Five reflections on hospitality this holiday season | Business Ethics

Good leaders understand that hospitality unites people. It is the antidote to hostility and division.

This holiday season, especially in these times marred by conflict and division, would serve us all well to re-explore the meaning of this powerful virtue: hospitality.

Consider these five reflections about hospitality to your relationships at home, work and with your fellow citizens:

Reflection 1: Practicing hospitality helps us to find room for others in our lives.
Practicing hospitality helps us find room to help others in need and open our hearts a bit more without losing our heads.

The DelMonte Hotel Group, headquartered in Rochester, has flourished over three generations on its talent and tenacity for finding room for guests and making their stays not just welcoming but enriching. CEO Alex DelMonte says that “hospitality is in the company’s DNA. To strengthen our DNA we like to grow people from within. Many long-tenured employees stay with us because they find meaning and purpose in serving others.” DelMonte noted that his #2, chief operating officer Kate Kuttruff, has been with the company 33 years and his CFO, Mark Mercier, is retiring in December after 32 years of service. DelMonte says: “We know that hospitality is built on a genuine appreciation for our associates and guests, and a desire to exceed expectations in every detail.” The company will soon acquire its 18^th hotel and has expanded to four states.

The best professionals and leaders I know always seem to have time to help a struggling colleague or new associate succeed. How often do you sense the real needs of others and make room inside yourself for them?

Reflection 2: Hospitality is a calling, a duty to fulfill, not merely an option.
Hospitality is among the oldest of all human moral institutions. The Latin word “hospitalitem” means “friendliness to guests.” The Greek word “philoxenia” links two words, philos, “affection” and xenia, “stranger.” Thus, hospitality means affection toward strangers.

In the ancient Middle East, with political borders often in flux, travelers were forced to rely upon the hospitality of others to survive because one never knew when the tables would be turned. The practice continues today. Watch the movie Lone Survivor, where United States Navy Seal Marcus Luttrel finds himself pursued by hostile forces and must rely on the protection of Afghani tribal leaders — Muslims — who practice the ancient Pashtunwali Code of showing hospitality toward strangers, regardless of their background.

The responsibility to extend hospitality — as a matter of survival — is even extended to one’s defeated enemies. Proverbs 25:21-22 exhorts the Israelites: “If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; for … the Lord will reward you.”

Healthy competition flourishes on hospitality. When I was the chief operating officer of a multi-national middle-market company, our main production facility suffered a devastating fire. We survived because our competitors chose not to crush us but instead provided us with product so we could bridge our way back into business. Their hospitality was thanks, in large part, to the good relationships our founder and board chair, Bill Coffey, established with competitors across the industry over many years.

Does your business show the appropriate level of hospitality toward employees, customers, visitors … and competitors?

Reflection 3: Hospitality helps us to overcome past hurts and wounds.
Hospitality is often hardest with the people closest to you. Many families and organizations are wounded by infighting. Greek Orthodox philosopher Stelios Ramfos reminds us that “in order to co-exist with our fellow human beings we need to accommodate them.” The word “accommodate” in Greek is synchoreo, which also means to forgive and tear down unnecessary walls such as those built over time from unresolved conflicts and moral injuries.

That is why the Christmas story of the incarnation and birth of Jesus is so radical. To bridge our estrangement from God through sin, He empties Himself into the finite human being, Jesus, to make infinite space for us in Himself. God extends hospitality so that each of us freely makes room inside ourselves for Him and others.

Receptionists and retail greeters occupy important positions in your organization. Check to see that they have what the need to represent the kind of hospitality you want others to experience.

Reflection 4: Hospitality extended requires respect from the guest.
With hospitality, the host gives freely (from the goodness of the heart) and the guest receives (with gratitude). The Nativity scene begins with Mary in labor, and her husband, Joseph, seeking shelter. Although the innkeeper has no room, she senses their desperation and finds excess good still exists to share. It is inconceivable that Joseph “pitched a fit” or expressed resentment at the rough hospitality offered in the stable. Quite the contrary. There is an expectation that visitors respect the accommodations and the law of the host, even if they are not under its rule.

In the epic Iliad, Homer tells how the entire Trojan War is fought over a violation of hospitality. Helen, the wife of Spartan King Menelaus, is a stunningly beautiful woman. While visiting Sparta, Paris, the son of King Priam of Troy, seduces Helen to dishonor her marriage and follow him to Troy. This breach of hospitality led to a terrible 10-year conflict.

The failure to maintain control of our southern border has caused anguish for Americans who see the pain of so many desperate people risking their lives to enter the United States. Yet these same Americans also feel deep injury, abuse, and violation, because their leaders are failing to protect the order — our laws and our common good — required for hospitality to flourish at the border.

Hospitality is conditional in this respect. The host’s door is open to the stranger, but only on condition that the visitor respects the order the host requires of the house. Unless the host and guest practice hospitality freely, they cannot possess its power.

When traveling to suppliers or customers or other company sites, do your leaders and employees show respect for their hosts and due care toward their customs?

Reflection 5: Hospitality is required to overcome past sins.
Our greatness as a nation is in proportion to our hospitality toward others.

Despite our country’s sin of racism — importing Africans to fund slavery from the 1700s to mid-1800s and the near extermination of our hosts, the American Indians — the United States has sought to atone for its violations of hospitality. We need to atone again. The rise of antisemitism on our college campuses — a place that should be safe for the mind to learn to think — are dangerous violations of hospitality that foment hostility and division which leaders must address.

Since we celebrate Chanukah this Holiday Season, it is fitting to remember America’s first-generation Jewish poet, Emma Lazarus, whose inscribed words of her poem The Colossus at the base of the Statue of Liberty capture our nation’s most cherished value, hospitality, extended to those ready to receive its liberties and respect its laws:

Here inscribed is America’s most cherished value: hospitality. You could be tired and poor, but you had to be strong to enter America and you had to come to live in peace and prosperity. America, the place of abundance, was ready to extend hospitality to those ready to receive its liberties and respect its laws.

The American soul needs the light of Christmas more than ever. We have entered a dark period in our history when the existing power structures and institutions are no longer trusted; when citizens love their country but hate their government; when people grieve the loss of goodness in their lives and desperately look for leaders to restore it again.

Greatness, after all, comes from excess goodness. And without excess goodness, hospitality is hard to find.

Peter C. DeMarco is a longtime supporter and former board member of Elevate Rochester, and the author of the forthcoming book, The Good Will Leader. Priority Thinking® provides leadership coaching, organizational development and ethics education programs to leaders, businesses, health care groups, universities, and non-profits.