HTM FINAL PORTFOLIO
Hello, My name is Hee Woong Lee who is from South Korea and have a passion for becoming a hotelier in the luxury hotel. My ultimate goal in life is to achieve a general manager position at an international hotel such as Marriott, Hilton, or Hyatt. It looks like an unattainable and intangible future that I can take in my hand, but I trust myself that I will become a general manager someday when if I don't lose my belief. For this reason, now I am stacking the precious experience from the front desk office which is the first step to approach my goal.
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I have three values that I believe in my life: Integrity, personal development, and passion. These three components that I continuously keep in mind to become a great hotelier. Indeed, I think three components are essential to developing the requirements for a leader. Furthermore, the reason why I am talking about these three components is I am pretty sure that I may need these traits when I become a leader someday. Authentic leadership which I hope to grow from the inner mind may need these three components as well, because integrity will create an honest relationship and openness by creating trust between me and people, personal development is not only just a developing the knowledge but also it is to look back on myself, understand, acknowledge and develop myself, passion can be described in one sentence, "the tool of inspiration".
THE HTM CONTEXTS
Why am I pursuing a career in HTM?
Since I was in high school, my dream was never changed that I want to become a hotelier. There are three reasons that I pursue to become a hotelier. Firstly, I looked back myself, and my traits and characteristics quite fit the qualification of a hotelier. Particularly, my brightness, familiarity, integrity, smile are close to the qualification of a hotelier. Second, I think the future of hotelier is a very bright job. This is because as globalization continues, the demand for international travel is bound to increase further, and more jobs such as hoteliers will be created to meet the supply. Third, I want to be a general manager of the hotel and a great person who leads one hotel beyond the money and honor. And I want to experience the life of the general manager such as its burdensome and light.
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What are some unique characteristics that made you attracted to HT? Where are you now?
As I mentioned in the professional bio at the introduction, my brightness, integrity, and smile are the characteristics that are regarded as strongness to become a hotelier and these characteristics attracted me to hospitality. However, there are more characteristics that actually helped me to keep work and study in hospitality: patience, courage, and perseverance. I had numerous moments that I wanted to give up, but I never give up to continue my path to approach a goal. For instance, when I was in a hard time getting an internship for HTM 498 by COVID-19, I kept patience, courage, and perseverance to find out a job as much as I took the interview more than 10 times. If I stopped to find any job and failed to take HTM 498, it would depress me more. Fortunately, I finally found a front desk position and it has been my first step to approach a goal which is to become a general manager in a luxury hotel. Surprisingly, it is only the first stone on my path.
How have I adapted to this Industry?
Of course, it was not only my passion to become a general manager that was helpful to me aligning with the hospitality industry, but also there was some tactical way to adapt to this industry. First of all, I tried to indulge in many experiences relating to hospitality through a number of internships or part-time jobs. I already have done a sales and marketing internship, food and beverage internship, and now I am working at the full-time front desk as a clerk. Except for these professional experiences, I also worked a lot in several restaurants such as family restaurants. These experiences helped me to adapt to the hospitality industry while I was learning and attaining the skills, knowledge, and wisdom. For instance, I could train myself how to greet and respond to the guests in an efficient and sophisticated way.
How have I demostrated my passion for HT?
Challenge is the keyword that I could keep my passion for HT. Of course, it was afraid when if I expect something to fail, but I should have to be clever and get smart with this failure. When I failed, I just accepted the situation and focused on how to use it. I keep thinking if I just remain to fail as a fail, then it would not return to me as a chance. This mental attitude holds me to keep my passion for HT. Furthermore, the dream and vision of my path are also one of the triggers that helped me to maintain my passion for HT as well. Before I retire from the HT field, I would like to experience various properties of hotels worldwide. I like to travel and I like to lead people which means I have a dream that I will become a general manager in an international hotel and I will travel to various countries through overseas shifting.
Project Management
When I was a sophomore, there was a huge turning point in my career. I was selected to a member of the LMSA board as an international student liaison. My objective was to grab the international student to appeal to them to our events as much as possible. I think it was one of the huge projects in HTM's career. The beginning of the project was not that easy. There were a number of obstacles because it was the first time to open the international liaison position in LMSA which there were no guidelines or tasks on how to proceed with the liaison project so that I had to create everything myself. Firstly, I tried to investigate the portion of the international students throughout the entire HTM students. I could get the information that there are many Chinese and Tainaness students by the exchange program which was executed by Prof. Blake. Therefore, I contacted him to appeal to the LMSA event to those exchange students. Successfully, he accepted my suggestion and he promised to help me out to connect with the exchange student. However, I still need a person who can assist me to convey my message to the exchange students in their language. Prof. Blake introduced me to one student from the Chinese department and she agreed with my suggestion that she will interpret my words into Chinese and send it to the exchange students through WeChat.
Once I wrote down the message in English, I tried to perform the advantage of joining in the LMSA events such as the opportunity to share the moment with the HTM students. Literally, they could take advantage of the HTM students through sharing a moment, ideas, beliefs, and culture. Actually, it was an advantage for both parties because the point is they could have a moment to connect with each other by sharing the cultural difference. Our event was LMSA Casino Night which was aligned with MESA and I could invite more than 7 international students which was under my goal, but I satisfied with the result because it was my first try to proceed with the project without any guidelines. I was in a hard time someday by a lot of class materials with 15 units and the part-time internship as well that made me control the schedule with the LMSA project. So how I did overcome the burdening situation of a new position? Well, I believed that as much as I tried it will payoff.
Proficiency in People-Centric Settings
It was a story when I was taking LING 305 class. This class was for international students whose second language is English. For this reason, I could meet the students who came from various countries in Asia, and naturally, there were many opportunities to share the project with these international students. The professor did not want to be made up of students from the same country when he was forming a project team, so he mixed up! And the most memorable project for me was the last one I did. This project took 3 weeks and the aim was to create a formal business report. It could be any report from any department but we chose a business report because most of our members were related to a business major. My members were from Taiwan, China, and Japan which were a combination of east Asia including me, South Korea. I was indulging in the project with them and actually, we got an A grade on this project. So how could we balance the cultural difference at the begging of the project? My strategy was to try using their language when I talk with them. It didn't need to be a full sentence or using complex grammar to be closer with them. I could know how to say "hi, bye, thank you, have you eat lunch?" in their language which was simple but the effect was huge when I try to make a bond in a relationship with them.
By using their language, I successfully could make a friendly atmosphere. We are not only different in language but we are also different in belief and political disposition. However, we could overcome this difference by setting the same vision and mission which our mission was to get an A, and our vision was to become the best group that has great cohesion with each other. I could learn that the cultural difference could be mitigated when we are heading in the same direction. It sounds like a little bit work-oriented solution, but I might use this method in the future when I am on a project in the real HTM field. Because, hoteliers are more likely to meet people from various countries as colleagues due to their job characteristics.
Self-aware Leader
There was a big change in my leadership as I implemented many classes and many projects. The biggest change among them was that I, who had been passive, became active. Even though I'm still not good at speaking English and playing a supporting role from behind, I was worse before who refused to suggest my own idea due to the fear of speaking English. Therefore, I chosen one leadership style to overcome my passive characteristic which is the authentic leadership which I already mentioned in the introduction. I think the authentic leadership is similar to take some time for self-examination to get to know the weakness and strengths and acknowledge these traits when I perform my leadership behavior.
I don't have any power to influence and inspire people to using my comprehensive knowledge, great eloquence, or high performance, so that I chosen to inspire the people to using my sincerity and honesty. While I am working as a front desk agent in Wyndham hotel, the atmosphere of working place was negative by the reluctant communication to each other. The biggest question was "Why are they busy blaming each other apart?" Indeed, communication between the colleagues, manager, and director was completely cut off and I needed a way out of this situation. I was not in the position who lead the others, but I could appeal their mind to make them closer to each others. The most thorough thing I've ever kept is to always open listening to them when they were talking about dissatisfaction and complaints. Then, I always answered them with my genuine thought regardless of whether it induce them or not. I said wrong is wrong and right is right. Of course, some of them disappointed me or cheered me, I never losen my belief that 'I must be clear with my mind and it should be always truth', because it is the way of forming the confidence with the people. Now, I am still working on forming the confidence with others, I expect that others will understand and recognize me once I successfully build the trust with them. Afterward, I will try to resolve the each member's misunderstanding and build the cohesive relationship under my confidence.