This is the Leadership Journey series on the Choosing Leadership Podcast.

I believe we all have a lot to learn from each other’s stories – of where we started, where we are now, and our successes and struggles on the way. With this series of interviews, my attempt is to give leaders an opportunity to share their stories and for all of us to learn from their generous sharing. If you know a leader whom you would like to see celebrated on the show, please send me a message on LinkedIn with their name.

In our conversation, we talk about nature vs nurture, how we are shaped as individuals, and how growing up in an entrepreneurial family shaped him. He shared a couple of serendipitous moments which have turned out to be instrumental in his journey. We touched upon the important role of meditation in helping him stay balanced as a leader, and how his leadership style has evolved over the years.

You can find Ennio at the below links

In the interview, Ennio shares

  • I believe that people have to be self-supportive. But if we can’t be, if they can’t be self-supportive, then we as a state or as a society needs need to help those people in moving along.
  • There are so many books about leadership. If you have read them all, the risk is that by the end, you still don’t know what leadership is.
  • Some bits of an ego you need to have in order to move on because otherwise, it becomes a very passive life, 
  • So I’m very grateful for the fact that I’ve been able to fail. On a couple of occasions, which gave me the opportunity to learn and to see that there are better ways to move on.
  • I think it’s about balance first thing. So that’s a key word balance.
  • In the end, you need to ask yourself, what am I doing? Is that what I’m contributing to? Is that really something that is contributing to, the better of mankind, to improve the world to have some, another type of gold than just purely commercial?
  • Those types of existential questions. I think if people would dedicate more time without having their relatives or loved and dying around them but dedicate more time to think about those types of existential questions. I think, first of all, we would live in a better world for sure.
  • I always recommend also to people who work with me to do a bit of a retreat for a couple of days in complete silence and just think about, the purpose of life, things that you are grateful for, things that you have experienced, lessons learned, over a period of time.
  • I meditate but sometimes events happen. Also, unexpected events, which basically prevent you from, from staying calm because it’s easy to stay calm in a very calm environment where there is no pressure, et cetera, et cetera.
  • In the end, it’s always about reflection and the ability to see how unimportant you really are.  at the end.