In business, we are taught to manage systems, P&Ls, and teams. But as Peter Drucker famously noted, the most difficult person you will ever have to manage is yourself.
I recently attended a panel at the Peter Drucker Forum titled “The New Sciences of Managing Yourself.” The speakers, ranging from F1 performance experts to global CEOs, all landed on a singular, striking truth: High performance is not a business strategy; it is a physiological and psychological state.
If you want to lead in a turbulent world, you have to start in the driver’s seat of your own mind.
The F1 Principle: Recovery is Performance
Annastiina Hintsa (CEO, Hintsa Performance) works with 60–70% of the F1 paddock. Her secret? She doesn’t just ask drivers how they drive; she asks them who they are when they aren’t driving.
The Identity Trap: If your identity is 100% tied to your title (CEO, Manager, Founder), a setback at work becomes an existential crisis. To survive high pressure, you need pillars of identity outside the office.
The Pit Stop Mentality: In F1, you don’t stop because the car is broken; you stop to ensure it doesn’t break. Hintsa argues that sleep, nutrition, and mental energy are not “perks”: they are the prerequisites for the split-second decision-making leadership requires.
The Brain’s Verdict: Fear vs. Readiness
Eva Asselmann (Professor of Psychology) reminded us that our brains treat failure like social rejection. When the “internal alarm” (the amygdala) fires, we freeze.
Action Shapes Belief: Don’t wait to feel confident before you act. Self-efficacy, the belief that you can handle what’s coming, is built by doing.
The Story Matters: Your body feels the same during fear as it does during excitement (racing heart, sweaty palms). The elite leader reframes the story from “I’m scared” to “My body is pumping up to meet this challenge.”
The Leader’s Daily “Micro-Toolkit”
Niren Chaudhary (Former Chair, Panera Brands) shared six daily habits to bridge the gap between “knowing” and “leading.”
The Three Marbles: Carry three imaginary marbles into every meeting. Every time you speak, you lose one. Use them wisely to create space for your team to grow.
Learn and Love AI: Spend 30 minutes daily playing with AI. It’s not an end, it’s a means to stay curious.
Choose Courage over Noise: When the world feels chaotic, ignore the macro-noise and ask: “What can I control in my immediate community today?”
Practice “Wicked” Goals: SMART goals are for maintenance. WILD goals (Wicked, Illogical, Disruptive) are for transformation.
Build Grit in the Small Stuff: Do the extra five minutes on the treadmill when you want to quit. That’s how you train for the board room.
The Compassion Multiplier: Trust = (Competence + Character) x Care. Showing you care is the ultimate force multiplier.
Final Thought: The Diamond of Life
Niren closed with a beautiful metaphor. Life is not a flat marble; it is a diamond with many facets: work, family, health, and service. A leader who only shines in one facet is dimmed. To lead well is to do justice to the whole diamond.
Sustainable performance isn’t about running faster. It’s about knowing when to make a pit stop to finish the race.
Next Step for You: Pick one “WILD” goal for this month, something that feels slightly impossible. How would your approach change if you started at “impossible” rather than “achievable”?
Picture by Stuart Seeger from College Station, Texas, USA – Mika’s Lotus Debut, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5495395
Three different people, from entirely different professional contexts, asked me the same question: “How do we actually create effective team agreements?”
It wasn’t just the synchronicity that struck me; it was the timing. It’s the start of the year, a season where we naturally audit what’s working and what’s causing friction. There seems to be a quiet, collective realization spreading across teams: We can’t keep working by accident.
From Assumption to Intention
Team agreements aren’t about rules or corporate control. They are about alignment. In the book I co-authored with Michael Doyle, I Am a Software Engineer and I Am in Charge, we describe these agreements as a living document, a shared understanding of our habits, expectations, and rhythms. It is the bridge that moves a team from assumption to intention.
We use the story of Sandrine to illustrate this. She starts her journey frustrated, feeling like her team is constantly out of sync. Her turning point comes when she stops waiting for things to change and realizes:
“How do they know what I need if I haven’t told them?”
By making her needs explicit, she helps the team do the same. That is the heartbeat of a team agreement: It begins with a conversation, not a process.
How to Start (or Restart) Your Agreements
If your team agreement is currently a forgotten doc in a wiki, or if you’ve never had one, here is how Michael and I suggest you breathe life into it:
Start with Frustrations and Joys: Don’t start with a blank template. Ask the team: What has been draining your energy lately? What moments last month felt effortless? Use these stories to find where agreements are actually needed.
Focus on “Moments That Matter:” Don’t try to legislate everything. Focus on high-friction touchpoints: How do we handle interrupts? When is it okay to say “no” to a meeting? What does “done” actually look like for us?
Co-creation over Command-and-Control: An agreement handed down from a lead is just a rule. An agreement built by the group is a commitment. If people help build the house, they won’t want to burn it down.
Review and Revise Often: Agreements should have an expiration date. Your team changes, so your agreements should too. Make them a recurring topic in your retrospectives.
A Tip from the Field
In my other book, Changing Your Team from the Inside, I explore how the simplest acts, like discussing how you prefer to receive feedback, can build immense trust. A team agreement is simply an invitation for everyone to say: “This is how I work best. How about you?”
Another Tip from the Field
I also love the way Isabel Monville approaches this. She often reframes the exercise by asking the team to look through the eyes of a newcomer: “What would a new team member need to know to be successful here? What is okay to do, and what is definitely not okay?” This shift in perspective makes the invisible “unwritten rules” visible, allowing the team to decide which ones are worth keeping and which ones are just bad habits.
Your Turn: A Small Experiment
Next time you’re in a team meeting, try asking just one question:
“What is one working agreement we could make today that would make our day-to-day easier?”
Pick one thing. Write it down. Try it for a week. Reflect. That is how agreements become culture.
Are you rethinking your team’s rhythms this year? I’d love to hear what’s working (or what’s driving you crazy). Let’s talk.
Some leadership lessons are best learned far from meeting rooms and org charts. Hospitality is one of those places.
In this episode of Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership, I had the pleasure of welcoming Francelina Amaral, a hospitality leader whose career has been shaped by service, attention to detail, and a deep respect for people. Our conversation explores what leaders in any industry can learn from hospitality, especially when it comes to onboarding, developing leaders, and creating a genuine sense of belonging.
We talk about onboarding not as a checklist or an HR process, but as an act of invisible hospitality. The kind of preparation that happens before someone arrives. The small gestures that make people feel expected, welcome, and valued from the very first moment. Francelina shares concrete stories showing how these moments shape engagement, confidence, and long-term commitment.
We also explore leadership as service. Not leadership as authority or control, but leadership that creates the conditions for others to succeed. Through real examples from her teams, Francelina explains how trust, safety, and attention to detail help people step up, take responsibility, and grow into leadership roles themselves.
Finally, we look at belonging. Not as a concept or a slogan, but as something built through everyday actions. How leaders sometimes unintentionally break belonging. And how simple, human behaviors can restore it, for both employees and guests.
Transcript of the Episode
[00:00:00] Alexis: This is Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership. I’m your host, Alexis Monville. Today I’m very happy to welcome Francelina Amaral. Francelina has built her career in hospitality, a world where welcoming people, caring for details, and creating meaningful experiences are at the art of the work. She has held leadership roles in international hotel groups across countries and culture.
Always with a strong focus on service, people, and excellence. What I find particularly inspiring in Francelina’s journey is how she connects hospitality and leadership. For her, onboarding is not a checklist, but an act of invisible hospitality. Leadership is not about authority, but about service, and belonging is something you create through everyday actions.
[00:01:00] This conversation goes beyond hospitality. It’s about what leaders in any industry can learn from it.
Francelina, welcome to the podcast on Emerging Leadership. How would you introduce yourself to someone you just met?
Francelina: I’m Francelina, I’m Portuguese. I’m passionate about hospitality, and about the service itself. I love to meet new people, to be with people, and yes. I think it’s this. I have a long career built in hospitality. And I think it’s this, I think my career reflects my way of being in hospitality, is the way that where I can feel myself at best. So I’ll say it’s this passion about people, hospitality, and working within this environment.
Alexis: You’ve spent a lot of time in environments where welcoming people really matters. When you hear the word onboarding, what comes to your mind first?
[00:02:00] Francelina: Straight away, we think about checking, you know, we think about starting something, we think about… or in my point of view, onboarding, I associate straight away with a team, with the way that we welcome new team members to our hotel, to our company, to our house. I would say it’s, for me, a very, very important moment on the process.
Alexis: You’ve spoken about onboarding as a form of invisible hospitality. What does that mean in practice?
Francelina: Because when we’re talking about onboarding, and referring to hospitality or even to other business, because I have an example, I can think about an example that really stood in my mind and made me shift a few of the things that I was doing till that moment onboarding. It’s what happens behind the scenes.
[00:03:00] It’s the moment, the important moment where you arrive to a place and you feel or not feel that they were ready for you, they were preparing for you. You either feel special or you feel just one more. You either feel connected, or you feel that, hmm, not waiting for me. Maybe it’s not the right place or moment to come.
So I think on the onboarding we have the opportunity to really make someone feel special, welcome, and understand that we are ready to welcome this person and that this person, it’s important for us somehow, based on what the person will do, what the position will be. I don’t think that at this point it’s about the position. It’s about really having someone new joining.
And I always say “our family”, because in hospitality we work as a family, as a wall, as a team. But normally I say “the family”.
[00:04:00] When I’m talking about being invisible, it’s because there’s so much preparation that we need to do if we don’t want to miss this opportunity of success. Everything starts before the arrival, let’s say. That’s why I’m saying it’s invisible. It requires preparation that starts with the HR department — the Human Resources department, sorry, I’m saying HR and maybe people are not familiar with the term — so with Human Resources.
Then we have the manager of the department that will welcome the person, or even myself if it’s someone that will be working together with me. So invisible in the sense that we gather all the information, all the important things that we put on this moment, so that people feel that since the very first moment, since the very first contact, that they belong.
[00:05:00] Alexis: Interesting. Can you share a story of an onboarding experience where you felt genuinely welcomed?
Francelina: I will tell you — and it’s a recent one. It’s not an onboarding, but it is the feeling of really feeling welcome, as we were discussing. I just moved back to France. I’ve been in France, in Paris, from 2017 to 2021. Then I left back to Portugal, and now I’m back. I’m back with the same IHG to manage a different hotel.
Of course a different property, but when I went back to Portugal I left colleagues and some friends here in Paris that we, even though we don’t communicate on a daily basis or weekly basis, we do have the connection through the hotel, through some friends that we have there on the same group.
[00:06:00] And the best experience that I have, and it is the most recent as well, is my return to France, the way that I was received and welcomed back. Since the transfer — they went to pick me up at the airport — they managed that the driver was someone that I worked with in the past. So he recognized me.
And this was like I say, oh my God. So that was the first thing. I arrived to do the check-in in the hotel where I stayed. It was not this one. I stayed in the Paris Center, in the hotel that I managed before. And the general manager, she did everything, just to the little detail.
There was the check-in, then it was one of my preferred bedrooms that she prepared for me together with the team. I had the “welcome back to Paris”. I had, of course, the bottle of champagne, not to miss when we are in Paris.
[00:07:00] But all the details were really… like I was telling her, it was so important to me at that moment that I felt like I never left. I felt like I’ve been there all the time. So yes, this is the feeling of belonging. This is giving the importance of understanding the importance that a moment like this can have on an experience that will stay, and that will lead the experience, I would say.
Alexis: Yeah, I feel it’s really inspirational because unfortunately I cannot tell the same story about an onboarding that I felt really welcomed. And I believe that teams lose something when they treat it just as a process. And what you’re mentioning is it’s really about how people feel, and really get them to feel they are welcome, they belong to that new group, even if they are just there for five minutes.
[00:08:00] And I believe it’s really strong.
Francelina: It is, Alex. We do a lot. One of our aims, and I support it a lot, is… because my career started in hospitality because someone gave me the opportunity of being a trainee in a luxury hotel. That was one of the best hotels that we have in London. So this opportunity was given to me long time ago and it stayed with me.
It stayed with me to the point that every time I have the opportunity of welcoming trainees, and I see that the trainees are really looking forward — it’s not to have a stamp on their school practice — I open the doors and I encourage all the time my department and managers to do the same.
And the good thing is, when you meet these trainees at the end or in the middle of the internship and they come back to you and they thank you, and they thank you for the way that they were welcomed at your hotel. So this shows the importance of the moment, and how the moment can affect you, or can conduct the way that you’re gonna be at this place, and even in your life, I would say.
[00:09:00] Alexis: So it’s really interesting and fascinating to me. I was lucky enough to work in one hotel you managed near Lisbon. And I thought it was very funny to see how people are handling things that could seem very simple, but it’s not so simple.
It’s not necessarily easy to park your car. It’s not necessarily easy to understand how it works because you’re new. And of course all the people who are there know about everything. They could try to explain to you or whatever, but you arrive, you are… I use the GPS to find the place. I don’t know where I’m going, so I finally find it.
Oh, I’m going there, and there’s someone welcoming me there, and I wonder where to park the car. And they say, no, just leave it there. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.
Now they know why I am there and everything goes smoothly. And even before I realize, we are sitting on the terrace and having a fantastic chat.
So it’s very funny that it’s removing everything, removing all the frictions for someone to enjoy the place. It seems very easy. It seems very simple. I believe it requires a high level of discipline to reach such a high level of service excellence.
[00:10:00] So how do you balance the hospitality that you describe with the rigor needed to achieve that level?
Francelina: I think important for this experience… and I’m trying, or doing my best, to share what’s happening behind the scenes because yes, a lot of the preparation that you are just mentioning happens behind the scenes. So that you can arrive to a place and feel that yes, they were waiting for me. They remove all the problems or situations from the way so I can be at my best and enjoy that.
There’s two important components. One is that we need to love service. We need to love what we do. If you understand that what you are doing is to bring joy, to bring experience, to bring memories to the ones that are just in front of you, to the people that you are welcoming, then you got it.
Because if you like service, you like people, and you have the opportunity — and it’s an opportunity — to be facing guests like I faced you, like I face on a daily basis. And it doesn’t matter how important… it’s about the experience that the person in front of you can bring to your life and to you.
[00:12:00] Now I spend hours and hours with my clients, sometimes just listening to their stories, and I learn a lot about the world, places that I never been in my life, that they can share with you their experience.
So first we need to understand that it’s really an opportunity. And then yes, there’s a lot of procedures behind it, but the procedures become something that you do by heart, and not because you have a standard behind to tell you “you need to park the car, you need to open the door”. No, this will come naturally, I would say.
Alexis: It’s very interesting. So it’s focusing on how people will feel, and it’s focusing on how the people doing the job feel about it, and the rest is coming after. It’s not going in the opposite direction.
Francelina: I think — and let’s go back to the onboarding experience — if you do an experience where you manage to touch the person that is arriving, where you manage to show the person “this is how I care about you, how much I care about you”, and about what you’re gonna give to me in the future, of course — because this is the way that we welcome, and this is the way that we want you to do as well — the person will understand.
[00:14:00] And the person will give you the same… I’ll not say amount, but the same type of compromise with you, of commitment.
So yes, I would say that we are clients. I always say to my manager of human resources, I always say: we are your client. Because internally, yes, we have requests, we have needs, we have a family to take care, and sometimes it’s with this person that we have a bit more space to talk about, or to ask advice.
And the same with our guests. They stay with us, they ask advice of where to go for dinner, where to go. Of course it’s a different reality, but inside a hotel there’s another hotel, there’s the managers.
Let’s focus on the canteen, the staff canteen or staff restaurant. We have some colleagues that do their best so we can have a wonderful meal inside hotel. And this is not at the eyes of the guests, but it’s at our eyes.
This duality — if we manage to give the same importance that we give to our guests — then it works. We say: treat well a guest, he will talk to friends, he will come back, he will bring more people. So it’s really the way of keeping the business going.
Because at the end, yes, it’s a business, but it’s a business that if we do it, if it’s our passion and if we give our best… it’s like the saying: sometimes you don’t feel that you are working, you feel that you are really being part of a wonderful experience. Same needs to happen behind the scenes.
[00:16:00] Alexis: It’s very interesting that to really bring that level of care to the guests, you need to bring that level of care to the employees of the hotel.
Francelina: It’s the same. You as a guest, you will feel when an employee is doing by the book, or because he was told to do, or because it’s the standard — or you will feel because he’s doing his best. He’s really trying his best to accommodate your needs.
Of course there’s a standard. Of course we cannot be intrusive. Of course we have a few recommendations that our employees respect. But a lot of the interactions — what makes an experience different and ultimately a great memory — is what they give from them.
Alexis: You’ve seen a lot of people developing themselves, or you help a lot of people developing themselves during your career. What happens for them? What are the things that happen for them to start leading the way? How do you see that happening?
[00:17:00] Francelina: I’m going back again to my history and to my career. I was given the opportunity by my leaders at the time to develop myself. And one of the things that I have is that I’m very curious. I like to know why I need to do this, and why it needs to be this way and not that way. Not that curious anymore, but at the beginning.
Because again, I was passionate about this world of hospitality and I wanted to understand everything. So I would say that when you have in front of you a team member that is curious, that wants to understand and learn, you have a potential leader in this person. Because they will be curious, they will understand why we are doing the things the way we are doing them, and they will share this with others.
So on a team you have team members that will be there giving their best to the performance of the hotel and the experience of our guests. And you’ll have team members that will do an extra effort and will lead the process: they will correct the colleague if the colleague is not doing the right thing, they will come back to you with feedback that you haven’t seen, they will focus on details.
So when you have someone that starts to have these kinds of behaviors, then you understand that you are in the presence of someone that if you push, if you develop a bit more, if you dedicate a bit more, you can grow a leader.
[00:19:00] Alexis: It seems very easy to do when we listen to this, but sometimes it’s not easy, and sometimes even if you give the chance to some people they will make mistakes.
I remember vividly one time I was in Spain. The table we had was not far away from the bar, and we could see that there was clearly a more experienced woman talking to a very young guy who was doing the service. I could see that she was explaining carefully something and the guy was not very at ease.
And he’s going away with one bottle and two glasses… and three steps after, the bottle is on the floor and the glasses are broken.
And the woman goes around the bar, she already had a new bottle and two new glasses.
Francelina: Very fast.
Alexis: And she went to the guy. And I assumed that she would go to serve the customers, but she did not. She just gave the new glasses and the new bottle to the guy and she said, “oh, no passa nada”.
Francelina: Nothing happens.
Alexis: And she starts cleaning up the mess. And I was looking at that thinking: what just happened? And I don’t know, but the guy seemed absolutely okay after that.
And it happened in a snap, and there was no shouting, no big thing. And I’m pretty sure — I was looking around — not even all the people in the room noticed something happened.
[00:21:00] Francelina: That is a great example, Alex. This is how you build safety, how you build confidence in the person first.
You should not shout because it’s not a way that people learn. And it’s not the type of behavior that we expect from a leader or a manager or even a colleague. It’s not a way.
So what she did was to clean the situation, and to give new tools — the glasses and the bottle — to the employee, not giving him time to think “I failed”. No. These are things that happen. I’m here to support.
So she invests confidence. She gives him a boost of confidence saying “voilà, no passa nada, you go and you do what you need to do, and I’ll be cleaning up for you.” This is the foundation of leadership: when you manage to transmit confidence to your team, even though something that was not supposed to happen happened.
I like to think — and I always say this to my team — our team members are looking at our actions on a daily basis. So before being a general manager, my acts, the way I behave, is what they will see. They will see the title, of course — “Madame…” — but how is Francelina there? How come she’s there?
When I arrive, everyone knows from the teams I work with: I’m passionate about flowers, decoration, and details. So when I arrive in the morning, when I do the tour, I will have a look at the flowers. And I remember colleagues saying: “this is not in conditions, Francelina will see.” And it is true.
They will take care of it because Francelina will see, and because they understand how important it is for the way we present our lobby, or flowers in a room.
[00:23:00] So all the details count. What counts is actions, because they will see me remove something that is not in the right condition to be facing the guest.
So it’s actions. And what this manager in Spain did — encouraging the colleague to continue his job, removing the pressure of the situation — it’s one of the best examples we can have of how to build leaders and confidence, saying: listen, you go. This is teamwork.
Alexis: Yeah. And you mentioned something important: you’ll notice the details or even fix it yourself when you are doing the tour. It’s not just about telling others, it’s really acting, showing that it’s very important indeed.
Francelina: It is.
Alexis: Can you describe the moment when you see someone stop doing their job and start really leading?
[00:24:00] Francelina: I believe that is when you take ownership of situations. I would say problems, but it’s not only problems, it’s situations.
It’s when you see that someone comes to you, or to colleagues, or to a guest, and passes on: “don’t worry, I’ll be taking care of this.”
When you manage to put yourself in the shoes of a guest, of a situation, and you take the step of dealing with it, of assuming it, and saying: “I’ll come back with a solution.” This is one of the first behaviors that we see in a leader, or someone with the potential to become a leader.
When you see someone that is worried not only about the moment, but already thinking ahead.
Let’s take the example of the bottle and glasses. Maybe after the incident, the person who cleaned might talk to the colleague and say: “listen, you know why this happened — it happened because you didn’t hold the bottle as you should. I’m going to show you the most suitable way to do this.”
Maybe she’ll take this moment of stress and pressure and make it a moment of learning. Or if it’s not the fault of the colleague, she may take further action and say: maybe we need a procedure to show everyone that we cannot do it this way, it should be done another way.
This is the kind of actions you see in a leader: they don’t wait for a manager to go and find the solution.
[00:26:00] Alexis: Taking that moment as an opportunity to learn, and immediately while working on it, sharing it, trying to refine what we can do, how we can do things. I love this.
There’s a lot of leadership best practices in the world. We can see a lot of them on LinkedIn. What are the common leadership best practices that actually destroy belonging in reality, instead of building it?
Francelina: I would say what destroys not only leadership but a team, an entire team, is the lack of trust. The lack of drive. The lack of sharing.
It’s very important when you’re talking about the feeling of belonging. We are talking about more than… and going back to onboarding or to the way you welcome someone: you need to make them feel part of the problem and of the solution as well. They need to feel accountable for everything.
Of course there’s decisions and some situations that are held and managed by the manager or by myself. But if I share the reason why, if I share the result, then you will have the people with you.
Again, I like to inspire. I think I have been inspired by my leaders. And this builds trust, this builds confidence, this builds the engagement that we want.
I’m sure that if you talk to my previous leaders, they will tell you: yes, Francelina is someone that we can rely on. Because I learned so much from them that I’m there for them when they need me.
And I think this is the role of leadership: showing the way, sharing the knowledge.
Which is quite different than what we did in the past. In the past, we had a general manager or an HOD behind the desk dictating: “this is the way I want things to be done,” and no reasons why.
Sharing results — for example, in IHG, every general manager will do it the way they believe is the best for their team. But we have a culture of sharing results. We have a culture of empowering people on our teams.
And as soon as you are empowered, then you are given responsibility. Then you put more of yourself. Then you feel that you belong. Then you understand how important your work is for the success of the company, the hotel, and the goals we want to achieve.
I give you more examples of what builds than what destroys, but leadership is destroyed by lack of trust, lack of confidence, the wrong way of managing things. And there’s not one correct or wrong way, but the wrong way is when you don’t share the reasons.
I’m not gonna say the word authoritarian, but if you do it in a mandatory way: “this is mandatory, this is this.” No.
Share. Listen to your team as well. Share as much as you can. Of course a few things are not to be shared and this is okay, and they will understand. Because they know every time you can share something that will affect them, or help us move, help us achieve results, they will feel belonging and they will give their best.
[00:30:00] Alexis: Excellent. I love this. We are gently going to close. But before we close, I will ask you a question. What is the one question I should have asked you?
Francelina: What is the one… You asked the question, you asked what was the moment of my onboarding, where I felt most welcome. Probably — and this is not a question — but why Francelina, the general manager in hospitality, is present on your podcast when your industry, or your career, is built in different areas and not in hospitality.
Alexis: Yeah, that’s a very good question. Just listening to you, I was thinking: it would be so great if we had leaders in all industries behaving exactly like you described. Because I’ve been within companies, working with companies, working with clients, where they still don’t understand what good onboarding means and what is the impact.
Showing the way, going on the tour, looking at every detail, talking to people, listening to their team, working on the sense of belonging, safety, trust, building trust within their team — they still don’t understand why it’s so important.
So why it makes sense to have you on the podcast: it’s so easy. I believe there’s a lot to learn for leaders in all industries. I’m very thankful, grateful that you joined the podcast because there’s so many things we can learn from you. Thank you for joining. I really appreciate that.
[00:32:00] Francelina: Me too. It’s important. It’s a moment of sharing, and I love sharing. I’ve been doing this lately more than I used to do in the past. Exactly because going back to our industry — hospitality — I felt the need of sharing not only my experience, but sharing what hospitality really is.
And at the level of luxury, yes, but I always say that luxury… we can take luxury to all the details of the things that we do. We don’t need to be in a luxury environment. Luxury is respect. Luxury is understanding the need, anticipating the need. It’s behaving. So for me it’s all this.
And having your invitation to participate on the podcast, it’s another opportunity that I have to talk about this and to hopefully inspire not only leaders or managers, but the young generation that is still not understanding if they like hospitality, if they are willing to go to hospitality.
So if I can inspire at least one or two people with our conversation, I’m already really happy, and with a sense of achievement that makes me feel very good. So thank you.
[00:33:00] Alexis: Excellent. I love it. Thank you very much, Francelina.
Before we close, if this conversation resonated with you, I’d really encourage you to share this episode with one or two people in your life — someone you work with, someone you lead, or someone you are learning alongside. Your recommendations truly matter. They help this podcast reach people who could learn from these conversations and apply them in their own context.
You’ll also find the full transcript of this episode in the companion blog post linked in the description. It’s available on alexis.monville.com. If you’d like to revisit a specific moment or share it in written form.
Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership is supported by Pearlside. At Pearlside, we work with leaders and teams to create the conditions for responsibility, clarity, and impact to emerge. You can learn more at pearlside.fr.
Anger is one of those emotions we’re taught to see as bad, unproductive, or destructive. We learn to calm down, to let it go, to avoid it.
But what if that instinctive rejection of anger is actually making us less effective as leaders, as coaches, and as human beings?
This is where the work of Phil Stutz, the psychiatrist and author, gives us a powerful reframe.
Stutz is known for his long career in therapy (he began working as a psychiatrist in New York and later in Los Angeles) and for co-authoring books like The Tools and Coming Alive. More recently, his short essays were collected in Lessons for Living: What Only Adversity Can Teach You, a book full of reflections on real human challenges, including one titled The Positive Side of Anger.
Anger as a Signal, Not a Problem
Stutz doesn’t dismiss anger. He doesn’t see it as a flaw in character or something to be sublimated or ignored. Instead, he treats anger as information: a powerful emotional signal that something important is being violated.
When we feel angry, Stutz suggests, it is because something deeply matters to us. It’s a boundary signal, a marker that a value has been crossed or a personal standard has been ignored.
The trouble doesn’t come from the anger itself, but from how we respond to it:
If we suppress anger, it often turns inward as depression, apathy, cynicism, or self-criticism.
If we explode with it without reflection, it becomes blame and conflict.
If we instead own the anger and clarify what it is protecting, it becomes energy for change.
Stutz’s approach here is subtle but powerful: anger is not the problem, mismanaging it is.
Why Anger Is Useful
There are three important truths about anger that come through in Stutz’s writing:
Anger pinpoints what matters most. It’s not noise. It’s a directional signal that something significant for your identity or values is at stake.
Anger holds energy. Rather than draining us, when we own anger and interpret it accurately, it becomes fuel for clarity, resolve and action.
Anger is a stepping stone, not a destination. The aim is not to indulge anger, but to use it to uncover what needs to change and then move toward that change with intention.
In this sense, anger cleans the lens through which we see a problem. It helps us see beyond surface discomfort to structural issues like unmet expectations, crossed boundaries, or values under threat.
How This Applies to Leadership and Work
In organizational life, anger often shows up:
when leaders are exhausted by repeated blocks,
when teams feel undervalued,
when stakeholders ignore boundaries,
or when performance feels misaligned with values.
Too often, leaders either minimize anger or react to it without reflection. The result? Resentment, turnover, disengagement, burnout.
Stutz’s perspective gives leaders a different path: Use anger as a compass.
Ask:
What boundary is being crossed?
What value is being violated?
What concrete action would protect that value?
This shifts anger from a reactive emotion to a source of agency.
The Broader Stutz Framework: Adversity as Growth
Stutz’s book isn’t just about anger. Lessons for Living is structured as a series of essays on universal human challenges: envy, insecurity, bad habits, conflict, and yes, anger. What unifies them is a deep conviction that adversity is not a sign of failure but a teacher.
Rather than trying to avoid pain or conflict, Stutz invites us to face these experiences with curiosity.
A Practical Takeaway
Here’s a simple reframing you can use immediately — for yourself, or with a client:
Anger is not the enemy. Anger is the part of you that still knows what matters and refuses to give up.
That’s not a dismissal of discomfort. It’s an invitation to listen to what’s being said beneath the emotion.
In Practice: A Short Coaching Prompt
When someone says “I’m angry”:
Pause and validate “Anger tells us something matters here.”
Ask the deeper question “What boundary feels crossed?” or “What value is being defended?”
Solicit concrete action “What is the smallest next step that honors that value?”
Move toward ownership “What part of this is in your control right now?”
This turns anger from a stumbling block into a stepping stone.
We’ve all been there: You wrap up a powerful, high-energy, face-to-face quarterly meeting. Your leadership team is aligned, initiatives are clearly defined, and everyone enthusiastically volunteers to lead their respective actions.
You walk away feeling unstoppable… until you get back to the office.
Now, weeks later, you find yourself having to push every team member, individually and collectively, just to get the agreed-upon initiatives to budge. It’s frustrating, energy-draining, and makes you wonder: Why the resistance?
This is where a fun concept from psychology can shed some light.
Introducing: “Musturbation”
Coined by the influential psychologist Albert Ellis in the 1960s, Musturbation is his term for the human tendency to hold rigid, absolute, and irrational demands on ourselves, others, and the world—using words like “must,” “should,” and “ought.”
In the context of our post-QBR frustration, the “Musts” are likely manifesting as:
Your Internal Must: “They must execute on these initiatives without me having to chase them, because they agreed.”
Their Potential Internal Musts: “I must focus on my daily urgent tasks first,” or “This initiative must be perfect before I show anyone the progress.”
The Leadership Lesson: Stop Musturbating, Start Facilitating
The moment we believe our team “must” behave in a certain way, we replace clear, flexible facilitation with rigid, frustrated demands. We assume that agreement in a meeting translates directly into smooth, effortless execution, but that is rarely the reality in complex work environments.
Instead of operating from a place of frustration (“They must do this!”), leadership needs to:
Acknowledge the Obstacles: People return to a whirlwind of existing demands. The quarterly initiative is often a “should-do” competing with daily “must-do’s.”
Translate Agreement into Action Systems: Did you define the first next step? The accountability mechanism? The weekly check-in?
Replace Demands with Preferences: Shift your thinking from: “They must do this for the company to succeed.” (Rigid, frustrating) TO “I strongly prefer they do this, so what flexible system can I put in place to help them succeed?” (Flexible, empowering)
If you’re tired of pushing, stop assuming the “must” and start designing the system that enables success.
What is the most common “Must” you hear (or think) in your leadership meetings?
In many leadership workshops, we introduce a simple idea that quickly becomes a powerful lens: the idea of the line.
Above the line, we are open, curious, and ready to learn. Below the line, we are closed, protective, and trying to get through the moment.
It is easy to assume that one is good and the other is bad. But that is not the point at all. The point is simply to notice.
There is something almost like a leadership version of the Heisenberg principle. We cannot predict with certainty whether someone will be above or below the line in a specific situation. We can guess. We can know habits, patterns, preferences. But we cannot know for sure.
A difficult conversation, a stressful deadline, a sense of threat, a flash of insecurity, an unexpected constraint. Anyone can drop below the line. Likewise, the right environment, a supportive colleague, or a moment of clarity can shift someone above the line just as quickly.
There is no moral judgment in this. There is only awareness.
A big part of what pulls us below the line is our relationship with pain and uncertainty. Uncertainty carries the possibility of discomfort, disappointment, or loss, so our first instinct is often to avoid it. We try to control it, fix it, or eliminate it. This creates a kind of tension inside. We are not reacting to what is actually happening. We are reacting to the possibility of pain.
That is why uncertainty can feel like a wave we want no part of. If we are below the line, the wave seems unpredictable and dangerous. We brace. We contract. We try to make the wave smaller or make ourselves smaller. The energy becomes something to resist.
But above the line, uncertainty takes on a different meaning. Surfers know this well. A wave is not an enemy. It is a source of movement and energy. It is something to ride, not something to fear. When we stop trying to protect ourselves and start being willing to learn, the same uncertainty becomes possibility. It becomes play instead of pressure.
My friend John Poelstra, an executive coach based on the US West Coast whom I highly recommend, once offered a metaphor that may be even more helpful than surfing: dancing. Surfing is an individual sport. Dancing requires relationship. It requires sensing another person, adjusting moment by moment, and sharing leadership.
In a dance, the question is not Who is above or below the line?
The real question is How do we move together, given where each of us is right now?
Dancing works only when there is responsiveness. And responsiveness begins with noticing.
In teams, just like in dance, we cannot control whether people are above or below the line. But we can cultivate shared awareness. We can normalize the idea that both states are human. We can learn to pause. To breathe. To reconnect with intention instead of fear.
Above the line is not a superior state. Below the line is not a failure. Both are part of being human. The shift comes from recognizing where we are and choosing how we want to engage with the wave in front of us.
As you think about your week ahead, here are a few questions to explore:
What signals tell you that you are dropping below the line?What helps you return above the line without forcing it?How do you react when someone else is below the line?What would change if you stopped trying to avoid pain and started working with uncertainty instead of fighting it?
Andreas Treichl, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, ERSTE Foundation
The discussion revolved around one essential tension that leaders face today. When should a leader simply focus on running the business, and when should they take a public position on broader social and political issues?
What struck me during this conversation is how deeply connected this question is with the polarity between the short term and the long term. It is not a problem with a single right answer. It is a polarity to manage carefully and continuously.
The world today pushes leaders toward the short term. Shareholder pressure. Quarterly expectations. Electoral cycles. Social media outrage. Geopolitical shocks.
Yet almost every speaker insisted that leadership requires something very different. It requires seeing beyond the urgency of the moment.
Tom Tugendhat said it clearly. Politics often operates on very short time horizons. Electoral cycles and media storms pull elected leaders into the daily fight. But business has the opportunity, and even the responsibility, to bring in long-term thinking. Decisions on energy, technology, rare earths, supply chains, and defense have consequences that unfold over decades. When business leaders focus only on the short term, society loses one of the few voices capable of thinking beyond the next three years.
Antonella Mei Pochtler added another dimension. Many global companies face situations where taking a stand is difficult, because they operate across countries that are in political conflict. What position should a company take when the United States and China oppose each other, and the company depends on both markets? Taking a stand might hurt the business. Not taking a stand may quietly support an authoritarian regime. This is a long-term dilemma: protect immediate business interests or defend values that ensure long-term legitimacy.
Andreas Treichl offered a complementary warning. In recent years, many companies, governments, and institutions pushed too fast on various ESG topics without bringing people along. The result was a backlash that played directly into the hands of populists. Progress that does not match the pace of public understanding eventually works against the long-term goals it tries to advance.
This brought the conversation back to a fundamental point. For a democratic society to function, people need to understand how their institutions work. And that includes their companies.
Several speakers argued that companies should be radically transparent with their employees. Explain how the company really makes money. Explain the pressures, the constraints, the trade-offs. Help people understand why they are paid what they are paid, and what decisions shape the future of the business.
When employees understand the inner workings of the company, they become less susceptible to manipulation from populists on the left or the right. They develop a deeper sense of agency and clarity. They can then participate more confidently in long-term decisions.
This is where the polarity of short term versus long term becomes visible inside organizations too. Short-term secrecy may simplify life for leaders who prefer not to explain everything. Long-term transparency is harder, but it builds understanding, resilience, and trust.
To help visualize this polarity, here is the polarity map for Short Term and Long Term.
The panel reminded me that next-era leadership is not only the capacity to take a stand. It is the capacity to take a stand while thinking across decades. It is resisting the pressure to react to every wave of anger or confusion, and instead building organizations where people understand, participate, and grow.
It is also refusing to be neutral when neutrality reinforces oppression. Some speakers insisted that not taking a stand against an authoritarian regime means silently supporting it. Others insisted that taking a stance could put thousands of employees or billions in revenue at risk. There is no simple answer. But the conversation made one thing clear. Silence is a choice. And choices shape the long-term world in which we all live.
This brings me back to the core idea of Emerging Leadership. It is the practice of creating systems where people take responsibility for both the next step and the next generation. It is the discipline of balancing urgency with vision. It is the courage to create organizations that serve society, not just the quarter.
As we close, here are the questions I invite you to reflect on this week:
Where in your leadership are you being pulled too strongly into the short term?Where should you be taking a longer view to serve your team, your organization, or society?What would more transparency inside your organization make possible?What stand would you take if you were not afraid of the immediate consequences?
Last week, I attended a fascinating panel at the Peter Drucker Forum: Real-World Lessons from Hierarchy-Busting Pioneers, chaired by Michele Zanini from the Management Lab.
The speakers were – Michael Lurie from Bayer – Michael Y. Lee from INSEAD – Kevin Nolan from GE Appliances, a Haier company – Karen Massey from argenx
All of them described how their organizations replaced traditional hierarchies with networks of small, cross-functional teams focused on delivering value to internal or external customers.
What impressed me is that these transformations work at scale. Haier and Bayer each have more than 100,000 employees. Both used to be very hierarchical. Both removed entire layers of management and replaced them with teams that are closer to the customer, faster in execution, and clearer in accountability.
Karen Massey brought an important nuance. She leads argenx, a younger company founded in 2008 that has grown to around 2,000 people. You might think starting from scratch makes it easier to avoid hierarchy. But as she explained, even when you start with a horizontal structure, the people you hire still carry the mindset of hierarchy with them. They need help to understand and value horizontal relationships instead of vertical ones.
Working with teams, I often hear that the real problems come from the levels above them. Speaking with senior leaders, I often hear that they truly want change but feel blocked by the structure, the expectations, and the perks associated with climbing the ladder. It becomes clear that the hierarchical ladder has its own way of protecting itself.
Which leads to one conclusion. If you want to change the way an organization works, you may need to remove the ladder completely.
When people no longer look up or down, they start to look across. This is where collaboration, learning, and accountability start to emerge naturally.
Here is the question I leave you with this week:
In your organization, which part of the ladder could you remove to make space for genuine collaboration?
Many organizations struggle to find the right balance between giving people freedom and keeping things under control. They often try to fix a “trust problem” with more control, or fix a “control problem” with more trust.
But these are not opposites to be solved. They are a polarity to be managed.
In Polarity Management, Barry Johnson showed that many tensions in leadership, such as trust versus control, stability versus change, or individual versus collective, are not problems with one right answer. They are ongoing dynamics that must be balanced over time.
When we overuse control, we get bureaucracy, fear, and disengagement. When we overuse trust, we get chaos, inconsistency, and uneven performance. Yet when we balance the two, we create clarity and empowerment, high standards and high commitment.
A perfect example of an organizational model that overuses control is Taylorism. It was built on the belief that people could not be trusted to think, only to execute. Managers designed the work, workers performed it. Efficiency improved for a while, but curiosity, initiative, and humanity were left behind.
Now imagine instead a Michelin-starred restaurant. Every detail is thought through carefully. Standards are sky-high. Yet everyone, from the chef to the dishwasher, plays an active role in maintaining those standards. Trust and control coexist. Precision and creativity reinforce each other.
That is the sweet spot of emerging leadership. It is not about choosing trust over control. It is about creating systems where trust enables control, and control protects trust.
In your team, where might you be overusing one side of this polarity? And what small shift could bring you closer to that Michelin balance: high standards, high trust, and collective excellence?
In busy weeks filled with meetings, decisions, and endless messages, it is easy to lose sight of what drives us. Sometimes we move from one task to another without noticing whether we are acting out of obligation or out of genuine choice. This quick reflection can help leaders and teams reconnect with what truly matters.
Take a piece of paper. Draw a horizontal line across it.
Now think back over your past week.
Each time you did something because you had to, make a small mark below the line. Each time you did something because you wanted to, make a small mark above the line.
Pause. Look at your page. What does your week look like?
This simple exercise can reveal a lot. It shows the balance between obligation and intention, between compliance and choice. A week filled mostly with marks below the line might feel heavy, reactive, or constrained. A week with marks above the line often feels lighter, creative, and purposeful.
Now ask yourself:
Are there any “below the line” activities that could move above the line if I changed how I look at them? For example, a difficult meeting you “had to” attend could become something you “want to” do if you saw it as an opportunity to learn, to build trust, or to clarify direction.
Then, take the reflection one step further:
What might the week of my colleagues in the leadership team look like? What would happen if we shared our drawings and compared perspectives? What would we learn about where our collective energy goes?
And finally:
What might the week of the people in our organization look like? Are we, as leaders, unconsciously pushing work “below the line,” assigning tasks that feel like obligations? Or are we creating the conditions for people to want to do work that truly matters to the organization?
This simple drawing can open a deep conversation about motivation, meaning, and the space between “have to” and “want to.”
And that space, as Viktor Frankl reminded us, is where our freedom (and our leadership) begin.
We often talk about values as if they were things we already have. We list them in presentations, print them on posters, or mention them when asked about what matters most to us. But if we look closer, our real values show up in what we do, especially when no one is watching.
In The Happiness Trap, Russ Harris reminds us that values are not goals or traits, but directions. They are not achievements to check off, but aspirations that guide how we live, lead, and make decisions.
He offers a long list of possible values to help us reflect on who we want to be in different areas of life. Here are a few examples that often resonate with leaders and teams:
Authentic – being genuine, real, and true to myself
Courageous – persisting in the face of fear, threat, or risk
Curious – being open-minded and willing to explore and discover
Kind – being considerate and caring toward myself and others
Mindful – fully present and engaged in what I am doing
Responsible – being trustworthy, reliable, and accountable for my actions
Supportive – being helpful and encouraging toward others
And this is only a glimpse. Harris’s complete list contains 36 values, including accepting, adventurous, assertive, caring, compassionate, cooperative, creative, forgiving, grateful, helpful, honest, independent, industrious, loving, open, persistent, playful, protective, respectful, skillful, trustworthy, and many more.
When you read through them, which words describe how you want to show up in your work and life? Which reflect the person you want to become?
Values are aspirational by nature. We never fully arrive. And that is the point.
Benjamin Franklin understood this very well. At the age of 20, he designed a personal system of 13 virtues to guide his growth:
Temperance – Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
Silence – Speak only what may benefit others or yourself.
Order – Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
Resolution – Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
Frugality – Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; waste nothing.
Industry – Lose no time; be always employed in something useful.
Sincerity – Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and if you speak, speak accordingly.
Justice – Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
Moderation – Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries as much as you think they deserve.
Cleanliness – Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
Tranquility – Be not disturbed at trifles or at accidents common or unavoidable.
Chastity – Use physical pleasure with care for health and peace of mind.
Humility – Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
Franklin’s system gave him the chance to practice each virtue four times per year. Every week, he focused on one of them, tracking his progress in a small notebook. He did not expect perfection; he practiced awareness. He later wrote that although he never achieved all his ideals, he became “a better and happier man than I otherwise should have been.”
Maybe that is the heart of living our values: not perfection, but practice. Not claiming them, but embodying them, one choice at a time.
So here is a small exercise for this month: 👉 Pick one value that matters to you. 👉 Notice how it shows up (or doesn’t) in your day. 👉 Ask yourself: What would it look like to live one step closer to that value today?
We often talk about leadership as if it’s a role, something that begins when you’re promoted or when your title changes.
But the truth is, leadership is a collective capacity, not a position. It’s something we build together, moment by moment, through how we show up, communicate, and make decisions.
This month, I’d like to explore a few simple ways to practice leadership wherever you are, drawn from the conversations I’ve had with inspiring guests on Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership.
1. Lead by Clarity and Care
In my discussion with Russ Laraway, author of When They Win, You Win, we talked about how great leadership is measurable. It shows up in clear direction, thoughtful coaching, and meaningful career conversations. Russ’s advice was simple: set clear expectations, offer real feedback, and invest in people’s growth.
Try this: Pick one person this week and ask, “What’s one thing I could do to better support your success?” Then act on what you hear.
2. Build Trust by Talking About How You Talk
With Jeffrey Fredrick, co-author of Agile Conversations with Douglas Squirrel, we explored the idea that every problem in an organization is ultimately a conversation problem. Jeffrey shared that high-trust teams don’t just talk about what they’re doing; they talk about how they talk. They examine their assumptions, make their reasoning visible, and invite challenge.
Try this: In your next meeting, pause to ask, “What assumptions might we be making here?” or “Is there something we’re not saying?”
You might be surprised how quickly this opens up honesty and alignment.
3. Empower the People Closest to the Work
In my conversation with Maria Bracho, CTO for LATAM at Red Hat, she shared that the most effective leaders are those who trust their teams to make decisions. Her insight was clear: People closer to the work usually know best what needs to happen. The leader’s role is to create the conditions for them to act.
Try this: Instead of giving solutions, ask: “What do you think we should do?” Then, genuinely listen.
Empowerment is not a slogan; it’s a daily choice to let others lead.
4. Make Change Feel Possible, One Step at a Time
When I spoke with Tamar Bergovici, VP of Engineering at Box, she described how real transformation doesn’t come from big speeches, it comes from small, consistent actions that build trust and momentum.
Try this: Choose one thing your team has been struggling with. Instead of planning a massive fix, take one visible step forward this week. Then, celebrate it.
And if your favorite platform isn’t on the list, just let me know, I’ll be glad to add it.
I’d love for you to join me there! See you in your earbuds!
Before closing, a quick update! This month, I’ll be in Vienna, delivering the opening keynote at a private client event, while Isabel will deliver the opening keynote for Agile Tour Bordeaux. These talks mark the beginning of a new season, with fresh insights drawn from our upcoming book, set for release next year. If you’re organizing a public or private event and would like us to bring these ideas to your audience, we’d be delighted to join you.
