Carl Winston, Founding Director, Payne School of Hospitality & Tourism Management at San Diego State University, interviewed by Lan Elliott

Carl, who works with aspiring hoteliers, explains the very simple thing people need to do to distinguish themselves (that most people aren’t willing to do).  In this interview, he also discusses the ultimate tool for advancing professionally and how to avoid being that bad boss.  Carl also unpacks the most widely misunderstood thing about mentorship.

Transcript

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Speaker 0:00

Hello and welcome to It's Personal Stories, A hospitality podcast. My name is Lan Alliott on behalf of It's Personal Stories. And today I'm really happy to have my friend Carl Winston join us as our guest advisor. Carl is the founding director of the Payne School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at San Diego State University. Welcome, Carl.

Carl Winston 0:24

It's great to be with you, Lan.

Speaker 0:25

So great to see you. And I always have fun talking with you. All right, let's jump right into it. I wanted to start by talking about your career journey and maybe some of the turning points in your career. And if there were any threads that carried through that were Part of your success.

Carl Winston 0:49

Yeah, sure. And thanks for starting with something so personal and close to home. I, my journey may be is a little different than your typical persons, but I'll start with the fact that I was a first in college person and really in my family and nobody had ever done anything in terms of leadership at all in my family. That's not a criticism, it's just a fact. And, I remember announcing to my mom when I was 15 that I was going to be the vice president of a hotel company by the time I was 30 and she said to me, something I'll never forget. What's a vice president? And why a hotel company and I said, I don't know I just read about it and what's interesting is I kept that goal and I quickly Even back then which was you know, the late 60s early 70s I'd heard about a legendary school that taught hotel management. It was called cornell and As a high school student, I applied and I got rejected as a community college student. I did that for two years because I kept, I really wanted to go. And so I applied to go to Cornell again and got rejected. And so I finished up my my undergraduate down here in San Diego, at a place called UC San Diego, and graduated on time and started my work life in restaurants and decided to Try again, go to Cornell. So I applied to grad school and I got in and it was in fact, the beginning of my journey towards leadership. I'd never been to an Ivy league institution. I'd never been out of the state of California where I grew up and I got in my car and I drove across the country and it kicked off my life open doors. Into rooms that I'd never dreamed had existed and flash forward after getting out of Cornell and working in the real estate consulting world for a while, I ended up quitting that and went to hotel operations with a very high flying growth company and ended up being the vice president of operations by the time I was 30.

Speaker 3:05

I love the fact that you set a goal, and you held on to it, and also the persistence. You really wanted to go to Cornell, and you were going to try again and again. And that's a theme we've heard a couple times, is to be persistent if there's something that you really want.

Carl Winston 3:23

Yeah, and I think on the flip side of that lad, as I obviously work with young people, and it wounds me. When I speak to a 20 year old and I'll ask them a question like tell me about a dream for you professionally I'm like, I don't have one anything like, you know run Coachella like you know own your own business and Sometimes they just they're afraid to take a risk of dreaming out loud And what I found throughout journey as you put it is if I'm willing to dream out loud people are willing to help me

Speaker 4:04

That's such a good point. People can't help you if they don't know what your dreams are. I think it's worthwhile reflecting so that you can. verbalize what it is that you're looking for so that people can help you. And I think there is something around manifesting what you're looking for and sharing it, and it can be very scary and it is a vulnerability to share maybe a big dream. And it's scary to share that, but I think it can also help focus you and also allow people to help you.

Carl Winston 4:35

Yeah. And I think. That when I look at those, call it 50 percent of people who are afraid to dream out loud professionally, I think they're afraid of getting it wrong. I've had these conversations with them about it over the years and this fear of what if I guess wrong? And I always respond then just change your mind, try the next thing, but it's amazing how many people are, in my opinion, self limiting. And they don't need to be. And it's golly, you could have just a life. It's a perfect life for you professionally. Just say it out loud, go for it. And so many people are so afraid. So if there are people are watching this and even one of you says, I'm going to go for it. I feel really good about today.

Speaker 5:18

I love that. And I love the idea of dreaming big and going after what you want. Move into continuous growth. And I know that your students get assigned a lot of reading. We also hear from leaders that curiosity is a big part of their path and learning and reading and developing new skills in general is important as you advance in your career. You don't get all your learning done in university and then emerge ready for every role you're going to have in your career. There's learning that continues. Do you have a favorite leadership resource? Maybe it's a book, a video, a podcast that You could share with our audience who are looking to advance their careers.

Carl Winston 6:06

Yeah. I think you've got a couple of concepts that you unpacked there. And I think I can completely agree with you. Curiosity is the ultimate tool to advancing oneself professionally. And I don't say that lightly and you didn't set me up for it. I just happen to agree with you completely. That the most curious people I know are the most successful. And you and I are very familiar with an organization that starts with an M and I had the good fortune of working with some of the Marriott family before. And one of the things I've noticed about them and their senior leaders are, they are some of the most genuinely curious people I've ever met. I remember pitching to them a large charity initiative that they actually funded in China a decade ago. And they kept asking, why do you want to do this? I would explain and they said why about that? Why about that? Why about that? And we got so many whys going. And I think that curiosity factor is massively useful for people trying to understand the environment around them, the people around them, their motivations, and the reality of what it might happen if. People that you're around, you say, yes, let's, I'm going to help you. So curiosity is huge. I think in terms of continuous growth, I'm going to point in my lifeline where yes, I am a voracious reader and I read from all sources, some books, some articles, things off the internet. I still use paper. But I think I would say at this point in my life, as I'm on the backside of my career, I get my continuous growth. through my people. And that might sound funny, but one of the concepts that I'm wildly passionate about is what I call workforce diversity. But I don't mean in the traditional sense of Ethnicity or even gender, but I look at diversity of thought of life experience of what continent the person was born on. We just made a key hire somebody recently who we knew well. But had spent the last five years living in Europe and she brought back and has brought back challenging assumptions to the way we think about the world because Europeans don't necessarily think the same as North Americans. And I think that is for leaders. And for anyone surrounding yourself with people who don't think the same way, who have different life experiences, who have different, of course, things like sexual orientation and gender and all that stuff. But if you can build a team around you of trusted coworkers who just challenge you because they just think differently, that's the richest growth that anyone can receive because you're constantly challenging your norms. And I think that to me is where it's Growth really comes from is when somebody says of course it's like this. And you're like, I never even thought about that. Wow. So that's where I get my growth is working with wildly diverse.

Speaker 9:21

I agree. I think having that different mindset, a different paradigm, really. I'm working closely with people like that. They just will shift the way you think about things. It's not just a or B. We may be looking at, a different alphabet. And I think that's really helpful. It does take a specific. Mindset to be open to that because it's much faster if you have a bunch of people who think like you and you all agree and you see the answers very quickly and in the same way. But sometimes there's advantages to having different perspectives and being able to think about things in different ways. And you might end up in the same place you started where you thought you might be. But I think Your decision making is richer from having the different perspectives and being challenged a little bit to think differently.

Carl Winston 10:10

I couldn't agree with you more land that it's way easier to have like minded people. We've heard terms like, Oh, it's a boy's club, and these kinds of things. It's much simpler for me to hire and work around people who look and act like me. It's much simpler and I'll always get the answer I want. I think about my own staff meetings. As I mentioned, we have a new. colleague joined us and she sat in our first couple of weeks of meetings and we just yell at each other. It's a very tight knit group. There's about 10 of us in the core group here in the school. And every week we get together for an hour and it's almost a yell fest. But we're going through strategy, we're talking about stuff, but we're picking on each other, we're challenging each other. And one of the things this individual mentioned is Wow. No one's afraid to speak their mind. It's yeah, that's the biggest compliment I have in my life is that everybody at every level who's in that meeting could just say what's on their mind. And now there's no repercussions. And that, too, again, I think leads to growth.

Speaker 11:15

Yeah, I think it's having a safe space where people feel comfortable speaking up and sharing what they think. I think if they keep getting shut down again and again, people eventually And Not saying anything and then you get, you just let the like minded people have the conversation. So I think in terms of continuous growth, it's also being open to continuing to be challenged. So I like that.

Carl Winston 11:38

Yeah. I'll make one other additional thought to your topic whether it's continuous growth or challenges. And I think one of the things I've noted is that. Most growth and happiest people, the people who get there, are the ones who move into their discomfort. I mentioned to you before we got online here that I recently moved. I'm at an age where you're not supposed to move very often. And I moved a couple times and it was uncomfortable. Which is one of the reasons I did it. It's one of the reasons I've become reasonably expert at AI. Really uncomfortable for me, challenges the heck out of me. That's why I'm doing it. And I think discomfort is a key success marker for people. And those of us who avoid discomfort are definitely more comfortable, but we're not as successful, if that makes sense.

Speaker 12:34

Absolutely. I love the idea of leaning into the discomfort and it segues perfectly into talking about challenges because being comfortable leaning into new challenges, learning new things where you're a beginner again, right? And I think as we move through our careers, we become very good at doing certain things. But then doing other things as uncomfortable. You've never done it before. You're now discovering new ways of doing things. And you're at the, you're a beginner when you're so good at other things, you could just keep doing those other things, but leaning into new challenges so that you're growing can be super important. Could you talk a little bit about how. You approach challenges. How do you handle it? You mentioned that you now run towards them. And so say more about that.

Carl Winston 13:26

Yeah. So it's I'll put it in context, my current role, which is for better part of two decades going on two and a half, I've been running a school here at San Diego state. That I'm a relatively entrepreneurial human. I work in probably the least entrepreneurial environment that one could imagine called a university. And my colleagues on and off the university constantly marvel at The fact that I come at it every day with energy and passion when there's so many people in this place who say, no, I remember 10 years ago, we launched the first online master's degree at San Diego state and everybody told us it can't be done. It's impossible. There's no way you're going to get it done. So when I started hearing that, I would go home every night going, this is going to be so fun. I could hardly wait and to take it on. And my team was constantly like, how do you come at this? Like with so much positivity. And I'll tell you a personal clue that I use to help myself cope with it. Landon, it might surprise you. I turn all what so called politics that I deal with at work, which I'll call a type of challenge into a video game. And so I'm a boy, I'm a guy, I wake up in the morning, I want to win, I want to, play games. Okay, great. If I'm playing a game and a bad guy shows up, I either shoot him or run away. And it's the same. And people, people are like, you just got shot down in that meeting. It's that's fine. We'll just find another way. There's clues. We just got to find another approach to it. And we're going to be fine. We're going to get it done. Just trust me. I don't have all the answers by the way, I'm just going to keep running and I'm gonna find a way through the maze that is the video game to get it done. And that's been a constant around here. And a way that I constantly thrive personally in my profession is by gamifying really challenging situations. I think when it comes to other more operational kinds of challenges. Organizational challenges, such as a huge one that I'm facing in hospitality education now, and that is, how are hospitality schools going to stay relevant? If I talk to recruiters at the companies that recruited my campus and others, I commonly will ask them this question, and again, this really relates to your challenge topic. Will you hire a college graduate who doesn't have any hospitality education? Or work experience. If they have a good attitude, they can think on their feet. They can communicate. They understand that work is work. Will you hire them? And they're like 10 times out of 10. Oh, sure. And I walked back from this conversation. I'm like, wow, that just made my school potentially irrelevant if I'm not careful. And you and I both work with a number of universities and see what's going on out there and some great educators, some great programs for sure. But. The people who are hiring our graduates, they'll hire anybody, whatever we teach them. So how do a challenge is how do we stay relevant? How do we adjust the education that's going on? And you've been part of that developing real estate classes and things like that, that are, not easy to digest, but we just have to. So I think another approach to challenges land is looking at the landscape and going, okay. What's over there on the horizon that could hurt me, or hurt my school, or hurt my organization? And having that vision to wow, we have a big problem. What are we going to do about it? And the people who got us into this situation, honestly, are usually not the ones to get us out. And that's another approach to challenges is sometimes you got to change horses. And what does that mean? It means maybe the people who are going to help us solve the future of hospitality ed, that's my challenge. Aren't the people who are in my key seats right now and key roles. Maybe I need new thinkers and that's painful to say, but innovation doesn't come always from the people who were doing things. It's from the people who are going to be doing things in the future. So I'm really looking to new models and new people and new ways of accomplishing things to get my challenges overcome, because I think if I keep looking at the same old tools. Using the same old people, it may not get there.

Speaker 18:08

Absolutely. There's a few great themes in what you talked about, which was this idea of persistence. If you don't get what you're looking for one way, you're going to find another way to do it. I also think the creativity of looking at problems from different perspectives, and if it isn't working this way, we're going to try it a different way. I think one of the things that really made me gravitate towards you was during the pandemic. I had reached out to you about doing some sessions on zoom and you said something that really stuck with me was when all of the schools went to zoom and people were getting really tired watching Things on zoom. You said the problem is not the screens. The problem is the content. Do you remember that

Carl Winston 18:57

very well? Very well. Yeah, I actually went out and partnered with a Hollywood production person and company at that time to learn how to make TV was good and screens that were good and engaging. And my favorite example was we mastered something called the commercial. And, this time of year, we're here in January now, and we're going to be watching the Super Bowl, a few of us, in a few weeks, and half the audience is here for the commercials. And that, was a huge breakthrough for us to actually, we put, we ended up during the Zoom era, and still today, when our longer Zooms, we put commercials in. But they're super fun, and they're super engaging. And they're just little 60 second breaks that people are like, That was amazing. I can't believe that just happened in the middle of a boring Zoom.

Speaker 19:50

Yes, I so vividly remember you saying the problem isn't watching screens because people will watch Netflix for 14 hours straight. It's the content. And it really opened my mind about looking at things in a very different way. Let's talk a little bit about mentors and champions because I know you have been a mentor and champion for so many people and you've had them as well during your career. How important is it to find a mentor or champion and how do you go about it? I'm sure there's a right and a wrong way to do it.

Carl Winston 20:27

Yeah, this is a, this is, this should be a master class that takes tens of hours. to explain and understand. So let's try and do it in two minutes. It's a big one and a tough one. I'm a big personal believer that you've got to give to get when it comes to mentoring and champions you need to learn to give it before you're going to necessarily get it at the level that you crave. And I think that's a big miss on that. I'm going to go back to the pandemic because it was a very, here's a very short story that I think might make my point. As a lot of people who got laid off during the pandemic, especially in the hospitality and the event industry. And one of my key colleagues at the time was a national sales manager for a big hotel company. And she got laid off and she called me and said, Hey, I want to help. And I'm like, help me what? She goes, I don't know. I just, I'm out of work. I, can I help you with some stuff? And so I thought about it and it created a list of things, of projects that would help my school during the pandemic times. And she's OK, I'll do it for free. I'm like, what do you mean you'll do it for free? My mom taught me that if I was ever Like feeling down and out, I should just help somebody else. And to this day, she was immensely helpful. I've helped her multiple times since because I was paying it back. But she took a time of her own need and just said, I'm going to not worry about myself. I'm going to go help somebody else. And that sounds like a little karma kind of stuff and foo, but I believe in this stuff. I know it works and I know it works for me. I've given back since the beginning of my professional career and I cannot tell you how many. Things 10, 20, now 30 plus years later, people are like, I remember when you gave me that summer job in 1992. I'm like, I did? It's kindness goes very far. And I think again, to your listeners, I'd say give before you're going to get. Seguing into the getting, I think one of the most widely misunderstood things about mentorship, particularly, is it needs to be a natural fit. I think sometimes, maybe too many times, somebody will say, will you please be my mentor? I really want you to be my mentor. You're the big boss in charge of this. If that's not a natural relationship, just like every good relationship in the world has a natural element to it. If it's a hundred percent fake it's not going to be effective. So sometimes we have to go out there and find the right fit. And it sounds like a lot more work. But I've been so fortunate to get mentors that are just way off the org charts compared to me and they've helped me so many times and but it was always a natural fit and they wanted to help me just like I want to help others. And it's led to them helping me expand my mentor relationships. I'll give you a very specific example where it's maybe not so natural. And that is in my master's degree programs, which for mid career learners, we actually. Source mentors. Every student gets a mentor, and we base that mentor based on career interest. So if I have a Hotel GM doing my master's program who says I want to get above property. We will go out and we have enough connections here that we will find somebody who's above property who used to be a GM and say, Hey, here's this individual, Susie Smith. She wants to get above property. Can you mentor her? And I'd say eight out of 10 times it works. Cause we were pretty good at knowing our audience on both sides. Two out of 10 times, it doesn't work. And we actually will pull the. The mentor and the mentee apart a few months into it because we check in with them both, but that's extraordinary and unusual to have a. controlled mentoring environment. For the folks in the audience who are seeking mentors, again, give first. Learn how it works. Learn how it feels. It'll help you find a mentor for yourself because you'll be able to understand what's going on in their head and in their hearts if you've already done it yourself.

Speaker 25:00

I love that. That's such great advice. and also makes you someone that people are more interested in mentoring.

Carl Winston 25:08

Very much

Speaker 25:08

along those lines, you launch a lot of young people into their careers. What do you think is required for a young person or someone in the middle of their career to distinguish themselves?

Carl Winston 25:24

It's actually pretty darn simple. And most people aren't willing to do it. I was reminded recently by somebody I'm very close with who said, Do you remember 35 years ago you told me something? And I'm like, what was I 35 years ago? What did I say? And he said, If I worked harder than everybody else, I'm going to make it. And I'm just here to tell you 35 years later, I took that on board. And I'm really doing well. Thank you. So one way is just work hard. It sounds silly, but I'm not saying you have to go in at 6 a. m. and stay there till 8 p. m. every day, but working really hard makes you above average. And I didn't say work smart. I didn't say be strategic or savvy. I said, just show up, be there, be present. It's really a differentiator to distinguish yourself because if people say, wow, There's Lann Elliot. She's a hard worker. That's way better than being, there's Lann Elliot. She does what she needs to. That's a reputational thing that you can do. I think another related thing, Lann, in terms of distinguishing oneself is a really important concept that a lot of young people miss. And I, it's really self development and training. And one of the things we're really proud of is a lot of my graduates go to work for hotel training programs when they graduate terrific. And the first thing we tell them after they get the job is, by the way, no, one's going to train you in your training program. And they're like, what? Not even the big brands. It's especially not the big brands. They have a training program, but it's, I want you to think of it like a buffet. If you don't get up off your butt, walk to the line, get the food, bring it back, you're not going to eat. Training is the same thing. These companies have great resources, you've got to go get them. If you're waiting for the company to say, here you go, I'm going to train you today from 9 to 3 and then you'll be proficient. You're never going anywhere, you're not going to distinguish yourself. You've got to do the hard work. You got to train yourself. You got to be thinking about what your boss does. You got to learn his or her job every way you possibly can to get ready. It's really not that hard and it's not that challenging. It just takes self initiative to really distinguish oneself. And I think related to that, it goes a little bit back to your last topic on Mentorship and champions. I think when people see you working hard, they see you asking for more training yourself and training yourself doesn't mean by the way, learn how to do everything by yourself. It means going up to that person saying, Hey, I want to learn how to do rooms control. I have no idea how rooms control works, but I know it's really important. Will you show me? If you don't ask, I'm not going to show you, but if you do ask, They probably will. So asking for help from people above you on those org charts and saying, I want to learn this piece of the work. And then asking open ended questions like, what else should I learn? I'd like to keep moving. What's next. And they might say something unexpected to you. If you're in that hotel context, again something I've said to many young people, which is go work in housekeeping. What? That's the heart of the hotel everybody. That's where most of the employees are. If you're 23 years old and working in housekeeping, you're going to be a GM a lot faster. So you get that unexpected advice when you ask for advice. Keep it open ended. And I think pretty simple ways to distinguish oneself hard work, asking questions, training yourself. It's really not that hard.

Speaker 29:31

And it links back to what we talked about earlier, which is curiosity, that continuous learning, continuing to ask for help to learn new things. But it's reaching out and making those requests and being proactive on your own behalf. They're not going to serve it up to you. You're going to have to go and request it. But those are the people who stand out.

Carl Winston 29:51

Absolutely.

Speaker 29:53

Carl, we are coming to the end of our time together. I hope. two last questions for you. The first one is what advice would you give to 22 year old Carl?

Carl Winston 30:07

Yeah, I love this question because I use it all the time. I do. It's funny. You I'll answer your question a bit at land, but I'll tell you the way I use it with my 20 year old students. And that is, I actually do the reverse because they're 20 and I'll say you and I are talking about you having a study abroad experience, and you're scared. What would your 25 year old self tell you to do? Let's pretend she's sitting right there next to you. They always look up, and they're like, She'd tell me to go and have a great time. It's OK are you going to listen to your 25 year old self? And, I don't know. Everybody, they know at that age what they should do. They're just apprehensive or afraid to pull the trigger. I was personally quite different because I was motivated, as I said earlier, at a very early age to achieve something. That I had no idea what it was. I think if I was going to give advice to my young self, it would be, dude, you're going to get there. You're on the right path. You I have a very blessed life. Nobody gave me anything, but I'd learned how to earn it. And it makes me really proud. So I would tell myself. Trust those instincts. You don't know exactly what you're doing, but you'll figure it out.

Speaker 31:24

I love that. Carl, we're down to our last question. You've offered so much great advice during our discussion. Do you have one final bit of advice for our audience, keeping in mind that our mission is around empowering personal success? What advice would you offer to our audience? One last bit.

Carl Winston 31:44

You're not that special. What do I mean by that? Bye. I'm a big believer that there's more bad bosses out there than good ones. And I've never encountered a bad boss who woke up in the morning and said, I'm going to get out my pen and make a list of things to do badly today. I'm going to yell at people. I'm going to embarrass people. Let's see. This guy isn't, Oh, I'm going to give him the worst assignment possible for him and his personality. Yeah, that's a good idea. These people lack self awareness and Carl Winston's not that special. I'm The way Carl Winston thinks is different than the way Lan Elliott thinks. I respect Lan Elliott the way she thinks. I just need to learn how she thinks what motivates her and figure out ways to connect with her if I want to have a solid business relationship and vice versa. And I think one of the biggest pieces of advice is to become self aware to develop that emotional intelligence, because if not, you're going to be that bad boss instead of being a great leader. Great leaders, there's so much literature around, leaders eat last and leaders put their people ahead of their own interests and good leaders know how to get the most out of people by having them in the right seat in the right bus. And all the analogies are in a million of them. But they all come out of all of us being aware of how we are, and that it's different, not better than everybody else's way of thinking about the world. And we can engage people where they are, in the way they want to be engaged, or at least share here's the way I think, how do you think? That begins a very productive dialogue for people. So my advice is really, focus on who you are and why you are, so that you can understand others and who they are and why they are. I think you'll be really happy and so will they.

Speaker 33:49

Wonderful. Wonderful advice to end on. Thank you so much, Carl. As always, I get so much wisdom anytime I spend time with you. So thank you for being on today.

Carl Winston 33:59

Same. I love chatting with you, Lan. You're an inspiration.

Speaker 34:04

Oh, thank you. Feeling is mutual. And for our audience, if you've enjoyed this discussion with Carl, I'll hope you will go to our website. It's personalstories. com where you can find many more. Wonderful interviews with industry leaders. Thank