A decorated combat pilot and officer, attorney, and consultant, Jay offers a unique leadership perspective. He shares his career journey, including the importance of a great team, and why it’s critical leaders take responsibility for ensuring team members have a sense of belonging. He describes his approach to risks and how tackling challenges creates value. He details how he selects his personal board of directors, and the best way to find a sponsor/champion.
A decorated combat pilot and officer, attorney, and consultant, Jay offers a unique leadership perspective. He shares his career journey, including the importance of a great team, and why it’s critical leaders take responsibility for ensuring team members have a sense of belonging. He describes his approach to risks and how tackling challenges creates value. He details how he selects his personal board of directors, and the best way to find a sponsor/champion.
Hello and welcome to D e I advisors in Arizona, nonprofit dedicated to empowering personal success. My name is Lan Elliot on behalf of d e I advisors, and today I'm really thrilled to have Jay Caifa, the Chief Operating Officer for the Americas, for I H G Hotels and Resorts on our show. Welcome,
Jay Caiafa:Jay. Thanks Lan. Great to see you. Great to be
Lan Elliott:here. It's great to see you. Now. We've had the opportunity to work together. I think we started at I H G at a similar time, but you've had a very fascinating and unique career. You graduated from the Air Force Academy. You're a decorated Air Force. I. Combat pilot and officer. You're also a licensed attorney. Having worked at Paul Hastings for a number of years, you have a really unique path to leadership for our industry. So I'm really excited if you could please share with our audience your career journey and some of the inflection points that. That you experienced along the way, and perhaps if there's a certain factor that contributed to your success?
Jay Caiafa:Sure. Yeah. When you say it that way, I think back and realize that none of my five year plans have ever worked out in any way, shape, or form. And I think that's okay. I think I've had a great career that way. I've learned a lot. I've met a lot of people. But you're right, I didn't start off in the hospitality world. I started off almost as far away from it as you can get. When I was a kid, I saw the movie Top Gun. Obviously the first one. The original one. Now people know it again. And I always wanted to be a military pilot. Obviously Top Gun was a Navy thing. I didn't want to be on ships, so the Air Force seemed like the right way to go and the Air Force Academy was an incredible school, a great opportunity. And so I took a chance and went that way. Absolutely amazing career in the Air Force, but one of the things that taught me was that nothing that we have planned is set in stone. When I got my wings, it was the beginning of 2001. We were flying air shows around the world. It was a great job for a, 23, 24 year old guy being able to fly around and poke holes in the sky and enjoy life. And next thing I know I'm flying over Midtown Manhattan with trade centers smoldering, trying to get planes to land. And then after that, 300 days a year in the Middle East, flying combat. Not at all what we thought we were signing up for. Not at all what we had expected. But I'll tell you, you talk about an inflection point. That's one of those moments in my career, being in the Middle East, being in some of the worst places on earth, but being surrounded by great teammates. That I realized that the team is so much more important than just the job or the place or the location. We had some of my fondest memories in some of the worst places on Earth because I love my team. And it was a group of folks that just had that bond and we could get through it and we had a job to do, but found a way to laugh and have fun. But yeah. So my first inflection point in my career happened in 2004. I was actually diagnosed with acid reflex heartburn. The Air Force hadn't approved Nexium for pilots, and so they basically gave me a choice of flying a desk for two years or having an honorable discharge and going and doing something else with my life. And I took door number two, decided to go to law school. Didn't really know what I wanted to be when I grew up. So law school seemed like a great idea. Really enjoyed my time at Duke Law School, business School joint degree. Knew I didn't wanna be a lawyer forever. But there was something about that practice of law that I felt like I had to at least try. I had to pass a bar, I had to be a lawyer. I didn't wanna be a litigator. So actually, I went into your world land. I went on the deal side. I be went into commercial real estate finance working with developers and banks, trying to figure out how to get deals done. And I started about a week before Lehman collapsed in 2008, which was absolutely terrible timing. But hey, that's life. My firm laid off a bunch of folks. I was lucky enough to keep my job. But our job changed. We went from development and building to workouts and foreclosures and leasing and. All the things I never really wanted to do. But it gave me enough time and I guess the benefit of being willing to work pretty hard, I got to plan in some startups and I started working with a number of startups. I actually ran a biotech startup for a little while. Really got the business bug. Decided that I wanted to follow that, but I also knew that I didn't really have enough experience to be great at it. Being in the startup taught me that I had a lot to learn. B School was great, but it wasn't enough. So I went to probably one of the best learning laboratories I could have thought of. I went to Banning company and became a consultant, and basically for the next three years, worked in private equity mostly Across a number of different disciplines. Never worked in the same area twice. We did things like credit bureaus. We did plastic packaging for fruits and vegetables. We did all these diligences on companies you'd never think of, but it taught me really how to think through problems, how to approach something that I didn't know the answer to in an efficient way. But again, with a team, that's what I really missed. In law. In law, I was by myself all the time. At Bain, you're with a case team, so same thing. You're, you might be working until two in the morning, but you're working with four other people and you're finding a way to laugh and have a blast and have an impact. But I didn't wanna, I didn't wanna be a consultant for the rest of my life. And that's actually what led me to I H G. I had someone that was working with me on an externship to I H G and they introduced me to Ricardo Lopez, who's no longer with I h G. But brought me into the strategy world and I realized that hospitality was an incredible place to really build a career. Something I think that's gotten lost in the last few years that people haven't necessarily seen, but there aren't a whole lot of careers where you look at some of our leaders, That have started off as GMs Keith, going from a GM all the way up to a global c e o or some of our owners who came to this country with, the money, they could fit in their pockets that now own dozens of hotels and they've changed the generational wealth for their family incredibly. And I saw that and I just fell in love with it. It's a people business. And it's been it's been a really fun ride for the last almost 10 years.
Lan Elliott:No, you've had a phenomenal career. Just in the time that I've known you at I h G. Your trajectory has been really incredible, so it's great that I'm really glad that I had the chance to work with you like that. Lemme ask you this. Oh, thank you. You have so many wonderful talents, but was there something as you were coming up in your career that you thought, you know what, this is a skill. I need to hone a little bit better, that's going to make me more successful. This is something that I need to improve.
Jay Caiafa:Yeah, I think, one of the things in hindsight reflecting on my career that was actually probably the most valuable that people take for granted was actually the training I got in law from a writing perspective. I think that there are so many brilliant people out there that just cannot communicate effectively. And in business, whether it's hospitality or anywhere else, being able to understand your audience and find a way to connect. But to also deliver the information that you have in a way that's compelling, that can be, digested and used was huge. And in law, actually, it's probably one of the only things that I'm glad that I learned frankly, as a recovering attorney was how to write effectively. Clear, succinct. I think a lot of folks take that for granted, just the communication side more broadly. One of the things that I always tell people and it's not my own idea, it's a quote that I've heard, but they say, if you can't write it in a sentence, you can't explain it in an hour. And that's the point that we have to all get really good at is how do I take something that's complex and make it understandable, make it actionable and really have an impact. So that's one. I think the other one that I tell people, especially from a strategy perspective, you gotta love talking to yourself. It's this in like intellectual curiosity, this desire to get past the question. And I think so many of us rely on someone else to ask us the hard questions when we've gotta be asking ourselves that the whole way through. If you don't have this like little voice on your shoulder saying why? Why not that? Why this? What's really the problem? Where's the no? How do I get past the, no, what's your next objection gonna be? So I think that too, that, taking that intellectual curiosity and turning it into something that you can actually Have an impact with just, pushing yourself to get past the first answer and then being willing to tell your boss, Hey, I got the answer to your question, but by the way, you asked me the wrong question, what you should have asked me was this. And I also got an answer to that for you. And I think some people just really stay in the bounds of the initial question a little bit too long.
Lan Elliott:I think that's so interesting and it's a different twist. A lot of people have mentioned curiosity, but not in that same way to push past the ba basic question and figure it out. I use it a little bit in, in negotiations when I'm talking to someone and I ask a question and they answer. With something that doesn't quite fit. Then I know there's like maybe three more questions I need to ask until I get to the heart of things. But it, it's funny, I don't translate that to other parts of my life. So it's really interesting that you've learned to, to apply that in lots of different ways.
Jay Caiafa:I think, especially in, in, in development and negotiation when you're working through those areas, being able to really see both sides before you get there. Makes such a difference, makes such a difference to be able to be not only so that you're prepared, but you're also empathetic. You understand why they see it that way. It helps you get past the no, it helps you get to the right answer. That works out for both sides.
Lan Elliott:Absolutely. So very true. Especially in negotiations. Let's broaden our discussion a little bit to how you overcome obstacles in general, how you approach a problem. Can you share how you first process it? What do you do first? How do you motivate your team when they're tackling a challenge?
Jay Caiafa:Yeah. I think the first piece of motivating yourself and motivating your team is understanding why. Why are you doing this? What is the point of this challenge? There's plenty challenges that we can all take on. There's obviously not a shortage of challenges in the world. The question is, why this one? Why does it matter? And the reason why I try to think about that is because I also want our teams to take on kind of a fail fast mentality. So the moment they're in the challenge far enough, and they realize that the juice isn't worth the squeeze anymore. We've gotta fire ourselves. We've gotta go work on a different challenge then and move through it. So it's interesting. I was talking with somebody the other day and we were talking a little bit about Amazon's approach. To projects in general and at one point, and, regardless of whether or not you like Jeff Bezos, good, bad, indifferent, whatever some of his business ideas have actually been pretty solid. And this one in particular I really liked. So what he would have people do is at the start of a project is instead of going through the entire project and at the end having comms or communications write your PR statement and the one page FAQ on why this matters, he wanted everybody to do that at the beginning of the project. So before you even start, write your PR B bullets, what is this gonna accomplish? What does solving this mean to us? What does it mean? In our case, what does it mean to our owners? What does it mean to our guests? What does it mean to our shareholders? Is that PR bullet compelling? Because if it's not, you should probably just stop there, right? Because chances are, it's never gonna be as compelling as when we start. But really getting people to the why does this work matter? Where does it fit in? What are we trying to accomplish? And then to me, I've always looked at challenges as a fun. Problem to solve, right? Anybody can do the easy work. No, nobody's celebrated or put on a statue for doing the easy thing. They're celebrated for doing the hard things. That's where all the value is. That's where I think we really make a difference in our careers. So framing it less is a challenge, is more as an opportunity. How can we solve this? And then there's lots of tactical ways that you go about trying to figure out how am I gonna approach this. One of the things I learned in my time in consulting that I think has served really well is something that Bain calls answer first. Some of the other consulting firms called something different. The Pyramid principle, I think is what they call it at McKenzie, maybe, or bcg. They'll kill me if I get it wrong. It doesn't matter, but it's all the same thing, which is start with an answer. The answer doesn't have to be right, but you wanna make your answer complete enough where as you go seek to prove out your answer, whether it's right or wrong, you're gonna find the right part, right? And then that helps give you something that you can go actually break into chunks and go address. Cuz sometimes the stuff is really overwhelming. And then I think the last thing I would say land and this is one of the things that I love about being a pilot. I loved about being in consulting. I love about being at I H G. I never approached challenges by myself. It's, I think we all want to accomplish it by ourselves, but to me, the best way is to build a team around you that's got a diverse set of perspectives, a diverse set of experiences that sees the world in a different way and will help you break through some of those things that. You don't even see half the time you're just missing the point. And so being able to build a great team, which I think is what is probably my favorite part of I h g, is has been huge in getting through any of those challenges, is that we never do it alone. I
Lan Elliott:love so much about what you said there, first asking the why are we doing this and failing fast? I thought that was a really great concept. And then switching gears, if it's not working right, you need to do that sooner rather than getting to the end. And then I also loved having the answer first, or I think we called it in high school science, have a hypothesis of what you're trying to solve for. Yep. And it doesn't work out right. Keep testing against that and then building a team because no one person's gonna be. As powerful as everybody's collective efforts put together.
Jay Caiafa:So no question. No question. I love that you're digging back to high school science,
Lan Elliott:right? Yeah. It said a hypothesis to me.
Jay Caiafa:That's right. No, that's what they call it. Hypothesis driven hypothesis driven problem. Solvings. Yeah.
Lan Elliott:There's a word I haven't used in a few decades. So moving on to taking risks. And one of the things I say sometimes when we're working on difficult challenges, and I'll say to the team is, this is not rocket science. It's not life or death. We're not doing open heart surgery, but you've actually been a combat pilot. So when we talk about taking risks, you actually have been in a situation unlike a lot of us, where it is life or death. How do you approach taking calculated risks and is there anything from your prior roles that translate into the business world? And maybe could you share an example of a success and how you mentally prepared yourself and your team to take a chance on something? Sure.
Jay Caiafa:Yeah. I think, whether in combat or in business, It's always gonna be a balance of courage and judgment, right? You can't have one without the other and expect to be successful. Maybe you can get lucky, but it's always a balance of being willing to do something courageous that's outside of your comfort zone, but also having the judgment to realize if I jump off my house, it's probably gonna end badly for me. We've gotta put some other things into here. So I think, you know what I've learned. Primarily through my time in the Air Force Flying Combat is that I have to make sure that if we're gonna take a risk, number one, it's worth it. Number two, I've created an environment that has the psychological safety where people feel comfortable bringing their whole selves and making sure that they are willing to share their perspectives, even if it's maybe a little bit scary, right? Because now we're all operating a little bit closer to the edge. I need everybody in that room on that team to be willing to get pretty close to the edge with us. Otherwise, we just don't, we don't really do it. But again, it all goes back to the why are we gonna take this risk? It's not just about taking a risk for the sake of taking a risk but it is about being willing to put your hand up and say, I'd like to give it a shot. I have confidence in the team that I've built and my skillset. That's the judgment side of it. To say, let's take a chance on this. And you know what? Failure in the business sense. I think so many people see that as a bad word. It's only a bad word if you're incapable of succeeding or if you just fail at the wrong things too frequently. But taking a risk on something and it falling short done correctly is not a bad thing. It's actually a good thing in many ways. You get to learn from your mistakes as opposed to just wonder. Would this have ever worked? But I think you've gotta know what the risk is, right? So when I get with my team and we start thinking about what do we want to do? We want to try something different, we gotta, we're gonna put this in pilot. The first thing we ask is what can go wrong if we get this wrong? We just come out of the box. We're just wrong. What does that mean? How big of a deal is this? And for a lot of things you'll realize, you know what, it's actually not that big of a deal. So I don't need to get to a 95% confidence level before I press go. I just need to get to that 60% confidence level. But other things, cybersecurity, for example, credit card security, a lot can go wrong if we don't get that right. If I'm gonna take a risk in that world, my confidence level has to be 98, 90 9% can be catastrophic to people if we're wrong. So that kind of balances the danger and then you can set people up to, to be comfortable around that. In the hospitality world. There hasn't been a whole lot of risks that we've had to take that were that dangerous. I think going into it, people probably feel that way. Launching a new brand, trying to do something like coming outta covid and removing, full stay over housekeeping. Like those are things that pre Covid none of us would've ever talked about, right? We would've never thought that you could do that, but you start calculating what's really the risk if we get this wrong? What's the benefit if we get it right? What can this do to help owners? What can it do to help the team in order to get, all right, so let's take a chance figure out where the pressure points are. I think that's, that was one of the best parts going through Covid. I think it gave us all an opportunity to really question things and take some risks and going through that, if that makes sense.
Lan Elliott:Absolutely. And I think everyone was going through it together because no one, not even Mr. Marriott, who's been in the business for a really long time. Had experience dealing with what our industry faced in those early days of spring 2020 I also thought it was very interesting that as an industry we really came together and leaned on one another to, because nobody knew, and leaders were reaching out across companies to, to ask, what are you doing? How are you handling it? Yep.
Jay Caiafa:Not just across the companies, I mean across industries. The number of phone calls that we had with our partners at like the Cleveland Clinic. So what do you think of UV lights? What do you think? What, how should we handle this? It's amazing how those businesses that tried to stay open all started talking to each other. And saying what can we borrow from each other? What can we learn? What's working for you? It was pretty neat. It was pretty neat.
Lan Elliott:Yeah. It was, I don't wanna do it again, but, no, I don't wanna do it again. But it was, it's an amazing thing to live through during our lifetime. Absolutely. Let's talk a little bit more about, Personal boards of directors, we've talked about this together. And how having a personal board of director can act as your own personal support system. So how do you identify who you include in your personal board of directors, and what kinds of things do you rely on them for?
Jay Caiafa:Yeah, it's a great question. It's something that's been thrown around, almost buzzworthy wordy to people like, oh, who's on your personal board, Rick? But it, I actually think it really does matter. They. You should plan for it. The way that I think a company plans for a board of directors, right? When you look at it, you don't want it to just be friends that look like you and that think like you. All that does is reinforce your own personal biases about these decisions, and it's such a mistake. But instead, thinking about people who maybe have a completely different working style than you do are at a different point in their lives than you are, have worked in different industries than you have. To me, having a personal board of people with that diversity really makes a difference because when I come to them in my life, and many of'em are now close personal friends as well. They didn't all start off that way, but when you come to them with, man, we're going through, like during the pandemic, we're going through all this social unrest across our country. I've got a really diverse team across my organization. I'm thinking about talking about this. What do you, how does that hit y'all? What do you think that feels like to people? Am I thinking about this the right way? Different jobs that we've taken on. Some of the jobs I've taken on at I H G have been great, but I took them on with no real experience in that space. To your point about taking risks, I had to. Talk to me, like how would you do this? This is a mini career transition going from strategy into hotel lifecycle or into the COO role. Where are the watchouts? What should I be focused on? So I think it's really important to build a board of directors with people that, number one, care about you as a person, right? The, at its core, they have to care about you. Number two, are willing to give you bad news. I think so many people pick the folks that they know will treat them with kid gloves. I don't want that on mine. I want somebody to tell me, Jay that's nuts. I don't know why you're thinking that, but that's a bad idea. Don't do that. Don't do that. Or, I know you're scared, but you need to just toughen up and give it a shot. You'll be able to do this. You want folks that are gonna make you feel a little bit uncomfortable sometimes. But that's also why it's really important to build that trust and that, you've heard me say it a few times in the way that I run my teams, but that psychological safety, do we, do, we trust each other enough to give each other real advice, real feedback, not just easy feedback. And it changes. It changes over time. It's not like you meet'em all at one meeting. You use'em for different things. But I think it's, I think it's super important and a very underutilized I don't know. Thing that you can lean on in your career.
Lan Elliott:Absolutely. Great support system to be able to have people, to bounce ideas off of people that you trust, and like you said, people who will tell it to you straight who aren't gonna sugarcoat it for you.
Jay Caiafa:As you get more and more senior, you have fewer and fewer of those people in your business that are willing to do that. Yeah. You start getting into a position where it starts feeling. Not lonely per se, cuz you're around a lot of people, but it's lonely in the sense that your number of peers is starting to shrink a little bit. And the decisions that you're making are impacting the people that you would normally go to for advice right now. So it helps to find people that are also just non-judgmental that there's no, it's a safe room. You can talk about things openly. Absolutely.
Lan Elliott:I wanted to switch gears a little bit and talk about champions, also known as sponsors and advocates, because a lot of times we talk about mentors and having a mentor is wonderful, but having a champion to pick one of those three words is really important. It's not some it's not something I understood early in my career. But it's really to have the people who are gonna speak up on your behalf when you're not in the room, when there are opportunities or promotions that are out there. And I know that i h g has developed a formal sponsorship program, if I'm not mistaken. How important is it to find champions and how do you go about it if your company doesn't have a formal program?
Jay Caiafa:Yeah, you're right. It's something I was like, elan I really never contemplated this idea of champion sponsors. I, I thought mentor was the overarching umbrella and it's really not. There is a big difference between somebody who's willing to invest time in you. Versus somebody who's willing to invest personal credibility in you. And they are really very different things. You're right at I H G I love the fact that we've started to formalize this. We have a program called the Ascend Program that we launched. And really this started from a de and I board perspective where we knew that we had folks that were probably under frankly, In positions in the company where they weren't as visible to folks. They were underrepresented across our company, but super talented. And we knew that the best way to start creating this momentum in the company for people to do this was to role model it. And so that's how we started. And I was part of the first cohort of sponsors now in my second cohort with Ascend. And it's been fantastic. But you're right, there's a lot of companies that don't do it. It's not formalized. Frankly, even I think just generally, I don't know what it's been like in your life, in your career, but I find. That over formalization sometimes takes away from the true benefit of being a sponsor or having a champion or an advocate. But I think, for me, in my career, when I look back and I think about the folks that have really championed my career, the way that I think I kinda heard an echo there for a second, sorry. The way that I think you start developing those relationships is number one, you want to be impactful for them. You wanna help them improve their, stature and standing as well. You wanna build trust with them. You wanna show them how you can help, how you're eager to learn how you wanna move through. You wanna be somebody that folks believe you will just get stuff done, you know how to work across the organization. You can have impact in other projects. It usually, at least in my experience, starts small. If it's not formalized at your company, you don't wake up one day and say, Hey, land, I'd love you to be my champion. This is the job I want and this is the next job I want. Can you please go advocate for me? It's usually, Hey, I've worked on some projects, we've overlapped a couple times. I really like the way you lead. I really see how you're doing this. In many cases they start as mentorships. But again, I think it always goes back to. The best way to have a sponsor or a champion is to give them something that they can clearly advocate behind. And to me, that always goes back to being able to show impact in the company, willingness to put in the extra hours sometimes, cuz some, sometimes you need to sign up for that extra project to be able to get in front of the right people and take that chance. Be willing to raise your hand, be willing to take that risk. But it's just cultivating relationships. It's not I don't know that there's a, an obvious playbook in my mind. It's try to get involved. Try to always be helpful, be a good team player. And as you see people that have the experience in the areas of the business that you're interested in, or have the tools on their toolkit that you know you don't have yet, or that you're really eager to learn, you connect and you work through. And I think you've gotta be willing to get outta your comfort zone too. One of the funny things that I think a lot of people are afraid to talk about sometimes is what their ambitions really are. And for people to advocate for you, they need to know that too. Especially because where you think your path goes, you may not be planning it the right way, right? You might think this is the next job I want, but really, if you wanna be c e o, these are the three jobs you're eventually gonna have to have. And that one's not one of'em. So let me help you navigate to that. But I've met a lot of people that are I've had to pull out of them, Hey, someday I want to be an svp. Someday I want to be a C E O. Great. That's great. We can start with that. Let's have a conversation about what that's gonna take. It might take 10 years, it might take 20 years, but let's have a real conversation about it. But you've gotta put yourself out there. You gotta be willing to put in that emotional work, I think as well.
Lan Elliott:Yeah, I think that's, I think that's so true, and I know when I've talked to some of the people on my team, when we first started talking about where do you wanna go with your career, I was surprised. It was a really uncomfortable conversation for a lot of people. And I don't know if it was because they hadn't really given it a lot of thought, or because they were scared to say the words out loud, like it was going to be carved on their tombstones. It's, we need something to shoot for and something to help. Get you towards. And so how do I help you in that direction of, I don't know which direction you want to go in. So I think it's so important to be able to articulate what you want.
Jay Caiafa:Absolutely. And even if you don't know what the job is I see so many people, I just wanna be a director. I, I wanna be a vice president. Okay of what? In what is it that draws you to that? Do you actually understand what that is? Do you realize the amount of muck that you get into once you start getting into some of this, some of these other jobs, do you realize you're not gonna be able to do this anymore? But it's amazing that usually when I have those career conversations, people talk to me about what they want to do next, not about what they want to do. Yeah. And it's, I think that's a distinction, especially if you're building with folks that are gonna be willing to advocate for you. You're building a lifetime relationship with them. They don't advocate for one job. They become part of, maybe part of your board. They are, they're there for you long term. So they can't help you if all you're thinking about is near term. That makes it a lot harder.
Lan Elliott:Absolutely. I wanted to jump into a related conversation, which is around belonging, because in past interviews we've talked a lot about inter inclusive cultures, or D E I. Initiatives, but you've had leadership roles in the military and in business and you've talked about the need for team members to not just feel included, but to be, go beyond that and have a sense of beyond belonging, which is the new thing. I'm starting to hear more, which is D E I b with belonging. Can you share more about that and what are some of the key things that leaders or managers of teams can do to help their teams feel like they belong? Team members. Yeah,
Jay Caiafa:I think it's such an important distinction. Teams are different when you feel as if that's where you were meant to be. Not that you were just invited, not that you're a part of the team, but that this is where you were meant to be. And in the military, I think one of the things that you and I have talked about in the past is I hear a lot of people talk about, Giving 130% right and feeling Hey, I've got this secret reserve where I can somehow tap into that and give more than my a hundred percent. And that's always been one of my least favorite sayings. And I'm gonna tie this back to belonging, I promise. But the reason why is the moment we believe that there is something beyond our capacity that allows us to somehow plug into this secret reserve. It takes the responsibility away from the leaders. To allow people to be their best selves. Because when I think about teams where somebody doesn't feel like they belong, or even worse, doesn't feel like they're included, one of these non-inclusive teams, then they spend a lot of their energy being somebody that they're not, and I don't care who you're talking to, that does take energy that takes. Mental energy, emotional energy, physical energy in a lot of cases to do that. So if I'm looking at my team members and I need their a hundred percent right, and they're spending 30% of that wearing a mask, trying to pretend to be somebody, they're not even on their best day, I'm getting a C minus out of them, right? And so in the military, the way we thought about that is if I'm in an emergency situation, I've got a crew and everybody's got a job, my job is to get them home. My job is to make sure that they can all do their job to the best of their ability. If I'm panicking and that's taking up 20% of my bandwidth, that means it's taking up 50% of their bandwidth. And now I've got a, babbling child helping me. It can't work. I've gotta absorb their stress, I've gotta let them fit in. So in the corporate world, to me, that really becomes part of this idea of belonging. If I am sapping your energy. By forcing you to be in an organization where you can't operate the way you are at your best because you're stressed about your kids, because you're stressed about your spouse because you're worried that people won't accept you because of, your diversity or your op opinion. If you create that environment, then nobody's operating at their capability and as a team you'll never succeed. So to me, whenever we talk about building teams, we deliberately. Hire on my teams. People with different backgrounds, different perspectives, different experiences, but we all tell them the same thing when they join the team. We need you to be high integrity that we can get past anything else, but we can't get past people who are who break trust. You have to put the team first. We win together. We lose together. Yeah. And third, you've gotta be, you gotta be humble. Everybody has something to learn and everybody has something to teach. If you can get through those things, and we create this team where people feel as if they belong right away, I'm already getting people to perform better than they have in the past without even changing them. They, I, they just get to be themselves. So how do you do it? You've gotta role model it. You've gotta hire for it. You've gotta make sure that the people that you have on your team, Believe in that environment. This isn't something you can fake. It's not something that you put on a sign and hanging on the wall and everybody suddenly does it. Like you've gotta, you've gotta believe it. You've gotta see it, you've gotta be passionate about it, and you've gotta role model it. For me personally, on my team, if I'm gonna leave work early, cause I need to pick up my kid, I don't try to sneak out the back door. I yell from the treetops, I'm going to pick up my son. I'm gonna get all my work done. I'll finish it later. That's not, but you know what? I want people to feel comfortable that they can do that. I want people to feel comfortable that they can bring their whole selves to work. The way I try to do that is I bring my whole self to work. And so people hear a lot about my family, they hear about my kids, they hear about my fears. But that's part of building trust.
Lan Elliott:It's really wonderful way to think about it and to carry it through. From your experience in the military where as you mentioned, it is life or death, you are trying to bring everybody home safely, but it also translates so beautifully into how you treat your team members.
Jay Caiafa:No question. No question. Team first. Yes.
Lan Elliott:One of my favorite questions during our interviews is what advice would you give your younger self? And you've had a few different life in your career, but what advice would you give to 22 year old Jay?
Jay Caiafa:Yeah, I think that's interesting. Some of that I probably can't say publicly. I think I can erase some of the mistakes I made. But we won't share those, I think generally. Number one, enjoy the ride. I think with every opportunity that you have, especially when you're younger, sometimes we're so ambitious or we're so ready to get to the next rung, that we don't take a second to really think about what am I getting from this moment in my career? We think a lot about have I done enough for this job so that I can then move on? But we rarely, very rarely ask ourselves, has this job done enough for me? Have I learned what I need to learn here? Have I made the mistakes I need to make here? The more senior you get the bigger deal, those mistakes are, it's good to make'em when you're starting off. But I've had so many folks that are very rigid in, this is where I'm gonna be in five years and 10 years by 40, I'm gonna do this by 50. I'm gonna do this. And it's great to have those generally in your head of where your ambitions are, but don't get so caught up in the map. Look outta the windows, enjoy the ride and make sure that you're taking what you need to take from there. It's funny, I was actually just at a concert the other night. We were hosting some folks at Taylor Swift and one of the things that I was laughing about with my wife is I looked around almost all of the kids. We're watching this concert through their cell phone while they're recording things. And I almost feel like that's how we've gotten with work sometimes where it's, you're missing the real part of it. It's, yes, the resume bullets matter and that's really important, but the relationships are what persevere. The experiences are what really matter. And that's away from the screen. Stop taking in your life, just looking at the screen and enjoy the moments. That's
Lan Elliott:great advice to your younger self. So as I suspected, cuz I always learned something new when I'm with you, Jay, which is one of the reasons I love talking with you, but, One final piece of advice for our audience, if you would, and keeping in mind that our mission is around empowering personal success, what advice would you give to women or underrepresented groups who are looking to advance their careers?
Jay Caiafa:Yeah, I think first off, what I would say is understand how much value your differences actually bring to the table. And recognize the fact that. Even though there are things in this world that may be stacked against you, and there may be some unconscious bias out there, and there may be all these other things, don't ever let that stop you from realizing that you're the person in power here, that you've got the ability to really make an impact and change. I think. This is also where it gets back to things like the personal board of directors. I know it's hard. I've been in meetings. I was actually laughing with somebody I'm on a board with, outside of I h G, about when they were asked to join a board of H B C U and they're white, and they were saying that for the first time in my life, I'm getting to these board, this board meeting, I realize I am the only white male in the room. And an hour later I was exhausted. Like I, and that's the first time I realized, how this impacts people on my team every day. And what I would say is when you think about your personal board of directors, I know how exhausting it may be and what I'm about to recommend. Make sure they don't all look like you. Make sure that they, that's true for all of us. We all have that role to play. But I would also say just be ambitious and find those allies in the company that recognize how powerful you are and the difference that you can make. It's not always easy. But I think the last piece of advice I would give, and this is why that confidence is so important. If you find yourself in a business where, You can't do that and you feel like those ceilings are there and you don't have advocates that work for you, you're in the wrong business. Come work for somebody else because there are still a lot of companies out there that don't, they haven't gotten it. They may say it, they may talk the talk, but there are other companies that live it and believe in it. And I promise you, when you find one of those, your best self is just sitting there a moment away.
Lan Elliott:Amazing way to end. Thank you so much, Jay. Amazing interview. Thank you so much for sharing a lot of insights, which you've gained along the way. And for our viewers, if you've enjoyed this interview with Jay, I hope you'll join us at d e i advisors.org for other great interviews with hospitality leaders. Thank you.
Jay Caiafa:Thanks.