Billy Keels  0:00  

Today's episode is sponsored by Billy Keels Advisory Services. If you want to learn more about how to make your 99 optional, just go to make it optional.com Once again, that's make it optional.com

Speaker 1  0:14  

helping you build freedom without losing your edge. This is the Going Long Podcast with Billy Keels.

Billy Keels  0:27  

It's not every day that I get a chance to speak with a manager. Now I'm actually not even going to say these words. Speak with such an amazing person and leader that has over 30 years of experience in the corporate world. He has a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Florence, as well as an MBA in Polytechnic University of Milan. He's held multiple senior positions in leading IT prestigious IT global companies. He's included roles at SAP, where he was the CEO of Italy, as well as the EMEA chief operating officer, as well as other roles, such as the global head of maintenance, and you know what, he's even worked at other companies like Software AG, where he was the senior vice president of global support services, as well as the global head of renewals, and that's not all, because he's originally from, get this, Florence, Italy. He's a jazz enthusiast, and he's also been ranked, and I don't know if this is a secret or not, but I'm going to share it with you, ranked in the top 100 in international fencing, and he today he is an executive and leadership mentor, as well as coach, and he is the author of The Leader's Heart: Leadership Beyond Rationality in the Age of AI. It gives me great pleasure to welcome to today's conversation mr. Augusto Abarki. Augusto, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2  1:53  

Thank you, Billy. Thank you for the introduction.

Billy Keels  1:56  

This is such a well, this is a like a full circle moment for me, you know, having had the opportunity to know you, to see and witness a lot of the things that we're going to talk about that you're going to be sharing with the Go Long family, all who are all around the world, I've been able to witness this leadership, and a lot of the things that you're going to be sharing with us today firsthand. So I may talk a little bit more about that during the conversation, but there's so much to talk about today, especially as we were going to lean a lot into the leader's heart. This is an amazing life experience, and I'm going to suggest, even from the outset, that everyone who is in a going-long family member, if you're watching, you're listening, you're running on a treadmill, this is a book you're definitely going to want to pick up, especially if you want to take your leadership to the next level, and so I'm not going to steal every all of the things I go through. I'm going to let you share with, but as you know, I usually like to ask the backstory, but today I'm going to do something just a little bit different, because, well, you know, you could be doing a lot of things right now. I know lots of different corporations around the world would love to have you leading their organizations, especially not just with the rational know-how and knowledge that you have, but also this heart-first-led leadership style that you have, but like most things, every single relationship comes to an end, and I'd be really curious for you to share with us if you could talk to us about what helped you to make the decision that today is a moment where you want to continue to help others on in the way that is best for you and not under a corporate construct.

Speaker 2  3:40  

It's in my heart it's simple. After many, many years working for multinational corporations, and having accumulated a lot of years of experience, I thought the moment had come for me to give back something and work more on helping other leaders to develop their own leadership style, rather than continuing to be a leader myself, and so I felt that this was something I should, I should do, and, and I feel, let's say, grateful to be able to do this, because I see people developing their leadership, and, and this is for me something that really pays off my time and my dedication to this activity.

Billy Keels  4:31  

I love that, and it was on your heart. And, as I've, as I mentioned before, you know, there are so many different lessons that we're going to learn, and I know that you're going to share with us through this, through you actually investing your time sitting down, sharing these stories. You will continue to, and I know you are even today helping other leaders to develop their own individual leadership style, so there's something. In the air, as it relates to leadership, and whether that's inside of the walls of a large multinational organization, or someone who is maybe has a small business, and they want to get the best out of their own leadership, or even a lot of the listeners of the Going Long podcast today, who are in a corporate role, they're enjoying their corporate role, and at the same time they have this desire to explore what else they could be doing, potentially outside of the corporate role or not, but there's the, we have a disengagement crisis, apparently, as it relates to leadership, and I know that one of the things in 2024 there was a large Gallup study that was done, and it talked about the crisis that we're living through right now. Specifically, it talked about, you know, 13% of European employees, if I'm hopefully that's correct, are disengaged. Can you maybe talk to us a little bit about the role that leadership could be playing in that?

Speaker 2  5:58  

Yes, so I think, you know the society is changing and the work environment is changing as well, and this is giving us the possibility to look at leadership from a different perspective than in the past. I think one of the reasons why the people are changing their mindset towards their work environment is due also to Covid, because the fear the people had in that period made them rethink a little bit the priorities in their life. I hear more and more people telling me the work environment for me is very important. I'd rather earn less money, but I want a nice working environment. You know, the old idea of work-life balance, which I have always hated, I would say, because I mean it gives you the feeling that you work and then you leave, but work is a part of their life and having a good working environment is very important for other people now, and the other big trend is due to the fact that the young people, the new generation is approaching the companies, and they come with a different approach, a different mindset. They would not sell their life or a career anymore, like in the past. It was pretty common to be to be done. Right now, the people want to enjoy what they're doing, so they care a lot about, you know, how they are seen, how they are, they are taken care of when they are working, rather than being there and just execute processes, like maybe in the 80s or even in the 90s, the people will do. Now you need to give them something more, right? So that's why I think the dealers should really think a little bit the approach and the way they look at the organizations in today's, in today's business. Yeah,

Billy Keels  8:16  

yeah. Well, and as we start to help share some of the stories that, that you, you've seen, or you've witnessed, not just seen, but actually lived. I'm sure that that's going to really help the going long fan understand this, this concept around leadership, and as it relates to that, like I, and it's something that I mentioned in the very beginning, which was your love of sport, specifically fencing. I think, if my research is correct, that maybe there was a bit of sport that has helped you also to come to this really focus that you have as it relates to the heart and the leader's heart, and so can you talk to us about how how Sport actually helped you to come up with the philosophy and the importance of how heart is as it relates to leadership?

Speaker 2  9:08  

Yes, when I was younger, my main activities was playing fencing, I was crazy about that, I used to train like four hours per day, and my, my idea was, I want to go to the Olympics. I want to be a champion, and fencing, you know, in Italy is very popular. We, we are the number one nation in the world. So I was number 22 in Italy, and that was in the top 100 so it means I mean the Italian fencing is strong, and I was strong from a technical and physical point of view, but I was very emotional when I was young, and being so emotional doesn't help, you know, fencing is a sport where you see me. Late fight, and you have in front of you a guy whose face you cannot see because it's covered by something black. He has a sword in his hand, and he wants to kill you. So, psychologically, it's pretty difficult, pretty hard, and the fact that was too emotional didn't make it possible for me to emerge like I should have, just to give you an idea, the guy I was training with, my friend, he won the World Cup, and in the training we were more or less the same, maybe I was a bit stronger from a technical and physical point of view, but when the competition came, there was something that was preventing me to be really a winner, and, and that was for me very frustrating, but I didn't give up, and I continued for many years to play fencing, then after I stopped, because I started working, so there was not time for me to train four hours per day, I decided to stop when I was 28 and I started thinking about what prevented me to be a winner, what, what was the reason, and somehow I understood, and I worked with a psychologist on this, by the way, that I have a sense of equilibrium that prevents me to, you know, be happy when I win, because in sport it's a zero sum game, so if you win, someone else has to lose, and this breaks the equilibrium, and for me, in my subconscious, of course, not in my rational mind. This was not good, and, and so this is what I learned about myself by doing sport, and I think sport is very important to teach you who you really are, because we always think about the zero sum game, I win, you lose, but actually you are not, let's say, facing another, another player, you are actually, let's say, exploring the deeper of yourself when you do sport, the relationship with yourself, the understanding of how your mind works is what I really learned when I was doing fencing, I started understanding myself much better than when I came in the world of business, I mean there are some companies, some organizations that say we need to win against the competition, we need to, you know, beat the competition. While I thought that's not the right approach, I want to, I don't want to think about the competition, I want to think about my customer and play a win-win game with my customer. I don't care about the competition, because if I create value for my customer and create a win-win situation, this will automatically give me, give me the possibility to win, and that's how I approach the business world, I would say, right, with this mindset.

Billy Keels  13:44  

Yeah, and you know, when you're able to approach this mindset, and it's really, how do you focus on the inside versus focusing on what's on the outside? It really does change the game. So, when we think about this zero-sum game, it's, it's very easy to understand, especially the work that you mentioned, that you'd also done to recognize it's that internal equilibrium that you were not having, which was having you not go to the next level as it related to fencing, but it's really, really interesting, so you talk about focusing on the things internally to be able to get the most of the of the leadership and especially with heart and it makes me think about one of the wells it actually makes me think of two things but the first is typically when you're looking on the inside there's also this desire to really drive and drive based on the numbers, it's really focused on how do we get, and you know, we both really many years lived in the in the sales and sales leadership side of things, and there's a constant focus on the key performance indicators. Now, without giving away a lot of things, I know you talk about a really key concept. Um, this McNamara fallacy, and I think most people should understand what that is, but can you tell us about how, when you, when you want to lead with your heart, but there's such a drive internally to look at numbers, how, how as a leader you can actually overcome these types of fallacies, such as the McNamara fallacy, to be the best version of yourself in leadership.

Speaker 2  15:28  

Listen, first of all, I would say that the numbers are very important, of course. I mean, we have all lived in national environments, and the numbers are, of course, the basis, but the way you use the numbers is also something to reflect upon. When you take decisions based on numbers, it means you have modeled the reality, made the reality represented in a model, right, and this is where most of the problem comes, because you know modernization introduce mistakes by definition, because reality is always more complex, especially when it involves human beings in the past, the market was pretty stable over time. You would have the chance to, let's say, make the model as sophisticated as it was possible, and then the model would work, so you could look at the numbers and understand how the business was going, where we should go in the future. What the kind of decision we should take when the market becomes, let's say, pretty complex, confused with new things happening every day, and so on the chance you have to represent the reality in a model is becomes pretty difficult, and that's where the heart comes into play, in my opinion, because you need to mix, let's say, the model with a different kind of, you know, abilities that we have as human beings, so I was.. I tell you, the book that I have wrote, written is the second version of my book. The first version was ethical leadership and but it was when I came to the conclusion, I said, yeah, but this is nothing new. I mean, and I have to think again about how I revise my experience, and then I came into these studies, into these neuroscience studies that have discovered that the heart has its own brain, so the feeling was always that the heart was important. The heart has been important throughout the history for millennials. Then there is a point where there is a break, and from there on only rational mind becomes important and we have forgotten the heart and now we know from neuroscience that the heart has a brain and this brain takes decisions and it's more what the heart tells the brain, then vice versa, so we have always thought the heart is a pump and for blood, and the brain will tell the heart what to do, and the heart will do it, but that's not true, the heart has its own brain that can feel, take decisions, communicate to the rest of the body, and so on, and this is very interesting, but what I ask myself is, what that means for a leader. What are the main points why the heart can be important for the leader, and I came with the three, mainly one is courage, the second is intuition, and the third is connection. So, I mean, we can talk for hours about that. I talk about all of those in the book, but tell me, what you would.. yeah,

Billy Keels  19:34  

you know what, we're definitely going to go to that, because that's the.. I think this is a key area. I want to just actually want to take a little bit as you were talking about the heart, and I, you know, one of the things I also learned is a lot of times we can't put words to it, but you know it's those messages that are going actually faster from our heart than our brain, right? It's almost, it's a few seconds, it's a few seconds that happens, but. Four, but I want to ask the question, really, about something else that, that relates, and it's for that person that feels like, hey, look, maybe I don't have any leverage, I'm in a, I'm in a situation, you're telling me about the, about the, about the heart, and, and, but I'm in a situation right now, I have this intuition that I feel like I need to be able to do something, but I don't actually have leverage, so and what I mean by that is the person who is in there, let's say that they're in a corporate role and they're feeling that they also have a desire to explore, they want to build a business on the side, for instance, How can someone who doesn't feel that they have the worth to be able to do something beyond their current role, and they feel that they don't have enough leverage to actually try that, what can they actually do to use a, I guess, like a technique that would allow them to lean into trying something new, even though that they don't have leverage, and it makes me think a lot about the story that you told with the purchasing director that you, that you met with, and you know, when you don't have leverage, sometimes it feels uncomfortable to try something new, but there are ways that you can actually to do that and feel a bit more confident.

Speaker 2  21:21  

Yes, I have spoken about this episode, looking back into, into my young age of my career, because at that time I was not realizing that the heart was was implied in this process, but that's what I felt, and the only way I had to face this person, this person was very tough, I was a young sales and I had to face this negotiation with a super expert purchasing director, and I knew he could have killed me, right, so my rational mind was telling me we lose because there's no way we can come out from this situation in a good way, for me on the other side I said it came to my mind all of a sudden I love this guy, I need to love this guy, because if I face him with rational points, he will, he will kill me, because he has the knife in his hand, he can kill me any moment. So I need to switch to a different mindset and a different approach with him, and and I was thinking into myself, and was repeating into myself, I love this guy, he's tough. Yes, he might have his reasons to be tough, he might have his constraints, and so on. So I understand why he's behaving like this. I don't hate him, because if I hate him, I will put, let's say, on the table a maybe worse situation. So I want to change the approach and say I appreciate you. I understand you, why you're negotiating so tough, and I just want to say let's look at things from both sides. I have my problem, you have your problem, we have different targets. Okay, why don't we try to find something that can be good for you and good for me? And by doing this, he immediately changed his his approach, and it was like magic. And then I realized, I mean, maybe love has something to, to do with, you know, the way you interact with people, the way you connect with people, because at the end, I've been, as you can imagine, I've been teaching how to sell to hundreds of people over my career, and you know, when you have these sales methodologies, they always tell you, you do this, you do that, negotiation, you start high, then you, you lower the price, and then find it, but at the end of the day, what I have understood is that the real decision is made much before that, that, that we think, and people, then that, in my opinion, the process that they take the decision subconsciously, and then they try to find reasons, objective reasons, why this is the right decision, but the decision has been taken already. So, when you face, for example, someone for a negotiation, you need to understand that there are very small factors that can. Influence a lot the behavior of the other party, and, and, and I mean, having this in mind, that you think I think you can conduct a negotiation or a sales process in a very different way, rather than, you know, putting their numbers, putting their demos, in the case of software, as you can imagine, and so on. Yeah, that's all something you need to do, but you need to be aware that probably the decision in the subconscious of the person you have in front has been taken already for other reasons.

Billy Keels  25:38  

Yeah, well, and I appreciate you sharing that with this, because it is one of the things that happens, especially when you feel like you want to do something new, you don't have, you don't have a particular leverage, it's finding that moment, and it is finding that reason, and it is finding, you know, it is understanding. Okay, am I in the right approach with this person? Is it, and when you say love this person, meaning from a gentleness, so you're not trying to figure out they, they win something, I win less. It's it goes back to even what you were talking to us about the beginning, is that genuine idea of being able to come up with scenarios where multiple people can win, which, like, which, which is, which is phenomenal. One other thing, and then I do want to go back to the, to the topic we were talking about before, with the courage, intuition, and connection, but many times when you are in a process of wanting to, maybe you're doing something new, or you've been put in a position that you're unfamiliar with, and you get to a point where you have to trust your intuition, that's something that can be really, really difficult, especially if you've spent your entire career getting ready for a particular moment, and maybe you have to give this massive presentation, and maybe you're standing in front of a lot of different people, and you, in you think it's the thing to do, but How can someone, and I know you've been through these types of experiences, and now with retrospect, I look at it and I understand it, but how can someone proactively learn to trust that heart brain that you were talking about before to be able to connect authentically with somebody, especially when there's like a pressure situation, like it's hard enough to do it when there's no pressure, but what can what what can you do to share with us, and being able to trust that intuition, that heart brain.

Speaker 2  27:33  

Yeah, so when you work, you have a career, right? So, and hopefully you grow in your career, and what happens is that every time you are familiar with what should be done, you're promoted to a higher position, and you are again back to square zero, because you don't know, I mean, at the beginning, so the career is something where you are constantly in an in the unknown, right, because if you do something very well, it's that's the right moment to be promoted to a higher position, and you're back to square one, as I said before. So you need to tap into something else, which is intuition, which is also connection, because when you have a new job or you want to do something different, many times the people around you can help you a lot, and that's what I've experienced when I had to cover positions where I was not prepared for people around me helped me. Why? Because I had created a connection with them, and intuition and connection and courage again are very important in this moment. So there is something to be very important to understand intuition and impulse, because if something comes to your mind, can be intuition, which is a very powerful tool that I will explain a little bit more, and impulse, impulse can come from different things, fear or enthusiasm, or but it's not a quality message. While intuition usually is very precise, very fast, but very precise and very useful, but to be able to tap into intuition you need to be in a certain state, which is called by neuroscience hard coherence. Hard coherence means you know when your heart beats 60 times per minute, for example, it doesn't beat exactly one time per second in. Be it's 1.01 second, 0.99 and so on, and this variation heart rate variability creates a sort of pattern. If the pattern is regular, you are in hard coherence. If it's not regular, you're not. And what happens, they have seen that hard coherence can be reached when you have are in, in a certain mood, when you feel appreciation, love, compassion, and and positive sentiments, then your heart is coherent when you are scared, when you are, we have anger, and so on. The coherence is gone when you are in hard coherence. Then intuition is is positive, is good. You have clear mind, you have more, let's say, access to to informations that are useful when you are not in hard coherence. Probably what comes to your mind is is not good, and that's why I mean it's very important for the leader to maintain a mindset. mindset which is based on positive feelings, because then your intuition probably is right, right, and that's that's something that you can train, you can train your hard coherence.

Billy Keels  31:38  

That's exactly what I was going to say, is that something that, and how easy is that to train, or what can be done? I know it's there's some of that, it's in the pages of the book that you can,

Speaker 2  31:51  

when I, when I, when I, if you read probably the first page of my book, if you want to be a good leader, go to a psychologist, because you need to start by knowing yourself, understanding your weaknesses, understanding your fears, understanding also your strengths, but that's why in coaching leaders I work with a psychologist, because so first of all, I'm passionate about leadership, as you, as you can understand, leadership cannot be, let's say, trying to copy a model, say, ah, Jack Welch was a great leader, I will behave like him, no, no, that's not because then you start pretending, and when you pretend, the people who immediately spot your pretending, and you're not credible, and you lose trust. You need to be yourself, but you need to work on yourself, because, for example, fear of failing is something that will prevent you from being in coherence. And then intuition and connection are gone, and so working with on yourself is very important. Starting from there, if you are able to maintain yourself in a certain mood, I would say then you can have hard coherence, and then there are exercises that you can do, I mean, I can, I can do some of them with, with the executives I'm working with to make sure that they are, they have the right approach and the right mindset.

Billy Keels  33:34  

Yeah. Well, and I appreciate you, you sharing that, and you know it is when you're working and working with executives and helping guide them and navigate them through that process, and also, as you said, even in the first couple of pages of the book, really talks about being able to work with psychologists, work with those that can help you to explore the deeper feelings, the emotions, and things like that. So I did want to come back to, but before we get into the towards the end of the of the conversation, and you talked about earlier this whole concept of what's really at the heart of leadership, and it's really about the courage, it's about the intuition, it's about the connection. Was there anything else that you wanted to build on that? I know you're talking about the connection, or, sorry, the intuition now, and courage. Was there anything that you wanted to build on the connection portion?

Speaker 2  34:25  

Yes, the connection is also very important. So you know that as a leader, trust is the basis. I mean, if the people, a leader is a leader if he has followers, I mean, no followers, you're not a leader to have followers, the people need to trust you, and and trust is based on connection with the people, so when I took over the position of head of maintenance at SAP, the. Organization was spread around the world. The previous leader, my predecessor, did not travel. It was a lady. She would interact only through video calls at that time. I decided to change totally this and started to travel, and I've been also damaging with my health, because you know, traveling around the world every day, changing time zone and food and everything, is not, is not good, but it was good for the organization, because I want to establish a connection with them, I don't want to speak only about work, I want to have a beer, have a dinner together, speak about your family, your situation, your problems, of course, on the job, but also about you as a person. People that are that feel they are seen, they tend to, let's say, reciprocate this with you, and then you establish the connection. What is interesting is that science, neuroscience, now tells us that this depends also from the heart, because the heart, as a magnetic field that it extends to three meters from your body, the person in front of you can feel it, even if they don't realize, they feel if you are calm, if you are nervous, if you fear, if you have any, any different kind of feeling in yourself. So it's very important to be there personally, and have the possibility to spend time with a person face to face, and make sure your heart is communicating with them. When you do this, I mean, everyone, I think, have seen that there are some leaders. They walk in the open space as they pass by, they create positive energy. On the contrary, there are leaders that create fear and negative sentiments like energy, positive energy is super important, because you know in this environment executing processes is not making an organization that successful to win in the market of today every person that works in the organization has to use their brain, has to put their passion in it, understand how to solve problems, because you know if in a market where, for example, the cost of energy can be increased by 30% in two weeks, because there is a war in Iran, for example. Then, of course, I mean, the organization doesn't have the time to re-elaborate the processes. You need the people that are there in the field to find the solution to a problem that has occurred in that moment. Will they do it? They do it if they are passionate about what they're doing, if they are engaged, if they have clear where we want to go as an organization, if they are there to execute a process that someone told them to execute, it will be a disaster, right, and that's why creating this connection with the people, making sure they feel comfortable, they feel what they do is appreciated, and so on. That's super important in a market like we are living today. It would be much longer, but I mean, just to explain in a few words.

Billy Keels  38:37  

No, it's, and that's really extremely helpful, and as it brings full circle in terms of connection, and also that connection, what that actually can can drive from a leadership perspective, and the actual direct impact that that can also have on on an individual, on a team, and throughout through an entire organization. Wow, there's so many different things that I want to be able to talk about, but I would like for you to actually just share, because I haven't really asked the question directly, like Augusto, can you help us understand, because we know we talked about the book, The Leader's Heart. We've also talked about just ways that you are working with and helping other executives. Can you maybe talk a little bit more about who you are helping today, and how you are helping.

Speaker 2  39:24  

Yeah, so I'm helping some executives now, starting from the point that a leadership style has to be built on this single person, has to be customized and personalized, deeply starting from where, where they are, and trying to add. I try to add the power of the heart, usually, and try to make them think and realize how the power of the heart can be an extremely useful tool. Tools for them to be successful as leaders, and how this is important, especially in a period where artificial intelligence is endangering all the working position. Right? If you are a leader, I met the first time I met this leader in December I'm working with now. He told me, "I'm an engineer, I take decision based on numbers. I don't care about feelings and emotions, and I said wrong, wrong, very dangerous. Now, taking decisions only on numbers, you know why? Because in a couple of years, artificial intelligence will replace you, because if we just elaborate on numbers now. Computers can do it better than you. You want to protect your job, make sure you add something human to what you're doing, otherwise the machine will replace you. For example, and that's that's a little bit simple, but I think it's important to consider.

Billy Keels  41:01  

Well, in usually the simplest examples are the ones that make the greatest impact, and so you know, as we, as we get ready to wind down, I appreciate you letting us know, and I know you also do some specific speaking engagements, as well as some, some, some smaller group, corporate group work as well, so we're going to include all of that in the show notes as well. Augusto, but there is one thing that I want to ask you, just because it's something that's really important for me, and I know for the for the going long family, and you've talked to us about not just thinking about the numbers, right, not just having the the number numbers focus is about also being able to, and more importantly, especially nowadays, to be able to focus on the heart and be able to make decisions, also leading with your heart, not in absence of numbers, you're not saying that at all, but also, also one of the things that I recognized recently, and this after leaving corporate life was when things are going really, really well, we tend to not focus on it, you know. You maybe, if we think about the corporate days and the QBR, you went by the things that were in green and you went by them really, really quickly, but when things are in the red or things are not going according to plan, we have a tendency to focus on those things, and it feels like it can last forever before it changes, but what I've realized is that all of they're all moments that the highs are really one moment, in the lows are one moment as well, but the differences in the low moments, and this is more about an individual versus an overall team, and just from your life experience, what is the one thing that you know you need to say to yourself, so let's even project. I'll say, let's think, Augusto, three years from now, you know you're going to have a lot of things that are going to happen that are going to be great moments, and you're going to have moments that are going to be really challenging moments. I want you to share with me and the entire going long family, when the moments are you're in those low moments, what's the one thing that you know that you need to say to yourself to get you from that low moment to getting back to more of the high moments that you would share with us,

Speaker 2  43:08  

so as a provocation, I would tell you the biggest mistakes are always done when you are in the high moments, because that's where you don't think where you know the market is going, and so on, because the numbers are good, no problem, right? So be very careful when you are in the high moments, because that's where you are at risk of making the biggest mistakes. When you are in the low moment, the problem is focusing only on the moment, and, and being, let's say, constrained by all the negative things without thinking out of the box, innovation is the key, but innovation requires intuition, and intuition you beg, you go back to the same right, because if you change nothing, nothing will positive will happen. If you want to change, you have to change in the right direction, and intuition can be a very good tool. For example,

Billy Keels  44:11  

okay, so focus on the innovation as well as the intuition. Well, I will start. You know, I can't believe, like, I love this. I love what I do here on the podcast, the thing is, is all these conversations, they just go by so fast. I feel like we just started this conversation, and you were helping us to understand, you know, you're helping us to understand how you are helping other leaders to really develop their leadership skills, and being able to do that really focused on the individual, because there is no one leadership model that's effective, and you, and you continue to recognize through your own over three decades of corporate experience and true life experience, you've noticed something different as you talk to us in the beginning, like whether it's what happened from the impacts of Covid, also recognizing that today's newest generation is really looking for other things, not necessarily wanting to to. Work as long or just focus on making money. It's about how do we actually make and lead and lead effectively. You shared with us also, too, how your love of sport and fencing, and how that has also helped you to have your own philosophy, which is not just - it's not a zero sum game as it relates to leadership, especially when you're leading with your heart, it's how do you create those scenarios that allow you to win, allow others to win, really taking a focus on what's happening in the inner game versus the things that you can't control, and then you've helped to also walk us through this specific age and this specific moment of artificial intelligence, if we're just thinking about leading based on the numbers, chances are we probably will be out. So it's also to our own advantage to be able to focus on the heart and to be able to focus on building up those skills that will allow you to differentiate yourself. And I know that my entire going long family, as I like to say, is thinking to themselves, well, Billy, just ask him the question. So, the question that we would all love to know, Augusto, is what is the best way for us to find out more about you? How we can get our hands on the leader's heart and also be able to be in touch with you to understand how you're serving other executives today.

Speaker 2  46:18  

Yes, so first of all, there is a book, and the book is a starting point. And then I have my internet site, where you can contact me, and we can have a chat about your leadership and how to build on it, adding probably the heart.

Billy Keels  46:38  

Yeah, fantastic. Well, listen, and everyone, I'm going to say, go to Augusto barki.com We're going to make it very easy for you, so don't worry. We will include the link to Augusto's website, where you can find out about more about the leadership workshops, the executive coaching, as well as his keynote speaker availability. When you reach out to Augusto on LinkedIn, please do yourselves a favor, just let Augusto know that you've already listened to the conversation here on the Going Long podcast. It's going to help the two of you continue the conversation in a much different light, and we'll also include a link to Augusto's book, and we'll include that all of that in the show notes. So, please don't worry if you're running on the treadmill, if you're swimming, if you're walking, all you're going to have to do is click a link. So, Augusto, as I mentioned to you before, I do want to just say very, very much, I truly appreciate it from the bottom of my heart for you deciding to invest your time with me, the Going Long family, and also very appreciative of your leadership, the time that that we had to work together. So, thank you very much for investing your time with us today.

Speaker 2  47:43  

Thank you, Billy. I love your podcast, so I was happy to participate.

Billy Keels  47:50  

All right, fantastic. Well, listen also to go along family. Thank you very much for joining us. I'll be back here. I'm going to be preparing for the next episode, so until then, go out and make it a great day. And thank you very, very much.

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