Dear reader,
The What
As I shared briefly in last week’s newsletter, I will be interviewing leaders and sharing their leadership journeys in a mini-newsletter. As a subscriber to this (Deploy Yourself) newsletter, you will get the best-curated insights from these interviews in a mini-email like this one. I will send it in the gap week between two regular newsletters. You can also read this mini-issue online.
The Why
We all have a lot to learn from the stories of our leaders – of how they came to be where they are today. These are stories peers and friends don’t usually know, and my attempt is to give you an opportunity to learn from those who have already tasted success and made an impact.
The Who(s)
Antonio Potenza – “Money has the power to be a force for good!”
Antonio Potenza is the CEO & Founder of Proodos Capital and the COO and Co-Founder of Fund4Impact. In this wide-ranging interview, Antonio talks about how he moved from creating shareholder value to creating stakeholder value. He shares how he shifted his perspective about money, took a sabbatical, went back to University for an MBA, and came back with a mission to give money a more positive connotation. In his own words, “Money has the power to be a force for good. Money is not bad per se, it’s what we do with it that makes all the difference.”
He was also generous to share a personal story about her mother and her struggles to raise two children in a foreign land. He credits her for having the most influence on his leadership. He further adds, “My late father, whom I never met because he died in a car accident the day I was born, is another source of inspiration. I carry his name and what I know about him through the stories that I am told.”
Antonio defines leadership as empowering others to grow, progress and allowing them to take on responsibility and accountability. Read the full interview here.
Lisa May – “There’s a different way to lead and there’s a different way to serve!”
Lisa May is the founder of Fülle – Holistic Leadership Development and her mission is to help busy executives maximize their fulfilment without sacrificing their success – or anything else that matters to them. In the interview, she talks about the moment when she was very successful by all standards and yet felt really empty inside.
It was then she started going deep to understand what that really meant. She spent 5 to 10 years studying different philosophies, modalities and methodologies to put the pieces together. She realised that “I had become my achievements, my identity, and a lot of my worth and value as a human had been trained to be connected to milestones outcomes, performance. And that’s simply not true.”
She now looks at leadership differently. She believes leaders can get out of their own way to live, lead, and serve better. And they can do that not out of pain and suffering and out of pushing and driving through, but out of a place of deep balance and inspiration. How lovely is that?
She considers her dad the greatest influence in her life. She learned stamina and perseverance and true commitment to work from him. She adds, “But what I also saw in him is that he was able to be truly present with our family and with me at those pivotal points in my life where he could have been too busy and just pushing, pushing, pushing to keep going with the achievements. But he didn’t, he would stop and he would be present.”
Read the full interview with Lisa here.
How can you contribute?
Each one of us is on a leadership journey. Our journeys might not look alike. They might resemble more of a roller-coaster ride than a race track, and that is what makes each one of us special and unique in our own ways. I am deeply touched when someone takes the time to share their story with me. The leaders I work with are also left inspired when we listen to each other’s leadership journeys.
If you think that your leadership journey is worth sharing and would be valuable to others, reach out and allow me the privilege to interview you. If you would like to recommend someone else who I should interview, feel free to write to me about them. You can send me a message on LinkedIn or send me an email at sumit@deployyourself.com.
That’s all for this week! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate. Just hit reply.
See you next week with the regular newsletter.
With gratitude,
Sumit