Rachel Dias-Cohen, Director of Training Programmes at Impact London, explains how honesty, role-play and a deeply human approach can transform the way hospitality teams communicate, lead and connect with guests.
You didn’t start in training. You came through hotel marketing and earlier work teaching English. How did that path lead you to Impact London?
Teaching had always been on the cards for me. My mother is a retired language and literature teacher, and I followed in her footsteps, teaching ESL to toddlers and adults at a language school in Brazil.
After my bachelor’s, I worked in digital marketing for a magazine in Brazil before moving into hotel marketing in London. I also had experience in hotel F&B, having worked as a casual waitress during my gap year in the UK, where I was mentored by inspiring leaders at Corbin & King.
That combination primed me for a career where teaching skills and a hospitality mindset are indispensable. Like so many people in London hospitality, I was also trained by John Baker. Little did I know I would end up working with him. I set out to make him my first freelance marketing client; instead, the training work persuaded me to leave marketing behind.
Your own story crosses the Atlantic, bringing you from Brazil to England. How does that personal journey show up in how you train people?
There is a lot about the Brazilian ‘spirit’ that can be adopted in hospitality to create genuinely positive and memorable interactions. Brazilians have a ‘lightness’ to how they live and face challenges. We can be creative, fun and sometimes a little goofy. Those characteristics come in handy on difficult, long days and with demanding guests.
I remember that joie de vivre helping me enjoy working double-shift functions: polishing hundreds of glasses, serving and clearing dozens of plates, dealing with drunk guests and a scorching hot kitchen. If I can bring a little of that Brazilian seasoning to help new talent see that hospitality can be a rewarding and fun career, and help established professionals rediscover their love for the job, then I have ‘won’.
Colleagues from other cultures helped me become more direct — not a common Brazilian trait. And it was the English who taught me how to say almost anything I needed to say while still remaining elegant. Those exchanges made me more aware, forgiving and empathetic — essential skills in a multicultural environment.
John describes your sessions as relaxed and highly participative rather than corporate. What do you personally protect and value?
Being direct and honest with my feedback is what I value and protect the most. When I am trusted with training guest-facing teams or managers, I have a responsibility to drive change in mindset, communication and behaviour. I cannot do that if I am only telling people what they want to hear.
Evolution lies in uncomfortable truths, and sometimes in painful transformation. I owe part of who I am today to people who were truthful with me. They respected me enough to tell me where I was wrong and what I needed to do to get better. I aim to bring that level of truth to the table.
Role-play is central to how Impact trains. How do you make it work without turning the session into theatre?
Without a doubt, this is the hardest skill to ‘master’ in my training journey. It is not easy to go from presenting ideas to playing a demanding guest, a drunk diner or a challenging employee realistically.
What helps is that I have always been good at observation. I am naturally introspective and shy, so I had endless opportunities to watch people and notice how they behave and communicate. I close my eyes, put myself in the mood of the role-play, and then improvise as I go.
This is where attendees retain the most value and technique. So crying on cue, or being deliberately rude, has become part of my training arsenal.
You now design and deliver management programmes as well as guest-facing workshops. How does your early career support you when training managers?
When I first started in hospitality, I was exposed to a wide range of management styles as an agency casual in fine dining.
I watched harsh, disconnected managers get superficial obedience, then lose respect the moment they left the room. I watched people-pleasing managers struggle to get things done and command a room. They had the friendship of their teams, but not genuine respect.
In the middle of that spectrum, I met exceptional managers and F&B directors who had a balanced measure of assertiveness and genuine kindness. Their yes meant yes and their no meant no. They commanded the room from a place of respect and had the support of their teams, while knowing when to step in and be hands-on with commitment and humility.
Balance is everything. When I train managers, I speak as someone who has been managed by many styles. My aim is to help people-pleasers become more assertive, and support managers who struggle to communicate so they can be assertive while still delivering the message with genuine kindness.
Training workshops have a terrible reputation for being boring and generic. What we deliver is the opposite. In the era of AI, Impact is going more human than ever. We do not train individuals to all speak the same way. We train them to read people closely and fine-tune each interaction in pursuit of positive emotion and earned trust.