Shownotes
Contact Aneace Haddad
Related episodes
#068 Connecting the dots to purpose with Marc Nicholson
Spotify: https://howtolive.life/ep68spotify
Apple Podcasts: https://howtolive.life/ep68apple
Episode Transcript
The transcript is computer generated. There may be errors.
Sharad Lal: Hi, everyone. Welcome to How to Live, a podcast that explores ways to live a good life. I'm your host, Sharad Lal. This is episode 71. Many of us ask ourselves, how do we navigate midlife? Today's guest, Aneace Haddad, has a different perspective. He believes midlife doesn't need to be in the yard. It's actually a dynamic period, a period of growth.
Aneace Haddad is a tech CEO turned C-suite executive coach. His leadership journey began three decades ago as a programmer in Denver, Colorado. . He later launched a tech startup in France that expanded to 30 countries. At 47. While selling his startup. He confronted midlife. and changed the tragic tree of his life. Now he guides C-suites executives in evolving their leadership style and growing through midlife. He's a senior advisor to McKinsey. And an external facilitator with Deloitte university. Uh, niece has also written two books on midlife. In today's conversation. We talk about the psychological and physiological changes that happen in midlife. Identity. Or tendency to evolve leadership style, reinvention, purpose, and more. But before getting to the podcast. Thank you very much for your support. We're in the top 3% of all podcasts and listen to. In over one 30 countries. If you haven't already, please do follow us.
Thank you. Now here's the incredibly nice add-on.
Sharad Lal: Good morning, Aneace. Welcome to the How to Live podcast. It's wonderful to have you. To start, let's talk about your midlife.
I take you back to when you were 47. You were a CEO of a software company based in France, travelling to Singapore, and other countries. And I think at that time you were also looking at selling the company. What was happening then and how did that create your perspective.
Aneace Haddad: I built a payment software company in France, grew it to 30 countries, and then sold it in 2007 when I was 47. And I thought I was going to be a serial entrepreneur then I gradually discovered, I went through a midlife crisis. Got divorced that same year, moved to Singapore
This was all in 2007, and I gradually discovered that what I was most proud of was my people, not the technology. I filed patents myself. I had won patent infringement lawsuits against competitors, where I was driving the case. I was the lead witness and everything. So, I had a very deep mastery of the strategicness of our technology and all that.
But that wasn't what I was most proud of. It was people who used to work for me who became CEOs, CTOs, and CFOs. That realization started pushing me toward mentoring and coaching. But it was very hard to let go of the identity of tech CEO and entrepreneur.
So by the time I was 50, I was done.
And I was pretty much doing what I did today.
Sharad Lal: 47 to 50 was when that process happened, and you emerged differently at 50. I know you talked about, you realise it wasn't the technical part of it, but it was the people part of it that resonated strongly with you. Was there a Eureka moment? How did that realisation happen?
Aneace Haddad: Actually, the one that comes to mind was on a ropes course. when you climb up in the trees and you've got the harness on and everything.
It was a leadership activity. I was paired up with a younger lady. You're supposed to go up to a high level with your partner. And then one of you has to put on a blindfold. And there's a rickety bridge with pieces of wood missing in between.
And you're supposed to get across the bridge without falling. And dangling in the air and all that. The facilitator pointed at me when we were at the top, you put the blindfold on. And so she froze, she was supposed to guide me across, she was in front of me, she was paralyzed. I said, come on, let's go, let's go, I tried to encourage her. Using What I thought was my kind of leadership skill of encouraging and saying, yeah, you can do it.
Let's go. She still wouldn't budge. And then my type a personality kicked in and I said, no, it doesn't matter. I'll get in front of you, hold onto my straps and I'll keep the blindfold on and I'll get us across. That was the real entrepreneur kind of leader that came out and I successfully got us across. took off my blindfold. She was all happy. Other people on the ground were clapping, but the facilitator was glaring at me. And when I came down, she said, what the hell was that about? you deprived your partner of the opportunity to find her own courage. And you wanted to be a hero, and you did get yourself across, but you didn't learn anything in that process.
That sent me into a lot of introspection and a deeper awareness of empowerment. Also, the image that came to mind was a courageous vampire. If someone around me can't step up, I'll step up to get it done. But that's just taking away their courage and feeding off of their lack of courage to boost my courage.
It was quite a realization, and since then, I've seen it in many senior executives. There's a sense that I'm most valuable if I can fix problems. I'll get us across no matter what. That's my value.
And then at midlife, you start to realise that your value might be elsewhere. it's finding those very subtle ways for people to find their own courage.
Sharad Lal: very powerful example, and that reminds me of when I'd done coaching, there was this visual where if somebody wants to pluck a fruit,
You don't lift them up, but you help them get taller so they're able to lift the fruit. So that's the empowerment thing.
Aneace Haddad: Yeah. Yeah. It's a very subtle distinction. So I think that's a very powerful image.
Sharad Lal: You have, that you heard. Understanding your identity, maybe letting part of it go and creating a new identity?
Aneace Haddad: Yeah, very, very. My identity was also tied up in my sense of value.what value do I have if I'm not a tech CEO? What value do I have if I'm just one amongst thousands and thousands of coaches? And that's scary because then you start thinking, the value is low then there isn't any money coming in with low value. It's quite a difficult process to unravel, yeah.
Sharad Lal: I like that. So identity is linked to value and value is linked to hate what you think about yourself, adding value as well as money.
Then how did you go about that process of shifting and saying, Hey, maybe there are a thousand coaches, but I could find this niche and be valuable to people.
Aneace Haddad: That was a long process. I like to look back in history a bit, and when you look at family names, family names are often trade names.
So my family name, Hadad, means smith, blacksmith. So I had blacksmiths in my heritage.
And the idea is that you pass it on. So if I'm the son of a blacksmith, I'm gonna be a blacksmith. And it's baked into your name.
And then we gradually grew out of that, the industrial revolution and everything.
It felt like an accelerated process of that identity just gradually crumbling.
it was more realising that the identity wasn't real.
It started changing in the 1800s, but we still feel it now.
Sharad Lal: That's such an interesting point. Can you talk a little bit more about nitty nitty? I think it's a powerful concept for people who haven't heard
Aneace Haddad: So niti niti means not this, not that. It's Sanskrit. I don't know what Sanskrit is, or what Could be.
originally it's been used as a way to negate one's physical being so that you can see that you're beyond that.
So it's very spiritual. I've taken the core of it and I don't use it in that spiritual manner, I use it as a way to loosen the identities that we hold on to. when you come up with a list of identities, it can be, I'm a man in Singapore, I'm an American in Singapore, an expat here, a former tech CEO.
A father, a husband, a father of stepchildren, all these identities are there. And then you start going through them with air quotes and you meditate and you tell yourself I am not a man. I am not a former tech CEO. And your brain, with the air quotes, when you do that, the brain kind of relaxes.
It goes, okay, this is silly. But when you do it, you start to get little flashes about how you're not really that. It's just a way to loosen up the identities. And then when you grasp a new identity, you're not grasping it in the same way. You go, okay, let me try this on for a little while, like a new shirt.
Sharad Lal: I like what he said, you might get glimpses of it all. unravelling for you or coming off for you, and then you can slowly try other identities. And it's a long, painful process. So let's not get away from that.
Where it is, what it is, I don't know, but it is beyond that.
Aneace Haddad:: So the identity isn't your authentic self. They're different. The search for identity to find your authentic self may also not be, it's just a complicated way of doing things because it's like, what is this authentic self I have to find? But then you can't find that. And there's in this book. It's what this is. It's like a purpose.
What is this purpose I need to find? What is this authentic self that sets the wrong energy towards it? It's a Simple kind of a process without complicating and seeing what works and over a period of time you accumulate that.
Yeah. And that's whether your identity or that's who you are at that point of time which could change
Sharad Lal: Yeah. That may also come as I listen to you replay this in your thoughts. It reminds me of things like Agile, in which you try something fast, fail fast, and learn from that to move on. And I wonder how much of my thoughts come from that entrepreneurial startup—background from years ago.
it's okay, try something new and then you discover as you go along. Interesting.
Aneace Haddad: So interesting. So this transformation process, which is, like you said, beyond three years of identity, has a spirituality element that came to you. You described it nitty-nitty, and you meditate and do other things, but there's also part of yourselves that has subconsciously shaped it.
Like you said, you're tech CEO, entrepreneurial, agile, try something new, fail, try something else, fail. All that has come together in uniquely helping you in your journey.
Yeah.
Sharad Lal: So now you've started coaching people and working with the people you mentioned who are 40 years old and above.
As you start speaking to people, what were some of the challenges that you heard people facing?
Aneace Haddad: this was around a year ago. I made the conscious decision that I wouldn't coach any more individuals or teams under 40.
And I came to that, not so much from the challenges that we face at midlife, but more from, potential for very substantial leadership transformation at midlife because of everything else going on in a person's life.
There are challenges involved. In my book Soaring Beyond Midlife, I discuss three winds of change. The first one is physiological: Our bodies are changing, our bellies are getting bigger, we don't have as much stamina as we used to have, and our health problems are starting to creep up.
So all of this is happening, and that kind of forces us to. If we have the privilege of living into our 40s, 50s, or 60s, it's very difficult to live into that time frame without learning experientially through life how to let go of stuff. So you let go of your youthful body. Let go of the way people used to look at you when you were younger.
Let go of the stamina. Yeah, no, I can't drink anymore in the evening before a board meeting or something. I can't, but in the past, I could. You're forced to let go of these things if you're going to continue functioning.
The second wind of change is neurological. I love this one. The prefrontal cortex slows down, so we forget where we put our car keys, we forget a cell on a spreadsheet while we're giving a board presentation, and if we try to hold on to our younger brains of the past, we can become brittle.
And that looks like somebody who is insisting on being right, even though everyone around him sees that, no, you actually don't remember what's in that cell.
And then if you let go of that, You start to see, okay, I can do some exercises to slow that down, so it's not slowing as fast.
But then you discover that the two hemispheres—these are all recent neuroscience discoveries—are talking more with each other, gradually developing the ability to connect the dots and see patterns that maybe were missing in your 30s.
and that becomes a superpower of leadership. So, by understanding what's going on there, you can say, okay, let me surround myself with people whose prefrontal cortexes are a little bit younger and functioning at their peak. And let me put my mind more into connecting the dots.
It's an organic, natural way to address what is needed at the C-suite level in a very complex world.
Sharad Lal: You put it so wonderfully. And I think we talked about this letting go a bit earlier, where it's letting go of identity. Like you said, we have to let go of the fact that we may not be the sharpest in the room.
We may have been there because there's a neurological reason for it. Yeah, but we may not be sharp, but we'll be wiser. We'll be able to see patterns better because that's how our brain is now processing stuff.
And if we shift towards that identity and that's how we add value, that's the kind of leader we can become and evolve
Aneace Haddad: kind of leader we can become and evolve to. which is the ability to intellectually understand what someone is going through. But what increases is our emotional empathy. So we get into these situations where we're listening to someone and we go, God, I don't understand what you're talking about. but I get you.
Sharad Lal: Yeah. I really get you.
Wow. many people listening to it would be nodding their heads right now. So there's a reason why that happened. That's so cool.
Aneace Haddad: So you can tap into that intellectual, that emotional empathy more. Which means that you could interact with people that think very differently than you. You can hold paradoxes more easily in your mind than when you were younger.
You don't need to resolve a paradox. There isn't a demand to resolve the paradox immediately. It's A or B. It can't be both. when that begins to develop, you start going, okay. A and B. What's that look like?
Sharad Lal: Let's talk about that. That's such a fascinating point of keeping paradoxes. Two very symmetrically opposite thoughts, but they sit in your mind very comfortably.
How does that happen? And if you can give an example of something like that.
Aneace Haddad: Oh, some very simple rudimentary examples are things like
We need to be more agile, flexible, and innovative, but we also need to respect processes and organisation.
When you coach a lot of people, you'll hear the or in the way they phrasing a situation. It sounds like either we're innovative and agile Or we're a large company and we deliver on the results that we promised shareholders. And you can see the or, you can feel the or.
With younger people, when I point out the or and have them, and suggest that they try to replace that with an and, I've noticed that it's a little bit more of a challenge. Older people will go, Oh my God, I get it.
Yes, I didn't realise I was in an awkward situation. I get it. It's very fast.
Sharad Lal: And then your unique view of that situation emerges.
Aneace Haddad: Yeah, exactly. You're connecting the dots again, back to that, seeing patterns and saying what would it look like if we are highly innovative and delivering on results at the same time? What's that look like?
Wow. As you work with CEOs and C-suites on this type of work, when do you start seeing shifts, and when is the first aha moment for them, when they get it that, Hey, the stuff that you're talking about is making sense to me?
I try to have that happen immediately. As a former CEO, that's what I want to do. I'm action-oriented and all that. As I mentioned the other day, two-thirds of my work is in the C suite. And then a third is one-on-one coaching with many of those same people.
But really the big work is having a C suite team in the room together and working on how the team can become more effective.
So there are exercises from the get-go that have them begin seeing these paradoxes. One of them that I love—I started a few years ago and now I do it systematically—is I put up a flip chart with 1 to 10 and ask them, I give them a green dot and a red dot, and I ask them to put the green dot where, on a scale of 1 to 10, how effective is the team here in this room right now?
And then put a red dot on where you think you need to be in terms of effectiveness in order to get everything done that you know the company has to deliver. I make it clear that it's not where you want to be a year from now or five years from now.
It's where you need to be today so we can get a feel for the room. Yeah, how big is this gap that we're talking about intuitively and subjectively? You can open that conversation.
Why are we seeing things so differently? And there, there's already a paradox. It's like I put the dot at four, somebody else, I see all these dots above mine. What are they seeing that's different from what I see?
So you start unpacking that. What does that look like when we're at that level? And that can take quite a while. And then the killer, where the real paradox all comes together, is then I'll challenge why not ten out of ten?
And then you hear all the same limiting beliefs, things like nobody is perfect.
They all sound rational, and they're all very rational reasons why not 10 out of 10. Nobody's perfect. There should always be room to grow. Change is always happening. I'll ask the room again: How many of you have kids?
A bunch of hands go up. Remember when your first child was born. You have no experience as a parent.
And you look down at your child and you say, I love you 7 out of 10.
Ten out of ten. Nobody is perfect. I don't know you. You don't know me. There should always be room to grow. And everyone's laughing in there. I mean, we don't do that. It's like ten out of ten, obviously. Am I gonna screw up? Yes. But my commitment is there.
My engagement is there and then they get it. It's yeah, I need, that's what I need to hold is that we're in a different world. We're not in a KPI kind of incremental improvement. We're in a different world. If we want to be great as a team, what's 10 out of 10?
Sharad Lal: Wonderful. How do you see these people then evolve their leadership style?
Do you see them in practice? Suddenly you see a new thing in someone. How do they see themselves and you
Aneace Haddad: in a general area, and then I'll give you a little anecdote. Once we get into the the analogy with parenting, so I'll ask also how many of you have teenagers, their kids are teens and they're getting ready to go off to college. At the board level, they're already, they've already left home. And then you can therefore connect their leadership journey to where they are in their parenting. So when they were younger, their parenting style was very KPI-ish. If you make your bed, you get this. If you finish your dinner on time and everything, you get that. and you bring that into your leadership.
So your leadership looks a lot like that. As the kids grow up, and you know that doesn't work anymore, then you start to discover through a very difficult process that all parents go through at some point, is If I can't tell you what to do anymore, and I am not here to guide you to the right choices, and I'm not here even for your sustenance, because now you're making like, what's my value as a parent anymore?
And we found it. We end up, we gradually find. And that same, exact same process is happening in leadership. If I'm not an expert in everything that everyone around me is doing, what value do I have? If I can't do it just as well as all of them, what value do I have?
It's a scary thing. You'll sometimes see people who believe they are more of an expert than the others around them, the people who report to them. And then when you open this up and they can get comfortable, then they'll start to notice that they actually know there's stuff that they do.
There is more and more stuff that they do that I just don't master, so that's a powerful organic way for that level to shift.
Sharad Lal: It's such a powerful example, and that starts opening up their mind. And if I understand right, once their mind starts opening up, then they're looking for the value they can add. And that's when things like connecting the dots, wisdom being like a an advisor,
Those kinds of things start coming
Aneace Haddad: The idea of truly empowering, not simply delegating. So all of that really can open up organically,which is why I decided to just focus on that level because it allows me to create, the distinctions that happen, um, At that level, at that
Sharad Lal: I know one of the other things that happens as you go through midlife is that you start thinking about meaning and purpose. How have you seen that happen with people that you work with?
Aneace Haddad: and life. How have you seen that with people you work with? I've never believed in it. It's like you have a purpose for this week, next month, or maybe the next five years.
In their forties and fifties, there's a sense of maybe I didn't get to exactly where I thought I was to get to at this age. I only have one more shotBefore I retire. And so there's a rigidness that creeps in, and there's a neediness that creeps in. How come I keep getting refused for that bigger role?
Why can't I get that? I'm going to quit companies and switch companies again to find that role somewhere else, and I've already done it twice. It's not coming. What's wrong?
Am I a failure? These things start to crop up. one area of that is that you start to realise actually I may live to 90 or 100.
So, I probably won't be retiring at 65. But what do I really want to do? When you start to open the horizon toward your current corporate gig, it starts to relax the mind; it's less cortisol-driven.
You can think more clearly because then you start going, okay, let me keep pushing at this. I'm not done with this. I like this work that I'm doing. Let me push 10 years. Great. However far I get, fine. But let me start to think: What is it that's going to emerge later?
Sharad Lal: You're not necessarily looking at the next promotion, even this looks pretty good.
I'm earning well, doing pretty well and not under too much pressure now.
Aneace Haddad: with someone I'd coached very briefly almost two years ago.
We caught up because he got the role that he wanted at the time. He was 48 at the time—he's just turned 50. At the time, he thought he was going to have to quit his company to get this role, but then he just relaxed into it.
He filled the role that was available to him. And then the role came up in the same company he was at. And now he's thrilled. He said, when I told you that I was almost 50.
And that's why I need to get all this done fast. And he said, your words stayed with me. You said, dude, you're only 50. You got a whole life ahead of you.
We forget these things. We get so focused and we forget them. In a
Sharad Lal: In a little universe, it's like the world's coming to an end and we need to finish stuff. And I love that the energy shifts from a cortisol fear based energy to a little more relaxed, open, and then things start emerging for us.
Aneace Haddad: A lot of people now practise meditation, which is a huge way to achieve what you just described.
Sharad Lal: Money can help ease things up as well. How do money and the perception of money play up in middle age?
Aneace Haddad: Yeah, it's extremely challenging. You want to have enough to last, and then there's a sense that maybe you won't, so what kind of work can I do? Even beyond the money, what kind of work can I do that I really enjoy and that's valuable? A lot of us have come to a feeling that money is a way to measure the value of what we're delivering. it may not be that I'm chasing the money for the money, it's more that if nobody wants to pay for it,
Am I wasting my time? If it's something that, that's valuable. Now I'm not talking about working with disadvantaged people, kids and stuff like that, that, that don't have the money to pay for that.
But just the normal stuff that we normally run into. So there's a natural predisposition to find things that others find valuable and that is measured through how much they're willing to pay.
Sharad Lal: So money turns into that I'm doing a service, and the value of that has to come in terms of money, so it's not like earning more and more.
But also I need money to live a reasonably good life and life is becoming expensive. I'm going to live longer. My kids need money, whatever that kind of thing.
Aneace Haddad: yeah. Now, when you're at that age and your kids are leaving home,
There's something easier that's kicking in, because you're starting to think that you're not going to be paying these expat school fees. extra rooms in your house indefinitely.
Although with a lot of kids coming back to live at home, that could go on quite a bit longer. That's such
Aneace Haddad: Now, with these thoughts that are happening with us, these shifts that are happening in the leaderships in the workspace, how do they seep into the rest of our life?
Relationships, friendships, these kinds.
Aneace Haddad: I've seen people become more accepting of the, I don't know how to describe it, the privilege to go to the gym and work out. I don't have to be working at my desk from 8 a. m. until 11 p. m. It's fine if I take time out during the day to go and go to the gym. So that grows. There was a retreat I did once with the C Suite in Hong Kong and It was time to start and the CEO was like five minutes late. But he had been out running for an hour, and he had also been to the gym, and he was very fit. The rest of the room was not quite fit.
and the impact, the message that sends is important. I have a friend Marcus Marsdenof TWP. He and his wife, Sari, have written a book called Fit to Lead, which is absolutely in this area, that there is leadership, you need fitness.
there's a lot of linkage there. That's one area that I can see people just giving themselves permission to take care of themselves. I've seen a number of times people developing deeper relationships with their kids. One India that I've coached years ago, CFO
She felt that she needed to work on her empathy. And then she said on our first coaching session, she said, and I'd like to start with my son.
Okay, great. The son was 17 years old, suffering from depression, an only child. Her husband also had some big role, so they were travelling a lot and they had all the helpers and everything at home.
And so we talked about feedback So she was excited about that.
She said, yeah, I'm gonna ask my son for feedback. And the next coaching session she said So I asked him for feedback, and he said You're my mother, I can't rate you as a mom. But if you asked me to rate you as a cook, I'd give you a zero.So she laughed at that, and then she Came up with the idea that she was going to cook for him,
So she gave the cooks and helpers an evening off. She starts cooking, he comes in, What are you doing? I'm cooking. And then, and every coaching session she would be talking about a meal that they had prepared together. It was beautiful. So it all interlinks
Sharad Lal: It's a wonderful story. Such a beautiful story. It was early in my coaching, and it solidified the value of the work that we do.
Now, I have two last questions for you that I ask everyone. The first is the slightly more serious one.
Bottom line, what advice would you like to leave folks who are currently in midlife?
Aneace Haddad: a theme around resilience that's been popping up a lot on I've written about this and it's in my book. I don't like the term resilience so much because it's a reaction term.
I like joy. I like to use the term joyful rejuvenation. It's a long, wonky term for resilience. But if I could leave someone with just one thought, it would be that we laugh a lot more when we're older.
And we can, we can lean into that. Why not laugh in a board meeting, in an, in an ex co meeting? Why not laugh about the mistakes that we've made? Why not celebrate things? So I, yeah, I think that part of it starts to come out more.
at that time of life,the happiness, you at 47, You start out pretty happy early in life. And then by 47, you're at the bottom. And then it starts to pick up again.
Sharad Lal: That's good to know. And I love your point of laughter and joy. You're an example of that and inspiration. And it also reminded me of a book by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, The Book of Joy.
I don't know
if you read it. It's such a light, joyful book and powerful book. I think that's such a good message that you're leaving
Aneace Haddad: Oh, the whole in the spiritual or the laughing Buddha kind of thing. It's yeah, it's a powerful image to have that we develop with age. When we're leaning into this process of letting go of a style.
Sharad Lal: And I have the last one, which I ask everyone. You've done so well in life. In the end, how would you know you've lived a good life?
Aneace Haddad: Oh my God. I think one of my fears is getting old and dying and nobody near me. Which is irrational and all that. But I think it would be how many people are there.
Sharad Lal: Thank you very much for all the good work you're doing, Aneace. I love this conversation.
Thank you Aneace for such an insightful conversation. For more than a niece and his books, please check the show notes. He has something all of us could reflect on. How can we add value to people? People around us. How. How did we do that? Dental? 10-15 years ago.
What's changed since then? Physical health, mental health wisdom.
How can we add value to people today? What shift in mindset is needed? Best of luck. I hope you enjoyed this episode. The next one will be released two weeks from now, on July 16. Do join us for that. Till then, have a wonderful day ahead. Bye-bye.
Sharad Lal: Hi, everyone. Welcome to How to Live, a podcast that explores ways to live a good life. I'm your host, Sharad Lal. This is episode 71. Many of us ask ourselves, how do we navigate midlife? Today's guest, Aneace Haddad, has a different perspective. He believes midlife doesn't need to be in the yard. It's actually a dynamic period, a period of growth.
Aneace Haddad is a tech CEO turned C-suite executive coach. His leadership journey began three decades ago as a programmer in Denver, Colorado. . He later launched a tech startup in France that expanded to 30 countries. At 47. While selling his startup. He confronted midlife. and changed the tragic tree of his life. Now he guides C-suites executives in evolving their leadership style and growing through midlife. He's a senior advisor to McKinsey. And an external facilitator with Deloitte university. Uh, niece has also written two books on midlife. In today's conversation. We talk about the psychological and physiological changes that happen in midlife. Identity. Or tendency to evolve leadership style, reinvention, purpose, and more. But before getting to the podcast. Thank you very much for your support. We're in the top 3% of all podcasts and listen to. In over one 30 countries. If you haven't already, please do follow us.
Thank you. Now here's the incredibly nice add-on.
Sharad Lal: Good morning, Aneace. Welcome to the How to Live podcast. It's wonderful to have you. To start, let's talk about your midlife.
I take you back to when you were 47. You were a CEO of a software company based in France, travelling to Singapore, and other countries. And I think at that time you were also looking at selling the company. What was happening then and how did that create your perspective.
Aneace Haddad: I built a payment software company in France, grew it to 30 countries, and then sold it in 2007 when I was 47. And I thought I was going to be a serial entrepreneur then I gradually discovered, I went through a midlife crisis. Got divorced that same year, moved to Singapore
This was all in 2007, and I gradually discovered that what I was most proud of was my people, not the technology. I filed patents myself. I had won patent infringement lawsuits against competitors, where I was driving the case. I was the lead witness and everything. So, I had a very deep mastery of the strategicness of our technology and all that.
But that wasn't what I was most proud of. It was people who used to work for me who became CEOs, CTOs, and CFOs. That realization started pushing me toward mentoring and coaching. But it was very hard to let go of the identity of tech CEO and entrepreneur.
So by the time I was 50, I was done.
And I was pretty much doing what I did today.
Sharad Lal: 47 to 50 was when that process happened, and you emerged differently at 50. I know you talked about, you realise it wasn't the technical part of it, but it was the people part of it that resonated strongly with you. Was there a Eureka moment? How did that realisation happen?
Aneace Haddad: Actually, the one that comes to mind was on a ropes course. when you climb up in the trees and you've got the harness on and everything.
It was a leadership activity. I was paired up with a younger lady. You're supposed to go up to a high level with your partner. And then one of you has to put on a blindfold. And there's a rickety bridge with pieces of wood missing in between.
And you're supposed to get across the bridge without falling. And dangling in the air and all that. The facilitator pointed at me when we were at the top, you put the blindfold on. And so she froze, she was supposed to guide me across, she was in front of me, she was paralyzed. I said, come on, let's go, let's go, I tried to encourage her. Using What I thought was my kind of leadership skill of encouraging and saying, yeah, you can do it.
Let's go. She still wouldn't budge. And then my type a personality kicked in and I said, no, it doesn't matter. I'll get in front of you, hold onto my straps and I'll keep the blindfold on and I'll get us across. That was the real entrepreneur kind of leader that came out and I successfully got us across. took off my blindfold. She was all happy. Other people on the ground were clapping, but the facilitator was glaring at me. And when I came down, she said, what the hell was that about? you deprived your partner of the opportunity to find her own courage. And you wanted to be a hero, and you did get yourself across, but you didn't learn anything in that process.
That sent me into a lot of introspection and a deeper awareness of empowerment. Also, the image that came to mind was a courageous vampire. If someone around me can't step up, I'll step up to get it done. But that's just taking away their courage and feeding off of their lack of courage to boost my courage.
It was quite a realization, and since then, I've seen it in many senior executives. There's a sense that I'm most valuable if I can fix problems. I'll get us across no matter what. That's my value.
And then at midlife, you start to realise that your value might be elsewhere. it's finding those very subtle ways for people to find their own courage.
Sharad Lal: very powerful example, and that reminds me of when I'd done coaching, there was this visual where if somebody wants to pluck a fruit,
You don't lift them up, but you help them get taller so they're able to lift the fruit. So that's the empowerment thing.
Aneace Haddad: Yeah. Yeah. It's a very subtle distinction. So I think that's a very powerful image.
Sharad Lal: You have, that you heard. Understanding your identity, maybe letting part of it go and creating a new identity?
Aneace Haddad: Yeah, very, very. My identity was also tied up in my sense of value.what value do I have if I'm not a tech CEO? What value do I have if I'm just one amongst thousands and thousands of coaches? And that's scary because then you start thinking, the value is low then there isn't any money coming in with low value. It's quite a difficult process to unravel, yeah.
Sharad Lal: I like that. So identity is linked to value and value is linked to hate what you think about yourself, adding value as well as money.
Then how did you go about that process of shifting and saying, Hey, maybe there are a thousand coaches, but I could find this niche and be valuable to people.
Aneace Haddad: That was a long process. I like to look back in history a bit, and when you look at family names, family names are often trade names.
So my family name, Hadad, means smith, blacksmith. So I had blacksmiths in my heritage.
And the idea is that you pass it on. So if I'm the son of a blacksmith, I'm gonna be a blacksmith. And it's baked into your name.
And then we gradually grew out of that, the industrial revolution and everything.
It felt like an accelerated process of that identity just gradually crumbling.
it was more realising that the identity wasn't real.
It started changing in the 1800s, but we still feel it now.
Sharad Lal: That's such an interesting point. Can you talk a little bit more about nitty nitty? I think it's a powerful concept for people who haven't heard
Aneace Haddad: So niti niti means not this, not that. It's Sanskrit. I don't know what Sanskrit is, or what Could be.
originally it's been used as a way to negate one's physical being so that you can see that you're beyond that.
So it's very spiritual. I've taken the core of it and I don't use it in that spiritual manner, I use it as a way to loosen the identities that we hold on to. when you come up with a list of identities, it can be, I'm a man in Singapore, I'm an American in Singapore, an expat here, a former tech CEO.
A father, a husband, a father of stepchildren, all these identities are there. And then you start going through them with air quotes and you meditate and you tell yourself I am not a man. I am not a former tech CEO. And your brain, with the air quotes, when you do that, the brain kind of relaxes.
It goes, okay, this is silly. But when you do it, you start to get little flashes about how you're not really that. It's just a way to loosen up the identities. And then when you grasp a new identity, you're not grasping it in the same way. You go, okay, let me try this on for a little while, like a new shirt.
Sharad Lal: I like what he said, you might get glimpses of it all. unravelling for you or coming off for you, and then you can slowly try other identities. And it's a long, painful process. So let's not get away from that.
Where it is, what it is, I don't know, but it is beyond that.
Aneace Haddad:: So the identity isn't your authentic self. They're different. The search for identity to find your authentic self may also not be, it's just a complicated way of doing things because it's like, what is this authentic self I have to find? But then you can't find that. And there's in this book. It's what this is. It's like a purpose.
What is this purpose I need to find? What is this authentic self that sets the wrong energy towards it? It's a Simple kind of a process without complicating and seeing what works and over a period of time you accumulate that.
Yeah. And that's whether your identity or that's who you are at that point of time which could change
Sharad Lal: Yeah. That may also come as I listen to you replay this in your thoughts. It reminds me of things like Agile, in which you try something fast, fail fast, and learn from that to move on. And I wonder how much of my thoughts come from that entrepreneurial startup—background from years ago.
it's okay, try something new and then you discover as you go along. Interesting.
Aneace Haddad: So interesting. So this transformation process, which is, like you said, beyond three years of identity, has a spirituality element that came to you. You described it nitty-nitty, and you meditate and do other things, but there's also part of yourselves that has subconsciously shaped it.
Like you said, you're tech CEO, entrepreneurial, agile, try something new, fail, try something else, fail. All that has come together in uniquely helping you in your journey.
Yeah.
Sharad Lal: So now you've started coaching people and working with the people you mentioned who are 40 years old and above.
As you start speaking to people, what were some of the challenges that you heard people facing?
Aneace Haddad: this was around a year ago. I made the conscious decision that I wouldn't coach any more individuals or teams under 40.
And I came to that, not so much from the challenges that we face at midlife, but more from, potential for very substantial leadership transformation at midlife because of everything else going on in a person's life.
There are challenges involved. In my book Soaring Beyond Midlife, I discuss three winds of change. The first one is physiological: Our bodies are changing, our bellies are getting bigger, we don't have as much stamina as we used to have, and our health problems are starting to creep up.
So all of this is happening, and that kind of forces us to. If we have the privilege of living into our 40s, 50s, or 60s, it's very difficult to live into that time frame without learning experientially through life how to let go of stuff. So you let go of your youthful body. Let go of the way people used to look at you when you were younger.
Let go of the stamina. Yeah, no, I can't drink anymore in the evening before a board meeting or something. I can't, but in the past, I could. You're forced to let go of these things if you're going to continue functioning.
The second wind of change is neurological. I love this one. The prefrontal cortex slows down, so we forget where we put our car keys, we forget a cell on a spreadsheet while we're giving a board presentation, and if we try to hold on to our younger brains of the past, we can become brittle.
And that looks like somebody who is insisting on being right, even though everyone around him sees that, no, you actually don't remember what's in that cell.
And then if you let go of that, You start to see, okay, I can do some exercises to slow that down, so it's not slowing as fast.
But then you discover that the two hemispheres—these are all recent neuroscience discoveries—are talking more with each other, gradually developing the ability to connect the dots and see patterns that maybe were missing in your 30s.
and that becomes a superpower of leadership. So, by understanding what's going on there, you can say, okay, let me surround myself with people whose prefrontal cortexes are a little bit younger and functioning at their peak. And let me put my mind more into connecting the dots.
It's an organic, natural way to address what is needed at the C-suite level in a very complex world.
Sharad Lal: You put it so wonderfully. And I think we talked about this letting go a bit earlier, where it's letting go of identity. Like you said, we have to let go of the fact that we may not be the sharpest in the room.
We may have been there because there's a neurological reason for it. Yeah, but we may not be sharp, but we'll be wiser. We'll be able to see patterns better because that's how our brain is now processing stuff.
And if we shift towards that identity and that's how we add value, that's the kind of leader we can become and evolve
Aneace Haddad: kind of leader we can become and evolve to. which is the ability to intellectually understand what someone is going through. But what increases is our emotional empathy. So we get into these situations where we're listening to someone and we go, God, I don't understand what you're talking about. but I get you.
Sharad Lal: Yeah. I really get you.
Wow. many people listening to it would be nodding their heads right now. So there's a reason why that happened. That's so cool.
Aneace Haddad: So you can tap into that intellectual, that emotional empathy more. Which means that you could interact with people that think very differently than you. You can hold paradoxes more easily in your mind than when you were younger.
You don't need to resolve a paradox. There isn't a demand to resolve the paradox immediately. It's A or B. It can't be both. when that begins to develop, you start going, okay. A and B. What's that look like?
Sharad Lal: Let's talk about that. That's such a fascinating point of keeping paradoxes. Two very symmetrically opposite thoughts, but they sit in your mind very comfortably.
How does that happen? And if you can give an example of something like that.
Aneace Haddad: Oh, some very simple rudimentary examples are things like
We need to be more agile, flexible, and innovative, but we also need to respect processes and organisation.
When you coach a lot of people, you'll hear the or in the way they phrasing a situation. It sounds like either we're innovative and agile Or we're a large company and we deliver on the results that we promised shareholders. And you can see the or, you can feel the or.
With younger people, when I point out the or and have them, and suggest that they try to replace that with an and, I've noticed that it's a little bit more of a challenge. Older people will go, Oh my God, I get it.
Yes, I didn't realise I was in an awkward situation. I get it. It's very fast.
Sharad Lal: And then your unique view of that situation emerges.
Aneace Haddad: Yeah, exactly. You're connecting the dots again, back to that, seeing patterns and saying what would it look like if we are highly innovative and delivering on results at the same time? What's that look like?
Wow. As you work with CEOs and C-suites on this type of work, when do you start seeing shifts, and when is the first aha moment for them, when they get it that, Hey, the stuff that you're talking about is making sense to me?
I try to have that happen immediately. As a former CEO, that's what I want to do. I'm action-oriented and all that. As I mentioned the other day, two-thirds of my work is in the C suite. And then a third is one-on-one coaching with many of those same people.
But really the big work is having a C suite team in the room together and working on how the team can become more effective.
So there are exercises from the get-go that have them begin seeing these paradoxes. One of them that I love—I started a few years ago and now I do it systematically—is I put up a flip chart with 1 to 10 and ask them, I give them a green dot and a red dot, and I ask them to put the green dot where, on a scale of 1 to 10, how effective is the team here in this room right now?
And then put a red dot on where you think you need to be in terms of effectiveness in order to get everything done that you know the company has to deliver. I make it clear that it's not where you want to be a year from now or five years from now.
It's where you need to be today so we can get a feel for the room. Yeah, how big is this gap that we're talking about intuitively and subjectively? You can open that conversation.
Why are we seeing things so differently? And there, there's already a paradox. It's like I put the dot at four, somebody else, I see all these dots above mine. What are they seeing that's different from what I see?
So you start unpacking that. What does that look like when we're at that level? And that can take quite a while. And then the killer, where the real paradox all comes together, is then I'll challenge why not ten out of ten?
And then you hear all the same limiting beliefs, things like nobody is perfect.
They all sound rational, and they're all very rational reasons why not 10 out of 10. Nobody's perfect. There should always be room to grow. Change is always happening. I'll ask the room again: How many of you have kids?
A bunch of hands go up. Remember when your first child was born. You have no experience as a parent.
And you look down at your child and you say, I love you 7 out of 10.
Ten out of ten. Nobody is perfect. I don't know you. You don't know me. There should always be room to grow. And everyone's laughing in there. I mean, we don't do that. It's like ten out of ten, obviously. Am I gonna screw up? Yes. But my commitment is there.
My engagement is there and then they get it. It's yeah, I need, that's what I need to hold is that we're in a different world. We're not in a KPI kind of incremental improvement. We're in a different world. If we want to be great as a team, what's 10 out of 10?
Sharad Lal: Wonderful. How do you see these people then evolve their leadership style?
Do you see them in practice? Suddenly you see a new thing in someone. How do they see themselves and you
Aneace Haddad: in a general area, and then I'll give you a little anecdote. Once we get into the the analogy with parenting, so I'll ask also how many of you have teenagers, their kids are teens and they're getting ready to go off to college. At the board level, they're already, they've already left home. And then you can therefore connect their leadership journey to where they are in their parenting. So when they were younger, their parenting style was very KPI-ish. If you make your bed, you get this. If you finish your dinner on time and everything, you get that. and you bring that into your leadership.
So your leadership looks a lot like that. As the kids grow up, and you know that doesn't work anymore, then you start to discover through a very difficult process that all parents go through at some point, is If I can't tell you what to do anymore, and I am not here to guide you to the right choices, and I'm not here even for your sustenance, because now you're making like, what's my value as a parent anymore?
And we found it. We end up, we gradually find. And that same, exact same process is happening in leadership. If I'm not an expert in everything that everyone around me is doing, what value do I have? If I can't do it just as well as all of them, what value do I have?
It's a scary thing. You'll sometimes see people who believe they are more of an expert than the others around them, the people who report to them. And then when you open this up and they can get comfortable, then they'll start to notice that they actually know there's stuff that they do.
There is more and more stuff that they do that I just don't master, so that's a powerful organic way for that level to shift.
Sharad Lal: It's such a powerful example, and that starts opening up their mind. And if I understand right, once their mind starts opening up, then they're looking for the value they can add. And that's when things like connecting the dots, wisdom being like a an advisor,
Those kinds of things start coming
Aneace Haddad: The idea of truly empowering, not simply delegating. So all of that really can open up organically,which is why I decided to just focus on that level because it allows me to create, the distinctions that happen, um, At that level, at that
Sharad Lal: I know one of the other things that happens as you go through midlife is that you start thinking about meaning and purpose. How have you seen that happen with people that you work with?
Aneace Haddad: and life. How have you seen that with people you work with? I've never believed in it. It's like you have a purpose for this week, next month, or maybe the next five years.
In their forties and fifties, there's a sense of maybe I didn't get to exactly where I thought I was to get to at this age. I only have one more shotBefore I retire. And so there's a rigidness that creeps in, and there's a neediness that creeps in. How come I keep getting refused for that bigger role?
Why can't I get that? I'm going to quit companies and switch companies again to find that role somewhere else, and I've already done it twice. It's not coming. What's wrong?
Am I a failure? These things start to crop up. one area of that is that you start to realise actually I may live to 90 or 100.
So, I probably won't be retiring at 65. But what do I really want to do? When you start to open the horizon toward your current corporate gig, it starts to relax the mind; it's less cortisol-driven.
You can think more clearly because then you start going, okay, let me keep pushing at this. I'm not done with this. I like this work that I'm doing. Let me push 10 years. Great. However far I get, fine. But let me start to think: What is it that's going to emerge later?
Sharad Lal: You're not necessarily looking at the next promotion, even this looks pretty good.
I'm earning well, doing pretty well and not under too much pressure now.
Aneace Haddad: with someone I'd coached very briefly almost two years ago.
We caught up because he got the role that he wanted at the time. He was 48 at the time—he's just turned 50. At the time, he thought he was going to have to quit his company to get this role, but then he just relaxed into it.
He filled the role that was available to him. And then the role came up in the same company he was at. And now he's thrilled. He said, when I told you that I was almost 50.
And that's why I need to get all this done fast. And he said, your words stayed with me. You said, dude, you're only 50. You got a whole life ahead of you.
We forget these things. We get so focused and we forget them. In a
Sharad Lal: In a little universe, it's like the world's coming to an end and we need to finish stuff. And I love that the energy shifts from a cortisol fear based energy to a little more relaxed, open, and then things start emerging for us.
Aneace Haddad: A lot of people now practise meditation, which is a huge way to achieve what you just described.
Sharad Lal: Money can help ease things up as well. How do money and the perception of money play up in middle age?
Aneace Haddad: Yeah, it's extremely challenging. You want to have enough to last, and then there's a sense that maybe you won't, so what kind of work can I do? Even beyond the money, what kind of work can I do that I really enjoy and that's valuable? A lot of us have come to a feeling that money is a way to measure the value of what we're delivering. it may not be that I'm chasing the money for the money, it's more that if nobody wants to pay for it,
Am I wasting my time? If it's something that, that's valuable. Now I'm not talking about working with disadvantaged people, kids and stuff like that, that, that don't have the money to pay for that.
But just the normal stuff that we normally run into. So there's a natural predisposition to find things that others find valuable and that is measured through how much they're willing to pay.
Sharad Lal: So money turns into that I'm doing a service, and the value of that has to come in terms of money, so it's not like earning more and more.
But also I need money to live a reasonably good life and life is becoming expensive. I'm going to live longer. My kids need money, whatever that kind of thing.
Aneace Haddad: yeah. Now, when you're at that age and your kids are leaving home,
There's something easier that's kicking in, because you're starting to think that you're not going to be paying these expat school fees. extra rooms in your house indefinitely.
Although with a lot of kids coming back to live at home, that could go on quite a bit longer. That's such
Aneace Haddad: Now, with these thoughts that are happening with us, these shifts that are happening in the leaderships in the workspace, how do they seep into the rest of our life?
Relationships, friendships, these kinds.
Aneace Haddad: I've seen people become more accepting of the, I don't know how to describe it, the privilege to go to the gym and work out. I don't have to be working at my desk from 8 a. m. until 11 p. m. It's fine if I take time out during the day to go and go to the gym. So that grows. There was a retreat I did once with the C Suite in Hong Kong and It was time to start and the CEO was like five minutes late. But he had been out running for an hour, and he had also been to the gym, and he was very fit. The rest of the room was not quite fit.
and the impact, the message that sends is important. I have a friend Marcus Marsdenof TWP. He and his wife, Sari, have written a book called Fit to Lead, which is absolutely in this area, that there is leadership, you need fitness.
there's a lot of linkage there. That's one area that I can see people just giving themselves permission to take care of themselves. I've seen a number of times people developing deeper relationships with their kids. One India that I've coached years ago, CFO
She felt that she needed to work on her empathy. And then she said on our first coaching session, she said, and I'd like to start with my son.
Okay, great. The son was 17 years old, suffering from depression, an only child. Her husband also had some big role, so they were travelling a lot and they had all the helpers and everything at home.
And so we talked about feedback So she was excited about that.
She said, yeah, I'm gonna ask my son for feedback. And the next coaching session she said So I asked him for feedback, and he said You're my mother, I can't rate you as a mom. But if you asked me to rate you as a cook, I'd give you a zero.So she laughed at that, and then she Came up with the idea that she was going to cook for him,
So she gave the cooks and helpers an evening off. She starts cooking, he comes in, What are you doing? I'm cooking. And then, and every coaching session she would be talking about a meal that they had prepared together. It was beautiful. So it all interlinks
Sharad Lal: It's a wonderful story. Such a beautiful story. It was early in my coaching, and it solidified the value of the work that we do.
Now, I have two last questions for you that I ask everyone. The first is the slightly more serious one.
Bottom line, what advice would you like to leave folks who are currently in midlife?
Aneace Haddad: a theme around resilience that's been popping up a lot on I've written about this and it's in my book. I don't like the term resilience so much because it's a reaction term.
I like joy. I like to use the term joyful rejuvenation. It's a long, wonky term for resilience. But if I could leave someone with just one thought, it would be that we laugh a lot more when we're older.
And we can, we can lean into that. Why not laugh in a board meeting, in an, in an ex co meeting? Why not laugh about the mistakes that we've made? Why not celebrate things? So I, yeah, I think that part of it starts to come out more.
at that time of life,the happiness, you at 47, You start out pretty happy early in life. And then by 47, you're at the bottom. And then it starts to pick up again.
Sharad Lal: That's good to know. And I love your point of laughter and joy. You're an example of that and inspiration. And it also reminded me of a book by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, The Book of Joy.
I don't know
if you read it. It's such a light, joyful book and powerful book. I think that's such a good message that you're leaving
Aneace Haddad: Oh, the whole in the spiritual or the laughing Buddha kind of thing. It's yeah, it's a powerful image to have that we develop with age. When we're leaning into this process of letting go of a style.
Sharad Lal: And I have the last one, which I ask everyone. You've done so well in life. In the end, how would you know you've lived a good life?
Aneace Haddad: Oh my God. I think one of my fears is getting old and dying and nobody near me. Which is irrational and all that. But I think it would be how many people are there.
Sharad Lal: Thank you very much for all the good work you're doing, Aneace. I love this conversation.
Thank you Aneace for such an insightful conversation. For more than a niece and his books, please check the show notes. He has something all of us could reflect on. How can we add value to people? People around us. How. How did we do that? Dental? 10-15 years ago.
What's changed since then? Physical health, mental health wisdom.
How can we add value to people today? What shift in mindset is needed? Best of luck. I hope you enjoyed this episode. The next one will be released two weeks from now, on July 16. Do join us for that. Till then, have a wonderful day ahead. Bye-bye.