Full Transcript for Why Great Leaders Don't Hide Their Humanity with Tino Mantella

as an office. Vulnerability is what makes that visibility possible. It is the door that allows connection to walk through. The second half of today's conversation lives in the territory of crisis. And the philosophy of never letting a good crisis go to waste. What I've come to see is that crisis is not just a threat to be managed, it is a compressor. It shortens the time between decisions, it collapses the distance between leaders and the people they serve, and it strips away the pretenses that healthier moments allow us to hold on to. The leaders who understand this treat crisis as an accelerator of connection, not a distraction from it. They lean in harder to the relationships that matter. They let themselves be seen in the middle of the mess, and they earn a level of trust in a few weeks that would have taken years to build in ordinary circumstances. That is the line of today's guest, and he has lived it repeatedly across sectors, cities, and decades. My guest today is Tino Mantella, and Tino brings a leadership journey that few people have matched. He currently serves as Chief Strategy Officer at Relevance, a global technology services company, and he holds partner and leadership roles across retained executive search, tier four advisors, tier four group. That range is a reflection of a career built on flexibility, curiosity, and the belief that the underlying skill of leadership travels across every environment. Before this chapter of his work, he led the Technology Association of Georgia. For 12 years, taking that organization from 350 members to 36,000 and building it into the largest technology trade association in North America. He also has served as CEO of the Arthritis Foundation, president of the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago, and in senior leadership roles that placed him at the center of some of the most consequential community crises of his time. His work has been recognized. With induction into both the nonprofit Times Power and Influence Top 50 in the Georgia Technology Hall of Fame. And he continues to serve on multiple boards, teaching future leaders how to navigate the moments that will define them. Tino, welcome to Still Evolving. I'm grateful to have you here. speaker-0: Thanks Amy. It's ⁓ it's great to be here. I appreciate the opportunity. speaker-1: So you your journey has flexed between sectors, if you will. You started in nonprofit, but certainly now in for profit organizations. As an executive leader, ⁓ can you share a bit about what most people often get wrong about the difference in leading, perhaps in those two ⁓ sectors? Perhaps there's more similarity than I'm assuming, but I I welcome Learning from you and that that experience. speaker-0: Yeah, so I think what you're saying is, you know, what's you how do people feel feel about non profit and ⁓ for profit? And ⁓ you know, there's a few things I would say about that. First of all, ⁓ there's a perception I think by most that running a for profit business is more complicated than a non-profit business. ⁓ that's being that I've done both, that's absolutely not correct for the most part. It really just depends on the setting, the environment, the kinds of things that you know people are focusing on, what they're what they're going through. Certainly running ⁓ organizations now in the nonprofit space. Let's just say that they're federally funded. I'm on a couple boards that that they're mostly funded by government and ⁓ they're getting notices that you know they're getting cut twenty five percent, fifty percent, hundred percent of some of the funding So they have to be able to pivot. They have to figure out ways to raise money. They have to figure out how to move from ⁓ being in a position where they're getting all of their money from the government. It's like, ⁓ all right, we have to do fundraising, we have to do fee for service, we have to figure out how to build a board that can give and get dollars. we have to continue to look at other options on ⁓ federal funding and community grants and so on and so forth. But that's not taking anything away. Obviously, I could say the same thing from the business perspective, ⁓ being in the in the for profit world. you know, that there's obviously challenges there. AI now is, you know, changing jobs, how ⁓ the whole change in technology is accelerating. And ⁓ I was just doing an article on human centered ⁓ leadership and ⁓ probably no more important time now than thinking about people and how to keep the people not fearful of what's coming, but how to embrace it and how to get the community together in terms of ⁓ the collective voice of the employees. ⁓ how to keep your employees, you know, together and ⁓ fend off a lot of turnover, all those sorts of things. you know, both of them are are very similar in a lot of ways. You know, you have financial differences, certainly, you know, some you know, money ⁓ goes to ⁓ owner's equity in the in the for profit world and ⁓ in the nonprofit you're driving ⁓ funding back into the business. But that doesn't mean and ⁓ I've always said this 'cause you're running organizations, big nonprofits, the you know, Arthritus Foundation was a hundred and sixty million dollar operation, not huge, but You're not supposed to lose money. What you're supposed to do is is create some kind of a cushion. So we always had a rule, and so my rule, I think it's pretty much standard fare that ⁓ 50% of your operating budget ⁓ should be in a reserve. So if you have a hundred million dollar annual operating budget, you might have fifty million dollars in in reserve for some of the things that I just mentioned in terms of being ready for those changes. So both are complex. ⁓ nothing simple. they can both be fun. They can both be very much stressful. ⁓ so I'll stop there. speaker-1: No, thank you for providing that context. I I'm also interested, ⁓ you've had a heck of a journey in leading in both those sectors. ⁓ when perceived crises occur, right? And and

oftentimes many will say ⁓ that leadership is the most crucial in those crises. And and it's my own research that we found that crisis leadership skills were the most potent when we look at leader overall leadership effectiveness. You've said that you've never let a good crisis go to waste. ⁓ can you share more about how that philosophy has shown up for you across the many crises that perhaps you've read led through? speaker-0: Well I'll give two quick examples. One is when I ran the YMCA Metropolitan Chicago, it was during the time of the Rodney King riots, and Mayor Daly called me directly ⁓ and said, Hey, I'm concerned we're gonna have a challenge this summer. ⁓ there is already, you know, Chicago like a lot of big cities had a lot of gang violence. And so we were happy to take on a leadership role of trying to solve that. And what we did is we brought in maybe 50 different nonprofits ⁓ and some for-profits as well into our organization. We had several meetings and we made a decision around how we were going to address it. One of the things we did, and the why I took the lead in this, is we hired fringe gang members. And I say fringe because you can't really hire the hardcore center gang members, but those that are not quite at that level. And we hired them to take graffiti off buildings, which granted they may have put the graffiti on the buildings. But nevertheless, we hired them to take the ⁓ take the graffiti off. and so they had some prestige, they had some feeling about their worth. ⁓ they were making some money. And in that particular area it was Logan Square in Chicago. Some people may know that. There were sixteen gang related murders the summer before and when we did the program for a lot of environmental reasons, but there were no gang related murders that that next year. So again, we grasped the opportunity, we we took the leadership role. Second is very different. So when I ran the Technology Association of Georgia, I took the role. we didn't have a lot of money left. We have about a three month burn rate, but I saw the potential. And the board was ⁓ down from about twenty board members to five and they were all pretty arm weary. So ⁓ when I came in and and had a bunch of ideas, they said, Yeah, do whatever it takes to get get the job done. So why I'm saying that is the difference between that and you're coming into a very strong organization, everything's set, the board feels like don't rock the boat, come in. So ⁓ we were in crisis and they gave me a lot of room to move. I kept them involved, but because it was an opportunity to make decisions quickly, and they and they gave me the freedom to make those decisions based on my experience, we ended up being very successful. We grew the organization from three hundred and fifty members to thirty six thousand over ⁓ twelve years and became the largest tech trade association in North America. So It was a fun ride, but it all started with a crisis. It's like, yeah, this organization might not be around it around in three months, six months, so do what you have to do to get the job done. speaker-1: Wow. You know, you come across as very authentic and sharing the stories, right? ⁓ and certainly no one's perfect, right? We've all like made missteps along the way. ⁓ how how do you distinguish like performing authenticity, the the performative from actually being it? Like what where did you learn? to be able to show up as grounded and in being able to motivate, engage volunteers. I mean, much in the nonprofit sector is going to be a community effort. ⁓ but how do you how do you distinguish that performative from the real, actually being it? ⁓ and maybe with the influences along your way? Yeah. speaker-0: Thanks for saying that. I appreciate it. I I try to act in that way and ⁓ walk my talk. ⁓ probably like a lot of us that had good childhoods, I owe a lot to my parents who ⁓ you know certainly were n you know, I never heard them say anything negative about a community or people. they always tried to be helpful. my dad and and mom together built built a small business. ⁓ so I took that with me. And then when I went to college, ⁓ I worked at a home for ⁓ like at the time they called it neglected kids. They weren't they weren't necessarily in trouble enough to go into incarceration. But they were in trouble enough to probably leave their family and come into a different environment for a while. And we took them through ⁓ you know, a variety of activities and it it showed me, you know, as I've always learned, people are people and ⁓ try to be kind and generous and you know have an impact on ⁓ people of all levels, whether they're up above you in terms of position or you know, whether they're you know poor people in communities in in the Y. ⁓ going back to that experience, I mean I had a chance to ⁓ we were the largest provider of single occupancy housing and in ⁓ the Chicago area, I think in the state. And so, you know, it was pretty poor population. They were a step below being a step above being homeless. But by the same token we we're in wealthy communities as well, so you had the you know opportunity to work work with all. So I mean I I think it's just ⁓ being authentic is something probably that in some ways you you grow into. And it's grounded in, you know, how you've been brought up and other places that you've, you know, had impact from mentors and teachers and things like that. As you said, that's not, you know, if we had time to talk about failures and things. I certainly had plenty of those as well. And and ⁓ I I've always said you learn a lot, you know, more from failures and ⁓ than you do from successes. I I ⁓ had a more of a challenging time when I ran the Arthritis Foundation because I came into it not really studying the organization in terms of it being a federated model. By that I mean we had fifty five chapters all over the country and they had their own presidents and their own boards. And I was a national CEO. So

I was trying to run it like a corporation, you know, this l looks like a good idea. I've got some buy-in, let's do it. And I'd always get, you know, push back is, well, I'm in California or Texas or wherever and my board voted no. And then I'd have to fly out there and try to ⁓ try to straighten it out. But ⁓ I never did quite straighten it out to the level that you know I thought I should. But when I took those experiences and I started in Technology Association in Georgia, we created 36 different special interest groups. And I really knew through my arthritis experience how to engage those groups so that they would feel like they're part of the organization. ⁓ we've made rules like how does the funding get split up and what you know and everybody voted on it. And every chairman ⁓ was on a committee that we brought together quarterly. So those were all things that I would never have done if I didn't have the challenging arthritis ⁓ experience where, you know, in hindsight I should have tried to bring more of the CEOs together in small groups. ⁓ I think some people leaders call them kitchen cabinets or whatever to ⁓ create different strategies and also. good learning. is learning the hard way. speaker-1: Well certainly ⁓ I appreciate you relating the impact that from your family to the the communities you serve have have made on your approach, not just in strategy but in leadership. ⁓ I guess I'll I will retell a story that you you shared with me and and hopefully you can expand. But I remember also you sharing on ⁓ why employee whose two sons had been killed in gang violence and the impact that that made on you. Would you be willing to expand and and share more on how that moment perhaps even still shaped how you leave today? speaker-0: Yeah, I mean, you know, you know you know a lot of people you meet and this particular woman that worked for me at the ⁓ at one of the, I think was the Pilson Y, ⁓ one of the Wise, ⁓ inner city wise in the community and she had I always when I I'd always try to visit all the Y's and say hi to the the staff and the the members and all. And ⁓ she was worked the front desk, so she was always very pleasant and ⁓ then we were asked to speak. ⁓ at an event, I wasn't, you know, as the CEO, sometimes you don't know what's gonna be happening, but it's like, come on over here and speak. So I'm like, okay, I'll be there. And it was at the new city why I remember, which is the one right near Cabrini Green Cabrini Green at the time, which was a very ⁓ challenged area with a lot of history. And so ⁓ the this woman, the same woman who worked at the desk, got to speak before me. I wasn't sure what she was gonna talk about. And she spoke about her two of her sons that had got murdered in or died in gang violence. I was like in shock when I got up there and and I was pretty emotional. I mean tears were in my eyes and it was just just a sincere feeling that, you know, here's somebody that seems like they're s you know, ⁓ rock solid, you're you know, and they've got this background. in these communities sometimes that, you know, are rough. And, you know, for me it was sincere. But I think, you know, sometimes Bonanese and I was a athlete in college and you try to be a you know, stoic, tough guy, whatever. But you do the same things, not just men, but you know, being there and then showing emotion, I think that changed how staff felt about me and that I was real and vulnerable and ⁓ you know, th there's I don't know why I just thought of the episode of Sear Cheers where Norm people know Norm was crying because he had to ⁓ fire people and they'd come into the bar and they and then he'd you know wherever he was working it'd fire him and then you know like they all were felt sorry for him and they you know appreciated that he was, you know, emotional about it. That's not why I did it, but it was like, you know, the very sincere and it you know means a lot. So in sometimes I think people are not showing their vulnerability because they have responsibilities and if they show emotion to a certain level then it's perceived as a negative. I suppose it can be at some points, but to me it was really like impactful experience of, you know, they're just kind of bottled up in terms of, hey, I'm working for this organization and there's real challenges out there and how do we, you know, help to make it better. speaker-1: Absolutely. At the end of the day, I remind people that it's it's human performance, right? Like we have to be human. and and certainly I appreciate the role of composure. I talk a lot about that in my upcoming book. It it is a critical component, and yet also everything in moderation, right? Like if you're you're really disconnected from your own emotions, first off, you're missing out on a ton of data that could be really informative and Sue. Yeah. ⁓ your choices, your decisions. But also like you you lose that ability for connection. You lose that ability to really be relatable. And and sharing whatever is in a wherever you want to take the organization. So well thank you. I know I put you on the spot on that one. speaker-0: No, no. And ⁓ I just to double down on what you said, I think ⁓ I'm interested in certainly reading your book. but I do think ⁓ if you don't show vulnerability, sincere vulnerability, then you're somewhere like if you're a CEO of a company, it's a lot of times really hard for people to talk to you and to relate to you because they're thinking that you're up there and you're you know, you're not open to a conversation and then you don't not hearing the things that you probably need to hear most. So yeah, that's I think that's what you're saying too. speaker-1: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean the communication goes both ways, right? So if you can be real and sharing, it's likely to be mirrored back. Yeah. speaker-0: You have a suggestion box but nobody puts suggestions in it 'cause they're saying what happens. speaker-1: Right. Right. Why is this

empty this week? so we we talked a lot about the non prof your nonprofit experience and that chapter in your journey as well as for profit. But another aspect in your journey has been taking on fractional leadership roles. And this is an area that we haven't dived into as much on our pod. And so I I would love since you're here to pick your brain a little bit and learn from you about ⁓ Are there any lessons learned or considerations when you are a fractural model, ⁓ compared to perhaps a traditional C suite? speaker-0: Yeah, ⁓ so first of all there's and I didn't double check the statistic, but I I know it's over fifty percent of the population ⁓ at certain ages are now doing more than one job. And sometimes, you know, there's ⁓ the poor populations have to do more than one job, but I'm not necessarily referring to that. I just think there's a movement to be able to be more flexible with your work. And for me it was like so just just a level set here. I'm Chief Strategy Officer for Relevance and I'm president of retained partner at Tier Four ⁓ Advisors. I'm a partner at Tier Four Group, which ⁓ retains a division of that, and then I'm also a partner at ⁓ Turknet Leadership Group. so I wanted to do all that. It's been a lot of fun to come into one culture. The relevance team is great, purpose-driven, ⁓ mostly Indian f ⁓ population, fourteen hundred people headquartered in Alfredo, Georgia, but have ⁓ twelve hundred people in Chennai, India, and then retained as executive search. and ⁓ it's part of tier four group. more younger team, more women, ⁓ much more ⁓ diversity. so going into these two different settings as an example is it's fun for me and it's an experien it's a good experience for me and it's also challenging me to you know kind of shift gears. so I think that there's now I don't think just statistics show that there is a movement towards this fractional work. And not everybody's cut off for that, but I I for some people it's you know, you get to experience different things, different revenue streams, ⁓ opportunities to make an impact in a variety of different ways. ⁓ the last thing I'll say about that is I like to challenge myself and I I believe that through these experiences, there's certain leadership skills that you can take with you everywhere. And you're going to apply those again and again. and because frankly, I say this to the you know, to everybody who's listening, I'm not a technologist, although I've run technology organizations and been part of ⁓ you know had a strategy for an organization that focuses on technology. So I mean I know I have to surround myself with great people in that area, but ⁓ but it is ⁓ learning and it's experience and you provide the skills of working with people and communication and business development, sales, strategy, those kinds of things that that I think I'm decent at. So I'll stop there. speaker-1: No, that's great. Thank you. ⁓ I've appreciated you sharing on your journey from nonprofit to the profit, certainly in the fractional different types of roles you've held. what has helped you sustain this journey? So ⁓ hopefully we can give back our audience maybe that immediate actional strategy, maybe that tool, something that's in your daily or weekly routine that's helped you stay grounded, ⁓ perhaps renew yourself, stay motivated, engaged along the way. speaker-0: Yeah, I I like to work, so you know, sometimes ⁓ people ⁓ it's getting older but people retire at certain ages, right? So ⁓ I don't see myself doing that anytime soon. But ⁓ I think that the the things that I like are ⁓ you know, having those experiences, having that that impact. ⁓ people should pick a job that they are gonna love. You know, there's this saying you and I know it very well, it's like work-life balance. And ⁓ I'm doing podcasts as well, and I generally ask that question about what what's your you know thinking about work life balance? And I'm interviewing mostly CIOs, CTOs and CEOs, and the response I'm getting is it's not really a thing, you know, that it's it's very difficult to say, here's my work, here's my life side. And you know, my point is if you love your work, then it's like work is part of life. It's not, you know, two separate things. So if you're working, you know, ten hours one day and then, you know, eleven ⁓ the next and then you have you know something else you're doing that it's it's all part of your life. Now I'm not saying give up on your family or your sports, your recreation, your arts, whatever it might be, but ⁓ I think At least the ⁓ in my opinion, the generations ⁓ at least there's certain generations that are kind of testing again the work life balance. And they're, you know, saying I I wanna work remotely, I wanna only work, you know, forty hours a week. that's fine if that's their decision, but they may be slower in advancement depending on what they're what they're doing. So ⁓ I don't wanna make it a long longer answer than you asked, but you know, that's that's kinda my thought on that. speaker-1: No, I mean there is a there is a practical ⁓ consideration here, right? Like just following any passion, we live in a society where at the end of the day we have to have a budget to to survive. So so there's that practical element, but I very much appreciate also where in that work i is the element of fulfillment for you. Maybe it's not the task, but it's the organization and the connections and the people. as you were talking, or perhaps maybe it is the creative or the building or the execution of a particular ⁓ skill. So ⁓ workshopping that. I I'm a big proponent of workshop that when you're young, go out and try a number of things and and find what is it that fills you up. I I agree. Tino, thank you so much for the conversation and and you and being on s joining me on Show Evolving today. ⁓ Very much appreciate the opportunity to learn from you. speaker-0: Well thank you. ⁓ I really appreciate it and ⁓ Amy I enjoy ⁓ enjoy speaking with you and ⁓ hopefully your audience will ⁓ feel like they're take a little nugget or two from this conversation. speaker-1: Absolutely, no doubt. Thank you.