On Connection

In this episode of On Connection, host Robin Anselmi interviews Pedro Zannoni, CEO of Lacoste Latin America. With a rich background in the sporting and fashion goods industries, Pedro has successfully grown global brands in new regions and tackled various leadership challenges. As an ambassador for Diversity and Inclusion at Lacoste, Pedro shares valuable insights on elevating women's leadership and why it matters to have a truly authentic approach to the work of inclusion.

Learn more about Pedro through his bio and the links included below:

An executive with over 23 years of experience in multinational companies in the sports and fashion industries, Pedro has expertise in sales and brand building. He takes pride in forming and leading high-performance teams and has held leadership positions at companies such as Wilson, PUMA, adidas, Reebok, ASICS, and is currently the CEO of Lacoste Latin America. In this role, he is responsible for leading the strategic direction and operations of one of the most iconic and prestigious brands in the world.

Before starting his corporate career, Pedro was a professional tennis player and coach. During this time, he won several national and international titles in various categories, including South American and World Champion titles in 1993, and competed in Grand Slam tournaments at Roland Garros and Wimbledon.

He holds a degree in Law, a postgraduate degree in Business Administration, a specialization in General Management from Wharton - University of Pennsylvania, and certification as a Corporate Governance Board Member from IBGC.

Follow Pedro on LinkedIn⁠ and ⁠Instagram⁠

⁠More on Pedro's work and career⁠

Follow Lacoste on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ and ⁠Instagram

Organizations rely on leaders to effectively direct action and inspire collaborative work even when they don't have direct authority over everyone they need to influence. Often, these are leaders a few rungs below senior leadership that are responsible for driving strategic priorities forward, influencing across a matrix, and doing so without relying on title or reporting structure.

There are effective strategies for inspiring authentic commitment and engagement even when you can't demand compliance, and it's worthwhile for any leader to learn how to leverage this skillset.

In this episode, Robin and Emma Rose are joined by Conversant consultant Roger Henderson to offer practical areas of focus to become an effective and purposeful leader, with or without authority.

Now enrolling: The Purposeful Leader program, January 2025

Read: Standing in Purpose to Lead & Collaborate Without Authority

Strategic planning and budget setting are core responsibilities for organizational leaders, yet they often come with unique challenges. These processes rely on a series of crucial conversations that directly impact not only how challenging that process feels, but also the quality of the resulting plans and commitments, ultimately guiding successful execution.

In this episode, Robin and Mickey share insights from their experience supporting leadership teams across various industries, as well as from their own leadership journeys. They explore how to design conversations that help answer the essential question: What are we focusing on, and why? Tune in to learn how to make your strategic planning discussions more focused, valuable, and productive.

Additional Resources:

Power & it's impact on leadership, inclusion & value

Challenges of Leadership: Enterprise Leadership

A critical first chapter in a leader's growth comes when they are no longer just accountable for their own performance, but for that of others. Whether managing a team for the first time or taking on more leadership in collaborative work, this leap requires new mindsets and skills to guide collective rather than individual success.

Challenges for this population include:

- Setting expectations & generating alignment (both with those they lead and their managers)

- Generating trust in working relationships

- Clarifying accountabilities & getting commitment from others

- Giving and receiving feedback for continuous improvement

In this episode, Mickey, Robin and Emma Rose share what they see are key developmental focus areas for Emerging Leaders and what they can do to set a foundation for valuable leadership that lasts through their career.

The Emerging Leaders Program - Enrolling Now!

Bringing a team together - whether that be for meetings, offsites, retreats, kickoffs, happy hours, or other forms of gathering - is an important part of cultivating team culture, generating alignment, and building connection. Many will report that their teams don't meet often enough, or meet too much. At the heart of both critiques is a question - when we do meet, how do we ensure it's a valuable and worthwhile investment of time and resources?

Many are currently considering plans for team gatherings at the end of this year or the start of 2025, and we wanted to offer our insight and expertise around how to ensure that when you gather, you do it well.

Are you clear on why you need to come together? What outcomes would make that use of time and resources worth it? To design your gathering well, all decisions about virtual or in-person, agenda, team building activities, and more should be intentional, clearly serving what you're out to do together and why it matters.

In this episode, Mickey, Emma Rose, and their colleague Patrick Kennedy share what they've learned from advising clients on this very challenge, and how you can design your upcoming gatherings to serve the needs of your team and your business.

Resources:

The Five Sense Solution

Blog: That Email Could Have Been a Meeting

Blog: Do This One Thing to Run Your Meetings More Effectively

Of the challenges unique to senior roles, "Enterprise Leadership" is a common point of focus in our work with clients today. Enterprise Leadership is a distinction that refers to both a role and a mindset: taking responsibility for the health of the whole enterprise, and for the promises it makes to its stakeholders and citizens.

Leaders can have great capability and expertise in leading their function or a specific set of accountabilities, but at the most senior levels, organizations need people that extend their care not just vertically but across the organization. Leaders that generate the connection and alignment that allows the system to achieve strategic and cultural goals while navigating dynamic challenges.

Resources:

Challenges of Leadership: Practicing Emotional Leadership

Tool: Connected Leader Review

Imagine if all use of your time, energy and attention at work led to real value. How much would you get done? How would you feel? Now imagine if all use of time and resources across your organization caused value - no meeting, task or project was a waste.

Every organization has waste in its system, but the real problem is that we either don't notice it, or we don't feel empowered to do anything about it. Every individual in an organization has power to make the shift from waste to value, improving the vitality of that individual and the system as a whole.

In this episode, Robin, Mickey and Emma Rose share their advice for catching signs of waste in your work, and practical steps you can take to improve the value-to-waste ratio, improving your experience at work and the results you're able to produce.

Resources:

The 7 Signs of Waste

Organizational Vitality Quick Scan

Mike Tetreault, Chief People Officer of The Nature Conservancy, joins Robin Anselmi to talk about the value of Radical Partnership, and why it's a necessary focus for leaders navigating dynamic and complex challenges.

Mike leads the team focused on enabling a healthy, strategic and agile organizational culture that is dedicated to creating a world where people and nature can thrive. He believes in a human-focused approach to leadership, one that prioritizes empathy, integrity and collaboration in its pursuit of strategic goals.

You can learn more about ⁠Mike Tetreault⁠ and ⁠The Nature Conservancy⁠'s mission at www.nature.org.

Change and uncertainty are unavoidable challenges for organizations and leaders to lean into today. Whether those changes and shifting circumstances are externally driven or strategic choices, they can be disruptive and dislocating. They also offer powerful opportunities for generating connection, resilience, and value-producing cultures.

Mickey and Robin join Emma Rose to share what they've observed can help or hurt your ability to navigate times

When we find ourselves in disagreement with another person, it's easy to put our energy into winning the argument. How do I get my point across? How do I get them to see it my way? How do I prove that I'm right?

If we treat conversations and conflict like a win-or-lose game, we all lose. If we practice conversational accuracy, we create an opportunity for both sides to learn from the other.

In this episode, Mickey, Robin, and Emma Rose share the essential shift to focus on if you want to turn those differences into an opportunity to build something together. It starts with how you listen, and what you're listening for.

Resources:

The 10 Laws of Collaboration Summary (2004)

The Conversation Meter

TEDx Boulder: Rediscovering Connection & Belonging | Mickey & Emma Rose Connolly