Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Maureen: [00:00:00] Hi. Welcome back to the Innovative Leadership Series at the International Leadership Association Conference. Today we’re joined by Aldo Boitano. Aldo, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Aldo: I’m Chilean by birth, but my first language I learned was German because we moved to Germany was little kid, then back to Spain, then back to Chile, then to the US as an exchange student.

Seven years in the US and now back to Chile, and I’m traveling at least once or twice a year to the U-S to teach or visit family or friends.

 Maureen: How many languages do you speak?

Aldo: Four: English, German, Spanish, and according to my dad, nonsense

 Maureen: language. So I wanna ground our interview in the leadership competency of intellectual versatility.

The work we had published by ILA last year in the Leader 2050 book looked [00:01:00] at seven leadership competencies we think are required going forward in a more complex world. Let’s start with why does mountaineering help you be a better Leader? Because that’s gonna seem a bit like a non-sequitur.

Aldo: My background or your original background is, uh, industrial, civil engineering. In Chile, we study six years. That means you go for the bachelor degree and then the master’s degree all together and no, no one stops studying at the bachelor degree. Mm-hmm. Year number five and a half, I, I organized something called breaking the squares out of, I dunno, 800 students that enrolled every year in the various engineering fields.

We had guys who were famous pianist, guy who were Olympic wrestlers, me who was a climber, people who paint poetry, and it was a lot of art and a lot of other things. And I keep founding that over and over again. So long story short, I got my degree because it allowed me to do more (unknown) I did one day the other way around.

But I have a dad who was awarded the presidential award [00:02:00] for being the the most outstanding engineering graduate back when he graduated on a mechanical engineer. Lots of relatives in my family were famous for their technical side of brain, so I said, maybe I’m not that bright. Back then, I also organized poetry contests and things, so.

But then in life, in working life, then I realized that the ability to overcome difficulty, positive view on life, even though I lost nine dearest friends because of mountaineering. They died in the stages and a lot of, uh, emotional, personal, and social are important to succeed in life. I’ve been the CEO of a large ski area, the CEO of a company that sold mining equipment and things like that. Mm-hmm. Now I’m independent, like I said, but, uh, all those things are much more important. And I know you teach at a, at a engineering school, these are important for succeeding in life. Of course, there’s the work of Goleman on emotional intelligence.

Mm-hmm. A lot of things devoted to soft skills, but in engineering curriculum, not much. It was an effort on the side. So that’s what [00:03:00] I like about ILA, the diversity, the fact they’re trying to be global, the fact that they’re reaching out; the women’s work – how impressive the series of books and meetings and webinars.

Mm-hmm. Women, and

 Maureen: I’m just trying to make mm-hmm. That kind of, yeah. Let’s talk first about mountaineering. So when we say mountaineering, you’re talking serious. You’re not talking the thing I did.

Aldo: I’ve been in various expeditions all over the world, but the reason I really like mountaineering is just exactly somebody who will come to a conference and say, “there’s nothing I could learn.”

I was bad at mountaineering and I love the fact that with patience, with hard work, mm-hmm, I could do well, I was a (unknown) but a very good swimmer and I could…in other sports, I was good, but I like the fact that you take day by day a big mountain. Mm-hmm. Like K2, the world’s second tallest mountain.

Mm-hmm. And one of the most dangerous one or one of the most dangerous ones. We did a successful expedition back in 1996 without anybody being lost or dead. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. People were close. And they’d been in many other mountains like Mount Denali or McKinley in Alaska. But the fact that you take people out of the comfort [00:04:00] zone or you take yourself being outside of the comfort zone, and then once you’re in that comfort zone, hopefully not in a panic zone.

Yeah.

 Maureen: But sometimes that

Aldo: happens. Yeah. But in a conference, it won’t happen. Mm-hmm. And then you say, well, this person out of arts, it’s good. There’s something to value it. There’s something on ethics that I should add to what I preach in my company or some of those tools. For some reason, when we, we kind of specialize, somebody said that the last book wrote on management was by Xenophon, the Greek philosopher and the treatise and, and the book – I forgot the name of the book, but it was a book written 2,500 years ago. And what it meant to that is we as human beings have always been the same people. Maybe a long time ago we didn’t have seven habits or (laughter covers Aldo’s words) do you understand? Yeah. And, and we had the same challenges and it was a mix of physical challenges of, of intellectual challenges, of social challenges, and sometimes we will address them individually or by family or by community. And nowadays it’s just, okay, why do I need for my business to do good to do other [00:05:00] things? Why every time there’s a crisis on ethics or reputation or this and that? Mm-hmm. And the people go back to these things.

I think a conference like this where people from different walks of life, famous consultants, famous professors, but also practitioners and people from other fields. Mm-hmm. It’s good for your mind, for your life, for your business.

 Maureen: I attended my first conference in Barcelona last year — back to this intellectual versatility, you know, hearing people from several European countries talking firsthand about the Syrian immigration and how their countries were dealing with it, not the stuff that was sanitized and the real world challenges.

That we have precious people who are, are being persecuted. So how do we grapple with the ethics of sharing a planet where we have people who are being killed and yet we don’t wanna go outside of our comfort zone? Where are the ethics there? Really, some of those conversations really stuck with me. I remember

Aldo: getting into a room in Barcelona.

I was with a group of guys who had [00:06:00] started a foundation in Medelin, Colombia. Mm-hmm. To…just pure reaction of a killing of a graffiti person or something. Oh, and they created a foundation. Mm-hmm. To work towards — against violence. But their presentation was with this timeline on the political timeline, all the crisis in Columbia at the time.

And their response every time, every time was some problem like a mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And they will, instead of 200,000 people going. Half a million people will go and do a music master (unknown). ha. And how they really recuperated their space and, and how they, people who were against, or for whatever — agree — of the government, how they will bring themselves together towards art and towards peace and everything.

And. How, why? I don’t know about this. Why in the news I already see one per-… Why? Yeah. It wasn’t like trying to compare you into something. They just presenting what they did, how they did. Mm-hmm. They still questioning that they have still today their challenges they’re facing. And it was like, I like, like you said, keep bouncing in different rooms, on different things

 Maureen: and each of those gives me something [00:07:00] to think about that now when we have a negative impact to our company, the real world of someone kills themselves.

I was in a session a couple days ago, and then one of our people left because one of the students had committed suicide. Uh, this is a real situation. What is the positive antidote? Because the suicide is a very real impact on the child, obviously, who’s no longer here, the family, the students around them, the folks in the dorm. That ripples out.

So are there things that we do that build positivity?

Aldo: Back then I, I was surprised. Remember the Coca-Cola index on happiness? For some reason it gets on the news every once and then they do a survey on, on happiness and now United Nations, but Colombia was always top 10 all these years with all their, their problems and, and some countries who don’t have many problems, there are more not so happy.

All I’m saying is that mountaineering, when you get out of the comfort zone, you have the luxury of being on an expedition isolated and everything back then even more [00:08:00] because without satellite phones and things, that do they have mm-hmm. Or the luxury of taking a few days off and going to a conference and attending.

Mm-hmm. Different world views, different conversations, really gets a perspective of the important things in life where not that many, and they’re fairly simple. Mm-hmm. And then for days, you feel relief and you kind of like going back to your company or to your daily life. You have mm-hmm. Like a.

A way of acting or, or, or seeing things really clear. Mm-hmm. From a different way. But then you get inside the forest, you get tangled up. You, you just, for me, every once in a (while) I vent, to get out, out in the outdoors or going to conferences and listening to other people, points of view, round tables, whatever. It’s a good way of reenergizing your life and your goals and, and try to do something.

We actually presented a book and it’s called Breaking the Zero Sum Game, and, and we collected tales from around the globe, from China, from Sri Lanka, from South America and US kind mm-hmm. Of theories or ideas from colleges in the U-S. The notion that [00:09:00] why to win you have to beat somebody. Why? And you make things that everybody wins and, and how that inclusive leadership was about, but it was eyeopening. And, uh, campus riots, Arab Spring, this is what Pope Francis, when he visited Obama, it was mm-hmm.

Angela Merkel dealing with the Syrian immigration. Mm-hmm. Those were the topics, the civil rights, the Dreamers Act. All those things happen in, in just a, in a 90 minute span with 13 people who spoke. I was like uh world

 Maureen: travel, like history, travel. I work with a researcher who talks about the idea of positive deviance.

What do we learn from those significant outliers on the positive side, and what do we learn from those individuals? So I’m gonna shift gears only slightly because everything we’re talking about is sparking in me the idea of vertical development, that I make significant development not on my skills, but in my meaning-making only by going out of my comfort zone.

And it is that either extreme discomfort [00:10:00] as in you’re on a mountain wondering if you’re gonna die. For me climbing Kilimanjaro because I wasn’t an athlete. Yes, you can’t breathe very well if you get altitude sickness. It’s cold up there. Well, and bodily functions just stop functioning. So all of those things you know that you wouldn’t think are leadership building.

And yet it’s building your character. It is one foot in front of the other, and my guide basically picked me up and said, “three more steps, and then you can fall over. Oh. Four more steps and then you go,” and that was how we, we hit the top is that’s how he– climb the mountain: one foot in front of the other. That that’s how you write a book.

That’s how you run a company. Yeah. That’s how you raise a child. Yeah. To your point, there’s some stuff that’s totally novel and different out there that we have to understand and then there’s the basics. But all leaders have slogged through something that they didn’t want to. It was painful. They say that’s, it’s good for your

Aldo: brain and if you go to your workplace in the same [00:11:00] route every day, you’re not thinking it’s like bribing.

You’re not, yeah. You go in different way if you have lunch instead of with the same people. So it’s more like challenge yourself. Mm-hmm. That’s the, the metaphor behind. Mm-hmm. Uh, mountaineering or climbing. Challenge yourself for the sake of growth. Life is short. Don’t make it dull. Yes, yes, yes. Try to amuse yourself.

Somebody gives you a book and you’ve read three pages and you don’t like it. Okay. Don’t give it it back. Don’t hide it in your closet. Mm-hmm. Try to give it a chance later on in life and like, oh wow. It’s more to the metaphor behind that. Get out of the comfort zone. Don’t get in the past, so don’t twist yourself it.

Right. It’s challenge yourself because that’s part of who you are, the character. I lived in the US eight years already. Mm-hmm. And, uh, at various times. And I like the fact that the country as a whole challenges itself every once in a while. In the 1980s, I was an exchange student in the, all the crisis with the car, the riding Toledo, you mm-hmm the crisis on every corner. Yeah. And then came answers, management answers and, uh, the [00:12:00] kaizen mode or the, oh, this or that, and, and then the country goes up again, not only people, but countries as a whole, sometimes. Need a challenge, need, need to

 Maureen: mm-hmm.

Aldo: Get out of the comfort zone.

 Maureen: So let’s wrap up. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Yeah. So that mountaineering thing. Yeah. You don’t die most, most of the time nothing happens to you. Yeah. Now I, now I say a good hiking trip is I bled and I got

Aldo: lost and I fought. The best thing of going to the outdoors: you love your bed, like you’re never slept before in a bed, and your restroom –food. Your restroom, shower.

Yeah. Things you take for granted every day. You ah, you’re so happy to see them back on that note, Aldo, thank

 Maureen: you so much. It’s been quite a delight.