The Science of Inner Certainty: Leading Through Chaos with Amir Glogau

Speaker A: You're someone who has said you can turn order into chaos. And I feel that most C Suite leaders, executives are always feeling they're in chaos. The pressure is high. From the top, from the bottom, everywhere around what's been your journey. Evolution and awareness of being able to take that environment and to bring consciousness and um, groundedness in it.

Speaker B: When we feel an outside chaos, if we see chaos on the outside, there must be some chaos on the inside. So the best way for me, when I experience chaos, I look inside and I say, how can I cleanse or organize or put together in the right setting?

Speaker C: Inside m leadership looks powerful from the outside. But behind closed doors, the pressure is real. The decisions are heavy and most leaders have nowhere to talk about it. The boardroom moments that keep you up at night, the decisions that affect thousands of people. The quiet questions many leaders carry but rarely say out loud. I'm Melissa Dawn Simpkins Edtech, founder of athLeadership, CEO of Velvet Suite and the C Suite. Confidant to leaders performing at their highest level as they navigate pressure and change. For more than two decades, I've built global leadership platforms and advised executives and elite performers across business and sport in high stakes environments. If you're here, you're probably someone people count on. That's why I created C Suite Confidential. Grounded in neuroscience and the elite athletic mindset. Each episode features candid conversations with CEOs, talent, leaders, athletes, high performers who who understand both demands and the privilege of leadership. Most leadership conversations focus on strategy. This one focuses on conditioning. If you're leading in the arena and you want to do it with strength, clarity and heart, you are in the right place. This is C Suite Confidential, where leaders come to strengthen the mindset required to perform when it matters most.

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to C Suite Confidential. You are in the right place at the right time. Today's guest is Amir Glogau. And Amir, uh, is someone who has led successful turnarounds and growth management for small and mid sized companies for over 30 years. As a matter of fact, he's personally been responsible for 12 exits of which two have gone public and one has a market cap of over $5 billion. So needless to say, he understand and knows business as a CEO and founder. But what makes this conversation interesting and more nuanced is that he has a different approach to why leadership is failing. What we need to do to be more present. How we can bring what he calls soul leadership into the C Suite, into every facet of leaders personally in our community and in business. It is a fascinating conversation, and I loved that we have the opportunity to dive deep into some conventional wisdom m and turn it on its head, which is what this show is all about. Real talk you can't have anywhere else. So without further delay, let's step into the arena. Amir, thank you so much for being on C Suite Confidential. I want to jump into your backstory. Um, you have led for over three decades. Turnarounds, acquisitions. You've, uh, been at the forefront of business and innovation. What do you think you know now about your leadership that maybe you would not have seen in hindsight?

Speaker B: Thanks for having me, Melissa. It's really a pleasure. And I love all the work you do. So keep shining the light on how we can show up better in every place and everywhere we show up. I think the biggest thing for me in looking back is really being more intentional and being more intentional about how we show up to situations, to whether it's in our personal life or our business life, being more intentional. And for me, intentional more on the emotional level, like, how do we want to feel? And, uh, I'm sure we're gonna talk more about this today, but for me, that is the foundation. I think that's the gravity that the strongest force that works on us is how do we wanna feel? And a lot of that comes from the subconscious. And I say that on an individual level, but also organizational level. So as organizations, we sometimes have this subconscious of failure or success or hard or easy, or in tapping into that subconscious level on an individual or a collective, and understanding, learning that, coming to it with curiosity and really tuning to how do we want to feel is key. Turn around to growth, to. And really in different aspects of life,

Speaker A: you are someone who has said you can turn order into chaos. And I feel that most C suite leaders, executives, are always feeling they're in chaos. Uh, the pressure is high. From the top, from the bottom, everywhere around. How have you been able to. What's been your journey of evolution and awareness of being able to take that environment and to bring consciousness and groundedness in it.

Speaker B: So, first of all, you know, side by side to my business career and professional career, I've always been in the. What we can call personal development, personal growth, uh, self help, call it spiritual journeys. Throughout my entire life. And there's always been a search for me for the next layer down. And I think that's where the anchoring lies. So for me, when we feel an outside chaos from above, from below, from the sides, it's a reflection of an inside chaos. So whatever we See, on the outside, or at least in my belief system, is a reflection of something that happens to us on the inside. In other words, if we see chaos on the outside, there must be some chaos on the inside. If we see stress on the outside, there must be some stress. If we see ease, there must be some ease on the inside. So the best way for me when I experience chaos, and by the way, I experience chaos every day, for me, when I experience chaos, I look inside and I say, how can I cleanse or organize or put together in the right setting inside?

Speaker A: Was there a situation? Because I'm listening as my audience, right. And they're saying, wow, he seems so at peace and he seems so calm and he seems so collected. Right. And they don't understand the other side of the story. Was there a time when you led differently?

Speaker B: And I still, people that I work with, still will tell you that sometimes I pull my hair, don't really have, and maybe say things that my calm version wouldn't be happy with because I get activated and it's natural and it's okay. And so I think all those leaders in the audience that feels, oh, I always want to be calm, uh, it's okay to be upset and it's okay to be angry and it's okay to be frustrated or disappointed. It's okay. The best thing about it is to notice that I don't know if you're familiar with Dr. Susan David, what's her name? The book is it emotional agility. It's understanding the underlying need, looking at the emotions as a, uh, post sign to what is the underlying need that we carry with that and when we feel something. If I feel frustrated, it's because I want to be heard and seen and I don't or I don't feel like I am. Um, so tapping into that within me can help more than saying, melissa, can't you see that this is what I'm trying to tell you and you don't get it? Yes. That just increase the resistance. Right. So if I can do that with myself and own how I feel, it can help the surrounding operate in that way. And again, it's not like I'm Mr. Perfect and I show up always on, um, and whatever. I can show up with emotion and I have big emotions. I know that. And I also give myself permission to show up with my emotions. Especially people who care show up that way.

Speaker A: Yes. What you're talking about is the conditioning. It's a practice that you build that allows you to have a better automatic response. What I love about leaders, and we love frameworks. We love a structure and a way to practice. You have created this sole leadership framework. And I believe there's a tie to what we're talking about to practical applications. So can you tell us more about that?

Speaker B: Sure. So the story is, you know, about a decade ago, a um, little more than a decade ago, a dear friend of mine who had mounted some of my background said to me, you have to write a book about business turnarounds. And I said, I'm not into that. And I didn't have the discipline, the grit, and the passion that you have to come out with a book at that time, maybe at some point in my life. But he sat me down and literally interviewed me for quite a few days and went through one distressed situation to another and asked questions to lead to the common theme of what worked in those situations that helped me turn those around. And what I found in some way corresponded with a lot of my spiritual practice and my personal development journey, is that when we have three elements aligned, we operate from what I would call a higher self. You can call it soul, you can call it capital S. Self, as my dear friend D. Schwartz from Internal Family Systems calls it, or whatever it is. And those three elements are emotional, intention that we talked about. How do we want to feel? The second is choice. And the choice is really how we see life. How do we interpret what's in front of us? Is this chaos for me or to me? So when we feel that this chaos that we talked about a minute ago is, to me, we put ourselves in a victim mindset. Nothing wrong with that. It's okay to be a victim once in a while. I come from a heritage of that My tribe narrated the story about victims. But at some point, you want to look at it and say, does it really serve me in this situation to look at this chaos as something that happens to me versus, oh, uh, wait a minute, this is happening for me. It's here to serve me to be able to see something that I'm not willing to see when I think of it as something that is happening to me. And then the third element is the action, and the action I define, I divide to two different layers. One is the method, and the second is the discipline. So the method, if you think about in the athletic space, what kind of workout would work for me? So if you talk to me, if I decided that my method would be running, I promise you that after the second, third, fourth day, you lose my discipline. It's just not a good fit. For me, if you talked about mobility and functional, uh, and yoga and enhancing my presence, better fit for me. So finding the method. And that can apply, by the way, to which method increases efficiency in the production line. In Project Throughput, it doesn't have to be just workout or diet or meditation or. And so pick the method that work that is right for you and then use that method with discipline, with whatever is the right discipline for that. So when you have those three elements aligned, the emotional intentions, the choice, and the action. And the action is correlated to my emotional intention and my choices. I believe we operate with less inner resistance, with more flow, and truly from a higher place in us.

Speaker A: Yes. Before we jump back into the conversation, I wanted to share something with you. Everything on this show is really based on one belief, and that's leaders aren't born, they're built. We are built through change, pressure, and the moments that demand more from us than we think we have to give. And that's why I'm so excited to share with you the heartbeat behind this show and the movement. It's called athletic. The elite athletic mindset. How to lead under pressure and perform when it counts. This is a movement that's not about becoming an athlete. It's about learning how to build the mental and emotional conditioning elite athletes activate when the stakes are the highest. It's grounded in neuroscience, and it helps unlock how you become more steady, more purposeful, resilient, and prepared to be your best when it matters most. If you're navigating change, dealing with uncertainty or building something meaningful or, uh, stepping

Speaker C: into a season that's demanding more from

Speaker A: you, I invite you to join us@athleadershipmovement.com now back to the episode. Can you walk me through and our audience through an example where that played out for you, maybe in one of your turnarounds?

Speaker B: I was quite a few years ago, CEO of, um, company that manufactured printed circuit boards and complicated boards and very different type of manufacturing. And it was. I was. I would always be frustrated with the efficiency and the throughput and the defected. How many defected boards we had. And, you know, delivering defected boards to clients which triggered lawsuits and what have you. And I took a step back and I said, this is not how I want to feel about this. And I actually, together with the entire leadership team, went through the journey of we want to feel like we're providing this client with exceptional value. Put aside pricing and everything, but the full reliability and dependability on the product that we put in front of them. So we Wanted to be the best partner we can be, and we would feel, as a result, valued, meaningful on purpose, and a sense of pride in what we do. So we had to look at the problem in the production line from a place of, okay, this is coming to us just to make us better in what we do. And thank you for that. And in that, how can we. It pushes us to, how can we feel better? And then we looked around and we searched for different methods to improve our production line. And we ended up pitching theory of constraints, TLC as the method that would be right for us as individuals, as the human aspect and for the purpose that we're using it for. And then we implemented that, like, excuse my language, like maniacs with no compromise, day in, day out. Uh, our life depended on us. And it wasn't really even our life, because for me, the bigger thing than life is the sense, the feeling of being valued and meaningful. So in some cases it's easier for us to say, okay, I'll give up my life, but to say that I live my life but without purpose and meaning. Uh, for us as a team, by the way, it was, this is the only path for us to feel meaningful. We have to do that, to feel like we were providing our contribution to this relationship. And in this case, it was a client or multiple clients. Um, and by the way, we. Some of our clients were companies that. Space shuttles that were launched using our boards and very sophisticated equipment, medical equipment at high pressure and high protection. So for us, it was. We felt flattered that they chose us as a partner, but also we. The only way for us to feel pride and valued around it was to actually deliver not just to the level of expectations, but always above that. And this is what we did. And within, I want to say 60, maybe a little less than 60 days, there was a significant change and shift, not just in the outcome, but in the energy around it. Everybody felt aligned and everybody felt huddled and everybody cared all of a sudden. And it was no longer my battle against the team. Can't you see this? Like, can't you get that? That we. It was everybody. Wait a minute. I have another idea. Uh, this is. If we do this, it might get better. Okay, let's check with the rest of the team. Yeah, great implement. And you build the momentum like this, and then in short order, it becomes so different.

Speaker A: That's such a great mirror story. And I see so many interesting, um, angles to that. One thing I would just want to double tap on is that you started with. I didn't Want to feel that way. Right? And how often in leadership and work, we ignore the feeling, but we don't read the feeling. Creates energy, creates the environment, creates the culture. And it really started with you saying, I don't want to feel this way.

Speaker B: I knew how I wanted to feel and I knew how everybody. I sat in a room, by the way, with senior management and also middle management, so probably 25, 30 people in the room. And I said, what would it feel like if our error rate would be less than 1%? What would be like if this was, you know, the return or if, if this would, if we actually drafted a letter, fictitious letter from a client and said, what would it feel like if this client would email us something like this, what would that feel like? So tapping into, especially in the workplace, talking about emotions is not very. That's revenues, ebitda, cash flow, whatever, right? And I talk that language. My background is in finance, I'm a cpa, art or understand, whatever, blah, blah, blah. But understanding that the numbers are only qualified reflection of the energy that we put in, and that energy is fundamentally dependent on the way everybody in that box feels.

Speaker A: I love that connection. There's, there's a clear through line that you helped bring an awareness to. So I'm curious about this. One of the things we had talked about before is the patterns we create from our childhood. And how does that show up in our leadership today?

Speaker B: It's childhood. It's ancestral. You know, we carry forward whether we're Jewish or African Americans or Native Americans or just Caucasians. Right? I mean, we carry religion based, whatever it is. And also in our own household, there is a narrative to the story and the narrative repeats itself until we're willing to look through it and really metabolize it in a way that helps it to dissolve from the way we captured it. So if as a kid, you grow up and you sense that the only way for you to be worthy is to perform and achieve. Ever heard of somebody that grew up in a household that in order for them to be relevant in their family system was to perform and achieve one or two people, right? So if you think about it, that's a story that takes away the ability to feel that you're meaningful and belong and valued whether you perform and achieve or not. So that creates a little bit of, uh, machines, right? I mean, we, we do this and then we just have to, okay, I did this, now I have to do this, and now I have to do this. And there is always and never enoughness. So we get stuck in this hole in our heart that, uh, whatever we do, it's never going to be enough. And there is no way for us to feel enough unless we go back to that seed and look at that part and say, well, I am enough.

Speaker A: It's a process. It's actually the second chapter in the book is called the Performance Paradox. And it is this epidemic of what success looks like. And we chase and then we do, and then we get praise and we do it again. But it's this constant disconnect from our identity. How do you see that play out in the C suite?

Speaker B: Before that, Can I ask you a question about that?

Speaker C: Sure.

Speaker B: What is success? How do you define success?

Speaker A: Well, my personal definition of success is that I'm living out my God given purpose. I believe I am here to show people that they can rise again. That's why my middle name is Dawn. I believe that is why I. Every day the sun rises and no matter how much we mess up, no matter what we do that we wish, we regret, there's another opportunity as long as there's a new dawn. So I honestly believe that's my purpose. And so my alignment has to be started with that as my core.

Speaker B: What do you think I'm, um, with you. Living on purpose is success. Living in connection. Right. In connection to our source, in connection to our purpose, in connection to. I always bring it back to the quality of being present and being present with how we feel. So sometimes when we have. I've worked with different coaches on defining my purpose and mission and this. And sometimes when we get too attached to the mission, we get so consumed by the mission that we lose connection to ourselves. We stop being more present on this external object, if you will, which is that purpose. And for me, success is to be able to be present at all times. And if I don't sound too woo, uh, on all levels. So physical, emotional, spiritual.

Speaker A: Oh, I 100% believe that there is a spiritual realm and we are creation and we have to connect back with God, our creator. And to that point, I think that's a really important point, Amir, because you can pursue purpose to an end that you do detach from yourself, but you think it's in the service of good. Because it's like, this is my purpose. I got to go do my purpose. I got purpose. But you're detaching who you are in that process. How do you build an awareness? What are some of the practices that helped you build that awareness when you saw that gap?

Speaker B: Yeah. So for me, you know, meditation and prayer Are two things. The practice of meditation, the practice of gratitude, and the practice of prayer are, uh, three elements. And in my meditation, I always look at it in a way of checking in with my physical body. What do I feel? Where. Where do I feel expanded? Where do I feel tension? Where do I. My shoulders, my back, my tummy, my hips? Like, where do I feel? And just being present with it and see if I can get any messages from that. Then emotionally, what do I feel? What emotions are present for me in the moment right now, and taking a little space from it, just looking at it as, here, my friend Amir is feeling this and just looking at what emotions and being present with those emotions. And then the same spiritual level. What is the realm that I'm in? And if you think about altitudes, to make it simple, am I at a thousand feet, ten thousand feet, fifty thousand feet? Where's my flight path today?

Speaker A: There's something that I was in a conversation earlier today with Dr. Corey Yeager, and he was saying, you've got to start thinking about your thinking. And that's what you're saying. It's stepping back and really looking at your patterns, looking at how you're processing things, and beginning to come to some greater clarity around who you are and who do you want to be Once you understand how you're showing up, why is that so hard for? I find that people get very uncomfortable with this.

Speaker B: I want to give you my two cents about his idea of thinking about thinking. We live in an era where we tend to overthink. And if I had to coin that phrase, I would say we're invited to be present with our thoughts. So just observing how our brain think. I mean, even if you sit in silence for a second and just without trying to empty your mind, without trying to do any spiritual gymnastics, but just being present with the thoughts that runs through your head without judgment, letting them come, letting them go, just being present with them, the act of thinking becomes. Then you have to think about. Think about thinking, Right? For me, at least, it becomes a little bit of a trap. So being present with and detach a little bit from it and give it space and identifying our thoughts is healthier for me.

Speaker A: Again, no, I love this because I think this gives us perspective. And in the context of this conversation, in your framework, the presence is what brings the power. How do we help leaders do this more, not just for themselves, but their organizations? Everyone just feels so stressed. They feel so overwhelmed right now. And leaders want to know how to fix it. And I don't believe it's giving time off or a spa day. It's a cultural thing. It is a way that we've just become nor we've normalized a pace and a process. How do we break free from that?

Speaker B: So first of all, I just said it yesterday in a lunch meeting to a dear friend that the desire to let go of the stress sometimes is camouflage because we tend to get addicted to the stress and we tend to love our busy schedule. I'm so important. I'm so valuable. I'm so busy. My calendar is back to back to back to back. I barely had time for lunch. I barely had time for bathroom. I barely had time to call my wife. I barely had whatever it is. And I think that on some subconscious level, we like that. So I want to challenge some of my friends who says, oh, I can't stand this trust anymore. It's like I'm looking at my calendar. Da, da, da. Well, guess what? We are the masters. Nobody did that to us. We were creating that whatever it is, busyness, stress level. And so that's one thing to say, hey, do you really want to let it go? And if you do, there are ways. And, you know, we can talk about ways to create breaks between meetings, to reflect. I mean, it's like, you know, when we do spiritual work, we set intentions, then we go into session, then we do integration. But when we go to business meetings, we walk in from one meeting to the other. There is zero intention setting. There may be somebody sent out an agenda that nobody got a chance to read. Someone may have sent out materials before the meeting that very few read, most likely streamed through and then showed up to the meeting. And then everything is on the fly, you know, like, oh, no, no, no. And then you go out from that meeting. There was no real reflection. Okay, we're now, uh, to the next meeting because it's all performance based. So for me, the idea of slowing down for the purpose of speeding up is the first step. And slowing down doesn't mean it doesn't have to be from a hundred miles an hour to zero. It can be from 100 miles an hour to 99. And allow 1 mile an hour to be what we just did before we started this, even without words, and just

Speaker A: sit, uh, we sat in a moment of intention, and it was so powerful. And I want to ask you this. I believe this work that we're talking about, what you do, what I do is what the world needs. But there's such a velocity of a system that doesn't operate that way. And it takes individual leaders. I want you to talk to the CEO who has the ability to reset the culture. Right now they're listening, and they're like, you're right. We need to change the way we're doing things. How do they set that in motion?

Speaker B: First M of all, I would like to invite, uh, CEOs to think that they're not the ones who are necessarily changing the cultures. The culture is something that is far. There are roots, there are many plants. There are different species. There is lots of. And the gardener who oversees this garden can work with what he's got. But it's creating. Putting this plant here next to this plant may create a more harmonious life balance in nature versus if you put those two plants next to each other, they will kill each other. Right? I mean, one will just draw on top of the other and will kill it. So I think the power of the leader in the organization is not necessarily the one who sits at the top of the pyramid. Every individual in the organization should be empowered to be a leader in their own. And when I say empowered, I mean empowered to, like, be that. Don't talk to me about cultural change. Be the culture you want to see. Because the conversation about a cultural change, just like the conversation about busyness, has a little bit of a victimized mindset. This company can be so great, but the culture is just, you know, it's not there. Guess what? Create the environment, the garden. The, uh, make the soil more fertile so the plants in it can bloom and grow and harmonize with each other in ways they can when it's restricted and dense. And so make it a little more airy, make it a little more enabling and get. Not going to say the word F, but out of the way, get out of the way.

Speaker A: Leaders have to realize that you are not the answer. It's you. You provide the gardening. But everyone has a role and let

Speaker B: them do the role. Because we tend to think. And I will tape every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I feel like I have to do the role. So reminding myself of, no, I don't step back. And sometimes you need to change. This plant is not exactly plain one piece. So maybe I need a different plant here or this plant needs to move to this side of the garden. But the idea behind it is really the responsibility is for the environment in which the plants that are in my garden can not just coexist, but fertilize each other and grow and bloom and be beautiful.

Speaker A: Yes. My grandmother had a green thumb. She could make anything grow. And it was Beautiful, right? You want to be that cultivator of that garden.

Speaker B: And there you are.

Speaker A: So as we were almost at time. This has been so rich. It's been so good. I want to ask you, how do you, when I say the term, become the leader the moment demands, what does that mean to you?

Speaker B: Present. I go back to presence because presence means sensing the moment, right? I mean that I'm not just all the experience and education and courses and workshops and whatever that I brought, that I did, that I'm not all the success I had, the failures, the whatever it is. I'm in the moment. And in the moment, I can show up in the highest and best service of all stakeholders that I'm in service of.

Speaker A: I love it. Thank you so much, Amir, for Beyond the seats.

Speaker B: Much, much love for you and cheers. And I really salute you for the work you do. And I'm excited to read your book.

Speaker A: I have a personalized copy for you.

Speaker B: Uh, I can't wait to read that book. Thank you for having me. Thanks for everything you're doing with us.

Speaker A: Thank you.

Speaker B: Bye.

Speaker A: Thanks for joining. C Suite Confidential. These conversations are designed to help you through pressure, navigating change, and becoming stronger in the moments that matter most. If today's episode resonated with you, be sure to subscribe on your preferred podcast platform so you never miss a conversation. Please share, review, share the episode.

Speaker C: And if you want to go deeper, I'd invite you to explore my new

Speaker A: book, athleadership, and join the athleadership movement at athleadershipmovement.com there you'll gain access to the book insights and conversations designed to help you be your best when it matters most. Until next time, remember this. Leaders aren't born, they're built.