295. Transforming Leadership Through Hospitality and Connection with Steve Fortunato

What if the fastest way to unlock performance isn’t to lead louder, but to host better? We sit down with best-selling author Steve Fortunato to rethink leadership through the lens of hospitality—not the restaurant kind, the human kind. Steve reveals why so much “look at me” leadership creates a vicious cycle of entitlement, and how the host mindset flips the script to “look at you,” building trust, engagement, and shared ownership.

We dig into three practical principles you can apply today. First, speak the good: start by changing the inner voice you lead from, then actively name strengths in colleagues, clients, and your company to counter negativity bias and build momentum. Second, honor the other: elevate dignity with real curiosity, mine for the gold, and apply what you learn through personalized recognition, better questions, and tailored support. Third, earn respect, don’t expect it: stand in their shoes to understand pressures and constraints, and pursue reconciliation when things go wrong so relationships are restored, not just transactions.

Throughout the conversation, Steve connects leadership and hospitality with vivid stories: power dynamics that make customers feel “lucky to be here,” the ecosystem of value that requires giving before getting, and how small hosting rituals—clear openings, inviting voices, pronouncing names right, closing loops—quietly transform culture. We close with a simple loop to keep you improving: celebrate what worked, then pick one thing to refine next time. If you’re ready to trade performative heroics for meaningful hosting, this one will change how you run meetings, lead projects, and serve customers.

🌐 Connect with Steve:
• Website: https://stevefortunato.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-fortunato-3b990516/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/steve_fortunato/

📚 You can purchase Steve's book on Amazon:
• The Urgent Recovery of Hospitality: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1962341526

Chapters

• 0:00 From Hero To Host
• 0:18 Meet Steve And The Host Mindset
• 4:52 Hospitality As A Way Of Being
• 10:10 Vicious Vs Virtuous Service Cycles
• 15:29 Power Dynamics In Service
• 22:02 Leadership Reframed Around Value
• 26:44 Adopting The Identity “I Am A Host”
• 31:12 Principle One: Speak The Good
• 39:24 Principle Two: Honor The Other
• 47:26 Principle Three: Earn Respect
• 56:20 Celebrate And Improve

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

Have you ever noticed how much leadership advice quietly casts you as the hero of every story charged with fixing, saving or convincing? What if the real shift to unlock performance is to stop being the hero and start being the host? Today, I'm joined by Steve Fortunato, best selling author and creator of the Host Mindset Framework. Steve's work sits at the intersection of leadership and hospitality, not the restaurant kind, but the human kind, the radical discipline of creating space where people feel seen, honored and able to contribute their best. In this conversation, we unpack why great leaders don't perform at people. They host them. They move from hero to host. And Steve introduces three core practices, speak the good, honor those you serve and earn their respect. Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. I'm greatly honored today to be joined by Steve Fortunato. Steve is the best selling author of a book called The Urgent Recovery of Hospitality, and he deals in the intersection of leadership and human connection through what he calls the host mindset. And that's what we're going to unpack today. What does that mean, the host mindset? What does it mean, the urgent recovery of hospitality? So Steve, without any further ado, please say hello to the audience. Give us a little flavor of your background and what inspired you to do the work that you do today and to write this book?

Steve Fortunato: 1:35

Well, first and foremost, thank you so much, Mick, I'll say hello to you first. Thank you for having me. I appreciate the invitation. I will say hello to your audience. Hello, audience of The Leadership Podcast, and thank you for the opportunity to speak. I count your time and your listening and honor so sincerely. Thank you so much. A bit of my background, I am from Northern California. I grew up in Santa Cruz, and I left Santa Cruz when I was 18 to go to college in Southern California. I went to Pepperdine and stayed in LA, grew worked in hospitality, married a woman, had a family, started a company, grew that company, after 32 years of living in LA, we have just moved back to Santa Cruz. Feels like we've come home, back to nature, back to the ocean. I'm a surfer. I was raised in the Redwoods surfing in Santa Cruz, and have spent I just turned 50 this past year, and my first hospitality job was when I was 14. So I've spent 36 years in this industry. You asked what inspired me to write this book? And probably I started my company in 2007 and I would say, probably 10 years into running my company, I began to notice some things in the climate of hospitality, while simultaneously noting some things in the climate of myself as a founder and as a leader and as someone in the Los Angeles hospitality scene. And it kind of opened up a explosion of vision for me, seeing the way that things were, the way that things could be, first and foremost, inside of me, and then secondarily in my industry, and then in our world, beyond our industry. And I felt compelled to write about it. One of the quotes that has shaped my thinking is from Brene Brown, and she says that the longest distance that information travels is from our head to our hearts, and the way that it makes that journey is through our hands. And I knew that metabolizing this information in myself so that I could embody the message that I believe. I knew that writing, it was critical for my own work, and then I really felt compelled to share it, so I set about to writing, which, for anyone that's written knows, is a very challenging, lovely, beautiful, brutal process. But after five years of kicking the tires on it, and edits and re edits, and seeing the framework and polishing the framework, and it finally came out last year. And that felt really good.

Mick Spiers: 4:32

Really good. Steve, that's a beautiful description of what it takes to write a book. I really like that. And congratulations on the success of the book. Well done there. The thing that captured my attention when you said the gap between the way things are and the way things could be. Tell us what you saw.

Steve Fortunato: 4:49

I saw that. Well, first, I fundamentally believe that hospitality is the hope for our. Creature. I believe it is a virtue. I believe that it is not an industry, but it's actually a way of being. There's no such thing as the gratitude industry or the kindness industry or the humility industry. Hospitality is a way of being. It's a way that we show up. And what I came to see is that we have, as a culture, accepted this flipping of the script, where it is now normative for the craftsmen in hospitality to leverage your sacred occasion as an opportunity for them to be celebrated for their craft, as opposed to leveraging their craft at your special occasion so that you feel celebrated. And I saw that we've just come to accept hospitality as a demonstration, and it was always meant to be an invitation and performance demonstration that has just become part and parcel to how we experience hospitality, and whether it is the barrage of recipe content or cookbooks or the celebrity chef craze or the Food Network and all of the media around hospitality, essentially how we as a culture have come to interpret hospitality is look at me. And hospitality is really meant to say, look at you. The essence of hospitality is, I have enough I want to share with you. But when we say, with our offerings, look at me, essentially, what we're doing is we're trying to get something from the very people that we're supposedly serving. And Far be it for me to say that, from my perch of altruistic equanimity, the way that I realized those things was I realized them first and foremost in myself that I, as a founder, was in an incredibly competitive hospitality scene in Los Angeles, and I wanted our company to be noticed. I wanted to be noticed as the founder of a company that was being disruptive, that was bucking the system. I kind of wanted to be noticed for how humble and unnoticeable, we were willing to be if, if that makes any sort of sense. And when I recognized that conflict in me, that the essence of hospitality is about making people feel valued, and I realized you cannot get value while trying to give value at exactly the same time, someone has to go first. Essentially, I realized sort of the ecosystem of value and how value works. And I realized that I was like many entrepreneurs and many founders trying to get value, ironically, in an industry that is all about giving value, and I recognize that inside of myself, and like I said, then I recognized it in my industry, and then I just recognized it in the world. I recognized it in all of our relationships and how we show up. I recognized it in leadership and how many leaders are trying to get respect and get validated. I recognized it in sales. And how many sales people are trying to get the sale and get the client? I recognized it in communities. How many people are trying to get the witnessing or get the space that they need? And it just, it kind of became the the world view through which I saw everything.

Mick Spiers: 8:39

Yeah, really, really interesting, Steve, two things that I'm taking away from that, first of all that hospitality is a noun. It's not an industry. I think that's very interesting, and we might come back to that and how we apply it in any leadership role in in any industry, that hospitality is a noun. And then the second one is this reframing, and I'm going to reflect as a customer and confirm to you right? So I certainly my wife and I have, we've been to restaurants where it has been performative. It was interesting, by the way, like celebration of the chef, celebration of the restaurant, celebration of the service, sometimes even celebration of the location. It's a special location with a wonderful view, or something like that. And then there's other times that we're the experience has been about us. It's usually, I've got to say, usually, when it's a special occasion, like we might be out for our wedding anniversary, and we've told the restaurant ahead of time so that we're having a special dinner. And then the focus has switched to us and and it's been a celebration of us. And then it's been the experience has been the star of the show, not not the chef, the restaurant, the service. It's been very special. And in those times, we've felt like we could have been the only two people in the restaurant, the service was so special, but there's definitely a difference performative versus very welcoming, and it's about you, not about us.

Steve Fortunato: 10:10

Absolutely, that's essentially what you just described. Is what I saw. I you know, I saw these two cycles. I was sitting out on my surfboard, and I was thinking about where we were as a company and what I wanted to accomplish compared to what we had accomplished. And I did the same sort of inventory taking that you just did. I had these experiences that just felt so nourishing on a soul level, and where I felt cared for, or my wife felt cared for, or we felt truly seen. And then I had these other experiences where I just felt taken from. And I asked myself, Why are there two such disparate experiences in the same what's meant to be the same environment, which is service and celebration? And that's when I sort of saw these two cycles, a vicious cycle, and what starts that vicious cycle and a virtuous cycle, and what starts that virtuous cycle. And as I saw that, I realized that these experiences and our experiences in hospitality and relationships, they can almost all be charted in one of those two cycles, what I call a vicious cycle of entitlement and a virtuous cycle of generosity. So I I'm really glad you made that point, and that is not all of our experiences are our vicious cycles. There's so many experiences that are amazing. And for me, what I really wanted to understand is what goes into making more of this beauty, more of this virtuous cycle, and what happens when these vicious cycles are created. And so I really began to think through the architecture of those experiences, and sort of created this framework around those.

Mick Spiers: 12:03

One of the things I've noticed, just to add a little bit, and then come back to you about what that architecture looks like. One of the differences is, when you're booking the restaurant, even in some places, you get made like, if you should feel that you're very lucky that you got into this place, you're very lucky, you know, you're lucky that you got a table. You're lucky that we take reservations three months in advance, etc, and the other one, the other experience when you're the when you're the special one, you make you feel like they're lucky to have you, that you picked their restaurant for your special occasion. So so this, there seems to be this kind of power balance between the two, a power imbalance where one you should be privileged that you're even dining at my restaurant. The other one, we're so privileged to have you. How does that sit with you?

Steve Fortunato: 12:54

It deeply resonates. I literally use those words I write about the power struggle in the service industry, and what I believe has been an over correction in the service industry. We all heard the maxim, at least the older ones of us, of your listeners, heard the maxim, the customer is always right. And everybody in the service industry knows that is fundamentally not true. The customer is not always right. And I think in there was a reaction to the customer is always right, to the chef is always right, or, you know, the sommelier is always right, or the designer is always right, or the architect is always right, or the leader is always right. There was this over correction. And I talk about the sometimes subtle and sometimes overt power struggle that exists in these interactions. Where do you live in Melbourne? In Australia? You live in Melbourne. Okay, so in LA, one of the almost ubiquitous greetings when you come to sit down at a table is, have you been here before? And regardless of what you say, yes or no, even if you say yes, I've been here 20 times, then they will say, Oh, good. Well, then you know how the chef likes you to order. Dishes are meant to be shared. We recommend this many, and we require that you order all of your dishes at once. It's literally a speech that is given at almost every restaurant that this is how the chef likes you to order, and this is a requirement of your experience. And it's just so deeply centering the experience right away and centering the power struggle on the power is in the hands of the hosts, and it's almost sort of this immediately putting you as the guest, in your place, and I'm not. I'm no longer in LA. And again, I think it's really helpful that you talked about the exceptions to the rule, because we're painting with broad strokes, and there's absolutely. Exceptions to the rule. But I think that, you know, we're not here just your podcast is not called the hospitality industry podcast. It's the leadership podcast. And I think it's not just about the experience that we have as restaurants. I think that some of our experiences in hospitality or in service or in air travel or in hotel lodging, they are emblematic of our experience in relationships where it is a binary premise of either your interests or my interests, and sort of that zero sum binary premise is always going to result in some level of conflict, whether subtle or over?

Mick Spiers: 15:41

Yeah. Really good, Steve. And to be clear, with what I was sharing before, those exceptions that I was talking about with my wife and I, they're the rare exceptions, the 90x percent of it is the other to be clear, but, but it feels different when it is special. Is what I was trying to share there. And now you talk about leadership, I'm going to reframe some of the things that we've already shared into a leadership situation. And for the people listening to this podcast right now that are leaders looking to create a great environment where people can do their very best work, have a think about that power dynamic that Steve is talking about. Do you want your team members to feel lucky that they have you as a leader, or do you want them to feel that you're there and that they are you're the one that's lucky to have them, and if they want to feel valued, if they want to see, feel seen and heard, they want to feel that they that you are the lucky ones to have them on your team. How does that sit with you?

Steve Fortunato: 16:41

It sits with me. Well, I would just say that I think it's important that we not frame these questions as altruistic. I think it's actually incredibly strategic. So I would not before I would ask a leader, do you want your team to feel dot, dot, dot. I would ask, do you want your team to be engaged? Do you want your team to be checked out or engaged? Do you want them thinking, what am I getting out of this? Or do you want your team thinking, What can I contribute? Do you want your team looking for better pay, fewer hours? Or do you want your team looking for how they can go the extra mile. It's this concept of value. It's not altruistic. It's strategic. If you want your team more engaged, if you want your team asking, What can I contribute instead of what am I getting out of this? The key to that is understanding that the ecosystem of value has rules. One of the things that you shared with me before we started recording is you said some of the best content is when in these conversations, we get people to stop and to reflect, to hopefully resonate and then respond. So I would say, stop and take a breath and hold your breath as long as you can. And as you run out of breath, the first thing you're going to do is you're going to give that breath away, because you have to give that breath away to make room for the next breath that you need. And that is the way that the ecosystem of value works. Our very lives exist in this ecosystem of you have to give value before you can get value. You cannot breathe in and breathe out at the same time. And so it's our job as leaders if we want to get value, which we obviously do. We want engagement. We want productivity, we want efficiency. We want contribution. That's the value that we are extracting. There's nothing wrong with value extraction. That is how we exist. That's how our companies grow, that's how our bodies exist, that's how our our homes are built. That is how humanity exists. Is value extraction, but if all we do is hunt and gather and extract value, but we don't actually think of value creation. We take the life out of a thing. It's what that children's book, The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein, so poignantly demonstrated is that tree just gave and gave and the boy just took and took and took until there was no life left in the thing. So as leaders, if, if we're wanting to get more value, more engagement, we've got to think, okay, how am I creating value? So I appreciate your question of you know, how do you want your people to feel? But I would, I would be selfish in the question. And go, What do you want from your people? Okay, well, then how are you going to get that?

Mick Spiers: 20:04

Yeah, good. Yeah, I love the framing, and I love the concept of the giving. And I'm going to say it feels like co creation, that you're creating value together, but it starts with you. You got to give value to get value back, and hopefully you're then co creating something that any individual couldn't have created by themselves, but by your collective value creation, you're now creating something bigger than any of the individuals involved. How does that sit with you?

Steve Fortunato: 20:34

Resonates deeply? I mean, that is, that is generativity, that like that is what happens. That is the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. You know when, when you come in with that spirit of contribution, you do not know like that's what happens in generativity. If I come in to contribute, and you come in to contribute, and we're both coming into shared space to contribute, what we co create is going to be so much bigger, so much more magnified than something that we would have created on our own. So I deeply resonate with that as not just a leadership principle, but as an existential principle.

Mick Spiers: 21:18

Yeah, really good. So what does it take for people to show up with that mindset? And I'm cool, I'm going to call it out and say both like so the leader and the team. How do they show up with the mindset of getting ready for that, getting ready to to give, not just take, and to make sure that you're co creating something together that's greater than any of you individually could have done.

Steve Fortunato: 21:39

I think it starts first with that truth resonating with you. I think that I understand that we want to be action oriented. We want clear steps that we can take. But I think first it starts with actually understanding that mindset, and it's why what I talk about is the host mindset. Hosting has nothing to do with food and beverage. It has nothing to do with throwing dinner parties or cocktail parties or Christmas parties. A host is just someone who's created something and is offering it to someone else. Hosting is that universal space between the creators and the receivers. So if you are breathing, you are a host. My 13 year old son, when he has friends over to his house, he's a host. He's creating an afternoon of play at our space. You are a podcast host. We are all hosts. So if you have created anything, whether it is a list of questions for your guest, a sales plan for next quarter, values that you want your team to follow, a latte or a flat white for someone that walks up to The counter, a route for your passenger, an itinerary or a syllabus for someone to follow, whatever it is that you have created, if you are offering that to someone else, you're hosting. And so I think it starts with just understanding yourself as a host. When I'm speaking and I'm doing seminars with people, I have people say out loud, I am a host, and I have them say it again, I am a host, because you can't show up with this mindset if you actually haven't let that mindset begin to metabolize into how you see yourself. So I think the first step is just identifying what is that mindset? Because it can't be a mindset of, well, I just want more out of my people. Well, everybody wants more out of their people. So it's actually adopting a host mindset. One of the things that I talk about is moving from a hero mindset to a host mindset. And this, this concept we we think in story, and the concept of of the hero's journey, thanks to Joseph Campbell, is deeply woven into the archetype of the human experience. It's why certain films do so well and other films flop. It's why certain books are compelling other books aren't. Certain political campaigns resonate. Others don't, commercials and adverts that do well, others that don't. It's because there's a framework that we as humans identify with, and it is that hero's journey. It's that hero's quest, because we are all the hero in our own quest. We are all the hero in our own journey. And that's that's beautiful, and that's understandable. That's part of being a human is to see yourself as the hero in this quest of life. The problem is, is that if you only think of yourself as as the hero, heroes on teams with other heroes, heroes trying to lead other. People that think they're heroes, heroes on committee with other heroes. That's when relationships get really hard. And so what I try to model in my own life, model in my thinking, model in my marriage, model in my parenting, is moving from a hero mindset to a host mindset and really beginning to think I am a host. I'm hosting. I want to host my family. I don't want to be that guy that's out giving keynotes about the host mindset, and then comes home and mainlines hero energy as a dad. What's it like to host my kids. What's it like to host my wife? So I think it starts with this holistic adoption of what I call the host mindset. And then there are absolutely once that's begun to sort of be marinated into the fiber of who we are. Then there's absolutely action steps that we can we can take.

Mick Spiers: 26:03

So I love the way it starts. So I'm going to say I am a host.

Steve Fortunato: 26:06

There you go. Mick, you're a host. Say it again.

Mick Spiers: 26:09

I'm a host.

Steve Fortunato: 26:10

You're a host.

Mick Spiers: 26:11

And what it makes me think of a few things building on what you've said today in any engagement, whether it's this conversation activities with my family, activities with my team. What am I trying to achieve out of this? But then also, what am I bringing to the table? What, what is it that I'm giving in terms of setting the frame for us to then have something that we can co create together? So my my role as the host is to, I'm going to say, set the frame, but then it's also to hold the space for the others in the story, not to be the hero of the story, it's to set the frame for the others in the story, to for them to bring their gift to the table. And when we all bring our gifts to the table, all of a sudden we can start molding something that is once again, bigger than the sum of the parts.

Steve Fortunato: 27:02

That's it. It's beautiful.

Mick Spiers: 27:05

Very good so, all right. So starts with a mindset I love. This starts the mindset. Once we have the mindset, what do we do next?

Steve Fortunato: 27:13

So there's, I believe, three, what I've identified as three principles, and each of those principles has a practice. And I don't know how in depth you want me to go into those principles. They're, they're outlined in great detail in the book, but I'll, I'll hit them from a headline perspective, and then if you want to dive in at a deeper level, we can do that. They are speak the good, honor those you serve, earn their respect, and the rinse and repeat is celebrate and improve. So speak the good. That's a principle. And the practices are speak the good in ourselves and speak the good about others, whether they are the colleague, the client, the company. So first practice speak the good in ourselves, we cannot effectively make other people feel at home if we're not at home with ourselves. And I find it a universal, common human tendency that we are brutal on ourselves, much harder on ourselves than we would ever be to others. I tell the story in the book that I was I was hosting a dinner party for some people that I really just wanted to like me. And following that dinner party, you know, I was doing my thing, and I was by myself, and so I got people engaged in the plating, and I had people come up and, you know, spread the puree on the plate, and I had other people place the protein, and I had other people sauce the dish, and had someone else shake in the cocktails. And I just engaged people in this dinner party that I was throwing. And it was a fun night. But afterwards, Mick, I was just taking an inventory of the night, and I just assaulted myself. I was just like, you tried way too hard. You were self aggrandizing. You were overbearing. You took up way too much space. I could tell that one guy hated the evening, and honestly, you overcooked the halibut. You should never have picked halibut. You know, you should have done a much more oily fish, because you were searing the fish by yourself. I just, I just literally berated myself, and by some grace, I got an image of my son, Dario, who looks a lot like me. And I thought about speaking to Dario the way that I was speaking to myself, speaking to him while he was trying to do something earnestly, and just looking at him, saying, you just tried way too hard. You were totally overbearing. You were totally I would not speak to my son that way if you had a gun pointed to my head. And yet I was doing that to myself, and I realized. We are not berated into improvement. We're not berated into growth. We might have a coach that you know, berated us for a short term accomplishment, like winning a game or winning a season, but you can't live under that voice over the long haul. Think about when we're we were learning how to walk, stumbling, looking like a drunk sailor. What were the people around us doing? They were jumping up and down, going, you're doing it. You're doing it. Keep going. And that's what motivated us to take that next wobbly step. And we have to be able to do that for ourselves. We have to be able to speak the good. It's not Psycho Babble, it's not airy fairy. It's actually science backed and substantive. The voice that we use with ourself is critical in determining if we're going to grow or if we're going to begin to call ourselves fully baked and check out. And by the way, the voice that we use with ourselves as we know, totally shapes the voice that we use with others. So the first thing we have to do in modeling a host mindset is we have to speak kindly to ourselves. We have to speak the good in ourselves. Secondly, we have to speak good about others. Complaining is easy, and it's like a wildfire. It is contagious. It just takes off. And complainers don't build anything. If you think about the building process and the construction process, what takes longer, demo or construction demo usually lasts, you know, a couple days. You just come with a wrecking ball and you just knock stuff over. So complaining and noticing the negative, it just doesn't build anything. We have a negative bias as humans, good information, literally, you know, it just bounces off of us while negative information, it's like Velcro. It sticks to our consciousness. So we have to intentionally overturn that gravity, that gravitational pull towards the negative and speak the good. And I say speak because words have power. And our someone described our brains like a tree with 10,000 screaming monkeys in it. And so if you just try to think good thoughts, while another thought of what you're going to have for lunch and what you watched last night on TV and the route that you should take when you leave like it's thoughts, it's not enough. You actually have to speak the good and notice the good, whether it's in your clients, your colleagues, the company. So the first concept in manifesting this host mindset is to speak the good. Make sense?

Mick Spiers: 32:39

Yes. Yes, please, Steve, keep going. It's great.

Steve Fortunato: 32:42

Keep going. Okay, so speak. The good principle two is honor. The other honor, I think, is a really complicated word. It sounds, it sounds a little bougie and archaic. You know, honor is not really a word that is often in our daily lexicon, but honor is just really elevating the dignity of the other. And if we want to show up in that host mindset, we have to elevate the dignity of others. Well, how do you do that? If number one, they're demonstrating undignified behavior. And number two, you don't really know them that well, honoring someone can be challenging, so the first step in honoring the other is being curious. You got to mine for the gold in others. You got to go digging. Where's the gold in this person? I know there. I believe fundamentally, there's gold in every human, even that person in cubicle five, that is driving me absolutely crazy. I know there's a human in there. I know there's gold in there. Where's that gold? And you got to mine for the gold in others. Through curiosity, just be curious. We've just got to start being curious about the humans in our orbit. Not just about how efficient were they, how productive were they, but really being curious. That's the currency of interest in others. How am I going to show up for you? If I feel like you have you're not really interested in me? How are as leaders. How are people going to be motivated to show up for us if they don't feel you're interested in me as my you're my leader, and you're not interested in me. You're interested in my productivity, but you're not interested in me. And we begin to shift how people show up for us when they experience your interest in them. So the first thing we do in honoring the other is that we mine for the gold through curiosity. And then the second practice and honoring the other is we apply what we discovered. Oh, I learned some things about Mick. Okay, now I'm going to apply. What I learned, and it doesn't take a lot to be able to come up with something that you can sort of customize how you engage with someone based on that gold that you mind. So you know whether it is observing their currency of appreciation. You know, this person loves public praise. This person, if I publicly praise them, they are like, get me out of here, please. I don't want a spotlight. This person would love a day off. This person would love a gift card. This person would just love an Atta boy. This person loves rugby. This person just had a baby, this person is going to propose to their partner. It's just being curious and then customizing how we engage with them. So when we begin to honor the other and elevate the dignity of the other, everything changes. And, you know, I have three kids, and when we would travel Mick, it was just a hot mess and and we were that family that, you know, we had our eldest was was old enough to carry, you know, her little Minnie Mouse suitcase, little roller bag. Then we had our toddler in a stroller, and our baby, you know, in the Baby Bjorn and luggage everywhere. And it was just this tornado of chaos. And we would make the flight by the skin of our teeth. And I was like, My God, why are we doing this? Why are we traveling That was crazy. And invariably, every single time we were in an airport, you would see a single mom with the same amount of kids, the same amount of bags, just handling it, just literally walking down the concourse, doing it all by herself. Well, someone that works for an airline can look at that single mom and go, Man, there's gold there. Excuse me, ma'am. How can I help you out? You know, there's something that they can honor in what they've seen. There's something amazing. There's something notable about that there. If we open our eyes with the intention of going I want to look for the gold, you'll find it. You will find what you're looking for. You will absolutely find what you're looking for. And so if we want to change the relationships that we have, if we want to change the dynamic and we want to think like a host, the second thing we do is we we honor the other. We elevate their dignity by mining for the gold and applying what we discovered. Make sense?

Mick Spiers: 37:37

Yeah, absolutely. Steve, this is gold. Keep going.

Steve Fortunato: 37:39

Okay, so the third principle is, earn the respect of the other. And I'm very intentional in saying earn the respect of the other, as opposed to expect the respect of the other. And I think something that I know I've done as a leader, as a CEO, as a founder, certainly as a husband, certainly as a dad, is I have expected respect, and there is respect that is supposed to be given and should be given, but man, When Respect is earned, then it is volunteered out of like that heart space, as opposed to where someone is on the org chart, where someone is positionally, it just changes the relationship. Fundamentally changes the relationship, so we earn the respect of the other, as opposed to expect the respect of the other. So that's the principle. The two practices, how do we earn the respect of the other? Number one, we stand in their shoes. And I know that sounds simplistic, but we just as heroes in our own journey. We just don't have a lot of experience actually putting ourselves in the shoes of the other because we're so filled with the chapters of our own story, they are consuming. So it's really difficult for us to put ourselves in someone else's shoes, but when we actually stop and go, I am a hotel guest. I am the Customer. I should be respected as the customer man. Someone is cleaning my room, someone is cleaning my room that probably couldn't afford to stay here. How do I want to treat them? How do I want them to be treated? What's what's their reality? Like, you know, I am a surfer, and so I travel to lovely, beautiful places to surf. I haven't surfed Melbourne. I've surfed Sydney, and sort of the cooling gotta coast, the Sunshine Coast, but I want to surf Melbourne. But you know, oftentimes make these places where, you know, we as Westerners. Go to surf. We are, you know, we're sitting in these pools. We are staying in these rooms. We are being shuttled out to these reefs by boat drivers who are literally living in huts. And I think it's just important for us as humans to stand in the shoes of the others, and when we do that as leaders, when we actually go, I'm above this person on the org chart. I expect their respect and what's their reality like? What are they facing? What are their financial challenges? What are they juggling? From a pressure perspective, what teaching was I given that they weren't what opportunities did I have that might have helped grease the tracks up on the ladder that they are never going to be given those opportunities when we just start to stand in the shoes of those we lead, those that we lead, engage with us in a wildly different way, a wildly different way. So we earn the respect number one by standing in the shoes of the other. And number two, we pursue reconciliation when it's gone funny. One of the things that that we would always say in in restaurants and in hospitality is that refunds do not equal reconciliation. A refund is essentially saying, you know, sorry, that sucked. Lunch is on. Me off with you. And reconciliation is not something that you can force someone might not want to reconcile with you, but reconciliation is just the intention to restore the relationship, to just make it good. If things went funny, I at least want to just try to make it good and and when we show people that we noticed it's gone funny and we we at least want to try to make it good again, it changes the game. In my industry. You know, one of our our most typical events were weddings. I've done over 3500 weddings since I started my company 1000s of weddings, and I have two daughters, I want everything to go phenomenal on their wedding day. And you know, weddings are these gatherings of families and friends and your heritage and your community, and people are people are flying from all over and they're traveling and they're getting time off. And we had a wedding that was in Los Angeles at one of our venues, and all the families had come from the other side of America. And after the wedding, I got one of those emails that every founder dreads, which was, I'm writing to you as the owner to express my extreme displeasure with your company and your services. Your event planner sent us an email two days before our wedding, requiring me to spend hours in my room looking through an email thread, as opposed to celebrating, you know, the arrival of all of our out of town guests. And basically what had happened is that our event planner had neglected to add the valet charge. It's disclosed on our contracts. Valet is part of your charge, and she forgot to add it at the final contract. Now, number one, we disclose that there's a valet charge. Number two, final payment is due 14 days before your wedding. And this family had been revising and revising and adding guests and taking away guests and adding a can of pay and taking canopy away. So there was all of these iterations of the contract, and in the 15 versions of the revisions, my event planner had forgotten to add back a valet charge, and what it had done is it had created whiplash on behalf of the mother of the bride, and she was in her room navigating, why is there a$2,700 charge that I didn't anticipate? So I could have there's a lot of things I could have done in response to that email. I could have ignored it. Weddings are a one and done transaction. I could have not cared about my reputation. I could have not cared about that individual. I could have totally defended our position and said, Look, in our contracts, payment was due 14 days prior to the wedding. You were advising the contract three days before your wedding. I could have said, well, you didn't miss the rehearsal, and you didn't miss, you know, obviously didn't miss the ceremony. You missed the welcome reception. I could have said, you know, the script that half of our service providers and our phone providers say when we're upset, I do apologize. And what I did was I picked up the phone and I just I listened, and I listened to her speak, and then I responded as a human and I said, You must be so upset. You must feel such a sense of loss, like you can't get that, that welcome reception back. This was your daughter's one wedding, and you can't get that back. And I just want you to know I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. I hate that I have daughters. Dollars, and if I lost one second of that celebration, whether it was the first of five celebrations or the main event, I would be irate. And I'm just so sorry that that happened, and I tell this story in the book, but she sent me an email after that conversation and said, Thank you so much for that conversation. If you are ever in Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania, we live 15 minutes from Gettysburg. I was like, Who would want to sit in a boiling spring? We are 15 minutes from Gettysburg. Please come stay with us. This this woman invited us stay in her home. That's cool. That was the power of reconciliation. So I've gone on too long, but those are the three steps. Speak the good, honor the other, earn the respect, and then sort of the rinse and repeat is you celebrate and improve. Celebrate how you did it well, and look for one thing you can improve.

Mick Spiers: 45:57

Really powerful step. I want to take some time to reflect back to you what I was taking from the conversation. It helps me to cement it for myself, but also for the audience. So the framework is very powerful. Speak the good, honor the other, earn the respect. I love the rinse and repeat as well. Their self reflection to go okay, what went well? What didn't go well? What would I do differently next time, so you can get better at it each time to speak the good. That was powerful message for me, how the negative inner critic that you have, and how horrible you talk to yourself in ways that you would never talk to another human being, let alone someone that you love, like that. So why do you do it to yourself? And that's a that's a call to action for myself, to stop doing that, to notice a name and speak the good in others. It's it's there, it's there. Speak the good in others and speak them up. Be their fan club, cheering them on to take those first steps. What, even if it is messy, cheer them on to to help them achieve what they can achieve, honoring the others. I think the key one there was you spoke before about the hero of the story. We need to remember that that villain in your story, they're they're the hero in their story. You spoke about the jerk in in cubicle six. That is the villain in your story. Guess what? They're the hero in their story.

Steve Fortunato: 47:20

Hero his, Yeah.

Mick Spiers: 47:21

So how so? How about stand in their shoes for a moment, see what they're seeing, feel what they're feeling, and reframe the whole Take it. Take a new perspective, and then you'll be able to use your curiosity that you spoke about. The greatest gift you could give at that point is your presence, but also your curiosity, to ask them a few questions, and then to reflect back to them what you're hearing, and to take action on what they're hearing. I'll share a personal one here, Steve and go. A lot of people talk about, oh, I want to be able to make a good first impression, and my goal is to make a good second impression. And a good second impression is having that curious conversation with someone else, and then one week later, coming back to them and saying, Hey, Steve, I've been thinking about our conversation, and this is, this is what I've done. That's the way to honor the other it's not just, not just fake compliments, etc, it's, it's truly listening and remembering something that they shared with you and taking action on it, and then earning the respect that this word, the reconciliation. I love it. First of all, what was screaming in my head was that sticking your hand up and saying sorry I made a mistake here, that's a sign of strength, not a sign of weakness, admitting that you made a mistake and then having the ability to listen and empathize to what they were going through, the experience that you shared with that letter that was absolutely beautiful and a perfect example of making sure that you truly understand what the other person was feeling and experienced before you can fix it, because if you jump to a solution straight away, you haven't really heard them. You haven't taken the time to really hear what their problem was, and you might be solving the wrong problem. You've jumped into solution mode before you understood what the problem was, and that's a way to earn respect. And the one thing that jumped out of me the whole way is if, if you can get to the point through this empathy, cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, to be able to get to the point where they go. You know that, Steve, he just gets me. He understands me. That's where respect comes. How does that summary sit with you, Steve?

Steve Fortunato: 49:40

Brilliant, it feels really good to just I'm noticing and I'm appreciating you're listening, and that means a lot.

Mick Spiers: 49:49

Well, it's a powerful framework, Steve, it's given me something that I can take away instantly and go and apply. And I'm going to encourage that to the audience as I kind of summarize our conversation. Little bit here about the host mindset, about the way that you show up. It starts before you show up. But in any engagement, what are you looking to get out of this engagement, and how are you going to show up as a host? What do you bring? What value are you bringing, and what environment are you creating, where the others can bring their gifts and their value, and then to speak the good honor the other earn their respect. Rinse and repeat. These are things that we can do every day, and we can get better and better as we go along. Really powerful. Steve, thank you so much for sharing this.

Steve Fortunato: 50:35

Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Mick Spiers: 50:36

Mick, all right, so I'm now going to take us to our Rapid Round. These are the same four questions we ask all of our guests. Steve, so what's the one thing that you know now that you wish you knew when you're 20?

Steve Fortunato: 50:50

That I'm loved? I find that yeah, so much of the conflict that we have with others is really rooted in conflict that we're having with ourselves. And when we show up just knowing I'm good, I'm loved, it just changes everything. And I didn't feel settled in my lovability when I was 20, and I don't I would not say that I'm totally settled now, but I am more settled in my own lovability. And, you know, there's an American data collector, a guy named George Barna, and he said, you know, he's, he's like the survey king, and he just, he collects so much data, I think I'm getting his name right. Might be a different researcher, Gallup, I'm sorry, gallop, gallop, not bar not gallop. And one of he queried people for what are the top 10 things that people are looking for at their place of work, and the number one thing that people were looking for, ironically, was to feel loved. And it's like, what like? We don't use the word love in our in our company lexicon, you know. And certainly people would not actually say, Yeah, I show up to work to be loved, but that's actually, you know, people talk about that's my work life and that's my personal life. We are living one life. We're living one life, and what we want as humans is to know that we're loved. And as Gallup looked at the different adjectives that people were looking for from their leaders, it all came back simply to feeling loved. That's really what every human wants to feel, is to just feel loved. And I wish I would have known that when I was 20.

Mick Spiers: 52:52

Yeah, that's powerful stuff. Our need for love and belonging is in all of us. And yeah, very powerful. And to remind ourselves that we are loved, because we do forget. Sometimes we get on autopilot and we forget. Very good. What's your favorite book?

Steve Fortunato: 53:09

Oh God, Mick, I'm gonna say the alchemist. I mean, that's that's really difficult as someone who who reads a lot of books, but I'd probably say the alchemist. Okay, very good. What's your favorite quote? I'm going to say greatness is in the trying. I think we think of greatness through the lens of accomplishment, through the lens of recognition, and I think greatness really is in our effort.

Mick Spiers: 53:40

How does that show up in your life?

Steve Fortunato: 53:42

It shows up in a commitment to lifelong learning in every every aspect of my life, I am trying to learn how to have a better relationship with myself, because I know that that influences the relationship that I have with my partner and my children, those I lead, those I serve, and living life with intentionality.

Mick Spiers: 54:07

Yeah, really powerful. All right. Thank you, sir. Finally, there's going to be people that are really curious about this host mindset, or just everything that we've discussed today on the intersection between leadership and human connection and your frameworks. How do people find you? If they'd like to know more.

Steve Fortunato: 54:26

stevefortunato.com would be the easiest way for them to find me.

Mick Spiers: 54:31

Okay, all right, and I'll just add there that I strongly encourage people to get a copy of the book to reach out to Steve. He also does retreats and seminars that could be really interesting for you, if you want to really immerse yourself in this world and become a greater leader, a leader that that has a host mindset, a leader that achieves great things through people, not at the expense of people, and by creating the environment where they can thrive through these relationships that we've been. I'm talking about today. Thank you so much, Steve, for your time today, for the gift of your time, the gift of your wisdom, and for making us stop and reflect and see the world through different eyes and inspiring us into action around our own host mindset. Thank you so much.

Steve Fortunato: 55:17

Thank you so much for having me, Mick, really appreciate it.

Mick Spiers: 55:21

What an impactful conversation there with Steve Fortunato. What stood out for you? For me, it was the moment you felt the shift from I need to be the hero to I'm here to host. Here are some takeaways that you can put into practice immediately, the mindset shift from hero to host, heroes, center themselves, hosts center, the people and the purpose and everything changes from that posture. Number two, speak the good. Start by naming the good in yourself so you don't lead from insecurity. And then name the good you see in others, in your colleagues, your clients and in your company, honor those that you serve. Elevate dignity, especially when you disagree, ask better questions and listen fully and reflect back what you heard. Number four, earn respect. Don't demand it. Bring tangible value. Keep your promises and close the loop consistently. Number five, turn moments into rituals. Host the room. Open with intent, invite voices, pronounce names right and end with clear commitments. See your reflections for this week. Ask yourself these questions, where are you still showing up as the hero? What's one meeting you'll host differently and specifically, how will you do that? And who needs you to speak the good to them today. If this episode helped you reframe leadership, share it with a fellow leader who's ready to trade performative heroics for meaningful hosting in the next episode, we're going to be joined by the amazing Jim Fielding, who's going to talk to us about building psychological safety and inclusivity in leadership. You've been listening to The Leadership Project. If today sparked an insight, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with one other person who would benefit from listening to the show. A huge thank you to Gerald Calibo for his tireless work editing every episode, and to my amazing wife Sei, who does all the heavy lifting in the background to make this show possible? None of this happens without them around here, we believe leadership is a practice, not a position, that people should feel seen, heard, valued and that they matter, that the best leaders trade ego for empathy, certainty for curiosity and control for trust. If that resonates with you, please subscribe on YouTube and on your favorite podcast app, and if you want more, follow me on LinkedIn and explore our archives for conversations that move you from knowing to doing Until next time, lead with curiosity, courage and care.