Key messages from the NoVacancy 2025 Future Leaders Summit
A rich history
It’s no secret that I spent the first 14 years of my working life setting up, managing, and shutting down family owned hospitality businesses in the Hunter Valley Wine Region.
This industry is like no other when it comes to demonstrating what elevated guest, customer, and colleague experiences should look and feel like.
I’m proud to have grown up in this industry because it fundamentally teaches you how you should treat people - with respect and dignity no matter who they are and where they come from.
Those core values carry through into everything that I do today as I help product and transformation leaders navigate the people and politics that come with their jobs.
I was only able to pop into the NoVacancy Hotel + Accommodation Industry Expo for a couple of hours yesterday morning to sit in on the Future Leaders Summit but what I heard was validating in that the fundamentals haven’t changed. In fact, the expectations and standards continue to lift.
What were the key messages?
Scott Boyes and Grant Alchin opened up with their A Room With A View Podcast featuring Melinda Lampier; and their one key take away was that it’s all about relationships and people. Your skills may get you in the door, but appreciating the responsibility of leadership, the enjoyable challenge of stakeholder management, your mentors, and your integrity are what will get you through in the long haul.
Next, Simon Pawson led a panel discussion with Laura Wiersma, Jai McNaughton, Victoria Smyth, and Stephen Cossetto. They placed emphasis on elements that have been core to the world of product and transformation for decades - the importance of creating cross functional teams, building leadership skills often and early, demonstrating strong commercial acumen, staying curious in order to grow, and being adaptable. It goes to show that these concepts transcend industries to benefit all!
Being able to demonstrate empathy, emotional intelligence, and building an emotional connection along every touch point in the guest, customer, and colleague experience journey was a theme that ran through every panel conversation. In particular, this was punctuated by the phenomenal stories told by Malakai Yeomans, Lachlan Garrett, and Mardi Sparrow when asked about how you can build exposure from an operations, sales, and people perspective. The bottom line was simply to be good at what you do. Your reputation will speak for you in the tight knit industry that you work in. People will speak about you and your work and you won’t even know it a lot of the times.
Thanks goes to the NoVacancy team for bringing the event together and the speakers for being so generous with their time and wisdom!!
Want to be even better at navigating the people and politics that come with your job so that you can create even more exceptional experiences for your guests, customers, and colleagues?
Let’s work on this together. Here are three ways:
Influencing for Impact: This practical 2-day workshop is for you if you want to influence a decision maker, influence a change in customer or colleague behaviour, or influence someone to buy something from you,
Executive and Leadership Team Coaching: Work directly with Lai-Ling to problem solve for your specific situation in a confidential setting. This is for you if you want to develop and execute on a game plan that is 100% tailored to you, and
Leadership Development: Invest in the product and transformation leaders in your company with leadership development that is customised for their role. This is for you if you want your people to learn about people and politics