Leadership
EHL’s mission is to form the future leaders of the industry. But you can lead only if you can convince others that you are making the right decisions. Decisions that look right on paper won't work if your team is not motivated to implement them. Negotiating depends on people skills. Persuading other people and bringing them on board is an essential part of leadership.
You can’t lead in a vacuum
The "hospitality experience" depends on team-work. You can’t learn leadership in a textbook. You need to be able test out, in a practical situation, whether you can listen to others, understand what they are thinking and feeling even if it is the opposite of what they are actually saying, and win them over to your point of view.
That's why, at EHL, students work so often in groups in both their practical and academic courses. Their experience of high-energy teams, in which they have both to battle and to exercise self-control, is a major advantage in the eyes of a future employer.
Learning leadership through group work
At EHL, we put students into concrete situations in which they can develop leadership skills from the very beginning. Working in groups, each member of the team is confronted with questions concerning role distribution, the need to listen and share, rivalry and conflict, and the cultural barriers to getting things done. In addition, there are the logistics of having to prioritize tasks and managing workload and deadlines that are also an important part of leadership - and also depend on other people. Students learn that they can't just say they want to lead and try to take over in an authoritorian way. They have to learn to listen and show that they can lead.
EHL's teambuilding coach guides students in developing these skills. Even more importantly, students learn to see themselves as others see them. Becoming a credible and convincing leader sometimes involves changing one's own work habits and preconceptions. It certainly means learning to communicate better. We help students to discover that learning to manage others is first of all about learning to manage oneself.
