Using Executive Coaching Principals in Hospitality Management Education

The hospitality industry landscape has gone through interesting changes post Covid 19 with respect to recruiting talent. 

On the one hand the industry demand for professionals has increased dramatically while on the other hand student intake in hospitality institutions has reduced causing a clear imbalance between demand and supply. This widening gap is a flash in the pan opportunity for students graduating to join the industry over the next few years. Graduating students today have two to three job offers in hand and are spoilt for choice,  added to this the international demand of hospitality professionals and openness to welcome Indian students is steadily increasing.  

A very positive environment for a hospitality graduate but a huge challenge for the industry with service levels dropping due to unavailability of quality talent equipped with appropriate skills especially behavioral which are tougher to inculcate. An equally difficult situation for educational institutions with inculcating graduate attributes becoming tougher with the change in the audience they are catering to today.   Benchmarking across industries and geographies where customer service orientation is key is a very good starting point.  

With this thought in mind, we have started to incorporate executive coaching skills into our already existing mentor mentee program with very encouraging results. Though initially it felt like a task to change attitudes in the Indian academic set up, the transition to a more personalized and interactive approach in creating personal development plans for each student mentee dependent on their personal journey and needs has been rather smoother than we anticipated. Understanding a student’s unique strengths and development areas through the support of psychometric assessments equips mentors to guide students in setting realistic goals dependent on their vision of themselves as a professional and create a plan to work towards achieving them. Suddenly from just following the obvious career route we notice unique career trajectories coming forth as students brainstorm and this leads to opening their minds to unconventional opportunities available in the industry.   The approach is both used as individual student interaction or while working with a group of students. Both situations reap long term advantages in equipping students with nuanced leadership skills and abilities.

Active Listening and Empathy, Confidence and Resilience, Self-Reflection and Drawing Insights, taking Ownership of one's own learning, Collaboration are all skills that are important in the hospitality sector and skill sets often overlooked in traditional education models. However, the question is how to impart these skills? And that's where a revolutionary new approach blending mentoring and coaching disciplines as a methodology comes into play. What better way to teach these softer skills than demonstration and observation.   The entire approach is to equip students to discover solutions and strategies independently in readiness of joining the industry as professionals.  

The approach has enhanced the overall development, especially behavioral skills of our students which are the foundation in any customer facing industry. We have observed this ability to find one's own solutions spills over to other areas of a student's life without us even trying and builds a more confident and wholesome personality.  

The institute has marked improvement in student engagement, student satisfaction level scores and academic performance since we have adopted this new approach  Equipped with the success of our approach we are encouraged to expand the use of executive coaching skills across various facets of our curriculum.  

In conclusion, the journey from traditional mentorship to coaching-infused guidance has not only transformed our approach to education but helped students widen their horizons by sharing and understanding that hospitality is a very wide landscape with many job opportunities beyond the traditionally known opportunities. With this approach we can proudly say we are shaping future leaders not job seekers.

About the Author:

 

 

 

Anila is an internationally certified L&D leader with 26+ years of professional experience in various facets of adult learning across industries, geographies and assignments as well as an ICF accredited PCC level executive coach. She is a Professor of Practice at Vedatya institute and Heads the Hospitality School.  

Note: The views expressed in this article are solely author’s own and do not reflect/represent those of Shiksha