Janet M. Young

I attribute my success to listening to people and trying to understand both sides of everything. Often we form an opinion about something and we don't really look at it from the other side, and I think trying to understand someone else's opinion is so important because when we do listen, we realize, wow, that's a good way to look at it, a different way to look at a situation. I think that makes it a lot better when you try to listen to somebody else's viewpoint in anything that you do.

One of the most impactful pieces of advice I received early in my career was from a manager who told me I was 'too nice.' At the time, I thought it was kind of a weird statement, but later on as I got further into my career, I kind of knew what he meant, and I thought it was good advice. I learned that you have to be a little more firm, a little more direct, and not try to make everybody happy every minute of the day. Sometimes I wanted to make everybody happy, but I learned that you can't do that always in business. You don't have to sugarcoat everything all the time, but you can be kind and nice and firm. When things have to be dealt with, you deal with it. That really helped later on in my career. It was an odd comment from a manager early on, but it turned out to be a really good thing to say.

My advice to women entering the hospitality industry is to go for it. Even though there are a lot of women in hospitality, as you get higher up into management, it's still a lot of men. The women that have moved up are doing great, but there's still a lot of men that seem to get into the higher positions. It's getting better, but don't be afraid of it. Speak your mind, show your strengths, and don't let them intimidate you. Sometimes the men still do that, and some still have the feeling that women aren't up to the top levels, even though they don't say it out loud. It's more in their mannerisms and actions. Women just have to stand up, and I admire a lot of them that have worked their way up. But I think sometimes women have to work a little harder at it than the men do, and that's still years away before it's all going to be on equal ground, which is a shame because there's a lot of wonderful women out there that have the ability. Just keep going and stand your ground. When things aren't quite fair or right, when you see an injustice being done, speak up. Sometimes it can backfire, but you just stand and you say what you think in a nice, professional way. You don't get mad. Men can get away with that, but women can't. If you start yelling at people, it's taken wrong. Just stay calm, prove your point, and have facts. Make sure you have facts to base your information on so that if you're trying to prove a point or get ahead or show where something isn't being done in a good way, you can show that with evidence.

One of the biggest challenges I faced was when Marriott had a huge layoff of people and I was unfortunately one of them. But that challenge became an opportunity when I ended up with one of their competitors, Hilton Hotels, and got a position over there. I was able to take a lot of my knowledge with me and work with the people there to show some things that could be done better. For example, they were buying tables for restaurants and getting better prices on tables that were supposed to match, but they would get different prices from different suppliers. I tried to point out that you can't guarantee they're going to match from different suppliers, even though you might get a better price. If you buy them all from one supplier, your chances of getting them to match are much better. I would speak my mind about it, and people listened to me. It didn't always win everything, but it was a good learning experience. Then luckily for me, after 9 months, Marriott had a position open and they hired me back, which was better for me because the commute to Hilton was quite extensive. But it was a good place and another learning experience where I got to work on some interesting hotels and meet different people in the industry and see how things are done elsewhere. I didn't really lose a beat and wasn't out of work for very long.

The values that are most important to me in my work and personal life are honesty, fairness, and respect. I believe in speaking up when something's wrong and not harboring feelings. If something's wrong, speak up and tell me. Don't just be mad about something and not let me know what's going on. It's important to be upfront with everything and treat people fairly. Sometimes people are just mean and there's no reason for it. If you don't like someone that you're working with, you still have to respect them if you're working with them. People deserve respect, and I think that's important in all aspects of life. You don't have to love the world, but you have to respect people. Unless they've done something outrageously bad, if it's something with work, you have to respect them in their position and try to work it out.