These two snaps show two different Walt Disney World employees. The one on the left is working at the Haunted Mansion merchandise shop. The one on the right is at the Harbor House restaurant. Although from where they stand, they can actually see each other., they are portraying very different roles. Notice the doomy, gloomy look of the Haunted Mansion hostess. She is actually holding dead roses. The Harbor House Hostess is all smiles and loudly ringing her “come and get it” dinner bell.

What’s going on here? Why the difference? Both are in character. Both are effectively performing their role in the show. It’s called PERFORMANCE THEMEING (PT).

PT is the discipline of taking on the persona of the location you work in and being a character within that location’s show. Consider the difference in performance between the elegantly dressed sales lady speaking softly in the Jewelry store and the cowboy hat wearing wrangler at the dude ranch are all playing their appropriate PT roles. What those team members wear, how they act and what they say affects the image of the location and the service being offered. Imagine a switch where the refined lady ropes a cow and the wrangler works the jewelry counter. The image is all wrong. It no longer fits the show being offered.

Disney goes to great lengths to align its team member performance to the location in which they work. Whether it is the Whispering Canyon with servers who holler for ketchup, the Prime Time Café where Cousin Ruthie make you eat your beans before you can order desert or the servers of national origin working in each Epcot International Showcase county. Each location may do an effective job of communicating its time and place, it is the performance of the team members who work there that give those locations their character. Otherwise, it’s just buildings.

What about your employees? Granted you are likely not running a haunted mansion. Even so, your customer offering has a theme. Do your employees clearly know what that theme is. Have you told them? Are they trained to perform their role within that theme? Do you coach those who do not deliver the theme and praise those who do. And most importantly as the leader, do you demonstrate that theme yourself? Deliver your theme in each and every interaction and customer may return … not just for the product or service you offer, but for the feeling they get when interacting with the people who deliver that offering.