Culture Leadership Program for Metaxa Hospitality Group
The context
Metaxa Hospitality Group is one of Greece’s leading hospitality groups, with a portfolio of upscale properties in Crete and Santorini and a long-standing reputation for quality, warmth and authentic Greek hospitality. The Group has been consistently recognized as “Greece’s Leading Hospitality Group” by the World Travel Awards from 2021 to 2024, a distinction that reflects both the strength of its guest experience and the depth of its commitment to people.
As the Group continued to evolve, expand and refine its culture strategy, it placed human-centric leadership at the center of its next chapter. Following a broader culture design process, including the definition of a renewed purpose, refined values and a values-based competency framework, Metaxa Hospitality Group wanted to ensure that its leadership behaviors would consistently reflect the culture it aspired to build.
One Breath Leadership was invited to design and deliver the Culture Leadership Program, “Leading through Care,” a comprehensive leadership development initiative created to support the translation of Metaxa Hospitality Group’s culture ambition into everyday leadership practice.
The challenge
For a hospitality group with multiple properties, seasonal intensity, high operational standards and diverse teams, culture is shaped every day through thousands of small leadership moments. It is expressed in how managers communicate under pressure, how they recognize effort, how they give feedback, how they build trust, how they respond to mistakes, and how they balance care for people with accountability for results.
Metaxa Hospitality Group had already invested significant work in defining the culture it wanted to strengthen. The next step was to translate that culture into daily leadership behaviors across the organization.
The challenge was to create a program that could support a wide range of managerial roles and experience levels, while maintaining a strong common leadership language across the Group. The program also needed to respect the realities of hospitality, where leaders often operate in fast-moving, emotionally demanding environments where guest expectations, team dynamics and operational pressures intersect.
The objective was to help managers strengthen human-centric leadership in a way that would support both employee experience and business performance, with a focus on visible behaviors that build trust, belonging, ownership and consistency.
The research context
The program was grounded in research on human-centric leadership, psychological safety, trust and emotional intelligence in hospitality. In high-service environments, the evidence suggests that leadership behaviors directly influence both employee experience and guest outcomes.
Employees in hospitality groups with high psychological safety experience a:
40% increase in openly discussing failures
35% increase in supporting each other
13% increase in error reporting
(Wang, Guchait & Paşamehmetoğlu, 2020; Guchait et al., 2016)
Human-centric leadership in hospitality is associated with a:
40% increase in employee engagement
30% decrease in turnover intention
30% decrease in burnout rates
20% increase in service ratings
25% increase in repeated visitation intention
30% decrease in guest complaints
(Sources: Gomes & Fereira, 2025; Abolnasser et al., 2023; Alzyoud et al., 2024; Vakīra E. et al., 2022; Sobaiah A.E. et al., 2022)
This research supported the design logic of the program: when managers build trust, emotional safety and clear accountability, people are more likely to speak up, learn from mistakes, support one another and deliver better service experiences.
The approach
One Breath Leadership designed a customized Culture Leadership Program aligned with Metaxa Hospitality Group’s purpose, values and Culture Competency Framework. The program was built around the 2026 theme of “Leading through Care,” with a focus on human-centric positive leadership and accountable teams.
The training was created for all managers of the company, with content adapted according to leadership level and role context. This allowed the program to create both consistency and relevance. All participants worked with shared principles and a common leadership language, while each group explored the themes through the lens of their own responsibilities.
a) Senior leaders
The senior leadership group focused on role-modeling the culture, setting the tone for inclusion and belonging, promoting accountability through trust, and strengthening alignment around vision, values and visible leadership behavior.
b) Middle managers and experienced supervisors
The middle management and experienced supervisor groups focused on enabling everyday team culture, bringing values to life through daily behaviors, applying practical tools for feedback and recognition, and empowering teams through clarity, autonomy and support.
c) New people managers and supervisors
The new people managers and supervisors focused on the transition from doing to leading, building trust, communicating clearly, delegating effectively, navigating team dynamics and avoiding micromanagement through fairness and clarity.
The learning journey addressed four core themes:
Human-centric leadership: Empathy, emotional intelligence, inclusion, recognition and trust.
Open communication and feedback culture: Active listening, difficult conversations, conflict management, recognition and improvement feedback.
Accountability and impact: Ownership, self-leadership, initiative, resilience and growth mindset.
Care and results: The ability to lead with empathy while maintaining clarity, standards and performance expectations.
The methodology
The methodology combined leadership development, organizational psychology, neuroscience, coaching frameworks, mindfulness-based self-awareness and practical workplace application. The program was intentionally experiential, because culture change requires leaders to observe their patterns, practice new behaviors and connect values to real interactions.
The training experience included:
Guided reflection and journaling
Self-assessments and leadership diagnostics
Partner exercises and group dialogue
Role plays and workplace simulations
Real-life hospitality scenarios
Feedback and communication practice
Team exercises designed to reveal leadership patterns
Mindfulness and nervous system regulation practices
Practical tools for recognition, delegation, accountability and conflict
Recommended reading, pre-work and post-work resources
The learning platform
To support continuity beyond the classroom, One Breath Leadership created the Metaxa Group Leadership Academy, a customized branded digital learning environment that gave participants access to materials, resources, tools, self-assessments and learning content.
Each group had access to a dedicated digital learning space, allowing the learning journey to continue before, between and after the live workshops. This digital layer helped reinforce the program’s core themes and provided a structured space for reflection, preparation and ongoing engagement.
Additional culture reinforcement
The learning journey was also designed to support HR and senior culture change stakeholders in stewarding the transformation over time, including the following initiatives:
a) Culture Council Training
A dedicated training element focused on helping internal stakeholders anticipate resistance, identify early signs of misalignment or fatigue, support managers during the transition, and monitor progress through feedback and adjustment.
b) Culture Day
A Group-wide culture launch event designed to introduce Metaxa Hospitality Group’s renewed values and culture direction, creating a shared moment of alignment, reflection and commitment across the organization.
c) CEO Fireside Chat
The CEO Fireside Chat, designed by One Breath, created a powerful symbolic and practical moment in the program. Through a reflective live conversation between the CEO of Metaxa Hospitality Group and Myrto Legaki, the themes of care, belonging, accountability and leadership were connected to the Group’s broader vision and culture journey.
The experience
The design of the program reflected a core belief shared by Metaxa Hospitality Group and One Breath Leadership: human-centric leadership becomes meaningful when it is practiced in ordinary, everyday moments.
Participants were invited to examine how their own behaviors influence trust, motivation, belonging and performance. They explored the difference between intention and impact, the role of self-awareness in leadership, and the way stress can shape communication, decision-making and relationships.
A strong emphasis was placed on communication and feedback. Managers practiced how to hold conversations that are both direct and respectful, how to offer recognition that reinforces desired behaviors, and how to address performance or collaboration concerns without damaging trust. Through role plays and realistic scenarios, participants worked on the ability to stay clear, grounded and constructive in moments that often feel emotionally charged.
The accountability component helped managers move toward clarity, ownership and empowerment. Participants explored how to set expectations, delegate effectively, create autonomy and respond to mistakes in a way that supports learning while maintaining standards.
The care and results theme was especially important. In hospitality, care is central to both the employee and guest experience. At the same time, teams need consistency, structure, accountability and performance discipline. The program helped managers practice a more integrated leadership stance that combines empathy with clarity.
The impact
The Culture Leadership Program gave Metaxa Hospitality Group a shared leadership language to support its culture transformation across all management levels. The initiative helped create alignment between the Group’s values, competency framework and everyday leadership practice.
The program supported managers in developing practical capabilities directly connected to culture and performance:
a) Human-centric leadership capabilities
Leading with empathy, care and emotional intelligence
Building trust and psychological safety in teams
Strengthening belonging through everyday inclusion
b) Communication and feedback capabilities
Communicating more openly and constructively
Giving recognition and feedback with clarity and respect
Managing conflict through dialogue
c) Accountability and performance capabilities
Encouraging ownership, initiative and accountability
Delegating with clarity and autonomy
Balancing care for people with responsibility for results
Modeling values through visible leadership behavior
Why this collaboration matters
For One Breath Leadership, this collaboration strengthens our role as a trusted partner for organizations that want leadership development to become a practical vehicle for culture change. It showcases our ability to design and deliver large-scale, customized learning journeys that combine research, behavioral science, mindfulness-based self-awareness, leadership practice and business relevance, especially in complex, high-service environments where leadership behavior directly shapes both employee and customer experience.
For Metaxa Hospitality Group, the collaboration reflects a strong commitment to building a culture where people feel seen, trusted, supported and accountable. Through “Leading through Care,” the Group invested in a leadership journey that connected purpose with behavior, care with accountability, and leadership learning with the lived reality of hospitality, helping managers strengthen the kind of culture that enables both people and performance to thrive.
If you’d like to explore how similar training programs can support your teams or leadership groups, check out our work and schedule an introductory call.