What happens when the vision you have for your life is bigger than what the people around you believe is possible? In this episode of Leading Visionaries, host Anjel B. Hartwell sits down with Steve Gutzler, leadership expert, speaker, coach, and the president of Leadership Quest.

Steve shares how lessons from his family's pancake house shaped his approach to leading people, why attitude sets the tone for an entire organization, and how a clear vision can create the passion needed to keep moving forward when life does not go according to plan.

Get ready to discover how to keep getting better forever while leading with vision, emotional intelligence, and purpose.

What You Will Learn:

Why a compelling vision can create passion and motivation in the present.

How a leader's attitude can influence the people and culture around them.

Why leaders manage things but lead people.

How to maintain perspective and navigate emotions when life goes sideways.

Why entrepreneurial and leadership journeys rarely move in a straight line.

How lifelong learning can help leaders continue growing and evolving.

Why emotional intelligence is a critical leadership skill, not simply a soft skill.

How emotionally intelligent leaders create trust, connection, and a sense of value in others.

Why your inner circle can either strengthen or diminish your biggest vision.

How anchoring yourself in your core values can help you navigate challenging seasons.

FAQ:

What is the relationship between vision and leadership?

Vision gives leaders a clear picture of the future and creates the passion needed to move toward it. A strong vision can help people understand where they are going, why it matters, and what they need to do in the present to make that future possible.

How does emotional intelligence improve leadership?

Emotional intelligence helps leaders understand and navigate their own emotions while recognizing and responding to the emotions of others. This creates stronger relationships, greater trust, and a leadership environment where people feel valued, appreciated, and empowered.

Why is emotional intelligence important for entrepreneurs?

Entrepreneurs are constantly communicating ideas, building relationships, making decisions, and influencing others. Emotional intelligence helps entrepreneurs connect with people beyond simply exchanging information, making it easier to build trust and move people toward a shared vision.

Connect with Steve Gutzler

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LVP 154 Steve

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Now, here's your host, Anjel B. Hartwell

Anjel: Welcome to another episode of the Leading Visionaries podcast, where we celebrate the ingenious, insightful, innovative, and inspired leading visionaries of our time and provide our listeners with world-class examples of the kind of courage, clarity, and confidence it takes to bring visions into reality.

Today, he's one of the nation's leading voices on resilient leadership, coaching the Seattle Seahawks, Microsoft, and other top organizations. As president of Leadership Quest, Steve turns those early lessons into practical tools that drive trust, connection, and results. Real leadership, he says, starts not with a title, but with a Pancake House kind of heart.

Steve, I'm excited to have you here. Welcome to the show.

Steven: Thank you, Anjel. This is great.

So I'd love to hear about your visionary capacity, Steve. Was it something that you, uh, recognize you've had since you were a child, or did your visionary, you know, proclivities come online later in life as a result of life experiences or some kind of awakening moment, or maybe even trainings that you received?

Steven: Yeah, I love that question. I don't think I've ever been asked that question before. Mm-hmm. But I think to begin with, I'm a visual learner, and so I've always been curious, I've always been observant. And so being very observant and visual, I think that lends itself to vision. Mm-hmm. I love the quote that vision is a picture of the future which creates passion in the present.

Mm-hmm. And often when I meet people and they go, "You really need to work with my, you know, my CFO," or, "You need to work with this team. Uh, they're, they're lacking discipline." And often I tell them it's not really a discipline issue, it's a vision. And, and they need to be... They need to tap into that vision of the future which creates passion in the present.

So I'd love to hear how you supported your guests or h- I'm not sure whether you were waitstaff or whatever it was that you were in the pancake house. How did you, like, transfer the vision to your audience, let's say?

Steven: Yep. Well, first of all, my parents had this little pancake house outside of Portland, Oregon, called Tom's Pancake House.

And often when I share this in presentations, I'll say, "Isn't it interesting he didn't say the most important management principle I know?" Because I was a manager. But he knew that you actually manage things, but you lead people. You lead people. So he took me to the back of the restaurant and he said, "When you walk into Tom's, I need from you, Steve, a capital A attitude every day.

And that attitude may not be the only thing, but it needs to be the first thing, because the attitude you bring to our employees is contagious, and that's the attitude they'll take to our customers." Mm. So he knew that. He set the tone. He brought that every single day. I was privileged to bring that as a manager.

Number two, let's surprise and delight them with what would be reasonably expected. And then he talked about the and then some Let's do a reasonable expecta- and then let's always and then some the service in every encounter, and then let's sincerely thank them.

Anjel: Mm.

Steven: And so becoming brilliant in the basics began to just separate us, and that was contagious.

Like, I've been able to speak with Ritz Carlton, some great... You always think about and then something. Mm. People have a reasonable expectation. What is he gonna say? What is she gonna bring? Mm. But what is your signature and then some?

Anjel: Mm. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna share a really brief story, because I just feel inspired to do it.

Steven: Good.

Anjel: I was the waitress that they would give twice as many tables to as any of the other waitresses, 'cause they knew I could handle it. And one day, my next-door neighbor came in, and it was just two people, and usually I was doing, like, 15 people tables. And I'm coming out with the tray, right, with their two plates on it, and I was just, like, on a roll, and I put the tray down on the tray stand, and the two plates went flying onto the floor.

Steven: Good. Nice, nice pivot.

Anjel: Yeah, yeah, and sometimes we have to pivot. So I wanna ask you about how you maintain vision when things go sideways.

How do you maintain vision, and how do you lead through when something goes sideways? Like, how do you help your people, the people that you support, with that?

Steven: Yeah, and I mean, that's, that's life. That is life. I just got news. We were scheduled to go up to Portland to watch my grandson play in his first varsity football game as a freshman, one of only two freshmen, and but he's had this back issue, and he did an MRI, and they just found out he fractured his L4, and he's out for the season.

I always like to say life is not up and to the right. It's more like watching the stock market. It's an ebb and flow, and it's-

Anjel: Mm ... changes daily. Mm-hmm.

Steven: And if you just live by high moments, uh, you're gonna get beat up. But if you can learn to navigate your emotions, which is, a lot of it is your self-talk A lot of it's how can I reframe this?

Anjel: It's less about, like, how you're helping people, but more about, like, did you start your own business right away, or did you... Were you in a corporate leadership role and then you ended up leaving and starting your own business? 'Cause a lot of the people who listen to this are founders and it takes vision to do that.

So I am curious, have you always been self-employed, or is that something that came sort of along the way as well?

Steven: Yeah, my path, like a lot of people's path, began kind of at rock bottom. I was unemployed. I was in between employment opportunities. I always wanted to pursue a leadership company speaking.

Mm. And then I started to really dedicate myself to lifelong learning. Getting better forever was my mantra, get better forever, and leaned heavily into emotional intelligence. I felt like, if I can become an expert or, quote, "an authority" in a subject matter under the umbrella of leadership, I think I can really do well in this.

Anjel: Mm.

Steven: Because I was intrigued by it, and that's how it began. So, it's- Mm ... been certainly a journey.

It's gonna be zigzaggy, and sometimes you start something and you have to stop it. Sometimes you start something and it takes right off and then it crashes and, you know, the market changes and... So there's, there's all kinds of different- Pathways and trajectories, and I wanna get back to what your dad said, which is attitude with a capital A is going to get you through a lot of things.

We're gonna take a quick break, but right right now, and I'm gonna let the listeners know where they can find out more about you after the break. Uh, so we're just gonna take a quick pause. Listeners, do you want a clear revenue-amplifying business strategy designed to convert your big vision into big money?

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Anjel: And we are back with Steve Gutzler. You can find out more about Steve and about Leadership Quest at stevegutzler.com. That's stevegutzler.com. We will have that for you in the show notes. So before we went to the break, Steve, we were talking about vision and leadership. I wanna get back to your dad's big vision for his restaurant, was that it was gonna be the whole Pacific Northwest.

I'm curious about what your big vision is for Leadership Quest.

It was kinda like a who's who, and my brother-in-law invited me, and I was a nobody. And they said, "What we're gonna do is we're gonna go around the room, and I wanna hear everyone's vision." And so they started off going clockwise, and I got more and more nervous because it was... I was gonna be the last person.

And when I said that, my voice was kinda quivering, but it galvanized it in my heart that it was- Mm ... going to be something big. I had no idea- Mm ... that I would have be privileged to serve global brands travel parts of the world be recognized by others. But it came with that dedication of really one life at a time-

Anjel: Mm-hmm

Steven: and getting better forever. And I just knew if I could touch one life at a time, significant things could happen. So, that was my vision. It's grown. It's evolved. There's new layers to it, but I still have that passion burning in my heart.

Anjel: Mm. Beautiful. Well, it's, it's another interesting thing for me, when I got the message, like, I get messages from the divi- I got...

Like I said, I wanna be... I know I'm supposed to be heard by millions, and this was, you know, almost 20 years ago, and this gal in this mastermind group I was in, she's like, "You can't do that." You know, "You need to, like, think smaller," basically was what- Yeah ... she was saying. So how do you help your leaders when they're getting pushback on their big visions?

Steven: Yeah. Interesting. So let's go back to that room of leaders.

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

Ad: Mm-hmm. "

Steven: I believe this is gonna happen." So they validated it because they were dreamers.

They were what I call summiteers. When you get around people that are summiting, they don't diminish other people's dreams. They validate it. So I tell people, "Be careful who you..." I didn't go out and start announcing that dream to other people because I knew if I did, they would probably shoot it down- Mm

or minimize me. Mm. And I didn't want that to happen because it was- Mm ... deep inside me. So I would say, number one, be careful who you share it with.

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

Steven: And number two, create a small inner circle of dream believers. A small inner circle of dream believers. Your inner circle, I tell people, will either make you or break you, and you need to choose what I call summiters, people that are summiting, that are still climb...

Retirement is the last thing on my mind. Mm. As long as I have value to share and I still feel passionate, I'm going to do my work. Mm. And so I'm even careful, like, who I surround myself with, right? Mm-hmm.

Anjel: Right. Well, and, uh, if you retire, it's gonna be hard to fulfill the get better forever.

Steven: That's

Anjel: right.

Steven: Well, I went to a conference, and that's where that get better forever started for me. They, they, they asked us to become lifelong learners, read a book a month. The very first book I read was, uh, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The second habit I read was Daniel Goleman's book on emotional intelligence.

And I was fascinated with it, and what popped out to me on that book is that with every human encounter, two things occur. There's an informational exchange, but Goleman said equally if not more important is there is an emotional exchange.

Ad: Mm.

Steven: And your highest performing leaders, your most successful entrepreneurials understand that.

But if they lead with emotion, if there is a story attached to it-

Ad: Mm ...

Steven: all of a sudden you're moved. Mm. You're connected. So I like to say emotional intelligence is not a soft skill, it is a hard edge leadership skill for visionaries that want to tell their story.

Anjel: Mm. Beautiful. Well, let's talk about some of your, like, maybe your favorite client story, client success story.

We got on the elevator and he said, "Now I know I met your wife, Julie, but you said you had three kids. What are their names?" And I said, "I have Jenna, she's in real estate. I have Jace, he's in law enforcement, and I have Kyle, he's in, uh, high tech." And I heard him say under his breath, "Jenna, Jace, and Kyle."

Anjel: Mm.

Steven: He registered it.

Anjel: Mm.

What has separated Chuck is his emotional intelligence.

Anjel: Mm.

Steven: When we walked across the workspace to go to his office, he introduced me to their new employee, Rachel, and he goes, "Steve, I've got to introduce you to Rachel. She's gonna be a rock star."

Ad: Mm-hmm.

Steven: And then we walked a little further. He goes, "Steve, I need to introduce you to, uh, Bill.

He's our longest-standing employee. He's gonna retire this year, but I'm gonna talk him out of it 'cause he's a legend. I want him to stay." And everywhere he went, he made people feel valued, appreciated, and empowered.

Anjel: Mm.

Steven: And your greatest leaders have almost this emotional magnetism That elevates the people around them.

Anjel: Mm.

He goes, "God gifted me with a good brain and a good set of hands for surgery, but I'll take credit for the second. I've improved my emotional intelligence."

Anjel: Mm-hmm. "

Steven: And I practice what you talk about. And before I ever talk to a person about treatment options, I always ask this one question: 'Can you please tell me the story behind your pain?'"

Anjel: Mm-hmm. "

Steven: The story behind your pain." And he goes, "I've had grown men weep because they're able to tell the story behind their pain." Mm. And he goes, "As soon as I share that or they, they tell their story, it's almost like we're connected in trust-

Steven: and empathy." So those would be my two, um, you know, hall of fame.

Anjel: I really love that second one. You know, being a podcaster for sure, I, I know what a gift it is to have somebody be heard. Like, I'm here hearing you, right? And, and I've been on both sides of the mic, so I know h- what it feels like to need to be heard, that need to be heard, desire to be heard, the calling to be heard.

Steven: Yeah. We all, we all face those, and I think we've all had the defining moments of loss, grief, breaking points. And for me personally, the defining moments have always led me back to my true self, which is getting recentered. And I like to tell people, keep it simple. You know, maybe write down those four or five stationary anchoring values.

Anjel: Mm. I love it, Steve. Thank you so much for being with me today. Listeners, we love feedback. Please let us know what you think of this episode by joining our community, sharing your takeaways, asking questions, or submitting guest suggestions. Be sure to share the show with your, in your own spirals of influence with people who would benefit most from these conversations.

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