Business Leaders interview: Shon Jones-Parry

How did you develop your leadership skills and how would you define your leadership style?

I think this is something that is constantly evolving throughout my career by being inspired and learning from some of the great leaders I have had an opportunity to work with. Early in my career I would define myself as a servant leader before transitioning more into a driver and motivator.  Now I think I am somewhere in between and try to pull on lessons from my experience and approach different scenarios as needed.

Innovating is crucial in our very diverse industry. How do you stay ahead of trends and incorporate them into your global strategy?

I think it’s important to innovate in ways that you do business from a technology, equipment, and tools standpoint operationally and administratively (sales, marketing, finance and HR) in a way that aligns with your core values. There is so many new tools on the market that can help businesses that it would be very easy to get lost in exploring them so for me it’s crucial to understand what your business values and how you want to achieve your goals to focus on innovations that actually help you and not distract from where you want to go.

How do you approach identifying areas for improvement within a company’s operations? 

Look, listen and seek to understand what your guests are feeling. How you are impacting them needs to be at the front of your decision making and prioritize for your business otherwise you are just making changes for yourself.

Where do you think the most promising investments should be focusing on and/or made on?

People, people and people. It’s our businesses and if you’re not always thinking about your people, you’re in the wrong line of work.

What’s the most important leadership lesson you’ve learned?

You need to inspire your people with purpose. This goes across generations and skill sets. If your team feels like they are contributing then they will take pride in what they do weather it’s cleaning dishes, cooking amazing food or looking after our guests.

Have you achieved everything you wanted in your career so far? 

Not even close! I am just getting started—look out!

How important is personal development to your success, and how do you approach it?

Pick a skill you want to learn and focus sometime on it every week.  For example, I wanted to get better at design so every Tuesday I spend an hour creating a design document in Canva. I also seek out time with our design team where possible and allocated project to myself that require a design component.