Hotel Leadership: When Discipline Matters More Than Motivation

I am tired of some conversations about motivation. And I deliberately use the word tired. Tired of meetings in which we try to find new ways to inspire people who know perfectly well what they have to do and have simply learned that not much happens when they do not do it. Tired of looking for activities, speeches, incentives and inspiring words to solve problems that are actually far more basic: lack of standards, blurred responsibilities, lack of follow-up and consequences that never materialise. I say this after many years of seeing hotels operate, excellent teams, challenging teams and teams that seemed challenging until one began to observe how they were being managed. I deeply believe in motivating, training, listening, developing, recognising and providing opportunities. I have devoted a great deal of time to this and will continue to do so. But I have also learned something rather less pleasant: there comes a point at which continuing to try to motivate repeated non-compliance stops being leadership and becomes a fairly sophisticated way of avoiding conflict. In a hotel, this is particularly dangerous because our operation depends on hundreds of small commitments that must be fulfilled even when no one is watching. The room must be properly prepared. The issue must be recorded. The order must be sent out correctly. The call must be returned. The cash must balance. Breakfast must be ready before the guest arrives, not after they appear. Preventive maintenance must be carried out. And if we have decided that a particular task is performed in a particular way, it cannot depend each morning on the enthusiasm of whoever is on shift. Perhaps for too long we have confused a kind organisation with a permissive one. We have worked so hard to talk about empathy, workplace climate, engagement, happiness, purpose and employee experience that it sometimes seems uncomfortable to say words such as high standards, performance, responsibility, compliance or consequences. But caring for people and expecting professionalism from them are not opposing positions. On the contrary. An organisation in which no one knows exactly what is expected of them, where some people permanently make up for what others leave undone and where non-compliance has no consequences ends up being deeply unfair. And that is where my frustration arises. Because when a good professional observes for months that a colleague arrives late, does not finish their work, fails to follow procedures or leaves problems for the next shift, and nothing happens, the person who usually becomes demotivated is not the one who fails to comply. It is the person who delivers who becomes demotivated. Then we call a meeting to talk about motivation. And few things seem more absurd to me than trying to motivate an entire team collectively in order to avoid having an individual conversation that we have been postponing for months.

The problem is not always motivation: often it is the way work is organised

There is one question I try to ask myself before concluding that someone has an attitude problem: Could this person explain precisely what result we expect from them, how we measure whether they are achieving it and what happens when they do not? If the answer is no, before holding the employee accountable, we should review our own way of leading. Because discipline does not mean punishment. Discipline means building an operation in which expectations are understandable, standards are defined, responsibilities are assigned to named individuals, results are reviewed and there is a consistent response when something goes off track. The World Health Organization itself defines burnout as an occupational phenomenon resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed, characterised by exhaustion, increased mental distance from or cynicism towards one’s job, and reduced professional efficacy. It is worth remembering because a permanently chaotic organisation, where every day requires correcting what was left unresolved yesterday, also wears people down. And the data on engagement should not lead us to think that the solution is simply to “motivate more”. Gallup places global employee engagement at 20% in 2025, while in Europe it was just 12%. The same research attributes around 70% of the variation in a team’s engagement to the direct manager. This is an extraordinarily uncomfortable figure for those of us who lead people, because it forces us to stop asking only what is happening to our employees and start asking what working environment we are building around them. A hotel needs motivation, of course. But first it needs several far less glamorous things.

Unambiguous standards. It is not enough to say, “we need to take better care of service”. What exactly does that mean? How long can a guest wait? Who communicates when a room is delayed? Who checks an incident? Which elements are mandatory before opening an outlet? What is not defined ends up being interpreted, and hotel operations work rather poorly when each employee has their own version of the procedure.
Clearly identified owners. One of the most dangerous phrases in a hotel is, “we need to look into this”. Who is “we”? When five people are responsible for something, too often no one is. Every relevant commitment should have one owner, an expected outcome and a deadline.
Systematic follow-up. We have turned some meetings into administrative rituals: we talk a lot, take notes and, a week later, discover that we are still discussing exactly the same thing. For me, an operational meeting improves radically when it includes four simple questions: what did we agree, who committed to it, by when and has it been completed.
Immediate feedback. Correcting something six months later that we have tolerated for six months is rather unfair. If a behaviour matters, it should be addressed when it happens. We do not need to dramatise every mistake, but we do need to prevent silence from turning the exception into the norm.
Consistency among managers. Nothing destroys a standard more quickly than one manager demanding something while another allows the opposite. When an employee discovers that they only need to wait for the right shift to bypass a rule, the rule has ceased to exist.
Known consequences. This is probably the word that creates the most discomfort. Yet a responsibility without consequences is merely a recommendation. I am not talking about turning the hotel into a barracks. I mean that repeated non-compliance should receive a proportionate, documented and fair response, consistent with employment law and the organisation’s policies.
Recognition for those who do deliver. Discipline is not only about correcting. It also means making professional behaviour visible. If we treat someone who makes an exceptional effort exactly the same as someone who consistently fails to comply, we are sending a powerful message: going the extra mile is not worth it.
Review of resources. Demanding results without providing the means is not discipline either; it is poor organisation. Before holding someone accountable, I must ask myself whether they had enough time, training, staff, materials and information to carry out the work properly.

I find this last point fundamental. Because talking about discipline first requires a substantial degree of managerial discipline. It is all too easy to demand punctuality while we arrive late to meetings. To demand procedures while constantly changing them. To expect follow-up while forgetting our own commitments. To demand communication while leaving messages unanswered. To ask for guest focus while our internal decisions contradict what we promise commercially. Before demanding discipline, we must practise it. Over time, I have also learned to distinguish between four situations that may initially seem alike:

They do not know how to do it. They need training.
They cannot do it. They need resources, organisation or support.
They do not understand why they need to do it. They need context, communication and perhaps leadership.
They know how to do it, can do it, understand why they need to do it and repeatedly choose not to do it. Then we are dealing with an accountability problem.

And I believe many hotels remain trapped for too long trying to solve the fourth problem with tools designed for the first three. We explain again. We train again. We ask again. We remind again. We meet again. We say again that “we need to improve”. Until a rather revealing moment arrives: the person who fails to comply already knows that the next consequence of failing to comply will be another conversation about their non-compliance. I do not see much transformative capacity in that model. Nor can motivation become a kind of fuel that the company is obliged to supply constantly while the individual is released from all responsibility for their own performance. I think that, at times, we have infantilised the conversation about people. An adult professional also has responsibilities. They have the right to receive respect, resources, training, clarity, feedback, development opportunities and decent conditions. And at the same time, they have a responsibility to fulfil the commitments inherent to the role they have freely chosen to hold. I see no contradiction between these two things. On the contrary: it seems to me a far more mature employment relationship.

When tolerance begins to punish those who do their job well

There comes a point at which a lack of discipline stops affecting only operational results and begins to erode culture. I have seen it many times. First, a small exception appears. Someone does not perform a task correctly. As it does not seem especially important, no one says anything. Then it happens again. A colleague ends up doing it. The next time, it is simply assumed that colleague will resolve it. Little by little, the responsible employee receives more work precisely because they are responsible, while the person who fails to comply receives less because we have learned that asking them to do certain things creates problems. It is one of the most perverse mechanisms I know within a team. The reward for professionalism ends up being more work. And the reward for a lack of professionalism ends up being lower expectations. Then we are surprised when the good people become tired. In Hospitality, this dynamic has an aggravating factor: internal failures inevitably end up reaching the guest. It may take a day, a week or three months, but they do. A cleanliness standard that some people uphold and others do not. A call that no one returns. Outstanding maintenance. An allergy that is not communicated. A room released without being checked. A special request lost between departments. A breakfast that starts being set up when it should already be finished. A known issue that reappears over three consecutive shifts. Individually, they seem like small things. But the guest experience is precisely the sum of hundreds of small things. Hospitality has a characteristic that we sometimes forget: much of our product is created at the same time as it is consumed. When something goes wrong, we cannot remove it from the warehouse and produce another unit. The guest was already there. They saw it. They experienced it. And perhaps they will post about it. That is why I struggle to accept the idea that expecting standards could be considered incompatible with creating a good culture. For me, exactly the opposite is true. The best cultures I have known were demanding cultures. Not necessarily harsh. Not necessarily hierarchical. Not necessarily formal. But extremely clear about certain things that simply had to happen. The problem appears when we confuse empathy with the absence of boundaries. I can fully understand why someone has made a mistake and, at the same time, explain that the mistake cannot be repeated. I can listen to a person’s personal circumstances while maintaining the professional standard. I can help, train and support them, while continuing to expect results. I can recognise an excellent professional and point out something they need to change. Understanding a behaviour does not require us to accept it indefinitely. I have also learned that discipline works much better when it leaves the personal realm behind. It is not: “I am disappointed in you”. It is: “This was the agreed standard, this has been the result and this is the deviation”. Not: “I need you to make more of an effort”. But: “This responsibility belongs to your role, it was not carried out yesterday and we need it to happen this way from today onwards”. The first conversation generates interpretation. The second generates clarity. And there is an even more important distinction: discipline is not micromanagement. A truly disciplined hotel does not need a manager standing behind every employee. Quite the opposite happens. When standards are clear and individual accountability exists, I can grant far more autonomy. Autonomy works when someone understands the objective, the boundaries and the responsibility associated with their decisions. Without these three things, what we call empowerment risks becoming merely organisational abandonment. A mature structure could work like this:

First deviation: check the facts, understand the cause and correct it.
Lack of knowledge: train.
Lack of resources: provide the means or redesign the process.
Lack of clarity: redefine expectations.
Repetition: an explicit conversation about performance and commitment.
Further repetition: proportionate formal action, documented and consistent with legislation, collective agreements and internal policies.
Persistent non-compliance: acknowledge that there may be a mismatch between the person, the role and the organisation.

The important thing is not to turn this sequence into a bureaucratic machine. The important thing is to end that grey area so common in organisations where everyone knows something is not working but no one knows exactly when someone will do something about it. There is also a question I find extraordinarily useful when I observe a recurring problem: What behaviour are we tolerating that we later say concerns us? Usually, the answer is quite revealing. If we tolerate lateness, we are defining our punctuality standard. If we tolerate ignored procedures, we are defining our operational standard. If we tolerate disrespect, we are defining our culture. If we allow meeting agreements to disappear without follow-up, we are defining the value of our commitments. If we systematically accept results below what was agreed, we are defining our true quality standard. Because the real culture of a hotel is not what is written in the welcome handbook. It is what happens repeatedly without anyone intervening. And perhaps this is one of the conversations we most need to reclaim in Hospitality. I do not want obedient teams. I want professional teams. I do not want people who work properly only when someone is watching them. I want people who understand that their work forms part of a chain of commitments and that someone else—a colleague, a department or a guest—depends on them fulfilling theirs. I do not want a hotel governed by fear. I want one governed by trust, clarity and accountability. And trust does not mean waiting indefinitely for someone to do what they have been showing for months that they will not do. Years ago, I thought one of the greatest challenges of leading teams was managing to motivate people. Today, I would qualify that considerably. One of the truly difficult challenges is to create an environment where motivated people do not end up exhausted from compensating for those who fail to deliver. That requires recognising, developing and protecting good professionals, but it also requires intervening when someone repeatedly breaks collective commitments. If you are seeing a team’s energy decline, before organising another motivational activity, I would spend a morning reviewing something far less appealing: which standards exist, which ones are being met, which ones we have stopped demanding, who is accountable for each result, which issues recur meeting after meeting and which behaviours we have tolerated for far too long. You will probably find more answers there than in many engagement surveys. And there is something I try to remind myself when the uncomfortable moment comes to demand accountability: the conversation I avoid today will probably have to be held tomorrow by someone else, with a bigger problem. Leading also means preventing our silences from becoming other people’s outstanding work. Motivation remains essential. So does listening. Recognition, training, support and development, of course. But when all of that exists and non-compliance continues, perhaps the hotel does not need another dose of motivation. Perhaps it simply needs more discipline.

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