What happens when the career you've worked so hard to build no longer feels like the story you were meant to live? In this episode of Leading Visionaries, host Anjel B. Hartwell sits down with Federico Malatesta, executive coach and founder of FM Transformational Coaching, and former Chief Investment Officer. After leading a $40 billion energy portfolio, Federico made an unexpected transition into coaching executives through identity shifts, leadership challenges, and life's biggest turning points.

Whether you're building a business, leading a team, or sensing it's time for your next chapter, this conversation offers a thoughtful framework for embracing transformation with greater clarity and intention.

What You Will Learn

Why career transitions often begin when your current story no longer creates meaning.

How unconscious narratives influence leadership and decision-making.

The difference between identity and the authentic self.

Why successful executives often struggle to recognize their own blind spots.

How to recognize the internal signals that it's time for change.

Why leadership is built through relationships rather than titles.

How values provide direction during seasons of uncertainty.

Why pursuing the right clients creates greater impact than pursuing more clients.

How meaningful transformation happens through reflection with others.

Why listening to your deepest desires can reveal your next chapter.

FAQ:

Why do successful leaders struggle during career transitions?

Many high-achieving leaders discover that external success eventually stops providing fulfillment. Career transitions often happen when the personal story driving their work no longer aligns with who they've become or what they value most.

What is leadership identity?

Leadership identity is the way leaders see themselves and how others recognize them. It develops through relationships, experiences, and personal narratives rather than job titles or positions.

How do unconscious stories affect leadership?

Unconscious stories shape how leaders interpret challenges, make decisions, communicate with others, and respond to change. Becoming aware of these patterns allows leaders to make more intentional choices.

Connect with Federico Malatesta

Website

Leading Visionaries Podcast

Join the Leading Visionaries Community

Make a Donation to Support the Show

Creative Age Consulting Group

LVP 142 Federico

===

Now, here's your host, Angel B. Hartwell

Anjel: Welcome to another episode of the Leading Visionaries podcast, where we celebrate the ingenious, insightful, innovative, and inspired leading visionaries of our time, and provide our listeners with world-class examples of the kind of courage, clarity, and confidence it takes to bring visions into reality.

He blends leadership practice with narrative theory, neuroscience, and contemporary psychoanalytical thought, and includes diagnostic tools like Hogan and Lead Now assessments when useful. Previously chief investment officer for a $40 billion energy portfolio, Federico now applies the discipline of global finance to the psychology of transformation.

Federico writes regularly on narrative collapse, identity, and leadership transitions. I'm excited to have you here today. Welcome to the show, Federico.

Anjel: Well, it is my pleasure. So I wanna start our conversation today talking about leadership, because it seems to me that you are somebody who has spent a lot of time in leadership roles.

And so I'm curious about your leadership journey, Federico. Were you the kid on the playground that was organizing everyone, or was your leadership journey something that you kind of grew into over time through a variety of, you know, jobs or, you know, a path that you took that led you into the leadership role?

Federico: You see, I, I actually never thought about leadership until I was in business. I, I had a, an academic and a kind of journalist career before switching to to business in London. And I, I never thought about leadership as something that I wanted to achieve. It was never like a mirage or something, "Well, I wanna get there.

Mm. A- and that what I try to transmit also to, to the people I coach.

Anjel: Mm. All right. Well, so let's talk then about your journey. It sounds like you've moved across industries more than once. So you just mentioned that you started out really in academics, and then you got into business. Can you speak a little bit about, like, these transition points?

Federico: Yes. And I, I think the best way to summarize what drove my transition is that the story that I was living suddenly didn't have the same meaning.

And, and I think this is a better framework than thinking in good or bad, moral, immoral. It's just some story at some point ends, and they can end for a good reason or for a less good reason, but sometimes they just do. And so being aware when, when the meaning is no longer there, as you know, that meaning is something that we build.

It's not something which is inherent in something. It's something we construct.

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

Because I think it's only through the engagement with other people that actually we can make a better sense of our life.

Anjel: Mm-hmm. I love that. Well, let's talk about constructing meaning via story, and how you have seen different stories in your own life, right? Where the meaning just kind of petered out it sounds like.

Federico: Yes.

Sure. So I'm curious what, what you've experienced.

Federico: Sure. Um, I, I had both as well. So, in my last corporate job, I, I had my dream job. I, and I... It's the jobs I always wanted in... I was working in Russia, which is something I wanted to do all my life. I, I grew up with Russian books, and working there was always, was always something I wanted to, to achieve at some point.

Other times uh, so o- when I, when I thought I was going to stay in academia, I realized that academia itself, uh, was too theoretical. I wanted the practical aspects of actually putting those ideas in practice. Mm. And I was really missing this, this aspect. And I realized I was going along, that this would not have worked.

And so I slowly transition out and, and, and moved to the business side. So I had both, as you were saying, and...

Anjel: Yeah. Beautiful. And so let's talk about vision now. W- as you have gone through these transitions, would you say that you, especially the most recent transition out of corporate and into your own business, right?

Federico: Sure. So, I always run kind of personal business on the side. So where I, I always had a small entrepreneurial- thing going, so they were not completely new to me as a business.

But what happened, especially around coaching was that as we were transitioning through this merger, a lot of younger executives started coming to me in the evening, not to talk about money, not to talk about business, but to talk about their own life in transition. They were asking, you know, "What are we gonna do now?

I also had very bad coaches, so I could navigate between the two with a little ... with some awareness. Um, and so this is how it started. So when I returned back to Europe, I started thinking, "Okay, what do I need to study in order to, to become a good coach?" I had an understanding, but I, I'm one of those people that think theoretical frameworks are very important if you wanna do something well.

You can make things up as you go along up to a certain point. Mm. And so I started studying. As I started studying, something very unexpected happened. So I was, I was laying down on the sofa watching a documentary about a cowboy in Montana and at the end of the documentary, my wife was coming down, and I said, "That's what I wanna do."

And, and suddenly, so my life changed again. So not only I was starting a new business, I was also starting a new lifestyle- Mm ... which really takes over your life completely. So-

Anjel: Mm ...

Federico: it was a very intense transition.

Anjel: Mm. All right. Well, beautiful. So for our listeners who have, you know, who have ideas or who have visions, and it sounds to me like, you know, it's interesting that you saw a documentary, and that documentary sent you to a whole new life, right?

Federico: Yes. So there is a concept in psychoanalysis, and especially in Lacanian psychoanalysis, Jacques Lacan was a French psychoanalyst in the '60s and '70s that talks about desire.

And desire is an unconscious force that drive your life. And because it's unconscious, it comes from nowhere you're aware of. It come from somewhere, you're just not aware it's there and develops. And- The idea he was trying to portray with a very difficult theoretical context was listen to your desire.

Anjel: Mm.

So listen to your desire. This is something we should be doing more. Mm. Uh, carefully talking to other people, but listening is important.

Anjel: Mm, I love that. All right, we're gonna talk to our listeners now. We're gonna take a quick break. Listeners, are you a leading visionary or in the role of leading other visionaries?

Discover more about this opportunity at leadingvisionariespodcast.com/creativeageleaderlab, and consider joining our community and sharing your feedback and takeaways from each episode. Be sure to share this show in your own spirals of influence with the people who you think might benefit from our content.

I wanna say a huge thank you to all of our listeners who are downloading, rating, and reviewing. In the last month, we added 24 new countries, which is huge. So we are now up to 99 countries, and we're welcoming thousands of downloads from all around the world. I wanna shout out this week, we might as well shout out this week to our listeners in Russia, as well as our listeners in El Salvador, Lebanon, and Hungary.

Ad: The Leading Visionaries podcast is brought to you by the Creative Age Consulting Group. Are you the one who thinks differently? Who is called to create a significant conscious change in the world? Who is seeing and dreaming of a better way for your industry, your community, humanity? Creative Age Consulting Group is hired to guide leading visionaries just like you who want to break through the static in order to clearly express and confidently enroll support for their vision in a way that makes it inevitable that it will come to pass.

Your word is your wand, and as the leader, your ability to articulate and communicate your vision is essential to its materialization and monetization. Please enjoy, with our compliments, a free copy of the book Be Heard by Millions and Live Your Destiny, which was a number one new release in three categories to get you started.

Anjel: And we are back with Federico Malatesta. You can find out more about him and his business at federicomalatesta.com. So we'll have that for you in the show notes. So Federico, uh, please let our listeners know what are they gonna find when they get to your website. Is there some kind of resource there for them?

But what happens most of the time, if not always, is that we really work on their unconscious patterns that get in the way of what they want to achieve. Mm. So what they see is the surface but there is a lot that is underneath the surface that they don't see. You know, there's interest statistics that, um, 85% of leaders have team that they believe have a blind spot, but only 10% of leaders believe they have a blind spot.

Anjel: Mm.

Federico: So obviously there is a big gap between our awareness of ourselves and what realities looks like.

Anjel: Oh, absolutely. And you know, I, I think I wanna go back to what we talked about before the break about this idea of constructing meaning via story.

That's a huge identity shift. What were some of the parts of you that were under the surface that needed to be either, you know, healed or revealed in order for you to successfully make that transition?

Federico: Right. So I, I... First of all, both business are about people.

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

Federico: And relationship with people- are really what drives both.

It doesn't work that way.

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

Federico: Because identity is built with the others and through the others. We, we, we're not who we are because of what we think, but we are who we are with others and through others because what we think together. You know, if, if s- if I get out of the house and everybody tells me, "Oh, Federico, you're so intelligent.

So the self is the experiencing subject, the one who acts, the one who feels, the one who has a body. Identity is how the self is recognized by the other. Mm-hmm. In order to change, we really have to work at a self level. That is what drives the change, and we have to do it with other people so we don't live in a box inside our head where we can tell us anything.

We can make the most wonderful stories, but if we're not confronted with realities, they're just stories we tell ourselves. Mm-hmm. And this usually when the problem starts. So going back to your question, is the other interaction, it really what drives real change.

Federico: Yes and no. So, uh, the... There were certainly, "Wow, I was expecting that." But at the same time, there was also, "Well, but I can see it."

Anjel: Mm.

Federico: So it, it, it really depends also how people knew me, in what context. Mm. You know, we're not the same to different people. So some people knew me better and had an idea that my interests were necessarily wider than people who knew me in a very narrow context.

I had somebody on the show recently who, you know, it was really wonderful at, at the technical part, and has kind of suddenly come into this leadership and, and it wasn't on the radar for them- Mm ... let's put it that way. So I... If for our listeners who are in that place where they have a big vision and they, they really feel that calling to bring that vision into reality, what are, like, two or three things that you would work with them on in order to help them to really land in the identity of founder or CEO or, you know, the ingenious instigator of some major global change initiative?

I- it's the biggest mistake I see during this transition, is the idea of motion rather than direction. Direction come first. The second is Once you have something you want to achieve, you're not gonna do it alone The idea, I mean, leader is a nice word, but like language is something which is constructed, it's not real.

want to achieve, how you want people to feel when you achieve something. Mm-hmm. I think that will drive the right behavior.

Anjel: Mm-hmm. Beautiful, I love it. So as you're looking at your own business right now, Federico, what are the top challenges that you see in your own business, and what is evolving in, in, in your vision?

Like, where are you going next?

Mm-hmm. And I don't plan to expand too much. I rather focusing on getting the right clients. Mm-hmm. So a lot of the work I do is who would benefit most for my skill set, who do I want to work with, and how I can make this happen?

Anjel: Mm-hmm. Beautiful. And so when you think about that if you'd like, you can give us a success story, or you can just put into the space the type, exactly who you would like to be working with.

Federico: So most of the people I work with are executive who are at a real pivot point in their life. Mm-hmm. So they've been successful, they've done, you know, their career, they made their money, and now they're asking, "Okay, what is next?"

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

Anjel: Beautiful. Well, one of the things I do wanna highlight here is that you're really focused on the right clients, and I think a lot of people make the mistake in many industries of going for more rather than going for more clarity, right? And so if there's anything else that you'd like to say about that before we close, that would be great.

Federico: Yeah, I think this is very important, and it's also, there is an honesty aspect with the client. So for example, I'm a coach, I'm not a therapist, and I had clients coming to me- That they had real depression or real health issues. And I referred them to a therapist because I'm not a therapist. So I think narrowing down and say, what w- what, how do you want to feel, how do you want your client feel at the end of the, at the end of the session, at the end of the coaching engagement?

Anjel: Hmm. Beautiful. All right. Well, thank you so much for being with me today. And listeners, we do love feedback. Please let us know what you thought of today's show by joining our community, sharing your takeaways, asking questions, or submitting guest suggestions. You can weave your visionary thread into our fabric by opting in on our website at leadingvisionariespodcast.com or by interacting with us on social.

Look for the handle @leadingvisionariespodcast across all the major platforms. Thanks so much for tuning in. Keep your eyes, ears, and hearts open, and remember, you are here to create conscious change

We invite your feedback and guest suggestions and invite you to subscribe to our mailing list to be notified of new episodes at leadingvisionariespodcast.com