Leadership in Hospitality: Jennifer Thomas on Rooted Connections & the Power of Five

Leadership in Hospitality: Jennifer Thomas on Rooted Connections & the Power of Five On the Shifting People Podcast, co-hosts Derek Williamson and Kathleen McDonough interview Jennifer Thomas, founder of Rooted Connections and VP of Sales at John Anthony Wines, about her hospitality-to-wine-sales journey and why she built an online, self-paced leadership development platform for nontraditional schedules. Jennifer outlines the Rooted Leadership Program’s four modules—identifying your leadership style, charting your course through past resilience, tackling fears by reframing worst- vs. best-case outcomes, and the “Power of Five” framework for building a network of comfort-zone, intimidator, dream-job, outlier, and protege relationships. The conversation covers retention and onboarding in hospitality, leadership as a learnable skill at every level, the importance of community and asking better questions, and reflections on women’s emotional attachment to companies and balancing what organizations ask from employees versus what they give back. Jennifer’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferthomas0624/ Rooted Connections LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rooted-connections-consulting/ Rooted Connections website: https://www.rooted-connections.com/ Substack: https://rootedconnections.substack.com/ 00:00 Podcast Welcome 00:27 Meet Jennifer Thomas 00:51 Hospitality to Wine Sales 02:19 Why Rooted Connections 03:45 Building the Program 05:46 Charting Your Course 07:59 Tackling Fear Factors 08:57 Power of Five Network 15:03 Pitching It to Leaders 19:39 Community and Midcareer Support 24:03 Success Stories and Wins 27:28 Women Advancing in Hospitality 28:13 Curiosity And Better Questions 29:32 ChatGPT As Networking Aid 30:16 Accountability Over Complaints 32:06 Stop Saving The Company 35:30 Protect Your Energy First 37:03 Finding A 50 50 Culture 38:40 Company Introspection And Balance 40:01 Where To Find Jennifer 42:14 Hosts Debrief And Takeaways 45:00 Shifting Questions Wrap Up 49:56 Final Sign Off