Many factors go into building an organization that is a community first and a business second, at Grupo Living Tours the building blocks include:

1. A Mission worth caring for

What unites a community is a sense of purpose. Business strategies change, but purpose does not.

Everyone at Living is proud and patriotic, and we want to show tourists from all over the world the best we have, are and know how to do in Portugal and Spain.

Living's new employees are taken to the Company's Headquarters in Porto, for an orientation session on the Company's Culture. Employees receive practical advice on how to live Living's values ​​of “Warrior Spirit”, “Fun and Passionate Attitude” and “Dedicated Heart”.

Stories of the origin of Living Tours are well known, emphasizing the company's passion for unique and authentic experiences provided to everyone with whom we interact. We teach our people about where we come from and what we stand for, because that's what families do. Families share their history with each other across generations.

Almost every company has a mission statement, but most don't have employees who believe they are on a mission. 20 years after Living Tours was founded, inspiring the world to live authentic experiences is still what makes the heart of the Living Tours Group community beat.

2. Open Communication

Open relationships make a community, and relationships are built on communication. Frank conversations can be difficult under any circumstances, but they are particularly challenging in hierarchical settings.

Open and respectful communication between managers and employees in feedback meetings is very productive and eliminates barriers. Be it from me as CEO to the leaders, who are my direct team, as well as from the leaders to their operational teams.

3. Feel safe enough to be yourself

When you are part of a community, you feel safe and able to be yourself. This opens the door to learning and improvement. It also gives people the confidence to take risks, which is essential for innovation.

Unlike many CEOs of many companies, I never took myself too seriously. From tattoos, to wearing shorts in business meetings with the bank or other formal entities, appearing informally at social events, or with unusual clothes and props at company parties.

By being rambling, unfiltered, I've always given everyone at Living permission to be equally authentic. I have always valued the human and professional potential of each person rather than the way they dress or behave. We give people the opportunity and possibility to be rebellious. You don't have to fit into a mold of restrictions at work - you can have fun. People respond to this.

If you feel safe to be crazy, you will also feel safe to raise your arm when you screw up.

Encouraging employees to be truthful improves the customer experience. Each Living guest has a story that involves a Living employee, whether it is a contact at our front offices, whether it is a guided tour during the day or an online service or through our DMC's, our thousands of comments on Tripadvisor are proof of that.

It's tempting to believe that a high-performance culture has to be tough, judgmental and relentless, but Living proves otherwise. Authenticity, fun, forgiveness – these are the things that make joining a community worthwhile.

4. The right to self-determination

Living's frontline teams know they have the freedom to do whatever it takes to serve the customer, our guest.

It is this freedom, rather than a set of protocols, that allows Living's employees to create memorable moments for our guests, such as helping to organize a marriage proposal on a sailboat, helping a client in a wheelchair to enjoy a unique experience in our tours, or helping a visitor to our agencies lost and in a panic to find their local accommodation out of hours and at night, among many other Living experiences provided by our employees, which are countless and can be consulted on our experience blog Living.

Shared responsibility and freedom to make choices bind a community together. This simple truth underpins Living's culture and is also a hallmark of our culture. It is through ongoing conversations about goals and tasks that personalities and viewpoints are revealed, hopes and fears are expressed, and bonds of friendship are built.

This is why there is no such thing as a community of people who take orders.

5. Accountability between Peers

At Living, team members are accountable to their customers and colleagues first, and only second to their supervisors.

We all succeed together and fail together. We can always count on the colleague who is at our side, this is the Living spirit.

As a general rule, accountability between peers produces higher levels of collaboration and commitment than accountability between subordinates and their leader. The main objective at Living is 100% focused on customer service, who are our guests, and we receive them as we would receive guests in our homes.

6 Mutual Respect

As human beings, we are inclined to classify each other – by wealth, education, understanding, physical attractiveness, fashion sense, athletic prowess, or the number of likes garnered on social media.

Sometimes these rankings are useful, but often they are the product of selfishness. To feel better about ourselves by putting others down. Needless to say, complacency is toxic to the spirit of collaboration.

In a community, status differentiators are muted. Everyone feels that they are important. This doesn't happen by accident. Rather, it reflects a conscious choice to treat everyone as an equal and celebrate everyone's contribution.

Over the years, Living has worked hard to ensure that all employees feel valued and that each role is seen as equally critical to delivering great customer service. To emphasize this well, at Living we encourage employees to be each other's shadows at work. A driver can help a guide in their duties so that one understands the work of the other and as a team they can provide the best experiences for our guests.

Here at Living, it doesn't matter if we have a university degree or just a secondary education. There's no status here, just a good work ethic. A graduate or leadership is as important as who carries our guests' bags or who cleans the floors we walk on every day.

At Living we understand that mutual respect is a performance driver. While markets reward some skills more than others, it's dangerous when peer respect is tied to the size of your paycheck.

I have always been adamant on this point, positions and titles mean absolutely nothing, they are just adornments, they do not represent the substance of a person. Each employee is valued for the added value they bring, for their commitment and dedication and not for the titles they hold.

At Living, we see employees as a mosaic of capabilities and potential, not as a pyramid of powers.