usually try to do a theme because we just think that helps bring it together. Our theme for Palm Springs was limitless, which made a lot of sense. It really brought together the potential the unbound potential of our sales team as well. As when you look outside the hotel in Palm Springs it is just surrounded by mountains. A lot of the activities. We did the fabulous Jeep tour this year. That really speaks to the theme of limitless.

That's great. Is there any moments that stood out to you especially meaningful during the trip?

Yeah, the one piece this year that was different from last year but we brought it back is that we had guests allowed. Last year we did it as a team event Coming out of COVID. It was all about the team approach because all of our teams were kind of multitasking and helping each other through some really difficult times. In the past we'd always allowed the winners to bring a guest That was so special to bring back this year. I can't tell you how many people we heard from and how important that was for them to be able to celebrate with their spouse. We had people that brought friends, we had children. It was just very impactful for them to be able to be recognized and celebrated with someone special to them. I think that really adds a lot of value to the program.

It's really cool to hear that, because we're holistic people, right, and it's just. you can't just isolate our work selves from our family life or our friends, and so you wanted to show that recognition more holistically.

it sounded like Yeah, we really did, And I'll tell you after the event. We've received so much positive feedback from the spouses, from the guests. I've personally received several emails just thanking the organization for allowing them to be a part of it and for our recognition of their loved one and the person that's important to them. So I think it just adds so much value for us to get to know them And we really treat the guests like a VIP as well. We understand how important they are to our winners And so there's equal treatment. I mean, they are both VIPs and they really feel that. They feel that the love and the support and, frankly, they feel like part of the family.

Yeah, i love that And I wonder if we could just talk for a few moments a little more around how you think about how this benefits the people in your organization year round, and you talked a little bit about everything from. This is an incentive, obviously, to encourage high performance, but you're also showing what excellence looks like across the organization. But you mentioned taking some clips and things like that, so it sounds like it was also a moment to maybe collect or share best practices and kind of record that to share more broadly.

Yeah, and that's one of the things. We just started getting our surveys back from the trip, from this most recent trip in Palm Springs And I was really happy and a little bit surprised, but our teams love spending time with each other, so that was something that was really important to them and I was surprised at how many people mentioned that as the highlights. They were there with their spouses or their significant other, but yet they really enjoyed the opportunity to meet and spend time with other sellers, with other winners across the organization, and that's very impactful because as we go through the year, we all need each other, and having that opportunity to have met 35 other people within the organization face to face and spend time with them, they naturally become some of the leaders that we lean on within the organization. So, as we need to roll out new projects or we want to get feedback on different initiatives, we have a challenge that we need to try to solve, for our winners are the people that we go to to solicit feedback and help. Chris Green, the president of Remington, was our keynote speaker at our Gala event and he had such a great message for our winners and it was a message of the responsibility of being a winner and the responsibility of our winners, going back to the hotels and embracing the rest of the team and pushing people forward, pulling people along to get those who maybe didn't qualify maybe they have some challenges not only in sales but within the hotel to be able to help motivate, encourage and inspire them to be able to excel to that level as well. And the message really resonated with our teams and that was something that I thought was really special and so typical of our leadership and how great they are in inspiring our teams. But it was a nice moment.

Inspirations, everything. How do you stay inspired?

I've been in the business a long time 30 years with Remington so I'm kind of at that point in my career that I want to give back. I'm mostly inspired by being able to help lead some of our DOS's that want to do more within the organization and some of our divisional vice presidents of sales that one day want to be in my role. So that really is what inspires me is being able to help people move to that next level.

I got to ask a follow up question because I was talking to somebody yesterday that was talking about sometimes the dilemma that leaders face, where all the responsibilities you have and then thinking about how do I allocate mentorship time right And if there's a lot of people that I could help, how do you decide which ones to help? How have you thought about that?

You know, i do think about that because there's not enough time in the day. And you know, one thing that we've done within Remington that I'm really proud of as well is we have a program called Rem Thrive And it is designed to identify those top performers that are looking to move up in the organization, looking to develop their more skills, and we've rolled that. We've rolled three of those classes out and we've got over 40 people within the sales organization that are part of that program And it's a whole road roadmap of different skill learning, leadership learning, to help them get to the next step in their career. And it could be sales, it could be operations, it could be revenue strategy, but it's having those discussions and helping them. And, as you mentioned, there's not enough time in the day for me to be able to impact every one that I want to, but this program engages different leaders across the organization that are the coaches and mentors for these individuals.

That's fascinating to me, because sometimes people talk about mentorship in the context of well, just ask someone for a coffee or you know, and there could be a time and a place for that. What I'm hearing from you as a key leader in this very large organization you have to think a little more systemically and structure around. Here's a program that we can install that kind of also empowers others to mentor others, right, and so you're thinking about these systems and processes that work at scale in a very large context.

Yes, and it's easy to put these programs together, but the challenging part is being able to manage them with your day-to-day responsibilities and the individual who's interested in growing. So it's a very detailed roadmap and it's customized for each individual, based on where they are now, where their opportunities are, where they want to go in the future, and it could be six months, it could be 12 months, but it's a programming that requires participation from a lot of different individuals to see it through. But that's what we do. That's one of the most important things that we do is help develop people, and if we're able to develop people, retain people, then a lot of the other things will take care of themselves.

That's great. Well, be sure to link to your website where people can learn more about that. Final question there would be for people who are maybe kind of earlier in their career and very ambitious, want to do things. They want to care about hospitality, but they also want to grow their own career. What advice would you have for them? What could they do or how should they think to put themselves in the best position to thrive in hospitality?

I think just follow your passion and find someone, that a company and individuals that align with your goals and inspire you to work every day. That's the most important thing is that you're in an organization where you feel aligned and you're happy to go in to the office and contribute and that's being recognized. I think we offer that within Remington. I think it's sad that some people don't have that joy of going to work every day and have that type of fulfillment. That's the one thing that I would look for.

Well, i appreciate you sharing that, because sometimes people start and they care about it, but then they climb out or burn out, right, yeah, they might not be aligned, but alignment might not be there or you're not excited about it. Life is too short to have something where it just feels like a slog every day. You've got to find something that excites you a leader that excites you, an organization, a mission and make sure that you're spending your time in that way.