If you’ve ever stood in front of your team at the start of a busy season and delivered your best version of “let’s make this our best summer yet,” you already know what happens next. The energy is real for about two weeks. Then it fades. And you’re left wondering what went sideways.
Derek is an operations manager at a coastal hotel. Last summer, heading into peak season, he went all in. Team-building activities before Memorial Day. Gift cards for strong performance throughout the summer. Morning huddles where he brought genuine energy and set the tone for the day. He meant every word of it, and his team appreciated it. That was never the issue.
The early weeks felt promising. People seemed engaged, the huddles had good energy, and one of his front desk leads, Alyssa, was someone he felt especially good about. She’d been with the property for two years, was great with guests, and had the kind of steadiness that made everyone around her better. He made a point to check in with her regularly, and she always said the same thing: “I’m good. Busy, but good.”
When the Energy Stops Sticking
By mid-July, the gift cards were getting polite thank-yous and landing in glove compartments. The morning huddles had settled into a rhythm he didn’t love: he’d bring the energy, the team would nod along, and he started sensing that some of them were just waiting for him to finish so they could get back to the floor. So he pushed harder. More recognition. More enthusiasm. More rally moments in the middle of tough shifts.
Then Alyssa put in her two weeks.
He didn’t see it coming. In the exit interview, she was kind but honest. She told him he was a great manager and that she’d always felt like he cared. But she’d been running on empty since June and never knew how to say that without it sounding like a complaint. Every time he checked in, she said she was fine because that felt like the right answer. She didn’t feel like there was room to say anything else.
That conversation caught him off guard in a way he wasn’t expecting. Alyssa wasn’t disengaged or unhappy with the property. She cared deeply about the work and simply ran out of fuel in an environment that kept asking for more energy without ever addressing what was draining it.
The Missing Piece
By September, he’d lost Alyssa and another longtime team member who left without much explanation. He’d spent the entire summer carrying the team’s morale on his own shoulders, and his own tank was empty. The people he was most worried about losing were the ones who smiled, said they were fine, and quietly made plans to leave. He’d given everything he had to keeping people motivated, and he was starting to realize that motivation itself might not have been the piece that was missing.
This year, he’s standing in the same spot. Same pre-season window. And he’s asking himself a very different question than last year.
What Motivation Can and Cannot Do
Recognition, incentives, and genuine enthusiasm from a leader all matter. They create moments of connection and let people know their work is seen. But these are extrinsic motivators. They come from the outside, create a temporary lift, and when the source stops, the lift stops with it.
This is why motivating hospitality teams through external tools alone has a limit. Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workplace Report found that among employees who report finding their work meaningful, engagement levels are significantly higher, while only 21% of employees globally are engaged at work. Meaning, not external rewards alone, predicts sustained engagement.
Derek felt like he had to keep generating the energy himself because he was the source. And when the source gets tired, the whole system stalls.
What Alyssa needed wasn’t more motivation. She had plenty of that. What she needed was something internal: a sense of her own worth that was stable enough to weather what the season was doing to her, the language to articulate what she was experiencing, and an environment where she felt safe being honest about it before it became a resignation letter.
What Self-Empowerment Actually Means
In our upcoming book, Worth at Work: An Inside-Out Approach to Confident Teams and Exceptional Service (co-authored with Kat Nisson, MLIS, CPCC, releasing June 30), we introduce a concept called the self-empowerment sequence. It’s the foundation for everything else we teach, and it reframes how leaders think about developing their teams.
Here’s the core idea: self-empowerment is recognizing the space between what happens to you and how you respond. Something happens. You react. But between those two moments, there’s a space where you have a choice.
How will I interpret this?
What story will I tell myself about it?
What will I do with this emotionally?
When someone hasn’t developed self-empowerment, they blow past that space without noticing it. The reaction feels automatic. A guest criticizes their work and they spiral. A manager overrides their judgment and they shut down. The “bully voice” takes over, replaying every mistake, reinforcing every insecurity, and there are no tools to interrupt it.
When someone has developed self-empowerment, they start to notice that space. They recognize they have choices within it, and they learn to listen to their “best friend voice” instead: “what can I do differently?” rather than “what’s the matter with me?” The reaction still starts the same way. The difference is what happens next.
What This Means for Leaders Like Derek
Understanding the difference between motivation and self-empowerment shifts the leader’s role in a meaningful way. Derek spent last summer being the source of his team’s energy, and it nearly broke him. When a leader’s role shifts toward helping their team develop self-empowerment, something different starts to happen.
The leader isn’t carrying the weight alone anymore. The team begins developing a sense of their own worth and agency: the ability to recognize what’s happening inside them, to make conscious choices about how to respond, and to access their “best friend voice” when the work gets hard.
A 2026 study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that leaders who support employee autonomy and self-initiation create work environments where employees report higher vitality, lower stress, and reduced emotional exhaustion. Not because the work got easier. Because the people doing it developed a different relationship with it.
What Derek Is Doing Differently This Year
This year, Derek isn’t starting with a speech. He’s starting with a conversation.
He’s asking his team what they need to sustain their own energy rather than asking them to match his and creating regular, low-pressure check-ins where “I’m not fine” is an acceptable answer, and learning to build an environment where people feel equipped to handle what the season brings.
He doesn’t have it all figured out, and he’s still learning. But he’s no longer confused about why last summer’s approach had a limit, and that clarity alone has changed how he shows up.
This doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing overhaul. Even a few small shifts in how you check in with your team, how you respond when someone is struggling, or how you think about your role as a leader will move you somewhere better than where you are right now. If you’re heading into peak season and feel like you’ve already done everything you can think of, start with whatever feels doable.
Ready to Bring This to Your Team?
The self-empowerment sequence, including how to teach it, how to model it, and how leaders like Derek can build it into their team’s daily experience, is one of the core frameworks in Worth at Work. Learn more and order your copy here.
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