It takes a team to create adventures. Each of our interactions with guests relies on the work that our colleagues have done behind the scenes to create goosebumps moments.
We have a hybrid structure where, depending on your role, you may be working directly with your team at the Canteen or working on your own offsite. This can make communications more challenging but it opens a lot of creative opportunities in how we work together.
We also work at different times which means that most of our collaboration is asynchronous. These are a few of the guidelines we find helpful:
- Respect that we all take different time off.
- Become familiar with the online collaboration tools we use. Depending on your role these may include Google Workspace, Google Calendar, Square Team or Asana.
- Choose transparency whenever possible. Most communications should be visible to your entire team.
- Presentation matters, even in internal communications. Always use full sentences, punctuation and formatting that matches our brand design guidelines.
Team Roles
We all play a role in creating goosebumps moments for our guests and this means that we all need to help each other, regardless of our job title. We’ll cover your role in more detail during your first week of work and over time we encourage you to learn more about other positions.
The leadership team is there to support you. Their roles and focus areas are listed below.
CEO: JP
Oversee brand alignment and long-term development. This includes:
- Brand and Strategy
- Marketing
- Training Programs
- Destination and Product Development
- Government Affairs and Industry Relations
General Manager: Danielle
Oversee the day-to-day operations, special projects and the implementation of our strategic plan. This includes:
- Sales and Guests Services
- Strategy Execution
- Operations
- Special Projects
- Community and Industry Relations
Canteen Manager: Paeton
Assistant Manager: Paul
Offer great food and an inviting space for our ideal guests by managing the day-to-day operations of the Nordegg Canteen. This includes:
- Supporting the Canteen staff so that they have the resources they need to do their job;
- Supervising and scheduling the Canteen staff;
- Managing inventory and orders;
- Planing and coordinating special events; and
- Developing new menu items and retail products.
Head Guide: Brett
Deliver the best possible tours for our ideal guests by managing the day-to-day operations of our guided activities. This includes:
- Supporting the guides so that they have the resources needed to do their job;
- Supervising and scheduling the guides;
- Maintaining the tour and rental equipment; and
- Implementing the guide training, product development and special events programs.
Destination Coordinator: Annabelle
Establish our region as the premier adventure tourism destination in Alberta by facilitating Explore Nordegg & Abraham Lake projects, including:
- Social media content, engagement and advertising;
- Email marketing;
- Destination events;
- Industry events and communications; and
- Special projects including the housing strategy.
Stakeholders
We work with a lot of stakeholders and partners to make our adventures happen. Depending on your role you will get to know some of them very well, including:
- The Nordegg Community Association;
- Our Explore Nordegg & Abraham Lake Industry Partners;
- Clearwater County;
- Travel Alberta;
- Alberta Forestry and Parks Land Managers; and
- The regional producers that supply the Nordegg Canteen.
Each of these has different priorities and reasons for doing what they do. Always aim for collaboration when looking for the best solution for all involved.
Philosophies
Assume the Best of Intentions
We all mess up from time to time and events outside of work will always impact how we react while at work. Whenever you encounter an issue with our guests, industry partners or a team member, always give them the benefit of the doubt. Try to understand where they come from, focus on the positive and accept that sometimes we all need a timeout to regroup.
Hospitality is an Individual Team Sport
Most individual competitive sports, like swimming or skiing, rely heavily on a strong team that include not only coaches and technicians but also other competitors. It’s this team approach that helps create amazing individual performances.
The same is true for a lot of what we do. You might be on your own while guiding or serving guests but great results only happen when we work together as a team. That’s why our successes should always be recognized using “we” instead of “me”.
The counterside to this is the need to own our failures. If you’re the lead on a project that wasn’t successful or sharing an issue, using “me” helps bring the team together even if we all know that it was a collective effort.
“Leader” Doesn’t Mean “Best”
A large part of leadership is helping others do the job better than we ever could. That’s why the best leaders are often not the best guides, cooks or guest service staff but rather great coaches and mentors. As leaders, empowering others to do great things is how you can free up the time needed to make your own contributions.
This is also true when leading guests on a tour where the guests may be more knowledgeable in some areas than the guide. Embrace that people love to share what they know and incorporate this into the experience.
Be A Coach Rather Than An Instructor
An instructor is an outsider providing technical instruction for a finite period of time. A coach is a member of the team that provides ongoing instruction, support and mentorship for an indefinite period of time.
The role of the coach is to help set stretch goals and expectations for the team, to provide the support needed to achieve them and to be there to help the team recover from failures.
A few things that help us be better coaches:
- Build on small successes and reflect on positive outcomes rather than focusing on poor performance.
- Focus on functional skills and knowledge rather than foundational skills and knowledge.
- Accept that learning and improvements are often uncomfortable at first.
- Remember that nobody knows what they’re doing before they do it.
To succeed as a coach you need to be able to identify the strengths of the people on your team, no matter how buried these might be.
BELIEVE IN YOUR IDEAS
Be passionate about the thoughts you share. Take ownership of them, telling us what you think rather than repeating what others have said and be willing to make the case for what you believe. This takes courage so it’s important that when others bring you their idea you start by listening, even if you may not agree with them.
Just as important is what happens after. You may disagree with the decisions or directions we take in some cases. Once a decision has been made it’s time for all of us to support it with that same passion we shared our own ideas earlier on and for all of us to do everything we can to make it successful.
Accepting that not everybody will share our vision or agree with our ideas is hard. It’s hard not to take negative reviews or feedback personally. Believing in our ideas and reminding ourselves of the goosebumps moments we create for our guests helps us remain focused on our vision as we decide which feedback we want to respond to.
Will Guidara brings up this tension between listening to our critics and believing in what we are doing in Unreasonable Hospitality:
If your business involves making people happy, then you can’t be good at it if you don’t care what people think. The day you stop reading your criticism is the day you grow complacent, and irrelevance won’t be far behind.
But I don’t change something every time one or two people say they don’t like something – maybe not even if a lot of them don’t like it! If you try to be all things to all people, it’s proof that you don’t have a point of view – and if you want to make an impact you need to have a point of view.
