Uncover Your True Talents with LH Dynamics

I was naked and afraid.

I’d just completed my test drive of Luxury Hospitality’s ‘LH Dynamics’ Talent Awareness tool, and it was freakishly accurate in its assessment of who I am.

On the results page delivered at the end of the process, my personal strengths were detailed with a level of accuracy that surprised and impressed me. My carefully crafted robes of professional mystery had been torn asunder.

The Lord’s Prayer

My results card boldly congratulated me for being a ‘Lord’, which is something I shall henceforth be obliged to remind my wife of any time I need to convince her that I am right. For a change. Just this one time. Maybe.

My talent profile was heavily, almost comically, skewed towards the ‘Lord’ profile, to the extent that more than two-thirds of my results fell definitively into that one associated energy.

Further down the page, my results were neatly plotted on LH Dynamics’ energy map. If I wasn’t a numbers person, this pretty picture cemented my regal fate in an undeniable graph that anyone can understand.

It was time to meet up with Julia Rogers, Head of Insight at Luxury Hospitality, to find out whether there was any hope for my professional career.

Honing talents in teams

It’s okay. Because as it turns out, there’s hope for me yet. Julia was a consummate professional and I should have expected nothing less.

As Head of Insight at Luxury Hospitality, Julia is an expert at connecting heads of department and their needs, with the members of their teams, via her cupid’s arrow: the LH Dynamics talent awareness tool. “The tool is the first step in any new client relationship at Luxury Hospitality, we don’t start working with them until they do this,” said Julia.

Once a candidate has completed the LH Dynamics tool, Julia arranges a three-way video call between herself, the candidate, and the client’s head of department. “We do a short debrief with the candidate to help them understand themselves better. We find out what they believe their talents are and reveal what they really are. 

As Julia explained my results to me, it was as though she was holding up a beautiful mirror to me. One that praised my strengths and uplifted my talents. For once, my ugly inner critical self was silenced. I was reminded of my worth. Of my value. It was exciting. And amazing.

Trust and talent in teams

No wonder then that LH Dynamics underpins everything that Luxury Hospitality does. From its base in the Netherlands, the company offers a range of personal and team development programs helping individuals, superyacht crew and staff working for companies in the hospitality space, to achieve greatness within themselves and consequently, within their teams. It’s thoroughly earned its reputation as a world-class talent development company. 

Fundamental to their approach, LH Dynamics helps to shine a light on the energies flowing through the individuals and the teams that they’re in, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that everyone in each team is in flow. “Flow is the path of least resistance; when you’re in a team that is in flow, productivity increases, results improve dramatically, and people have more fun while feeling more connected,” Julia revealed.

Great service industry teams are built when we understand those energies. “We’re born with natural talents and energies that we project around us,” she explained. “When we switch our talent on, it’s like turning on a bright, shining light. It’s felt internally and externally by those around you. When we follow our natural strengths and talents, we enjoy more success and happiness; they seem to flow naturally to us.”

Trust and talent in teams

Based on research and decades of experience, Luxury Hospitality identifies excellent service as the number one factor that impacts a guest’s level of trust in an organisation and, as Julia is keen to stress, “delivering excellent service begins with understanding self. It provides a clear pathway to building trust and flow.” 

LH’s entire approach, therefore, emphasises the importance of personality, talents and traits, or ‘energies’ in the ability of service industry staff to deliver fantastic experiences to guests.

Having an awareness of ourselves and what makes us tick fosters greater awareness of others, and this creates an invisible but sustainable trust amongst each other. “You create a better connection with someone when you understand what energy they are, so it’s a useful communication tool,” Julia added.

Test driving LH Dynamics

Going through the process myself gave me a much clearer understanding of the logic and how it relates to everyday life and work. It involves a relatively straightforward series of multiple-choice questions, one after another, and can be completed within less than twenty minutes. The questions ask how you emotionally respond to or how you personally feel about various challenges, circumstances and work/life experiences. It’s important to answer as honestly as possible, as quickly as possible, without overthinking any one answer. 

Based on your answers, the tool assigns a certain percentage to each energy and the one with the highest percentage determines which of the eight ‘Talent Profiles’ you primarily occupy. The energies vary from ones such as ‘Dynamo’ which dictates more familiar personality traits (creativity, strategy and innovation), to less familiar ones like ‘Tempo’ (order and service), and ‘Steel’ (systems and processes).

Once the process is complete, you receive a report with a detailed explanation of the results to help you understand why you respond to the world (and others) in the way that you do.

Recruiting the best

The LH Dynamics talent awareness tool has become a keystone that recruiters all over the world rely on for recruitment decisions. “We use it in corporate environments, on yachts and in various other environments, helping heads of departments recruit the best person into a team,” Julia explained. 

While explaining and defining my results to me, Julia’s passion for people and what the LH Dynamics tool can do for her clients, was frankly infectious. “Our talents need to be rediscovered!” she said enthusiastically. “We’re born with natural talents, but we’re immediately affected by our parents, schooling and friends, society, religion and politics. It all affects us.”

“The LH Dynamics tool helps you rediscover your talents,” she concluded. “It’s about insight and a greater understanding of self; having that awareness of your talents so that you can be the best that you can be.”