Resilience and the Hanoi Hilton

A guest services call center agent at a luxury hotel in Tokyo told me how bad she felt when unable to satisfy a guest’s request and asked me how she could have done better. The guest had called to make a dinner booking for eight people in one of the hotel’s exclusive restaurants on a specific date. The restaurant had limited availability because of previous bookings.

She offered options—a different date, separate tables, and a private room with a view for a modest fee—all to no avail.

The guest was upset and hung up. She felt bad despite having done everything right. What else was she supposed to do? Boot other guests who had reserved to make room?

Guest services call center agents have one of the most challenging jobs in the hotel. The range of requests is limitless. A guest once called and asked for advice on proposing to his fiancée because he was so nervous about not getting it right. What would you have advised?

Agents must field complaints with aplomb, sometimes from unreasonably irate guests with inflated senses of entitlement. Other complaints are warranted, and agents must have the courage to make it right—on the spot, without judgment, and without having to ask for time to investigate or escalate to a supervisor.

Sometimes, agents find themselves caught between a demanding guest and intransigent hotel staff and must nonethelessserve as the guest’s advocate and vigorously confront their colleagues.

The psychological pressure can be immense. Only the most resilient last in the job.

Bureaucrats operate in a world of black and white. Guest services agents reside in the grey.

Bureaucrats decide according to rules and regulations. Guest services decisions are principle-driven.

Use common sense. Empathize. Just tell the truth. Never put a burden or responsibility on a guest. Make things right even when it is no one’s fault. Advocate for the guest, not the hotel. Decide on the spot, even if you might get it wrong. Never make a guest wait for a callback if it is avoidable.

And do the right thing. Always do the right thing.

Then there are the tactics. The fastest way to calm an irate guest who makes a complaint is to become an ally of the guest against the hotel and mirror the guest’s level of dissatisfaction if not outrage.

“That’s outrageous! That’s not how we do things at this hotel! What can I do to make this right?”

When guests see an agent as no adversary but an ally who will fight on their behalf, they calm down and allow the agent to fight in their stead.

Yet even with principles to govern decisions and tactics to guide actions, guest service agents often burden themselves with undue psychological pressure. Like the agent mentioned above, they regret their past failures or fear making the wrong decision and suffering the wrath of the guest, their colleagues, or their bosses, even though such fears are not always warranted. Principles and tactics are not enough. A way of thinking is required.

So, I asked a simple question to one group of guest services agents.

“How many of you have studied philosophy?”

Only one had but remembered nothing from the required course at her university. In any case, studying philosophy when young is an exercise in theory, not practice. Philosophy means most to those who have lived and experienced more of life.

So, I taught them the wisdom of the Roman Stoics, who reached conclusions similar to those of Zen Buddhists.

“No one exists in the past. No one exists in the future. We all exist only in the present—in the now. What we choose to do in the now is all that matters.

“In the now, there is no shame, guilt, or regret. These are emotions attached only to memories. In the now, there is no anxiety, stress, worry, despair, or fear. These are emotions attached only to an imagined future.

“We humans are plagued by a sense of time. We are plagued by history and memories. We are plagued by our ability to imagine possible futures. Our minds constantly pull us into the past or project us into the future. Our minds rarely allow us to exist only in the now—if ever.

“There is only your morality, values, and principles in the now. You act in accordance with them, or you don’t. You either have a sense of them, or you don’t.

“There is only doing the right thing now, and as long as you do, you can take solace in your actions. Maybe you will get it wrong, and that’s ok because time is always flowing, and there is always another now.”

This is what the group needed to hear. They fell silent as they considered what I said. One woman put her face into her hands, looked up, and said, “Yes, this is so true!” Others nodded in agreement.

They understood that to be resilient and successful in their jobs they must reside only in the now.

United States Naval Aviator James Stockdale spent seven years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam — in the notorious “Hanoi Hilton” prison — a hotel of a peculiar sort. His captors tortured him fifty-five times.

Before Stockdale deployed in 1965, his philosophy professor gave him two books containing the teachings of the Roman-era Stoic philosopher Epictetus—The Enchiridion, which he committed to memory, and The Discourses of Epictetus.

Stockdale attributed his resilience and ability to endure those seven years to what he learned from those books. These days, Roman Stoicism is part of the United States Naval Academy curriculum.

If James Stockdale could endure seven years in the Hanoi Hilton by living only in the now, surely these guest services agents can endure the rigors of their work at a luxury hotel in Tokyo by doing the same. Perhaps many of their colleagues can as well, regardless of role.

Perhaps the people on your staff can too.

And maybe, just maybe, perhaps so can you.

NOTE: The Enchiridion is only thirty pages long and is widely available in translation in English, Japanese, and many other languages. James Stockdale has written many books and papers on the philosophy of Epictetus and resilience under the most extreme circumstances. His writing is not hard to find.