The Courage to Believe
by David Kong
Leadership books encourage us to set ambitious goals. Every organization talks about raising the bar, stretching beyond its comfort zone, and achieving more. Yet after fifty years of leading people, I have come to believe that ambitious goals alone rarely transform an organization. What changes people is a purpose worth believing in and a leader who believes they can achieve what they themselves think is impossible.
I learned this lesson in the late 1980s while serving as the general manager of a Hyatt hotel. After about a year, our performance had plateaued. We had made meaningful improvements, but despite everyone's hard work, we could not seem to move the hotel to the next level. Around that time, I attended an executive program at Northwestern University where I was introduced to the concept of a service guarantee. While many viewed it as a marketing tool, I saw something entirely different. I wondered whether it could become a catalyst for creating a culture of extraordinary service.
When I shared the idea with my operations leaders, the reaction was unanimous. They thought it was unrealistic. Hotels are complex businesses where countless things can go wrong each day. Mechanical failures occur. Rooms are not always ready. Flights are delayed. Expecting every guest to have a flawless stay seemed impossible. As I listened to their concerns, I realized we were asking the wrong question. The issue was never whether we could guarantee perfection. The real question was whether we could become so committed to caring for our guests that we would have the confidence to make such a promise.
Rather than continue the debate, I met with every department in the hotel and asked one simple question: "Do you believe we can become the first hotel good enough to make this promise?" I still remember looking around the room as hands began to rise. I had expected cautious support. Instead, I saw excitement. In that moment, the idea stopped being mine. It became our mission.
For the next two months, every department searched for anything that could jeopardize the guest experience. Problems that had quietly existed for years were suddenly identified and corrected because everyone understood they mattered. More importantly, something else began to happen. Associates stopped thinking only about performing their individual jobs and started thinking about how they could make a guest's day just a little better.
The stories that followed remain vivid in my memory. One guest mentioned during check in that he was not feeling well. Without being asked, a front desk clerk arranged for room service to deliver a bowl of chicken soup with a handwritten note wishing him a speedy recovery. No policy required that. No manager suggested it. She simply cared. Our housekeeping team created another tradition of its own. Whenever they passed guests in the hallway, they greeted them warmly and offered a sincere compliment. These gestures cost nothing, but they made guests feel genuinely welcome. Before long, associates were inspiring one another with similar acts of kindness, and caring became contagious.
The results exceeded anything I had imagined. Guest satisfaction improved dramatically, but so did employee engagement. Associates shared a common purpose, understood that every interaction mattered, and had the authority to recover a guest experience without asking permission. Looking back, however, I realized the service guarantee itself was never the real story.
The real story was that we had given people a purpose worth believing in and challenged them to accomplish something they initially thought was beyond their reach. The hardest part was not asking them to pursue the seemingly impossible. The hardest part was having the courage to believe they could. When they saw that belief in me, they began believing in themselves.
Over the years, I have often reflected on why that experience stayed with me. I have come to believe that people rarely exceed the limits they place on themselves until someone they respect believes they can. That is one of the greatest gifts a leader can give. Not a bigger budget. Not a better strategy. Belief.
Because belief is contagious.