People-centricity
Mind your Ps and Qs (10)
Travel and tourism are all about people, their well-being, or what I call a collective form or sense of ‘wellth”. Throughout our lives and livelihoods, we are interchangeably all hosts and guests who should be attempting to unlock the potential of human values (a common cause).
Instinctively we know how the game is (or should be) played in a wide variety of domestic and commercial settings. How our actions, behaviors, reactions, relationships, and responsibilities as participants are instrumental in determining (preferable) outcomes for our communities and particularly for those who Come from Away.
How the joy and sense of magnificence we and others seek could and should be cultivated, especially when difficulties and inconsistencies prevail. When we and others may feel out of place, or when place can reflect feelings of indifference and serves to homogenize rather than personalize, segregate rather than integrate, scare rather than share, being passive rather than being present and having emotional presence
Even though we all live in communities, our personal communities tend to be narrowly defined through tight-to-loose networks of families, friends and work-related colleagues scattered about. Rarely are we fully aware of how others, especially newcomers, strangers and visitors, feel about the communities in which they find themselves. How we can strengthen the likeability of hosts and the intricate webs of inclusion and feelings of belonging.
Like our feelings regarding sense of place, we hear a lot about sense-of-community, despite the challenges. As such, the most effective leaders don’t abandon their dreams and aspirations for our communities or organizations when facing seemingly insurmountable problems and challenges. They try, as best they can, to help, to ‘rise’ to the occasion, to be polite, convene and meet people ’where they are’. Manifesting their contact with people into a truer sense of hospitality and connectedness by listening to understand, building bridges, weaving the social fabric, resolving problems and making community happen and restoring hope.
Regardless of who or where we are, we live in and seek out those communities-as-destinations where we expect to find a true sense of community, a common ground, even a common good.
As leaders and managers of organizations and communities, we have obligations (as Zita Cobb is doing in Fogo Island) to engage in creating a sense of community we can all be proud of. Indeed, only when we find community do we discover friendship, civic-mindedness, comradery, and conviviality that exemplifies a unique form of integration, which, when evident throughout organizational settings, can also represent the basis for improving productivity and performance.
But such obligations come with the requirements, demands, and the necessity to create intentional ‘living communities’ (livable cities with multitudes of third places that facilitate connections) while trying our utmost to avoid the inevitability of pitfalls and destructive forces. Livable communities-as-destinations that provide meaningful work and facilitate our leisure-oriented lives. Livable communities that roll out the welcome mat whatever the setting.
And it all starts with those in charge, those who set the standards and boundaries – our families, the leaders and managers in our organizations and governments, who through their beliefs, words, deeds, behaviors and actions constantly and consistently seek to demonstrate human-centered leadership and hostmanship, not just to our guests, but more particularly to our colleagues, the people we work with, and depend on to be in service to others. A journey of leadership that requires learning to lead from the inside out.
In our communities-as-destinations, however, we cannot expect everyone to be our representative hosts unless we are present for those who work for and with us; unless we work as well-functioning teams; and, unless everyone is treated with respect and dignity, provided with meaningful employment, honored for their efforts, and developed for their talents. After all, it’s through our intentions (and the purpose we extol for pursuing tourism) that determine and influence our emotions, thoughts and perceptions that, in turn, influence our behaviors.
Good intentions, however, never constitute a plan of action. Sustainable improvement requires disciplined local action coupled with organizational commitments to improve how employees are recruited, positioned in roles, included, rewarded, recognized, and managed. And, in our communities, how civically minded we are when treating and serving our citizens.
Work in the service sectors of our economies can be quite taxing. During the Great Resignation, studies found that those who left their jobs cited a lack of empathy from their employers. Yet, for those of us who embrace empathetic leadership, we know how emotionally exhausting it, and micro-managing, can be. If only we could find our way to practicing sustainable empathy.
Similarly, when tuned into our customers, visitors, and guests, our organizational mandates require that we treat them as individuals. But do we? It’s far more likely that they will have been categorized and lumped into market segments (people traveling on business, for pleasure and personal reasons) – markets that emanate from nearby or from afar – markets that we tend to deal with in specific ways, common or standardized manners – a seemingly necessary requirement given the specialized nature of many visits and our visitor-serving organizations.
As such, it can be problematic when it comes to determining how people feel and present themselves in everyday life, and how we ascertain peoples’ levels of satisfaction as to whether our products, services, touristic activities, and peoples’ destination experiences fulfilled their requirements, conformed to standards, were defective, or deviated from what was expected or promised…especially when they’re well-experienced and been everywhere. Indeed, do most organizations ever ask? In community settings, do they engage in or encourage town halls?
When they do, satisfaction tends to be determined solely on the basis of functionality. Rarely is it attentive to the less rational and more emotional and aesthetic dimensions of their experiences. Yet it’s vital: Organizations and communities-as-destination cannot expect to succeed unless they determine what constitutes value beyond mere functionality, value beyond mere financial considerations.
Topics that represent interesting segue into (the next topic) ‘pleasure and pain’. After all, the concept of value created, captured or destroyed is elemental to fully appreciating whether the purpose of tourism within communities-as-destinations is being achieved. A requirement also implied by documents about Community Based Tourism and organizations like Destinations International who have suggested that touristic activities need to demonstrate Community Shared Value – concepts that need to be fleshed out and more completely understood and applied if citizens of communities-as-destinations are to derive pleasure (not pain) from tourism, if their capable and talented workforces are to receive just and fair rewards (economic inclusion and beyond) from their prowess (innovative skills and competencies) as hosts.