Faith Cuiyu Chen

I attribute my success to having strong mentors in my life. Having really good mentors who aren't scared to give you good feedback really helps you align yourself and understand that you need guidance. If you find a good mentor who's honest with you and gives you good advice, whether it's the advice that you want or not at the moment, it still helps shape different paths. We all need a leader that can really be a teacher and an advisor, a coach that helps you do better. I've had really great mentors that I'm still in contact with on a daily basis, because it's just a reminder that these people, whether in a previous career or my current mentors now, really helped me see things differently and be guided a little bit better. That's always translated into why I want to be more in-depth and involved with training at any given point, any level, whether it's a barista to a leader. Having someone constantly help you do more and push yourself is so important.

The best career advice I ever received was to slow down. One of my best mentors told me to slow down, let's redo things properly, and focus on doing things right the first time. I think we all get in this phase where we really want to be overachieving and we get in this world where we have to do this first, we have to be the first to get it done, but when we move at that fast pace, we make a lot of mistakes. Being able to slow down and doing things right the first time has always been something that I think back on in terms of how I train as well. I tell my team, okay, I understand, thank you for the initiative, but let's go ahead and do things right the first time. Also, just not taking shortcuts - not taking shortcuts is so important.

The most important thing is trusting yourself. Make sure that you never give up your convictions, and no matter how difficult or lonely it can be, as long as you have the drive and the passion to do something, and your work shows it, you're gonna be fine, honestly. Even in my hotel, a lot of our leaders are men, but the women that I'm fortunate enough to work with, we're all driven, we're all passionate, and we all support each other. We just have to say, we're gonna just overcome this, we're gonna do it. If you really want something, and you don't give up your conviction to get it done, people are gonna see you for who you are.

I think the biggest challenge in hospitality is perception - that the expectation is long hours, or that the work isn't worth the pay. But I think if you just take the opportunity to step back and say, why are you in this to begin with? And what do you hope to accomplish in the new day? And then finding the right places. A lot of times we hire people that have expectation or want to be in hospitality, but then the level of changes in guests and how they approach the hospitality world can be very challenging for some people to want to stay in it. I see it a lot in our workforce, where maybe the hours aren't as lenient as something else, or where you have different roles of social media and things that really take away the discipline that it takes to get into a certain field. The perception that hospitality is not worth it, or that hospitality is not a good career to be in, is a big challenge. But I really think it's about who are you encountering and who are you meeting in the hospitality field that really helps dictate whether or not you have a good workforce. You really can't train anyone unless you find the right people, and the right people have to be someone that wants to do hospitality because it's about guest services and how do we make experiences for other people.

I think finding balance is most important. Everything in life is about balance - you don't have to do it all in one day. It's important to not forget about the extrinsic outside things that make your life whole. This is coming from someone who worked a lot, but I value being able to set boundaries, have time for myself and do the things that are important to me, so that every day doesn't feel like a mundane day. I really set that for my leadership as well. Anyone I bring on or hire or train, I always let them know the expectation is to never overwork yourself, that it's okay if you can't finish something, and as long as we're not far from the deadline, it's okay to take time off and reset. I also really value honesty - being honest with yourself. Honesty really helps you want to accept coaching. When you're not honest with yourself, there's a lot of psychological things you have to overcome before you can feel comfortable enough to be honest. But once you achieve that state of mind, you're more susceptible to being able to say, listen, I do need to do a little bit better, or maybe here's something I have been doing well, but I need to do better at this. Honesty with yourself translates to being honest with someone else and what you need.