This week’s guest is Antonio Lucio. His bio is extraordinary. He was the first Global Marketing and Communication Officer at Visa. The first Global Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at HP. He was Facebook’s first Chief Marketing Officer. And left there to become the Founder and Principal of 5S Diversity. They describe their mission as accelerating the leadership journey of diverse talent and increasing its representation in senior marketing roles in the industry. He is a member of the Executive Fellows Program at Yale University and earlier this month was inducted into The Marketing Hall of Fame.

He is known as an incredibly empathetic leader.

As you’ll hear, that may be his greatest accomplishment.

Leaders, according to romantic lore, step in where angels fear to tread. They throw themselves, head first, into the fray, and generally are willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of others.

Here’s a simple truth. It’s hard to lead anyone, anywhere meaningful, if you don’t care about yourself.

The pandemic has extracted a much deeper cost from leaders than most are willing to acknowledge. I see many in denial of the personal price they have paid and continue to pay for keeping the company together and the business going.

The trauma of the last two plus years is real. And has been replaced by a world in which there are no rules and everyone’s normal is new.

If you think that you can tough your way through that then I encourage you to listen to all of this conversation.

It’s the story of how a leader who has achieved everything, had to first learn the very hard way what really mattered.