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The Hospitality Playbook: Leadership Coaching
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jun 9 2026
Pages: 242
Weight: 0.72
Height: 0.51 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Every leader in this industry was handed authority. Very few were handed a playbook.
The Hospitality Playbook is the coaching framework that should have existed on your first day in a leadership role. Built on thirty-five years of frontline experience leading teams across hotels, resorts, convention centers, and food and beverage operations, and grounded in current organizational research, this book gives hospitality leaders at every level the specific tools, frameworks, and honest conversations that turn managers into coaches and teams into something worth staying for.
Turnover in hospitality is not inevitable. Burnout is not a personal weakness. The leadership competency gap that drives both is a structural problem with a structural solution, and The Hospitality Playbook provides it through five strategic plays designed to address the root causes of disengagement one chapter at a time.
The Culture Play builds the environment intentionally before the environment builds itself. The Leadership Play moves leaders from managing tasks to developing people. The Feedback Play delivers honest, specific, and compassionate coaching conversations that produce real behavioral change. The Career Path Play answers the question your best people are already asking. The Inclusion Play builds a system that works for everyone, not just those who were already advantaged within it.
Every chapter follows the same rhythm. A story opens the door. Research builds the case. A practical framework gives you something to use tomorrow morning. Downloadable tools, training videos, and an AI coaching assistant connect to every chapter through QR codes embedded throughout the book, turning each page into a gateway to a full leadership development ecosystem.
This is not a book you read and shelve. This is a book you work through, return to under pressure, and share with every leader on your team who deserves better than a job description and a good luck.
Whether you are a newly promoted manager who was never shown how to lead, a department head trying to build a culture worth staying for, an HR professional who needs a framework that works on an actual hotel floor, or a general manager tired of rebuilding the same team year after year, this playbook was written for you.
Von Nelson is an HR Director for a large full-service hotel with more than thirty-five years of hospitality industry experience, a doctoral candidate in Industrial and Organizational Psychology at Grand Canyon University, and an Adjunct Professor of Business at Mt. Hood Community College.
Leadership isn't just a position. It's a game plan.
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