Thoughts on Leading Through a Crisis

When I took over as CEO of Marriott International eight years ago, the company had already weathered the 2008 economic downturn and watched the twin towers and a neighboring Marriott hotel come down on September 11th. Having helped to navigate those crises as part of Bill Marriott’s team, I thought that business would never be that bad again.

But look at us now. Today’s global health and economic crisis is truly unprecedented, worse than anything most companies have ever faced. As a leader, I knew back in January when we saw the first impact of COVID-19 on our hotels in China that extraordinary times were ahead. We would have to be nimble – responding with speed and boldness to tackle the vast array of new challenges brought on by the crisis. Through it all, I knew also that we had to remain true to our core values which include putting people first and acting with integrity.

Over the last six months, we’ve closed hundreds of hotels, furloughed thousands of employees and developed entirely new cleaning and food and beverage protocols for more than 7,400 hotels globally. We’ve dealt with immediate concerns: supporting our associates; gathering appropriate cleaning supplies for our hotels; closing our corporate headquarters. But as this crisis has continued, I’ve tried to take the longer view – anticipating what’s next: tomorrow, next quarter and next year. 

My guideposts have been three simple tenets of leadership: listen, empower, communicate.

Listen

My boss, Bill Marriott, taught me the power of listening decades ago. I was 34 years old, a partner in a Washington, D.C. law firm brought in to deal with Marriott’s decision to split the company into Marriott International and Host Marriott and the litigation that followed. Bill would call me regularly and ask “What happened today? What’s going on tomorrow?” He did this with people across the company. Even though he had a general counsel and CFO on top of the deal, he wanted to sound me out too, both to make sure he knew what was going on and to inspire and motivate me because my opinion mattered.

I’ve tried to replicate that approach, especially during a time when we’re all working remotely. I start my calls with questions:  “What are you working on?”  “What do you think?” “How are you doing?” The depth of this crisis is so great that we must get the input we need to understand the crisis and our options for dealing with it. 

Empower

This isn’t a time to be a micromanager. In a crisis, leaders have to empower their teams and trust them to get it right. Prior to COVID-19, I used to host monthly, all-day staff meetings with the senior leadership team. Data and analysis were presented, and we would thoughtfully dissect ideas. “Tell me exactly what you’re going to do. How will we get there?” That worked then. It does not work today.

Instead, knowing that we needed to move quickly and with much less data to support the decisions that needed to be made, we shifted to a weekly, two-hour meeting schedule. It’s very efficient. When you’re confronting a global crisis like this one, you’ve got to move fast. While we might identify every major decision that needed to be made in those meetings, the decisions themselves often could not wait until we were back together again. That means the team needed to be empowered. Let them make decisions. And stand by them. The results have been fast and bold, just as we needed.

Communicate

Finally, this crisis has been an important reminder of the critical role of communication. I’ve always been a big communicator – with our associates, our owners and our guests. But during this crisis, I thought it imperative to be even more visible, especially with the most difficult aspects of our challenges. The more difficult the decision, the greater the need to explain how the decision was made, the factors that went into it and why. Not everyone will agree with our decisions, for sure. But they will at least understand them.

Even in the midst of this incredible challenge, our communications also must chart a direction for the future and a sense of hope. That’s translated into creating more longer-form emails and videos for associates than usual. One video ran for 11 minutes. It was long, but I can’t think of a more important time to share where we are going.

This global crisis is far from over. But still, I remain optimistic about the future. With the help of leaders –  in government, in business and in the non-profit space – around the world, we’ll get through this – by listening, empowering others and communicating our plans. 

Stay safe and be well.