The Power of Yes: Transforming Risk into Hospitality with Christine Trippi

Everywhere. Guest experience, customer experience, team member experience, sales. Everything comes from that yes. There's four simple steps to yes. First, make friends. First. Second, tell them what you can do. Third, offer options. And four, be creative. Hello, my name is Jason Reichel and you're listening to Risk Management Brick by Brick. I'm fascinated with people who are helping build and maintain the physical world around us. On each episode of this podcast, we'll dive in with a risk manager, speak to them about how technology plays a role in this process. We're live at IAAPA 2025. You're listening to Brick by Brick, Risk Management. I'm Jason Reichel. Nice to be with you again. I'm talking to Christine Trippy International keynote, which is cool. Don't have a lot of those. And TEDx speaker, bestselling author of yes is the Answer. And founder of the Wise Pan Apple and the Crown Society. That's a lot. Give us the 60 second pitch. Why is yes the most powerful tool as a leader, even in a risk heavy industry where no feels safer? Because everybody has a customer and people. Hospitality exists when the other person believes you're on their side. And when you begin with no, no one believes you're on their side. And there's no way to come together and form a relationship versus what it's going to end up being. Me against you. Right. So that is why yes is the fastest thing to collaboration. Yeah, that's a great way to put it. Yes is your fastest way to collaboration and to understand each other. Great. I buy in for the risk managers listening. Where does hospitality actually improve business outcomes? So how? Everywhere. Guest experience, customer experience, team member experience, sales. Everything comes from that. Yes. Yeah, I love that. Yes. So walk us through your model. How does the model work? Give me the framework. Okay, let me give it to you. I'm going to give it to you super quick. There's four simple steps to yes. First, make friends. First. Second, tell them what you can do. Third, offer options. And four, be creative. Let me take you through an example. Yeah, sure, let's do it. Okay, let me just give this example. Okay, let's say I'm a hotelier. So? So let's just say I had a guest call my hotel and say, hi, I'm coming into Chicago for the first time. Do you have an airport shuttle? The number one answer I receive when I make that call is, no, we don't. Dead air. Dead air. No, we don't. That's it. That's not hospitality. I've experienced that. I feel that real I know it. So if we're using the four steps, imagine this. Oh, thank you for choosing our hotel for your first trip to Chicago. What brings you here? I'm coming to see my new grandbaby. My daughter just had my first grandbaby. Now I'm taking notes, I'm getting golden nuggets. We're making a connection. The minute you pause before answering question and connect, that opens up a world of opportunity, of relationship, of knowledge. And the minute you make friends, your brain comes out of the anxiety of that hard no question and. And it opens yourself up to what you can do. So make a friend before answering any question. Pause and make friends first. Then nobody cares what you can't do. Just tell them what you can do. So instead, thank you for choosing our hotel for your first trip to Chicago. Here's how you're going to get from the airport to the hotel. We have a negotiated rate with slash limo or our airport is Uber Lyft friendly, which works best for you. So you see what I did there? I made friends, built a relationship, got some golden nuggets that I can use later. Yes. Two, I told them exactly how they can get to and from the airport to the hotel. Three, I offered options. So they're in control. I'm not dictating to anybody telling them what they have to do. Anytime someone feels in control, they are genetically programmed to feel better about the interaction. We want the last word. We. We want to be in control. We want to have agency. And when you offer options, you're always the good guy. Helping them with solutions. Yes. Not telling people what to do. Yeah. I use a very, very similar framework called scale, which is status, certainty, autonomy, likeness, and then equity exchange. Okay. I love it. So in that way, you should always be offering the equity exchange on that so that you're evening the scale. They shouldn't be in a position where they are overextending themselves. They already picked up the phone call and called you. They already started that interaction in your example. Right. So really amazing stuff. Now imagine you're that same person trying to go through those four frameworks, and you have a line of people standing out in front of you and you're picking up the phone. Glad you asked. How do you keep a yes in that environment? Okay. I may be pulling a different message that you've come here sometimes. I'll have team members say to me, you know what? We sometimes have a line. We don't have time to make friends first. Yeah. But what I show them is that you actually Spend more time saying no. Because then it gets into this back and forth volley of no, I'm sorry, unfortunately, don't. We used to, but because of COVID we no longer have. You're not in control of how long the other person's on the phone standing in front of you. Any of those things. Right. Yes. And when you're agreeable and you're making friends now, if you have a long line, maybe you're not going to go into a big verbose. Make friends first. Maybe. It might sound like, oh, thank you for asking, here is how you're going to get from the airport to the hotel. It might be a short one, thank you for asking, but that is enough to get your brain out of the fight or flight and the anxiety and open yourself up to what's possible. We act like it's because service industry jobs, and we're all in the service industry. We all have customers, all of us. We act like that's a natural environment. But our natural environment when someone is coming at us is not to service them, it's to eliminate the situation. And so you have to have a framework to move into. Yes. And let me say this, you hear it everywhere, all day long, that today, employees, they're lazy. They don't care. They're Gen Z. It is not because they're lazy and don't care. It is biology. We are biologically prone to lean into the negative. And when we get that hard, no question, our brain goes into fight or flight. And the anxiety of that confrontation causes us to get that knee jerk. No, I'm sorry, Unfortunately. But we can beat and build the muscle to beat. Yes, and beat biology by pausing before answering any question. Pause and make a friend. Let's share one example where hospitality principles, empathy, clarity, positivity, reduce operational or reputational risk in a high stress moment. There's just millions, let's just say, for example, we'll talk about theme park. Okay? And you've got a dad with his son who's not tall enough to ride the ride. And it might be where they come in and they say, oh, I know he's just a little under, but can he ride the ride we would normally go? No, I'm sorry. Unfortunately. Right, because we feel bad, but we got to keep them safe. So instead saying, oh, I love. You're such a daredevil. I love this ride too. If you like this ride, you are going to love X, Y and Z. And those are rides you can ride right now. You don't want to miss that. So you're immediately making friends, you're coming together, you're telling them what they can do. And now I opened a water park called Keyland Cove Water Resort in Gurnee, Illinois. And I used to have people that would do that. We would go with our initial. Yes. Like I just mentioned there. But then if we had those pushbacks. No, no, it's gotta be the. You already went on that. Yes, yeah, yes, exactly. We would get to the point where we'd say, absolutely, if this is what you like. We. We don't recommend it. The lifeguard office is right over here. You can sign a waiver and your son can go down. And then the waiver has a little boy crying after breaking his arm. Nobody ever went through with it. That's great. That's great. Optionality. They're in control of the. That's the fourth step. I'm so sorry to interrupt you. No, please. I love. This is to be creative. We all know what our hard nos are. Can you price match? Can you. Can I check out late? I'm a platinum. Can I get an upgrade? We know what our hard nos are. And if we as leaders get ahead of it to help set our front line up to stand tall and say yes, they're gonna love their job. Yeah, right. And you're gonna reduce turnover. Cause they get to say yes all day. I love that. You're absolutely right. Yes. In hospitality and risk management, the stakes are emotional. How do you design the handoff between frontline staff and leaders so customers can still feel heard? So I think we told the example of a leader. You who believes in this. Yes. But sometimes we have the opposite. Let's say we have staff who want to deliver services, but they have leaders who are no leaders. And if I'm being honest, I wrote the book for them. Because even if you are under a no leader, which just change your job, but easier said than done interview for it, you should be interviewing back to make sure that's not what you're working. Exactly. But a lot of leaders say I empower my people, but then the first time they make it a choice and a decision, they say, why'd you do that? You shouldn't have done that. So a lot of leaders think they're that kind of leader, but they're not. I'm a big fan of, like, the waterline method, which is like, the leader's job is to define where the waterline is, and then everything else is fair game for the employees to have autonomy over the reason they don't take Action isn't because they're lazy again, it is because they don't have the clarity. You tell me I'm empowered, but that's so vast that cripples me. I don't know what that really means. Yeah. So you need those water lines. Yes, Yes. I love that. What? Guardrails help teams stay positive under pressure. To stay positive under pressure. Yeah. Well, again, when you're creative, you know your hard nose. And when you're creative, if you're practicing those in your huddles and you're teaching your team how to say yes, the question no longer gives you anxiety because you know how to answer it positively. So that must be that you're doing more enablement than the average organization is practice and enablement and role playing 100%. One thing that I talk about endlessly is daily huddle. People call stand ups Smart Start Premium. Famous in restaurants. Yes, exactly. Actually, it started in manufacturing to reduce accidents. Yeah, right. That's where the standup started. But if you're not doing. If you have a team, a frontline team, and you're not doing huddle, you're missing. You are missing out. This is not the fluff. It's is 100% strategy. And you. There is nothing you can do all day long that will give you better results in every scorecard metric than huddle will. The huddle is the pivot from the outside world to the inside world. Just like the pause for you is the moment where they can go into the framework and use the framework. You need the standup in order to go well out there. You are a person now. You're coming in here and it's changed. So we're going to have a standup. So it is a ritual that transitions the employee into being a service provider. Right. Which is, I think, important. Let me, let me. For. For any of the coconuts, I like to call them out there. That might not be buying what I'm selling right now. About huddle. I want to picture this. Do you follow football? No, I don't follow football, but I know football. Yeah, I don't either. I know two things. They've got really cute pants and they huddle. Can you imagine a football team coming in for the game, punching the clock and taking their position on the field without first getting motivated, talking about the strategy of how they're going to win the day and pumping each other up. Unheard of, unheard of, unheard of. You can't get people for performance otherwise, no way. Why would we think we could win the Day without first doing that for our team. Yes or yes. I love that. Yes. When leaders shift from command and control to empowerment roles change. What tasks move from routine reacting to more strategic relationship building. Where when you become a yes. Leader. Let's just call it that. Oh, my God. The magic that happens. I'll give you an example. That was a true story I told you about. I was a GM at a Courtyard hotel in Chicagoland, and I taught my teen. And someone called and said, hey, do you have an airport shuttle? I'm coming in for the first time. And my team member said, oh, what brings you to Waukegan? It was in Waukegan. And she said, oh, I'm coming to visit my first grandbaby. My daughter had her first baby, and they were like, oh, my gosh. So the next thing that happened, she. She's typing in the notes of her reservation, coming in to visit her first baby. This woman's already walking through our doors. A ten, A ten review. Then she gets here, somebody completely new says, congratulations on your new grandbaby. Do you have any pictures? I sure do. She's walking to her room. A 10, maybe a 20. She gets in her room, there's a card from us. There's a baby onesie with the courtyard logo on it. She's telling everybody. She's never forgetting this experience. This is how you become worldwide. Yeah. Legendary. There's a lot of books about the different hospitality things, the four seasons hospitality mantras. And then we think that when we go to more affordable brands, that you don't deserve it. That you don't. That you don't deserve it, and they don't need to provide it. How do you deal with that corporate idea? As everybody can already see, this personality. I like to consider myself the director of fun. And I remember people even saying, oh, Christine, this is a courtyard. We're a business hotel. We can always make every transaction an experience. Always. And that doesn't mean it has to cost a million dollars. That little onesie didn't have to even be a onesie. It could have been literally just a card. Yeah. You could have written a note and drawn a little baby on it, and it would have been the same output. They recognize it. And asking her to see pictures, that is unheard of. One time, I was checking in a little boy with his family. They're here on vacation. And I said, hey, little buddy, you want to check mom and dad in? He's like, heck, yes. Comes around the front desk. He got to slide the card. I'm like, did it decline? We were having some fun. I let him press the I for in. He probably still is 35 years old today talking about that vacation. I got to check mom and dad in. Absolutely. Absolutely. Does that cost me any money? Heck, no. Yeah. Let me tell you this because I am who I am. When I fly, I always want to have a surprise and delight on me when I see kids. I love the kids. And especially coming to Orlando this week, I always pack Pokemon cards. When I see kids, I'm like, hey, buddy. And I give them Pokemon cards. The light on their face with those Pokemon cards makes me happy. I love that too. This is how you make your team members happy. Team members who say, no, I'm sorry. Unfortunately, all day long, don't go home going, God, I love my job. They go home going, work trained me. Team members who say yes and create unforgettable memories all day long go home. Oh my God. Wait till you hear about my day. How do you keep customers experience fair, consistent and safe in an environment of yes? Again, it's getting creative, deciding what your hard nos are and then creating the yes. So, for example, with the little boy in the height restriction, we have our steps that we can go to. I'll give you another one. So this was at Key Lime Cove Water Resort. And the luggage cart is, is not like at a courtyard where the guest just takes it at willy nilly. We have a whole tour guide team that helps escort. This is a resort. This is the next level of service. So guests all the time would come down and say, oh, I just need the cart. I don't need a bellman. I just can get the cart. Now if I said yes to them, I would be saying no to my tour guide. And they're my guests too, because now I'm telling them, take the cart. And now that's taking away their livelihood and they gotta go find the carts to do their job. So now that was a no win situation. So we had to get creative. Now here's a little side note. People always are trying to find solutions to their problems. Like, okay, how can we raise our revenue this month? Or how can we be more productive? And we're looking for ideas up here. Forget about ideas. Stop looking for solutions. Start focusing on the problem. Why do you think it was a problem that the guests. Why did the guests want the cart and not the bellman? Because they found the bellman to be annoying. They didn't want to pay for it. All sorts of different. They don't want to tip. Exactly. So when we start when we. We zoomed in. Okay, what's the problem in this situation? They don't want to tip. Okay. So we came up with one hospitable phrase. That was our yes move. Anytime a guest came down and asked for the bell cart, I said, oh, thank you for asking. Absolutely. Every cart comes with a complimentary tour guide. Where can we send it? Now, every time we said that, the guests laughed. And without saying no, we told them two things in a very hospitable way. One, you're not getting the cart without the guy. And two, tipping's totally up to you. They come together. Yeah, you're signaling that. Yes, exactly. So often you can use humor to really drive that yes message and come together instead of apart. Yeah. And then they're taking from that. Well, they don't want their carts to go missing or they have a system here. Yes. And people feel secure in that certainty of that. You have a system here as well. Yes. As much as someone doesn't want to tip, they also don't want to get this luggage cart and be, like, trying to push it through the hallways and all that kind of stuff as well. Risky or too risky? Ready? Rapid fire. Rapid fire. Saying yes to a refund before verifying the full story, I'm going to say is not risky a choice. Risky or too risky? Oh, risky. Okay, then I guess I got to go with risky. Okay. So you would go give them the refund. Obviously, you probably with the way you sound like you build the these things, you would have predetermined that that's going to be a problem someone's going to have and have a response. It would depend on the situation. So, yeah, I know it's wrapped around, so I won't elaborate, but. No, please. Yeah, elaborate. Well, what I was going to elaborate on is that you always want to own it. Okay. Whether that's the thing. And then sometimes, like for example, I'm thinking in hotels, a bedbug issue. Say someone came down and said, and some employees or leaders will even say to me, well, I'm not going to own that. What you can own. We don't have to own that. That is the case without investigating. What you can own is that you are going to solve the problem, that you are going to own the problem and see it through. Oh, my goodness, you must be so freaked out right now. We are going to take care of this and take care of you. First thing we do is we call in a professional. We'll have the room inspected. We'll da, da. Da, da, da. If it should be this, this is what we'll do. If it should be this, this is what makes sense. I can still own it, even without admitting guilt. I'll give you an example. I was at a place called. I'll give them a shout out. Evergreen Lodge, which is outside of Yosemite. It's about 45 minutes down a dirt road, and then you get to a lodge where it's been. This is 1912. It's beautiful. I've heard of it. Okay. It's great. It's a great place. But I left three rings there, right? And they called me, said, oh, you left your rings here. I was like, oh, I'm already back in San Francisco. That's a four and a half hour drive, Right. They're like, I'm sorry, sir, we. We'll get them to you right away, but you're gonna have to pay because the post here, we don't have regular mail because we're out in the middle of nowhere. So it's gonna be like $30. I'm like, of course. No problem. Thank you for setting all that up. And then they called me and said, actually, we have one of our people coming to San Francisco to pick up some stuff. Can we just drop them by your place so that you don't have to pay for that? That's amazing. And it was a. A really amazing experience and solidified that place. It was an amazing stay beforehand. But my mistake, they handled like that's our job. Right? It was my mistake. There's nothing. I forgot the rings there. Right. But it really is impactful to be like, oh, your job is to help, even protect me from me. In the example of the luggage cart thing and everything else. Risky or too risky. Empowering staff to waive fees. I think things the same thing. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. Never losing a guest over a parking fee or a cancellation fee. Never using a customer sentiment alone to determine recovery decisions. Absolutely not risky. Go risky. So. But there has to be an emotional intelligence there, because if you accept that the customer is upset at your staff and you feel like your staff did nothing, you can handle those two situations in different things. I think a lot of leaders feel like I need to support my staff, and so to support my staff, I have to correct the behavior of this person. You're like, this person is your customer. Your goal is to get them with another customer and model proper behavior over time to them. This is so, so funny. You brought this up. This is my last episode on my podcast. Yes. And I Talk about how I was interviewing somebody and she was talking about how she made the wrong decision and she didn't made a mistake, but she stuck to it, upset the guests, put her team in a little bit of thing, but they were sticking to it and the boss backed her up. And I said, now, if he were to have said, hey, you know what, you know, this is Aria and make it right with the guest, would you have been upset? She absolutely. It would have ruined. And I disagree. And so I did a whole podcast on it. Because what is that teaching us then? That we are infallible, that we would just are covering each other even though we made a mistake? It takes humility, it takes heart, it takes hospitality. And it's okay to say, you know what, I made a misstep and I'd like to take a step back and it's okay to do that. Yeah, it's okay to be human in those. In those moments. Yes. We have a lot of people who are starting their career. I think you've given a lot of practical advice on potentially how you could stand out early in your career by just being someone who says yes. That's a big thing, I believe as well. What's another piece of advice you would give someone starting in their career? Now? There's so many pieces, but let me just give you another angle of yes. The whole thing that I get to in the keynote is about how we are biologically prone to lean into the negative. And do we go right to that automatic no. But we are also our own customer right now. You might have an opportunity coming to you. And what is your first immediate reaction is, do I have enough time to do. I don't have that degree, I don't have that experience. I don't know anybody in that field. I've never been in that industry. Every reason why we can't do it. I want you to pause and make friends first with the idea. What would that look like? What skills do I have that would help me be successful in this role? Make friends first with the idea or the opportunity before saying no to yourself. I love that. Thank you so much for being my guest. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much. Nice to hang out with you. You too. Risk Management Brick by Brick is brought to you by Trust Layer. Find out how Trust Layer manages risk so that people can build a physical world around us. Head over to Trustlayer I.O. and then make sure to subscribe to Risk Management Brick by Brick on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. On behalf of the Trust Layer team, thank you for listening.