Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the American Hotel & Lodging Association Foundation’s annual Forward conference with a few of my colleagues at CoStar and STR — and nearly 1,000 other women in the hospitality business.
Through the two days of programming, I have a few things I learned that I'm taking forward in my career. (Yes, my puns are always intended.)
The impact of influence
This year's Forward theme was influence, and the crowd was challenged on multiple occasions to think about defining what influence means to them. As a millennial woman who uses Instagram — and extremely infrequently TikTok — to find everything from travel tips and style suggestions to where I want to go to dinner with my fiancé this weekend, it's hard to decouple the word "influence" from the world of the social media influencer. But the subject of social media didn't even come up, at least in my experience of the conference.
Rather, attendees asked to define the word said it meant making the world a better place one person at a time and to leave a legacy with the people you've interacted with. To influence someone means you have their trust, and that's not a responsibility to take lightly.
I've always been aware of the influence journalists have, and it's something I've taken very seriously with every article I write. But it was a nice reminder that influence can happen face-to-face and one-on-one with anyone at any time — and especially in the workplace.
Personal relationships can mirror professional ones
People are always people first, and whatever role they are acting in — as a parent, spouse, friend, manager or co-worker — interpersonal relationships don't vary that widely. A difficult conversation with a colleague at work might feel eerily similar to a dispute with a significant other. A few of the panelists who took the stage shared lessons they learned about management and business relations from being a mother.
A few speakers shared personal stories about how raising their children made them better business leaders — especially since they knew they wanted to inspire their own daughters who closely watch their every move.
Whether it's for conflict resolution or just navigating a networking event, it's good to remember that it's all interpersonal communication opportunities — skills that, if properly honed, will benefit you inside the workplace and beyond. Hospitality is a people business, after all.
Nonlinear careers are often the most rewarding
I'm unique in that I've known what I wanted to do for a living since I was a preteen — even if I had a lack of understanding of what being a journalist really was outside of Hollywood-produced rom-coms and TV shows. But I can absolutely identify with a nonlinear career path.
In one of the Forward breakout panels, the speakers kicked off the session each diligently going through their careers. Listening in, I almost laughed to myself at the circuitous dialogue of "and then I went to X company where I was laid off but then took a similar position that moved me to Y country." The laundry list of roles would have been tediously boring if not for it exactly proving the panel topic's point.
Every speaker had a winding road that led to their current positions — the highs and the lows each crafting their experience and expertise to prepare them for what was next. Relationships played key roles in most of their career sagas, with each panelist encouraging the audience to maintain their professional relationships, invest in mentorship opportunities and trust their instincts when it came to making career jumps.
Moving forward, these takeaways will stay in the back of my mind as I continue in my own career in this industry, so a big thank you to everyone who gave their time and perspective at the conference. See you next year, Forward!
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