History has shown us time and again: Companies with a forward-thinking attitude have reshaped how business gets done around the globe. As Simon Sinek says, “An infinite mindset motivates us to strive for something bigger than ourselves”.

In travel & hospitality specifically, we understand better than most industries just how significant our work is beyond achieving temporary success – it can truly create lasting change worldwide.

The top five essential components of a collaborative mindset identified in the study are:

• Communication (75%)
• Open-mindedness (75%)
• Flexibility (72%)
• Active listening (71%)
• Being a team player (68%)

These are key ingredients to being a successful collaborator, and honing your presentation and listening skills will go a long ways towards this collaborative mindset.

However, there are obstacles that can get in your way of successful collaborations. These could be considered invisible obstacles to collaboration because they are easy to overlook.  

Imposter Syndrome 

One of the biggest obstacles that many people suffer from is imposter syndrome. It gets in our way when we try to achieve something new. You know the phenomena when that little voice in your head tells you that your ideas aren’t good enough. If you try this new thing – what if it doesn’t work or what if others don’t agree with you.

One of my podcast guests, Kris Kelso, author of Overcoming the Imposter, calls this the comparison trap and he tells us not to fall for it. Kris explains that imposter syndrome is about feeling like a fraud.

In other words: it is about feeling like you are not really a success despite evidence to the contrary. 

The Comparison Trap 

The comparison trap tricks you into measuring yourself against others. It is the measuring stick that says you are only adequate or legitimate if you can measure up to another person or another business, or another part of the industry.

This comparison is not reality, it is just a trap – don’t fall for it.

Instead, Kris encourages us to measure success against ourselves. If you are making progress toward your goals, it doesn’t matter what anybody else has done. It doesn’t matter whether it seems like you’re keeping up or are falling behind. What matters is how you feel about your own progress towards what you are trying to achieve. 

Overcoming Imposter Syndrome & the Comparison Trap 

Here is a perfect example of what you can accomplish when you move past the comparison trap. My daughter Maeve was the second one in our family to graduate high school. Three years before it was her turn, she attended her older sister’s graduation. She was inspired by the student commencement speaker and told me she wanted to speak at her graduation ceremony. Anyone who is a parent knows that sometimes, kids change their minds – but Maeve did not.

In our school district it’s not the smartest kids who get to speak, we don’t have a valedictorian or salutatorian. A panel of teachers and students select the commencement speakers through an audition process.  When the auditions came up in the spring of Maeve’s senior year, she started to think she wasn’t good enough and maybe she shouldn’t audition. She compared herself to other kids, thinking they were better speakers, students, you name it – better than her. I quickly told her there was one way to be sure she wouldn’t get picked – don’t even try. That must have sunk in because Maeve tried out and was one of two selected to give the commencement addresses. Maeve heard the little voices in the back of her head telling her not to try and she still went for it!  

Watch for the comparison trap and don’t let imposter syndrome stop you from showing up to a collaboration ready to make an impact.  

Mindset 

Another obstacle to successful collaborations is a fixed mindset. 

When you adopt a growth mindset, you view everything as an opportunity to learn, grow and expand. Versus those who adopt a fixed mindset – believing they only have a set amount of capabilities, they let challenges stop them in their tracks. Having a growth mindset can make all the difference in how you communicate and contribute.  

I explored this concept with Michelle Carlen from Alignment Advising on my podcast episode 219. Michelle talked about the importance of communication in leadership and pointed out that being open minded provides you with the opportunity to learn from every interaction.

According to Michelle, being open-minded means remembering that we don’t know it all: as soon as you think you know it all, that’s the red flag that you may be falling into a fixed mindset. Leaning on a growth mindset allows you to accept that you don’t know what you don’t know and opens you up to new ideas.  

Mastering a Growth Mindset

One way to master this thinking is to make a conscious choice every day. When I was in my early thirties, Seran Wilkie, my life coach, gave me the following affirmation that I have read every morning since: 

Today I will remember that 

I do not know “Everything” yet. 

I will entertain the possibility that 

Everything is perfect 

as it is for the moment. 

This affirmation helps me acknowledge that I still have a lot to learn. By accepting that everything is perfect in this moment, I open myself up to the possibilities of the next moment. In other words, I am not allowing imposter syndrome to creep in. I am staying in a growth-mindset and I am willing to dare to suck, because I don’t know what will happen when I share my idea with the world.  

The post Invisible Obstacles to Collaboration appeared first on Travel Alliance Partnership.

Why Listening Matters

Listening is crucial for effective communication. It helps build stronger relationships, fosters understanding, and resolves conflicts more efficiently. For tourism industry professionals, effective listening skills are essential for many instances, including creating successful collaborations and maximizing the benefits of attending travel tradeshows.

Effective Listening Skills Are Important for Successful Collaborations

Listening skills are essential for successful collaborations because they help build trust, respect, and understanding among team members. Being fully present in conversations allows individuals to engage genuinely, which fosters a collaborative environment where everyone feels heard and valued. Effective listening also involves using high-gain questions to draw out deeper insights, acknowledging others’ contributions, and addressing disagreements constructively. This enhances overall communication, making it easier to pitch ideas, gain buy-in, and work through conflicts, ultimately leading to more productive and harmonious teamwork.

Learn more about listening and presentation skills for collaborations. Go further with listening and presence skills in Episode 230, “Supercharge your Executive Presence,” with Carol Lempert.

Maximizing Your Tradeshow Experience Through Effective Listening and Communication Skills

Effective listening and communication skills are vital for maximizing the benefits of attending travel tradeshows. These skills enable meaningful engagement with buyers and suppliers as well as potential partners. By being an attentive listener, you can gather valuable insights, uncovering opportunities that might otherwise be missed. Additionally, clear and confident communication allows you to articulate your objectives and pitch your ideas effectively, fostering stronger connections and collaborations. This enhances your ability to network, negotiate deals, and gain strategic information, ultimately making your tradeshow experience more productive and impactful.

10 Tips to Enhance Listening Skills and Become a Better Communicator

1. Maintain Eye Contact. Face the person speaking and maintain eye contact to show that you are fully engaged.
2. Eliminate Distractions. Avoid looking at your phone or letting your attention wander. Stay focused on the conversation.
3. Be Attentive. Pay close attention to the speaker’s body language and physical demeanor. Mirroring their behavior can make them feel more comfortable.
4. Keep an Open Mind. Listen without judgment. Even if you hear something you disagree with, stay open to understanding their perspective.
5. Visualize the Conversation. Create a mental image of what the speaker is saying. This can help you better understand and remember the conversation.
6. Hold Off on Solutions. Sometimes, people just need to be heard. Recognize when to offer advice and when to simply listen.
7. Ask Thoughtful Questions. Show your interest by asking questions. This demonstrates that you are engaged and curious about what they are saying.
8. Pause Before Responding. Avoid interrupting. Wait for a natural pause before you speak to ensure the other person feels heard.
9. Respond to Emotions. Pay attention to the emotional tone of the conversation. React appropriately to show empathy and understanding.
10. Provide Feedback. Reflect on the speaker’s feelings and give feedback. Phrases like “You must be so excited!” or “That sounds challenging” can validate their experience.

The Power of Nonverbal Communication

Nonverbal cues such as tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language are essential components of effective communication. They can sometimes convey more than words themselves. By paying attention to these signals, you can gain a deeper understanding of the speaker’s true message.

Overall

Improving your listening skills can significantly enhance your communication abilities. By following these tips, you can become a more effective listener and a better communicator in general.

The post Master the Art of Listening: Elevate Your Communication Skills appeared first on Travel Alliance Partnership.

The Creative Process

Communication is key to making that creative collaborative process work.  

In our collaboration impact study we found that 57% of travel, tourism and hospitality professionals cited poor communication between organizations as an obstacle to collaboration.

As I shared in Communication: Creating World-Changing Collaborations, there are some foundational strategies to making communication in collaboration work. These strategies are transparency, a shared vision, established roles and goals, and creating a plan for communication.

Those strategies are important but the real power to success is in the soft skills. In other words, it’s how you show up to the collaboration that will make the biggest impact. Let’s look at the creative collaborative process a little closer. In an interview on Steve Farber’s Love is Just Damn Good Business podcast, The Brothers Koren share their perspective on the art of collaboration. In that interview, the musical artists talk about good ego and bad ego and what they call daring to suck.

Good Ego & Bad Ego

The Brothers Koren compare good ego and bad ego to good fats and bad fats. Good fats support a healthy diet while bad fats tend to stick around and cause negative health effects. Similarly, the good ego shows up for a healthy conversation and shares ideas without attachment to them. Meanwhile, the bad ego stays emotionally attached to the idea and wants others to like or use the idea. It is human nature to be emotionally attached to your ideas. The most powerful collaborations happen when people become conscious of the good and bad ego and choose to show up with the good one, without attachment.

Dare to suck 

Another way to think about this, according to The Brothers Koren, is to dare to suck. Share your first creative idea freely without filtering it. Let the idea be received and accept that it may or may not be used. Daring to suck feeds the collaborative process and will lead to stronger teams and bigger ideas.

“Yes, and…,”  

Another helpful principle for productive and open communication among collaborators comes from improv (improvisational theater). “Yes, and …” those two words are used in improvisational theater as a method. It allows one actor to accept what another actor says and expand on it to create a bigger idea. This same technique can apply when brainstorming with a collaborative team. One person shares an idea and other participants accept that idea and expand on it without judgement. Adopting “Yes, and…” thinking will help you make sure that you have brought your good ego to the collaboration.

Bringing your good ego, daring to suck, employing “Yes, and…” thinking will set you up to be a successful collaborator. Can you think of examples where these soft skills have worked for you?

How are your collaboration skills? Find out your collaborator type in 60 seconds! 

The post The Creative Process and Collaboration appeared first on Travel Alliance Partnership.

Big ideas, big projects, accomplishing something big historically has not been accomplished alone. Creating something BIG, something bigger than you can imagine, requires a team working together to achieve a common goal. It requires a world-changing collaboration.

I developed a 3-part framework for creating world-changing collaborations based on countless podcast interviews, conversations and research.

The 3C’s framework is a crowdsourced solution. Since 2016, I have talked with folks from all parts of the travel and tourism industry. In our conversations, they provide examples of successful collaborations and best practices for making them successful. From those conversations, I discovered there are three key parts to creating and maintaining a successful world-changing collaboration.

3 C’s framework: Communication, Commonality and Commitment.

This is the first in a 3-part blog series that will dive into each component of the framework. In this blog post, we will cover the first “C” – Communication.

On my podcast, Destination on the Left, I ask each guest “How do you set the groundwork for a successful collaboration?” The number one answer I get to that question is communication. There are 4 strategies that will help you master this part of the framework.

Build a plan for communication

We all intuitively know that communication is paramount to getting our ideas across, building consensus around a vision and motivating others. Yet we don’t have a plan for how we will communicate.

• Your plan for communication starts with who you are communicating with, your audience. What organizations are you collaborating with, who is the point-person for each, and what are their roles?
• Next establish the messages. Are there regular status updates, a shared project plan or key milestones that need to be communicated?
• Part of your communications plan includes the format for sharing information. Is it an email, conference call, in-person meeting? Do you have a shared google doc that everyone updates regularly?
• And establish how frequently you will communicate. Is it daily, weekly, monthly or at key milestone dates?
• Finally, identify who owns the communication. Is there one leader for the collaboration? Or will you split up the responsibility between a few people on the team?

Set realistic expectations, establishing roles and goals upfront

As Tony Robbins has said, “Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”

Setting realistic expectations and establishing roles and goals up front will set your world-changing collaboration up for success. Be clear on the goals that you are aiming for, identify roles of each person and set expectations. This is where many collaborations stumble. Spending time upfront discussing these details will make a big difference as you set out to implement your world-changing collaboration.

Have a shared vision

As a collective you all must buy into the vision that you are trying to achieve together. Paint the picture of that world-changing idea that you are working towards. What will it look like? How will you know that you achieved it? What are the smaller achievements that you will experience along the way?

Transparency is key

Be genuine and be prepared to have courageous conversations. Bring your best self to the collective, because hidden agendas will not work here. You must be in it for the collective good and any thoughts or concerns you have regarding your role should be made openly at the beginning. To achieve your common goals and reach the world-changing vision that you have in front of you, transparency is key.

Communication – the first C in the 3C’s framework for collaboration. In the next post we will explore the second C in the 3C’s framework – Commonality.

The post Communication: Creating World-Changing Collaborations appeared first on Travel Alliance Partnership.

Promoters are enthusiastic supporters of organizational collaboration, pursue it actively and with a range of organization types. Doubters are collaborators with a more measured view of the challenges and opportunities and expect results to take longer. Protectors collaborate but feel they have a substantial risk of losing competitive advantage by revealing proprietary expertise and processes.

Regardless of these differences, 99% of respondents in our study said their organizations have collaborated with others in the industry.

The research confirmed the opportunities inherent in collaboration, and the kinds of challenges that can get in the way. And based on the research, it’s critical for organizations in this industry to initiate collaborative efforts if they haven’t already. Not only that, but the research provides some clear direction as to how to build successful collaborations.

Collaborate to Survive and Thrive

Survey respondents shared a widespread belief that collaboration not only helps individual organizations, but that it can also help the entire industry survive and thrive.

81% of Promoters and more than half of respondents in the other segments say that it definitely can.

“Identifying partnerships is one of the most delicate and important factors right now. ‘We are in this together’ is something we hear constantly, this is true, but then we must act on it. We need to collaborate, support and promote each other. “ – Promoter

Even the majority of Doubters believe this, despite concerns about collaboration gaining equal work and benefits for all involved.

“The only way we all make it through this time is to work together and help each other, promote each other and not be afraid to talk/communicate. We are not alone, but we are in a large sea, and we know there are boats out there … we just need a life jacket or a ladder or helping hand to get into the boat!” – Doubter

You can learn more by checking out our research Executive Summary.

Challenges in Reopening, Answered

As the country comes out of pandemic lockdown, we are already seeing surging demand for hospitality, travel and tourism opportunities.

Many organizations may feel a sense of whiplash compared to 2020, when visitors were hard to come by.

But the boom in potential visitors will also bring with it significant challenges for our industry. A few examples that may add strain on your organization and employees:

Accommodating the onslaught of newfound interest

On episode 170 of Destination on the Left, Scott Hutchinson shared lessons and best practices from hosting a major sporting event. Warren County hosted the World Flying Disc Championship in 2018, and faced the challenge of having thousands of visitors from around the world come to their region all at once. It turned into a community-wide collaboration to welcome the visitors, and communicate together to give them the best experience.

Ensuring that your organization is visible to your ideal prospects

Getting in front of the right audience through collaboration is part of commonality, one of the three Cs of collaboration. (The three Cs of collaboration are communication, commonality and commitment.) Recently, I shared how successful collaborations start with commonality. In episode 215 of Destination on the Left, Kerri Green told us about a few collaborations that drive visitor traffic in Commerce Chenango.

Adapting your offering and messaging to address new attitudes and interests

Adapting and evolving is something we’ve been doing for a long time. I am thinking of my conversation with Loren Penman in episode 221 of Destination on the Left, and our work with the Autism Nature Trail and Letchworth State Park. This project is a public-private collaboration that built a nature trail designed specifically for visitors with autism spectrum disorder and other developmental disabilities.

Collaboration is not only a way to survive in lean times, but a way to address new challenges as well.

Partners for Successful Collaborations

How do you identify collaboration opportunities? Our respondents had a number of suggestions:

1. Don’t focus too much on balancing the work equally.

Of the factors important for successful collaborations, “All participating organizations doing an equal amount of the work required” was rated least important by all segments.

“The collaboration is designed to benefit all participating organizations equally” was also rated much less important than nearly all other factors.

These are both viewed as far less important than participants fully agreeing on the goals of the effort and establishing and tracking key milestones.

“The region we worked in benefited in general from greater awareness and brand identity. Some partners received a bigger share of financial benefit, but all increased their market share.” – Promoter

2. Find partners you have something in common with.

Having something in common was rated as very important to successful collaboration. And with 76% of respondents collaborating with direct competitors, nearly all are working with organizations playing in the same sandbox. However, respondents were enthusiastic about the belief that even direct competitors have things they do better and are interested in prospects somewhat different from ones their own organization is pursuing.

“Find similarities with other organizations that customers might look for, but then find a way to highlight these while still keeping your unique value proposition.” – Doubter

“Find those that fill your service gaps, develop trust, communicate more than necessary and expand accordingly.” – Protector

Interested in assessing potential partners? We have a handy filter.

3. Communicate, communicate, communicate.

Aspects of communication consistently bubble up to the top of the list when it comes to factors making collaborations successful. They also come up often when respondents identified challenges that can get in the way.

Collaborators need to commit to honest and transparent communications. They need to feel comfortable talking with and leaning on each other and accurately represent their organization’s abilities and limits.

“It doesn’t have to be combative, competitive or scary – if communication is clear and honest and the objectives are clear and shared, it can be very, very impactful and rewarding.” – Promoter

“Collaboration and communication are extremely important in these relationships. Stewarding sponsors and sharing is important. The more communication there is, the more effective we are operationally.” – Doubter

“Outline specific goals and tasks, stay committed and constantly communicate.” – Protector

4. Use tools to make communication easier.

Collaborators are using a range of tools to communicate with team members. 82% are using email, but the most successful are far more likely to also be using file-sharing platforms like Dropbox and Google Drive, virtual meeting platforms like Zoom and even project management and group messaging tools.

“Just do it. Utilize virtual meetings, Zoom meetings, email and phone communication.” – Promoter

Reopening is already underway. Restrictions are lifting worldwide and your neighboring destinations, attractions, accommodations and partners are just as excited as you are to welcome visitors again. And those same neighbors are ready to work together with you. You are all collaborators. Your neighbors are ready to sit down, maybe “in real life” or maybe still on Zoom, and come up with new and special ways to attract visitors, adapt to change and enter the post-pandemic travel world. Together we can rise to the new challenges. Together we will reimagine and revitalize our industry. Stronger together!

Unsure how to really get started on your next (or first) collaboration? I bet we could help.

The post The Keys to Successful Collaborations appeared first on Travel Alliance Partnership.