For Gaby Terrazas, leadership in housekeeping came down to one thing.
Managing humans and culture.
After 15 years in hospitality, including five as a Director of Housekeeping, Gaby knows that running a housekeeping department means leading people through chaos, change, and constant pressure. Her leadership style was grounded in empathy, connection, and trust, and it led her teams to some of the highest performance scores in her company. In this blog, you’ll learn her top leadership lessons from over a decade and a half in hotels.
Gaby believes that great leaders focus on their people first. Every day started with checking in on her team as humans, not just room attendants.
“I spent a lot of time just talking to my team. I didn’t just go to their rooms to see how they were working. It was more of, ‘Hey, how are the kids? How’s your life?’”
When quality slipped, it was usually a sign of something deeper.
“If I saw that one of my best housekeepers wasn’t doing so well, I’d check a room of theirs and it didn’t look like their normal type of work. I’d be like, ‘Hey, is everything all right?’ and then it’s, ‘No, I’m thinking about this and that.’ Okay, cool. I get it. How can I help you? Because I can see it in your work.’”
Those personal conversations built the kind of trust that made feedback possible.
“When you have to have the conversation, ‘I’ve noticed that in every single room you clean today I found a hair on the bed,’ they’re not just going to get the impression I only care about what they produce - but more of “It's okay, she cares enough about me to tell me that I’m doing something wrong.”
After years in the industry, Gaby realized that no two housekeeping teams are the same.
“You’re managing cultures. Everybody learns differently and shows up differently; priorities are different dependant on each team member”
She described how cultural differences shaped team dynamics in real ways.
“When a team is predominantly Hispanic, they tend to help each other more often. If one person finishes early, it’s not ‘I finished early, I’m going to go home.’ It’s, ‘Let me go see how so and so are doing, let me make one or two of their beds each, and then I’ll go home.’”
“My Asian team members would move as a group of five or six and all five or six of them would clean everybody’s rooms because in their culture it’s ‘respect your elders.’ If that’s how they work and if that’s what gets them to produce and to be happy and to want to come to work, who am I to say, ‘No, you can’t do that?’”
Understanding and respecting those cultural differences helped her build stronger, happier teams.
When it came to morale, Gaby found that every property was unique.
“Every team is motivated by something different,” she said. “In the two hotels that I was Director of Housekeeping, one was highly motivated by food. I could bring them an empanada and it would make their day.”
“My other team was more motivated about money. If it was a super busy day and everyone looked kind of grumpy, I’d go and I’d buy $1 scratch tickets and then hand them out. Nothing crazy. They had fun doing it.”
And when things got stressful, she brought in a little fun.
“We’d do silly trivia during lunch. ‘How long should a room take us?’ If you answer the question right, okay, here’s five bucks to Dunkin Donuts. Go get yourself a coffee.”
“Even the music in the morning, the team could be burnt out while they’re sitting there eating their breakfast before their day starts, it’s much better for them to be listening to music and thinking to themselves, ‘Okay, this is a nice environment to be in.’ Whether the work is hard or not is a different story, but at least I enjoy being here because we can kind of take this time to do something fun.’”
One of Gaby’s favorite traditions was “culture day,” a monthly celebration of her team’s backgrounds.
“We would do culture days once a month. We would jot down the countries that everyone was from, and every month we would collaborate with the kitchen, who’d make typical dishes from that country. I would have to put trivia together, I’d wear a little crown and a sash that said ‘Diversity Champion.’ and at the end of the day, we enjoyed ourselves for a small period of time.”
Those simple gestures reminded her team that they mattered, not just for their work but for who they were.
Gaby believes that empathy also means flexibility, especially when it comes to people’s lives outside of work.
“If they request a day off and that just so happens to be a super busy day, just give it to them. Because somehow we always figured it out. The job will always get done.”
“If you gave them that Saturday they requested for their daughter’s birthday, they’re only going to come back more willing to do favors for you and work harder for you because they know that you appreciate their time.”
Her approach worked.
“Within three months, they (cleanliness scores) were the highest that company had seen. And I was able to maintain it for two years – just because I spoke to my team like humans and treated them like people and trained them when I needed to train them.”
Leadership in housekeeping isn’t about checklists or chasing perfect scores. It’s about leading people with respect, empathy, and trust.
“Treat your team like humans,” Gaby said. “If you do, they’ll show up better for you.”
At her last property, Gaby also used Optii to help her team stay connected, supported, and empowered because the right tools make great leadership even stronger. If you’d like to learn how Optii can help you elevate your own housekeeping team, you can book time with one of our experts here.