The Ritz Carlton gets it.RC knows how to make their guests happy. They pay attention to the details..

The staff is empowered to go out of their ways to do extraordinary things to make their guests happy.

I was glad to spend the last couple of days at the Ritz Carlton Berlin and got a bit fascinated by my RC experience that I almost didn’t want to leave .

Here are few things I liked:

• bottled water from the friendly doorman after my morning jogging tour
• the breakfast had a variety of exotic fruits in addition to the basics
• the rooms were extra nice – spacious, spotless and quiet, equipped with high-tech
• the bathroom was XL with extra shower and great amenities
• the turndown service came with complimentary spring water and good night chocolates
• anywhere you met RC staff, they had a big smile on their faces
• I liked the free DVDs at the concierge desk – I watched “Little Miss Sunshine”
• the spa area had relaxing chairs with good reading light (this was much appreciated)
• the check-in/out process was quick and easy – they seemed to have enough staff at all times
• the lobby was like a living room with fireplaces and comfy chairs
• the elevators functioned only with keycards (security)
• personalized sealed message from GM after arrival
• the keycards had artistic photos of the hotel staff (the housekeeping lady on my keycard looked like a top model

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All in all, very nice hotel, very much attention to detail. Most of all the staff was amazingly friendly!

Dear RC, thank you for this nice stay.

To see more images of my short Berlin trip please click in here.

Posted via email from Life is sparkling.

Posted via web from Life is sparkling.

My first question to you is: How do you define “leadership”?

Wikipedia defines leadership as the “process of social influence”. I define it simply as influencing human behavior, because that’s after all what it is…therefore a good leader is positively influencing human behaviour, right? .

Leaders aren’t just people who have the title.
Around 10 years ago I was leading a team of 15 at the Hyatt Hotel in Almaty, Kazakhstan and got very challenged by the local staff, so I crabbed the title as my resource. (Un)fortunately you are not a leader just because of title and I learned that the hard way…

You can be a great leader at home, at work, in organizations, in the community, etc. and wear many different hats. What is important is that your values and beliefs are consistent. If you are not showing good leadership qualities at home with your kids or in the local community, how should your behavior change much from that at the workplace. Therefore a good indication about a person’s leadership skills can already be seen just by looking at the leaders’ behaviour in different settings (at work and outside of work).

Leaders come from all walks of life. I don’t  believe in the concept of “natural born leaders”. I believe that leadership is a process, and therefore can be learned – leaders are (self)made and not born. What good leaders have in common is that they are passionate, they are people-orientated, they are great communicators, they make a difference and they positively influence people.

Leaders must lead themselves first. I am a strong believer that you have to lead yourself first before you can lead other people. If you are not able to lead yourself, then how could you possibly lead others? And with leading yourself I mean knowing who you really are, knowing your own personal vision, your strengths and your core values and beliefs, and living up a value-driven life.

Commitment is the key. Are you committed? Are you committed to reach your own goals? Are you making a difference in your life? Again, are you leading yourself first and sticing to your own commitments? If not, how would your behaviour be much different from your company or organization. I believe commitment is the key – most people give up before achieving great success in business and personal life. It is part of your job as a leader to stay committed and take your people to places where they would never go alone.

Who would not like to be a successful leader…? I believe that successful leadership not only happens when you add value to yourself and your company, but especially when you add the sparkling success to other peoples’ lives, when you help your associates (each single one) to achieve their best everyday – and at the same time towards achieving the organizational goals and vision.

Walk your talk and ask yourself every single day: What example will I set today? and Whom can I champion today?

Continually build on your own leadership skills, and become better leader – there is always room for improvment – I am a strong believer on KAIZEN. Focus on making your own life and your organization’s life a Kaizen-driven life . Make a leadership list on things that you are really good at, and skills that you want to develop, and then focus on putting this list to work. You will become a sparkling leader when you use your own leadership strengths and especially when you unleash the human potential in others – become a sparkling people builder.

How are you? Just great. Couldn’t be better. True or false? It depends….

In many cases, happiness is a role people like to play, and behind the smiling white teeth there is sometimes pain, depression and other overractions, and all this unhappiness is covered by the smiling face..

„I am just great“ {Alles Bestens} feels sometimes as a commonly played role in Europe, but on the other hand in some other countries looking miserable is almost the norm and socially acceptable. In Finland for example, you may even get arrested for drunken behaviour if you smile too much at strangers in the street ☺.

If you feel unhappy, you first need to acknowledge the state. It’s uselsess to go by saying: „I’m so unhappy, I’m so miserable“. Unhappiness has nothing to do with who you are. Much more efficient is to make yourself aware of that state and then go to the root cause of that state. It may require some action from you to change that state or remove yourself from the state. It’s your choice. In other words you can either get aware of it and change it, or you can keep whining and making yourself miserable. The primary concern of unhappiness is never the situatiton itself but how you react to it with your thoughts, feelings and actions.

For example if you are not doing financially so well ie. short on cash, and say to yourself: „I’m broke“ you immediately limit yourself and this prevents yourself from taking any action. Instead saying „I have EUR 50,- left in my bank account „ is a fact. Stating and facing facts is empowering yourself to taking action. So always be aware what you think, as your thoughts create your feelings & direct your behaviour. It’s much cooler to be fully aware behind what is going in between your ears.

I believe that happiness is here and now. If you seek it, you won’t find it. Happiness is ever elusive. Being who you are and being yourself are the one and the same. Happiness for me, is at the present moment, right here and right now. Once you are comfortable with the present moment, you don’t have to seek for happiness anymore, but you are one with life. You are the masterpiece and life is the artist.

Today it is snowing in Vienna – it’s the first time in this winter. I just had a lunch with a good friend of mine at the cosy Japanese restaurant around the block – the KOI.

At some point I was staring at the ice cube in my glass of Coke Zero and thinking about the “Climate Change Day” (www.blogactionday.org)  today – this made me realize that this ice cube has actually quite a carbon footprint.

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Here’s why

• It is snowing and chilly outside, so the restaurant’s heat was on – which generates emissions because most heat comes from fossil fuels
• Ice cubes are made in freezers that run on electricity, meaning more emissions are generated
• Then those ice cubes were used to try to keep a cold drink cold, even as the warm room was being kept warm.
• In effect, the ice cubes (which took energy to produce) were absorbing the heat (which also took energy to produce) as they melted.

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The end result?

A warmer drink, a cooler room, and a bigger carbon footprint….so maybe it’s worth re-thinking our need for ice cubes in the wintertime….

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BTW: have you ever made toast in the summer when the air conditioning is on… ?

What is creativity?
Creativity is a state of mind.

How would you define it?
Creativity is unleashing one’s potential, and doing things that you are good at, being authentic, being yourself.

How does a person become creative?
Hang around with kids, drive home different ways every time, try doing different things, try different sports, go to the opera, theatre, brainstorm, start writing things down from your subconcious mind (in the night/shower etc.), read bios of creative people, listen to your gutfeeling, hang around with gays, punks, homeless, CEOs, africans, latinos, just do things differently than you normally do…

What jobs would you consider are creative?
I think any job, project or assignment  can be creative when you are empowered to be yourself, authentic, to create rather than being created. Well, you cannot be too creative when you are a doctor doing a heart surgery…

How do you know if someone is creative?
She is doing things she is best at, she is producing extraordinary results, she is producing great value not only to herself but also to the family of customers, shareholders and community. She is unique, she is ready to try contionusly new things and ideas, and to make mistakes along the way (read: take risks).

What is innovation? How would you define it?
Innovation is a new idea, a new thing that has not existed in that form before. It can be completely new, or it can be an existing idea brought to the next level (see computers, iPod, etc.). Best business ideas are mostly innovative ideas. In todays’ world, there are copycats to any innovative idea within few minutes/hours/days.

What do you think it means to be gifted?
I think all babies are born to the world with some special gifts (talent). It depends largerly on the choices and decisions we make how well we use those gifts. You can be very intelligent ie. have high ingherited IQ (genes) but it doesn’t automatically mean that you will become successfull in life. On another occasion you may have had terrible childhood, yet you still become a great success in life. The cool thing is that we all have the power to make decisions to be successfull in life and find & use our talents. Being gifted is finding what we love to do and then doing it with passion.

How do you know if someone is gifted?
He loves to do what he is doing. We all have gifts and talent, we just need to find it, unleash it and put it in action.

Are these ideas similar to what others from your culture would think?

Not necessarily. For example the current school system in Europe (EU) is not yet focusing enough on finding and developing childrens strengths & talents.
The school system is rather focusing on getting everyone through, punishing failures and not rewarding the kids real talent.

1. First of all decide: what is the purpose of your speech? What do you want to achieve with the speech? Write it down (the objective should fit on a small business card). Making a point is vital, people spend their valuable time listening to you, so make a point, give them value back! Naturally some speeches are there for entertaining purposes etc. and don’t really have another point but to entertain…

2. Plan the framework for your speech: the speech structure, opening, closing, the body of the speech, main points and roughly the short stories (the meat over the bones). I would recommend not more than 3x points in a 0-60 min speech.

3. When writing the speech down, write in the same way you would be talking to a friend in Starbucks – stay authentic, natural – just YOU.

4. Once the draft is done, read it out loud (in front of the mirror, camera, your spouse or your kids), correct mistakes, add spices (killer phrases, pauses, vocal variety, etc.), then go and re-write it. Make it fit to the time available.

5. Make it a full circle, so that your speech is flowing smoothly from opening to closing with once central point/theme/idea. Once the ‘master draft’ is ready, go out there and exercise your speech a couple of times – make sure there is some kind of an audience watching you and giving you feedback (live audience is always better than a mirror, even if it’s just your dog).

6. Once you feel comfortable with your speech, head down to Mind Meister website (www.mindmeister.com) and jot down a mind map with key-points

7. Get ready to perform – if you need notes during your speech crab your mind-map. And remember 70% of your success lies on the performance itself. Use efficient body language, voice, humor and get the audience on your site early on…