Carnival Cruise Line’s newest ship—Horizon—departs from New York City this week with about 4,000 guests. Also on board are 1,450 crew members who are responsible for keeping those passengers safe, happy, and eager to take another cruise.
Across all of Carnival Corp’s nine cruise brands, more than 120,000 employees and crew members are on the open seas at any given moment. That’s a lot of people to train and motivate to deliver exceptional service to every guest every time. Most company leaders know how hard it is to keep even a handful of employees motivated, which is why Carnival Corp CEO Arnold Donald’s leadership strategies are so valuable.
The Horizon ship is an attention-grabber. Attractions include a Skyride around the top of the ship, IMAX theater, a water park, high-end retail stores, and restaurants by celebrity chef Guy Fieri. It makes a statement, but Carnival Corporation CEO Arnold Donald knows that attractions only take the guest experience so far. The key to Donald’s success is to align employees around a common goal and create the conditions for them to succeed.
I recently had an hour-long conversation with Donald who celebrates his five-year anniversary at the head of the company. In Part I, Donald revealed the mindset that took him from poverty to the head of a $48 billion dollar company. In today’s column, Donald reveals some of the techniques he uses to attract, retain, develop and motivate team members to do more than they ever thought possible.
The Listening Tour. Donald wasn’t looking for the CEO job when it was presented to him five years ago. Although he had served on the Carnival Corp board for 13 years, he was semi-retired. In fact, he had never run a cruise line. Donald was the right leader at the right time. Profits were stagnant when he took the helm. In five years, Carnival’s stock price has doubled, and its market cap has grown from $27 billion to $48 billion.
Donald told me his first act as CEO was to go on a listening tour. “The art of listening is the greatest communication tool of all time,” Donald says. Donald created an atmosphere where employees, guests and people who said they didn’t want to go on a cruise were comfortable giving him the feedback he needed to hear. He listened to the media who had run some negative reports about the industry. He listened to analysts who were following the company. He listened to a wide range of employees including janitors, administrative assistants and cabin stewards.
“If you learn to listen, the world will reveal itself to you,” says Donald. “If you listen to your customers—in our case, our guests—they will tell you how to exceed their expectations. If we listen to our employees whose job it is to deliver in those areas, they will tell you how to deliver what the guest is asking for in a way that’s sustainable for the corporation and gives you the return you’re looking for.”
Donald asked his leadership team three specific questions to elicit their honest thoughts and feedback. The questions were:
1. What does success look like for you and your family?
2. What does success look like for your brand or department?
3. What does success look like for the company?
Donald encouraged the managers to use the same questions with their teams—and to really listen to their responses.
Align Teams Around a Common Mission. The management research is clear on the subject of vision—your employees will be confused and demoralized if they’re unclear about the company’s high-level mission. Donald makes the mission clear at every opportunity.
“Our mission is to exceed guest expectations,” says Donald. “If we don’t exceed expectations, we’re out of business and everyone knows it.”
While exceeding a guest’s expectations is the overarching theme in Donald’s communication strategy, the mantra is supported by four pillars that touch on safety and security, innovating around the guest experience, engaging employees from 150 countries, and providing value to stakeholders like returning double-digit returns to the investment community.
Corporate performance goals are critical, of course, but they don’t provide an inspiring mission. I doubt anyone’s ever applied to Carnival because they’ve always wanted to help the company generate a healthy return on invested capital. As a successful leader, Donald knows that people are motivated to join a company and provide exceptional service when they know a company cares about their dreams and aspirations. And that’s why Donald asks the three questions above.
If you take care of your employees, they’ll take care of you and the corporate performance will take care of itself. According to Donald, “When everyone’s voice is heard, and everyone feels respected, and everyone has an equal voice, it works like magic.”
My conversation with Arnold Donald reminds me that magical customer experiences don’t just happen. There’s usually a leader behind the scenes who creates the ideal conditions for the magic to occur.