Ep 203: Antonio Lucio of 5S Diversity - "The Selfless Leader"

Are you taking care of yourself?

Antonio Lucio's 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 he 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.

His reputation is that he is an incredibly empathetic leader.

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

According to romantic lore, leaders step in where angels fear to tread. They throw themselves, head first, into the fray, and generally, they’re willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of others.

But, 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 so many who are in denial of the personal price they have paid, and continue to pay, for keeping the company together and the business going.

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 And it has been replaced by a world in which there are no rules, and everyone’s normal is new.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