Rob: [00:00:08] Welcome to The Balanced Leader Podcast, where we tackle the ultimate challenge for leaders: achieving peak performance without sacrificing your wellbeing. If you’re ready to lead with clarity, energy, and impact—without burning out—then you’re in the right place. I’m Rob Hills, your leadership and wellbeing coach, and in each episode, I’ll give you the insights, tools and strategies that will enable you to thrive.

Today, I’m diving deep into a topic that hits close to home for many of us—the profound transformation that happens to leaders during midlife. My guest is Aneace Haddad, an executive coach who specializes exclusively in working with leaders over 40. Aneace believes that the physiological changes that occur in our 40s and 50s aren’t limitations—they’re actually the emergence of powerful leadership superpowers. We explore the three winds of change that reshape how we lead, why the shift from purpose to presence is so critical, and how embracing this transformation can make you a more effective leader than you’ve ever been.

So sit back and relax as we dive into today’s episode. 

Rob: [00:01:16] Welcome Aneace to the Balanced Leader Podcast. thank you so much for joining us today.

Aneace: Thank you, Rob. Wonderful being here.

Rob: Mate, before we jump in, can you tell the listeners a little bit about your background? How you came to do what it is that you do now.

Aneace: So, uh. I’ve been here 18 years. I was in France for 20 years before that, Italy for a while, originally from the us but I left 40 something years ago. Um, I started as a techie. I was a programmer in my early days, my early career. Became a tech entrepreneur, built a payment software company in the.

Promptly embarked into a midlife crisis as one would around that time of about that, that age. And, uh, discovered that I liked people more than computers. So, um, I found that what I was most proud of in my company was the people that worked for me that went off and became CEOs, CTOs, CFOs of other companies.

And I felt that. Much stronger hold on me than all the technology we had developed, the patents I had filed, all of that stuff. So that pushed me into doing what I do today. So by, that’s been 15 years now, I’m, uh, I’m moved into executive coaching, c-suite coaching. Um, most of my work is. So how can the team function better as a team?

How can they be more effective? Um, all that kind of stuff. So it was quite a big transformation late in life.

Rob: Yeah, it’s really interesting there, you, you mentioned the midlife crisis, and maybe that hit harder for you because you just come out of a, a massive deal where you sold your company and get to a point where you go, what’s next? Has that shaped where you are now and what you’re doing?

Aneace: Yeah. Uh, it’s the awareness of what we go through during that period, and it’s not always, it doesn’t always appear like a midlife crisis. Um, it, it often appears as, uh, some kind of deeper reflection that’s happening, and it can be anywhere from the mid forties to the mid fifties.

These kind of, these kind of changes are happening and around three years ago.

[00:03:00] There was something with coaching younger people under 40 versus people over 40 that I was noticing some qualitative differences in how, um, how they think, how they respond to the things, how they emotionally engage with the world. Um, I found, for example, under 40, they would often say, well. What would you do if you were in my position?

What would you do? You’ve been, you’ve been here before, you’ve done this kind of thing, you’ve had a board now, what would you do over 40? I would never get that kind of a question. Um, it’s far more reflective. So at one point I just drew a line in the sand around three years ago and I said, I’m just gonna specialize in over 40.

So I decided to no longer coach anyone under 40. And I’ll occasionally make, make exceptions for that, but that allowed me to go a lot deeper and really do a lot of the research. Uh, I discovered this is my second book that came out, uh, uh, last year, uh, soaring Beyond [00:04:00] Midlife. I discovered the. That there are neurological changes that are happening in the brain at that time.

For example, uh, our prefrontal cortex slows down. It starts to slow down, so we forget where we put our car keys, we forget our child’s name or whatever it is. And, but at the same, and, and that starts to get kind of scary, but at the same time, the two hemispheres are. So there is an ability to notice patterns that we might not have noticed as easily a few years ago, a few years younger.

Um, so, and those are the kind of patterns that we’re starting to see at that age. And we’re going, well, hold on. Did I. Do I really wanna be where I’m at today? Is this what it was all about getting here? What’s next?

Rob: Yeah.

Aneace: Uh, those kinds of things. So it it, it’s a very natural period. I just love that, uh, transformation. It’s like a second adolescence without all the acne.

Rob: Oh, I love that analogy. That’s great. [00:05:00] And I, I think for myself, I’ve probably been through that as well. Asking myself, you know, am I doing what I wanna be doing? Am I heading in the right direction? In fact, I just had an episode recently about have you put your ladder up against the right wall, which is a, um, a reference in Covey’s book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Yeah. And I think people do get to this point and start looking around and going, is this right? Do you think we have maybe more agency at midlife to be able to say. No, I’m not in the right place. Maybe I do wanna make a change, and that’s why this, you know, construct around the, um, midlife crisis happens.

Aneace: Yeah. So I, I, I’ve identified, uh, what I call three wins of change and midlife. This is what I write about in my book. Um, now it, I’m not looking at this from the general lens of the general public. I’m looking at it from senior executive leadership. So the three wins of change that I’m looking at is wins that really impact leaders.

There are [00:06:00] other things happening at midlife that I, that I haven’t really looked into in detail, but. One of them is physically we’re changing. Obviously our bodies are changing. We’re noticing that, uh, we put on weight faster than we used to and it doesn’t come off as quickly. Our stamina is lower. Um, we can’t go out drinking one night and then have a board meeting the next day if we wanna be effective.

We discovered these things that used to work just a few years ago. They’re not really working anymore.

Rob: Yeah.

Aneace: At the same time, we start to become aware that, um, there’s a high likelihood we’re gonna wanna be active and busy and, and, and, and physically active much, much longer than our parents and grandparents dead.

So there’s, there’s a, at the same time there’s this realization that I’m, I’m mortal and my body is aging, but I may have a runway that’s, uh, far beyond 65 years old in terms of, uh, being active. So that’s the, I call that the physiological wind of [00:07:00] change. The next one is the neurological wind of change.

This is the one I described, uh, very briefly a little bit ago. There’s all kinds of other stuff. We, another area that’s fascinating in the neurological changes, um, our cognitive empathy goes, starts to go down. So we have trouble understanding rationally and logically somebody else, but our emotional empathy goes up.

So we find ourselves in these weird situations where we look at someone and we say, I don’t know. I don’t have the faintest clue why you’re doing what you’re doing, but I get you. Yeah. Emotionally I get you. So it it, it’s a funny thing. And if we, if we ignore that and we go. I excelled, I got here at this CEO C-suite level because I was brilliant logically and rationally.

And if we start to get, um, brittle about that, then we can get kind of hard hardened if [00:08:00] we can let go of it and say, okay, that’s just my brain changing. Let me see how I can bring that kind of emotional empathy into the room and trust my people to have all the logical stuff that I men might not understand as well as I used to.

Rob: Yeah.

Aneace: So it’s a very different space.

Rob: Yeah.

Aneace: The third one that I really love is that, uh, and this is a generalization, but. With many is in, in our day and age, many of the people in their late fifties or so, their kids are growing up and leaving home. Uh, and it’s a generalization ’cause I know people who don’t have kids or whose kids are much younger.

Yep. But it’s quite a large number of people that are going through that. And they’re going through something very similar because they’re going. What, what’s my value as a parent now? Um, they don’t wanna listen to me anymore, and that was my value of the last 20 years. I would tell them what to do now. I can’t.

They don’t wanna hear it. What’s my value?

Rob: Yeah.

Aneace: And it’s a very similar thing to what they’re struggling with in, in leadership, especially with things changing so [00:09:00] fast as

Rob: Yeah.

Aneace: Yeah. I love that. I love that.

It rather than succumb be.

Rob: Hmm. Yeah, it’s interesting ’cause I’ve heard you talk about the parallels between parenting and leadership before and it’s something that really hit me. And I’m, I’m, my son is, um, 18 and a half and I’ve noticed that change of my ability to parent him has changed. And I, I struggle with that.

Yeah. Particularly because he doesn’t respond the same way that he used to. So, yeah, I think it’s a great analogy for, for leadership though. As we move into the second half of life and we start changing, we become less of the technical expert and more of the coach mentor. I think this is a really interesting transition period for, for leaders and I think people.

If they are, parents should perhaps look at this and [00:10:00] go, oh, I can see why maybe that’s happening at home, and this might prepare me for what’s happening in the workplace as well.

Aneace: Yep. There’s so much intertwining with what’s happening at home and what’s happening at work. Um, sometimes what’s happening at home is lagging behind what’s.

See, I’ve shifted at work that shift to how I’m dealing with my teenager.

Rob: Yeah.

Aneace: Um, more often than not, I see the shifting happen the other way, where people learn faster. At home because it’s such an important, uh, role and it’s such a, it’s something that people really hold valuable and then at work, they’re still treating their people like they were young teenagers.

Rob: Yeah.

Aneace: So, and then it’s just an aha moment that they go, oh, I see what I’m doing. Okay, I’ll stop that. I know what it’s,

Rob: yeah, that’s exactly right. It’s interesting. So you must have coached hundreds if not thousands of people now, I. Can you [00:11:00] talk to us a little bit about what happens during that transition from the earlier parts of leadership, which I imagine most people go from technical expert to leader, and that’s a whole nother transition.

Yeah. But then when they go from leader to a younger leader, and I say younger with inverted commi, I don’t wanna upset anyone to potentially a, uh, an older leader. There’s a bit of a shift. What, what happens in that shift and how do, how do people respond the best way?

Aneace: So there’s some generalities that I see, especially in the C-suite.

When someone arrives at the C level of an organization and they’ve come up through the ranks, they’ve come up through their technical leadership expertise, um, it’s very hard to shift out that mindset.

My voice counts across the whole enterprise, and I have something valuable [00:12:00] to contribute and.

Um, so, uh, somebody comes up through marketing or somebody comes up through a technical, um, area, they will speak up at a C-suite meeting when it’s their area and they’ll feel, um, a bit inhibited to speak up in other areas, or they’ll speak up if their area has an impact on those. Um, but really when they get to the C-Suite, it’s not so much, it’s no longer for their technical expertise, it’s their ability to really understand the whole enterprise completely in different ways.

Um, and so having that shift happen, uh, is, is, is quite.

I call it radical ownership, is that you’ve extended your sense of ownership beyond your function [00:13:00] to encompass the enterprise. What I love about the overlap with midlife is that we tend to become, our sense of ownership of our communities grows. So, whereas earlier on, our sense of ownership really was our family.

Our our what we at starts.

A larger group. Um, and that can appear in different ways from different, different people. Some people go to church more, other people get involved in community things. Um, other people contribute back or whatever. They, people find ways that they connect with something bigger than they did in the past. So.

It’s much easier to address complex issues when the top team is really sharing deeply. There’s so much [00:14:00] wisdom at the top team. It’s not just in their individual functions in terms of knowledge. It’s that wisdom of, of, of things that come, that come out. So that, that, that’s a powerful one. That’s, that’s a difficult shift.

A lot of people. Um, there’s another shift, uh.

The whole question of what’s my purpose? Uh, Simon Sinek, what’s my why? I’ve discovered that all of that thing is kind of a younger leader’s search. Um, it’s in our thirties and forties. We’re wondering, what’s my purpose in life? Where am I going? What am I doing? What do I wanna do next? All that kind of thing.

What’s my why? And these are very, very wonderful questions, but that starts to dissipate in our and fifties. And the best thing that I’ve seen, that purpose question, um, [00:15:00] um, converted to, or translated to or traded in for is, uh, is presence, is is finding that my, actually, if I’m just present. Um, with my people present with the organization, present with my clients, uh, present with myself, um, there’s a lot that happens that get, that gets unlocked, uh, because there’s so much, so much other wealth in the organization, so much other, so many other assets and capabilities in the organization.

So it’s kind of a trading in of purpose for presence that’s happening in that timeframe.

Rob: That’s interesting. Do you think there’s a correlation between the happiness U curve and this moving from Yeah. Yeah. From moving from purpose, I’ve gotta, you know, I’m really struggling. I’m trying to find something to then perhaps just going, I accept this and I’m gonna sit with it.

And maybe now that’s gonna allow me to have less angst and perhaps be a little happier.

Aneace: I love that you brought that up. ’cause if you look at the [00:16:00] U curve, the bottom of it is like 47.

Rob: Exactly. Which is my age right now.

Aneace: That was, that was my age when I sold my company and

Rob: big changes are coming for me then maybe.

Aneace: Yeah, no, I, I, I’ve shared that, uh, u curve with people. Uh, quite, most people aren’t aware of it. It’s such a specialized area. Mm. But it’s fascinating that that study has been done around the world by all kinds of different researchers. They try to disprove it to find, there are other stuff, there’s other stuff going on, but it keeps showing up over and over again.

It comes down and then it goes back up and we, we become more present. We become more, uh, even without, without training, without. On how to be more present, how to be more happy in your later years. Even without all that, it’s just kind of happening naturally. We’ve been through so much by that time.

Rob: Yeah.

Aneace: That we start going, uh, okay. This too. [00:17:00] This’ll pass.

Rob: Hmm.

Aneace: I have a saying. I like to use that at, at that age. Um. A leader, leader, something goes wrong. Big fiasco, a big failure happens, and the younger people are all freaking out and the leader says, nobody died. Let’s get pizza. There’s, there’s a, there’s a real shift in attitude that allows that to emerge at that time.

Rob: Yeah. And is that perhaps again, as you mentioned, that leaders have been through quite a few things. I know when I first started, um, with the A FP, uh, Australian Federal Police, I noticed that there was a lot of change happening. I’d come from a very stable environment in defense where it was all very planned out, you know, multiple years in, uh, in advance.

Whereas the, um, a FP was very reactive. But I noticed whenever a new change happened, I was very alive to it. I was like, oh, this is happening. Oh, I felt like Henny Penny. You know, the sky’s falling. The sky’s falling. I. Whereas as I became, as I got older, I suppose I became, [00:18:00] I’d seen all of that happen time and time again, and you’re kind of like, well, here we go again.

This is just another thing. Is that, is that what’s taking there?

Aneace: That’s right. Yeah, I think so. I think so. And then we start to compare it to other stuff and we go, okay, well, in the, in the larger scheme of things. Child this.

Nobody died. Yeah. Let’s get pizza.

Rob: Yeah. I love that there’s, and I suppose there’s a sense of wisdom here, and I know, um, chip Conley talks about this, the modern elder. Yeah. There’s this sense of wisdom as we get older, that we’ve been through more things, that we’ve experienced more things, we kind of have a little bit more perspective.

Not to say that young people don’t, but over time you have more experiences where you’ve got more things to draw from. So I think that wisdom starts shining through for people.

Aneace: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I love Chip Conley’s work. There’s a lot of stuff that he’s, uh, that he’s doing.

Rob: Yeah,

Aneace: he, [00:19:00] my area is same area, but very specialized in leadership.

Um, and, and, and very senior executive leadership. Um. Yeah, no, that wisdom is definitely involved there. One of my favorite books is The Wisdom Paradox by El Conan. Um, he’s a neuroscientist. He wrote this almost 20 years ago, I think, and that was when I first was introduced to these neurological changes that happen at midlife.

He was searching for, what is it that, can we, can we, can we see wisdom? Neurologically.

Rob: Yeah.

Aneace: Can we see those changes? What are, what’s changing in the brain that allows this concept of wisdom to emerge throughout time all over the world? Hmm. So that was, uh, that, that was a formative book for me. That’s where I learned about the prefrontal cortex slowing down the two hemispheres, talking more with each other.[00:20:00]

So there, there are a lot more studies. We’re learning things now that we.

Rob: Yeah. And it’s funny, and I often say this to people as I get older, I realize I know less. Um, I’m not necessarily, I’m learning more. Absolutely. But the context is widening. Yeah. And I’m seeing there’s so much more information and things are changing and I’m like, wow.

Like you’ve gotta be open to, to what’s happening. ’cause there’s, there’s so many changes. Are there actual physical changes in the brain in midlife that actually cause some of these things to, to change the, you know, the empathy you talked about before, the wisdom I. Are there actual physical changes in the, in the brain parts growing or decreasing?

Aneace: Yeah, that’s the prefrontal cortex slowing down. Um, that’s the logic part of our brain. So there, the, and the memory, the, the, the short-term memory. So there are things that we forget more easily.

Rob: Mm-hmm.

Aneace: Um, it’s the typical stuff that we hear about, that we see that scares the hell out of us. Um, [00:21:00] that’s prefrontal cortex and the, again, the opposite side of that or the, the, the, the positive side, possibly as a re possibly as an evolutionary response.

But I, this, I, I don’t know if there’s proof on this, but it’s possible that the two hemispheres are talking more with each other to kind of compensate for the prefrontal cortex slowing down. And that that additional, that, that, that greater communication between the hemispheres. Uh, again means that we can connect the dots, we can uh, um, we can process emotions easier because we can connect, we can see patterns easier than we could have when we were younger.

Yeah. All these things are, are coming up. It brings me back to actually. When you look at the leadership frameworks, um, some of the big leadership from Jim Collins in Good To Great, he wrote about five levels of leadership and the very top level is something he called humility and iron will, [00:22:00] uh, humility and fierce resolve our, our our merged together and.

He, he described that as being almost, uh, unattainable. And he even wrote that, uh, maybe 1% of adults or 10% of people, a very small number of people could reach that level of, of leadership. Um, and he didn’t think it could be learned. He felt maybe he was innate. Uh, Keegan, Robert Keegan.

Rob: Yep.

Aneace: Uh, who on adult learning, he wrote about the self transforming mind.

He also had five levels, and the self transforming mind was the highest level, and he wrote that, uh, only 1% of adults ever reached. Level. Mm. Um, but it’s very similar to what we’re talking about. And then what I discovered was that both of them were in their late thirties and early forties when they did their research.

They hadn’t gone through this process yet. Yeah, that’s right. So, and then the, [00:23:00] the more research I did, there was so much literature out there, leadership literature, all written by people in their late thirties, early forties. They’ve, they’re, they’re missing this, they’re not seeing this. So they’re describing something that’s extremely rare in our younger age, but which I believe is far more common as we age.

Yeah,

Rob: yeah, absolutely. It’s really interesting and, uh, a fascinating, um, thing to learn more about. And, uh, I’m sure it will sit with me, uh, for, for days and days to come. I also wanted to ask you about your book. So you’re the author of the book, soaring Beyond Midlife, the Surprising Natural Emergence of Leadership, superpowers in Life’s Second Half.

Can you tell us a little bit about the book, why you wrote it, and why a parable? That’s a really interesting choice.

Aneace: So actually there are two books. Uh, the one before that, the Eagle that Drank Hummingbird Nectar, that one, that one was published in 2022 and the second one Soar. [00:24:00] Mm-hmm. Both of them are on midlife transformation with senior executives.

The first one, legal hummingbird nectar is fiction. It’s based on my own transformation at 50. So there’s a main character who’s similar to me, but because I made it fiction, it meant that I was able to explore what I was going through, um, in a more storytelling manner, and I didn’t have to stick to the facts.

Rob: Yeah.

Aneace: But there’s, uh, there’s, there, there, there’s a good chunk of it that were things. Um, it was, it was also a process. That allowed me to kind of explore a more universal, universally, what we go through during that period, but in the, it’s a first person narrative. Um, the second book, soaring Beyond Midlife is.

Also with fables and [00:25:00] parables and stuff, but it’s structured more like a traditional, a little more traditional business book.

Rob: Yeah.

Aneace: Uh, it’s in my voice as a third person telling the stories. Um, and that one really was to go deeper into, what is it so that.

Um, the, I identified what I call six midlife leadership superpowers, that, that emerged, that are, that are, that are fostered by these three winds of change.

Rob: Yep.

Aneace: Um, and that if we, if we lean into them and we allow them to happen, then these six leadership superpowers really flourish. If we kind of resist the winds of change and we try to fight back against them and pretend they’re not happening, these things get stunted and they don’t necessarily come out.

So that’s, yeah, that’s that book. It’s all a sense of emergence. It’s not, here are 10 things to do. It’s, uh, how do you let [00:26:00] go of stuff from the.

How do we become aware that there might be something in my leadership style that I wanna let go of anyway? I’m not sure if I answered your question. I went off on a little bit of a tangent.

Rob: No, not at all. That’s great. Well, it’s interesting and I suppose I learn a lot sometimes by listening to people and making connections and then wanting to dive more into that.

And as I was reading your book, and I’m not all the way through it yet, it peaked interest in in different parts and it made me think, oh, okay, I see the correlation there for me. So I suppose that’s where I’m interested, is that why you chose that storytelling option to give people the storytelling so that they can then explore their own journey that way?

Aneace: Yes, absolutely. And interestingly, uh, going back to the neurological stuff, our brains become more wired for storytelling and, and understanding complexity, um, ourselves rather than someone telling us. Here it is. This is a complexity. So as human beings, we’re already wired for [00:27:00] stories, but that even becomes stronger as we age.

There’s something about poetry that emerges as well. If you, you would notice that there was a whole chapter in the book on poetry. Yep. Um, our brains become more comfortable with ambiguity and paradox as we age. We’re able to hold the end of an equation. Whereas younger we wanna resolve it. It’s either this or that.

Either I, I have work, I have a work life, or I have life, life. Um, balance means I turn one up and the other down, it’s 20% work, 80% life or the other way around. Um, it becomes very binary. And then as we age, we start saying, actually there’s an and in. Hmm. I can dial up work and dial up life and I can play with it a bit more.

Our brains become more comfortable with ambiguity and surprising there. What really, what I find [00:28:00] really, um, interesting is that, um, poetry is all about paradox. So, so, so poetry. Process poetry exists with paradox. It’s all ambiguity and paradox. And we love that when we’re reading something in a poem and a word shifts and changes, or the choice of a word gives new meaning to the whole thing and our brain lights up and it really enjoys that.

So. It’s also, it’s also a brain thing. If I was writing this book for, I don’t think younger people might enjoy it as much. It, it, it’s not telling them here are the 10 things to do.

Rob: Yeah. Yeah. Did you always like poetry or is that something that’s, uh, evolved as you’ve aged?

Aneace: That’s, that’s evolved. It’s grown as, I’ve aged.

I’m not a huge poetry fan even now, but I’m finding that when I write things, um, I’m searching more. Poetic feel to [00:29:00] that, um, the, the phrase that, that just lands differently because you’ve chosen a different word that’s outta context, but that gives a lot of context.

Rob: Yeah.

Aneace: Um, so I’m, I’m finding that that’s more interesting to me and the research I’ve done shows that with senior executives that lands, um, more deeply.

A list of 10 things to do.

Rob: Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. What do you wish that all leaders who are approaching midlife or perhaps are already there understood more about what’s happening to them so that they could become more effective leaders?

Aneace: Um, I. I find myself deep in deep resistance to giving advice, and it feels like, it feels like that’s inviting advice.

Rob: Okay. Is there another way that we could look at that then perhaps rather than giving [00:30:00] advice

Aneace: it, I trust that people are gonna get there on their own just by living.

Rob: Mm-hmm. So be more present perhaps, and hold on.

Aneace: Yeah. And they’re already doing that. They’re already learning to do that. Um, yeah. I have a term that I use.

I discovered, uh, radically empowering presence and I discovered it through coaching teams. Um, that there are times when if I question. The team’s ability to get through some mess that they, that they’re in, um, if I have any doubt as to their ability to get through it or their desire to get through it or their wisdom or anything like that, it’ll screw things up.

And if I have complete trust in

being in the. [00:31:00] Displays that without even saying anything and they do get through it.

Yeah,

Aneace: so I guess the best advice, the only piece of advice would be to whatever you’re doing that’s creating more sense of presence. If you’re struggling with your 18 and a half year old son and that’s teaching you presence with him, fantastic.

Um, if it’s, uh, uh, going kayaking or swimming or meditating or mindfulness or whatever. Fantastic.

Rob: Yeah.

Aneace: It’s those things that help us really emerge more easily, um, into our, our second half.

Rob: Absolutely. I love that. And a big advocate of, uh, mindfulness as people who listen to this podcast would know. So, and, and I, I do this every day, even though I’ve been, um, practicing mindfulness for 25 years, 30 years, um, it’s still something that I constantly try and just sit with and, and be present for.

And it, it makes a, the world of difference.

Aneace: Yeah. Yeah.

Rob: I did wanna ask [00:32:00] one related question, and because I have a background in learning and development and leadership development particularly, I’m interested in your thoughts then on whether we need to be doing something differently in the leadership development space for people in midlife and beyond.

So it seems to be, it’s a one size fits all approach at the moment, but could we change that maybe? And what would that look like?

Aneace: Yeah. Since I’ve come up through, this is 15 years now, I’m in, I’ve been in the leadership development area and have done a lot of work earlier with um, um, up and coming leaders, high potentials, things like that.

Uh, it’s so different. At the top echelons of the organization and so different in our mid forties to fifties, um, that I think there’s a huge disservice that’s happening by having this one size fits all leadership approach. It’s a top down. Let me, [00:33:00] uh, teach you. Um, there’s very much a sense of teaching imparting content teaching.

Things to people, um, that work great younger and doesn’t really work anymore. Uh, there are, there are things, there are topics that are skill-based that people need to learn throughout their life, but people in their forties and fifties know how to go out and look for that.

Rob: Yeah. And perhaps this is where executive coaching comes in because it allows you the space to have deeper conversations and really focus on the areas of interest and perhaps not put those guardrails up you were talking about where it has to be clearly defined.

Aneace: Yep. Yep. I see things like, uh, when I’m preparing a retreat for a C-suite, somebody, maybe the CHRO, maybe the CEO, they’ll say, uh, we need to, we need to mix things up and we need to, we need to define the small groups that the, the C-suite is gonna be working in and make sure we mix people up [00:34:00] that don’t normally work together.

Is very, um. Counterproductive because it sends a message that I can’t trust you to work together and figure out who you need to work with to develop a better relationship with. So I will do it for you, and I’ll create the small groups. Um, and most people that I work with, they’ll say, oh yeah, I get you.

Okay. I’m, I’m, I’m infantalizing them right now by doing that. And then occasionally there’ll be A-C-H-R-O or CEO that, that really are adamant, and then I will, I’ve managed to convince them to allow me to do it anyway. And. The way that I do it by, by giving agency to people to choose who they wanna work with the most and choose someone that you don’t work with a lot.

I, you might have issues with. [00:35:00] Invariably they create the small groups that the CEO EO wanted to create. And then when they do that, I’ll go, I’ll smile at the C they’ll nod, because you give agency to people and they’ll, and, and, and they, they do what’s best because they know. They know how to do what’s best.

Rob: Yeah, absolutely. Oh, that’s so interesting. Uh, anise, thank you so much. This has been a fantastic conversation, a really, really interesting topic. If people wanna connect more with you and find out more about what it is that you do and how you’re doing it, how can they do that?

Aneace: So, the easiest places, my, uh, my website.

Website, um, ar ramus, a RAM, yss.com. So Aames kind of like the, one of the musketeers, uh, but with YSS at the end, like an abyss. So there’s a sense of adventure and charm of a musketeer, but the adventure of really going deep, um, for the [00:36:00] purpose of action and an adventure and all that. So it’s not just, it’s not just naval gazing.

So a RA yss.

Rob: Excellent. Amazing. I’ll link that up in the show notes so people can find it easily. Thanks again, anise, really appreciate it.

Aneace: Thank you, Rob. Wonderful talking to.