What happens after the crisis is over, but clarity still hasn't returned? In this episode of the Leading Visionaries, host Anjel B. Hartwell sits down with Savio P. Clemente, keynote speaker, TEDx presenter, journalist, wellness coach, bestselling author, and two-time cancer survivor. After conducting more than 2,000 interviews with global leaders and navigating two life-altering cancer journeys, Savio developed the Adaptive Resilience Leadership Framework to help leaders remain grounded, make better decisions under pressure, and transform adversity into wisdom.

Get ready to explore the difference between vision and goals, the importance of leading yourself before leading others, and how life's unexpected challenges often become the training ground for greater leadership.

What You Will Learn

What adaptive resilience leadership is and why it matters in today's uncertain world.

Why vision is different from goal setting and how visionary leaders operate.

How personal adversity can become a catalyst for leadership growth.

Why self-leadership is the foundation of effective leadership.

How silence and stillness can create clarity during times of crisis.

The mindset shifts that helped Savio navigate cancer twice.

How psychological distancing can help leaders make better decisions under pressure.

Why surrendering to circumstances is different from giving up.

The role of metacognition in building resilience and self-awareness.

How the ALOHA framework can help individuals reconnect with themselves and move forward with courage.

FAQ:

What is adaptive resilience leadership?

Adaptive resilience leadership is the ability to remain flexible, grounded, and clear-headed during adversity while developing strategies that help navigate uncertainty and high-pressure situations effectively.

How can leaders stay calm during a crisis?

Leaders can stay calm during a crisis by focusing on what they can control, practicing self-awareness, using reflection and stillness, and developing resilience strategies that help them respond rather than react.

Why is self-leadership important?

Self-leadership is important because leaders who can regulate their emotions, manage challenges, and maintain clarity are better equipped to guide teams and organizations through difficult situations.

Resources

Savio P. Clemente

Website

Leading Visionaries Podcast

Join the Leading Visionaries Community

Make a Donation to Support the Show

Creative Age Consulting Group

LVP 138 Savio

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Now, here's your host, Anjel 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.

His work focuses on what happens after disruption when the crisis is over, but clarity hasn't fully returned. He helps healthcare leaders and organizations make high-stakes decisions, stay grounded under pressure, and operate with clarity when it matters most. I'm excited to have you here. Welcome to the show, Savio.

Thank

Savio: you so much, Anjel. What a great intro. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Were you always visionary? Did you have vision as a child? Did you have some kind of divine intervention that then suddenly opened up your visionary capacities? Um, or did you have mentorship that, you know, really gave you support in getting those visionary capacities online? Tell us a little bit about your vision journey, your visionary journey.

Savio: Yeah. It's great that you ask that question, 'cause most people confuse vision with goal setting, and they can bleed with one another. But a vision is how you wanna feel, how you wanna be, how you wanna actually see yourself, whether there's tragedy or something that's happened in your life to reclaim that same person or even a better version of that person.

I wanted to be an astronaut, actually, Anjel. Uh, the Challenger explosion happened. I was really, really young, and I was like, "I don't know if that's a good idea." But I remember researching. Gotta have 20/20 vision. I was like, check, I have that. Uh, have the love of space. Check, I have that. And so I didn't really feel like I was completely always rooted, but the vision for me really I would say I always knew...

So I grew up Catholic, but in college, I knew I needed to explore other belief systems. So I've studied everything at this point from Buddhism Jewish mysticism, all the way down to Vedic philosophy. And so for me, even though I was really young and didn't know sort of what was happening, I always knew that computers were something I'm really good at, so I studied computer science and information systems in college.

Mm-hmm. And so I got deeper and deeper into exploring why am I here and w- what is this life? Is it really just about just working and hanging out and, you know, meeting people and having relationships? Is, is it... Or is it more than that? And so I, I went on a deep search. 9/11 was a big deal for me 'cause I unfortunately lost a friend.

And I'm like "Eric, it- does that require me wearing a suit?" He's like, "Yeah." And I'm like, "Oh, I, I don't really think I can." He's like, "What?" He's like, "You're gonna give up a job at the World Trade Center, making all this money as a young person straight out of college?" I'm like, "Yeah, Eric, I just, I, I just can't do it."

I'm like, "I just, I just know myself. It just would frustrate me more knowing that I would have to do that." He goes, "You sure?" And I'm like, "Yeah." And unfortunately, and I'm not saying... But unfortunately, he was on the 104th floor- Mm-hmm ... and passed away. They found his severed arm and, uh, with a tattoo. That's how they knew it was him.

And so I'm telling you this story because for me, it started off very young, knowing things about myself- Mm. And what my boundaries were.

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

Savio: And then with the course of that, I also met three other individuals. We formed a production company. It was a labor of love. Not only did I give it time, money, and energy, but I also gave it a lot of my resources on all levels.

So I would say life, combination of yearning, wanting, needing, the vision that I knew I had entre- entrepreneurial spirit. I knew I had wanting and craving for that, but I also knew that I had to learn. I had to do the hard work. Mm.

Anjel: Mm-hmm. All right. Well, you know, one of the things that you said is that you were sensitive as a child and that you know things.

So, and, and it wasn't something, like you said, I d- I'm also not a goal setter. I'm a vision getter. When I get the vision, then the goals show themselves to me- Mm-hmm ... as, as pieces of the vision. But I, I don't go actively and say, "I'm, I, I'm gonna set this goal." And in fact, just like you can't wear a suit-

when I'm working with somebody, like if I hire a coach and they say, "What are your goals?" I'm like, "I can't do goals. Sorry. Can't do goals. Can't do goals. Can't..." Yeah. You know, if I've got the vision, it will all be there. Yeah. So, I just wanna point out that knowing things, there's a name for that. That's called clear cognizance, and, ah, that's one of the areas that I have a strength in as well.

Savio: Yeah. Yeah. I would say that I always felt an inner nudge with leading myself. Like, I had a strong idea as to how I wanted to, to show up for myself and how I wanted others to show, to see me as. Now, some of it was a little, you know- Trial and error. I did have a little social anxiety when I was younger.

When the pressure really hasn't gone quiet, it's just gone internal, and that's where performance is either won or lost. So for me, given the fact that I'm a journalist and I've interviewed all these people, given the fact that I'm an executive coach and I work with leaders and individuals in general, and my trainings have led me to understand what's behind the glacier, so to speak- Mm-hmm

You have to see them as fully. They just haven't refined or haven't seen or haven't explored the things underneath the mess. Mm-hmm.

Anjel: Mm-hmm. Uh,

Savio: and so for me, I would say my leadership abilities really were strengthened through cancer because even though I had my care team, and they were wonderful, after the first bout with cancer, it was only six rounds of chemo every three weeks, and then I was given my remission status.

Anjel: Mm-hmm

Savio: other people, and they could see that through example rather than me, well, I'm not someone who- Sort of proselytizes and tells people what to do. I'm more of, "This is who I am. This is how I go about doing things. If you wanna mirror me, if you want to embody some of the wisdom and the insights that I've gained, wonderful."

But I'm in no position to tell someone what to do because everyone has their own path, and I'm someone who respects that.

Anjel: Yeah. Beautiful. Well, I, I would have to agree with you that anybody who's actually leading, it really starts with leading yourself. It really does. And so, you would also exemplify for our listening audience that you're a leading visionary who's leading other visionaries, right?

Right. Because they, it's part that they can't see. All right. Well, we're gonna take a quick break, Savio, but when we come back, we're gonna let our listeners know a little bit more about what you're currently up to and how to get in touch with you. But right now, listeners, are you a leading visionary or in the role of leading other visionaries?

If you're interested in finding out more about how you can receive support for getting your vision out of the air and onto the ground in a way that's both impact and income producing, the best support is found in collaboration with other leading visionaries, which is why we've created the Creative Age Leader Lab.

I wanna say a huge thank you to all of our listeners who are downloading, rating, and reviewing. We're welcoming thousands and thousands of downloads from all over the world. I wanna shout out this week to our listeners in Japan, in Jersey, and I don't think we have another J, so we'll go with Turkey. And we will be right back with Savio P.

Clemente.

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 Savio P. Clemente. You can actually find out more about him at saviopclemente.com, and we will have that for you in the show notes. So Savio, when you came out of the first cancer, is that when you started your own business, or did you leave the production co- Like, tell, give us the timeline of how we got to saviopclemente.com.

And what the vision was that i- you know, inspired you to go in this direction.

Savio: Sure. So as you can imagine, once you have something as devastating as a cancer diagnosis, then you're also given a remission status. You have to not only deal with the physical aspects of what cancer does, 'cause cancer isn't, is a physical thing.

And so I was like, "Well, what's the point of building something if I have a relapse within that timeframe?" So I waited five years. I, at that time I was always a writer, so I got my writings out there. Um, I became a full-fledged journalist. I had podcasts at the time. I was just live coaching individuals cancer survivors and just individuals in general.

And then- I ended up getting my board certification and I, that was around the same time as COVID. And so I was like, let me just put on something else like ICF. Like I said, I'm an introvert, so me staying at home and

Anjel: studying was not a big deal for me.

Savio: So I got that done. And then fast-forward a little, a little while, I did a TEDx talk in, um, Raleigh, North Carolina.

And I'm like, "What?" He's like, "Yeah." He's... So I had a friend in LA. I'm like, "Listen, I'm gonna come there." He's like, "Okay, yeah, I can take you to Venice, I can take you to you know, I can take you to Malibu, and, you know, we could do that." So it was a great weekend and... But, you know, one thing I, I learned from that experience, being a journalist at, at such an uber event like the red carpet, was that these actors were still acting.

Mm-hmm. Because they were, they were... They had to show good face and put their armor on for me as a journalist- Mm-hmm ... for their handlers, for their managers. Mm-hmm. And I realized, I'm like, oh, I think it's my coach speaker and you know, it's that brain of mine that can see underneath and I'm like, oh, they're still acting.

They're not actually showing me who they really, really are, which is

Anjel: fine. Mm-hmm.

Anjel: Mm-hmm ...

Savio: the vision was put on hold. I thought I was gonna do speaking right after my TEDx talk and then life got in the way.

Mm-hmm. But I also learned something from my trip to India. I learned this idea of separateness, that we are not separate. I was in a tour group with individuals, even though I was on assignment- And one of them I guess she just didn't understand, or maybe she didn't care, but she was taking pictures of people without any walls.

Like, we're passing in these trains, and these people didn't have even walls to secure their homes, and she's taking pictures of them like they're zoo animals. I wanted to say something, but I said, "No, Savio," because at the end of the day, I have to let her experience whatever she needs to experience in that moment.

We're just living a different stream of existence. Mm-hmm. And that's their reality, and my reality is mine. No one is better or less than the other. It's just different. Mm-hmm. And so it taught me a great lesson in that.

Are, are we still in the engagement with that or...

Savio: No, it was 16 months, 16 months of treatment, including two three-day stays at the hospital. Then I had to do... They had to give me a neck catheter to, uh, harvest my own stem cells. Then I had to go to the hospital. It was supposed to be 21 days. It ended up being 29 days.

a complete remission.

Anjel: Complete response.

Savio: Yes.

Anjel: Excellent.

Savio: Yeah, complete- We love

Anjel: that ...

Savio: that's

Anjel: what I like- Let me ring, let me ring my bell for you. Thank you. That you had a complete response. Excellent.

Savio: Yeah, that's the technical term, but people use the remission at work. Mm-hmm. And so he's like, "There is a clinical trial.

You can do immunotherapy as a extra insurance policy." Mm-hmm. My sister's like, "Why would you do that? You just did, like, all these months of treatment." And I'm like, "Because if it ever came back, I wouldn't, I didn't finish the full protocol. That's what I would feel." Yeah, yeah. So I did that for about four and a half months, and then I did five months of physical therapy to regain my strength.

Sure. 'Cause what most people don't know is once you have a stem cell transplant, your bone marrow's completely depleted. They actually, like I was telling you earlier, they actually give you a medical rebirth status. It's an actual medical term that they count the days after your stem cell transplant and actually give you another birth date.

Anjel: And celebrate-

Savio: Yes ...

Anjel: because we love to celebrate. And, and celebrate

Savio: as well.

Anjel: All right. So tell us about the vision that came for Adaptive Resilience Leadership.

And, and before you go into that, I actually just wanna take a moment to have our listeners just clue in that vision, you can get a vision, and then all of a sudden life is gonna throw curve balls. And in Savio's case, the curve ball was a health issue. Sometimes it's a money issue, sometimes it's a health issue, sometimes it's a relationship issue, sometimes it's a family issue.

I'm, I'm gonna change that to navigating through. Navigating through these challenges that come up is, is actually an integral part of bringing the visions into reality. So tell us about Adaptive Resilience Leadership. Where did that come from, and what's the intention with that?

Savio: Sure. So that came, that germinated from my, not only professional experience, right?

Those are two things we have to our advantage, and we could take advantage of it anytime, anywhere. And I sank into it, and I realized a lot of things from that experience. 29 days in a quarantine room because of a stem cell transplant. I realized, "What can I regulate here? What can I self-regulate at the moment?

I can't control my red blood cell count. I can't control my, my platelets. I can't control all the, all the all the things that the doctors are looking for. I can control how I feel. I can control showing up when they did their rounds. I can control having a human, human touch when they would check my vitals every four hours.

I can control the fact that even my physical... Though my physical body was depleted, I felt l- lethargic, I had diarrhea issues, et cetera." Although that was happening to me, my spirit was still alive. My mental acuity was still there. I still had a link to what I believed was something greater than myself.

I'm surrendering to it. Not surrendering to death. I'm surrendering to what the situation is at hand, what it's trying to show me, even in its pressure-filled environment. Mm. The other thing I did as well is what they call psychological distancing. So I didn't see myself as the disease as well. I created a buffer.

So it's not disassociation, before I get in trouble with psychologists. It's not, it's not detachment. It's allowing that buffer to exist. It's a little bit of a distance, um, that, that I held. And then the greatest one... Well, two of the greatest tools. One of them was metacognition. I heard about the term, but it was the thinking of the thinking.

I ask a question in the beginning. I said, "If you look at yourself in the mirror, do you recognize the person in front of you?" And someone's like, "What do you mean by inner stranger?" I'm like, "Well, for me, the inner stranger was that young person who never felt rooted, grounded." I was actually called a nobhead by, by a friend of mine.

And so the woman's like, "Oh, I see. The inner stranger for me is that professional, idealized woman that I can't be, or that great mother that I wanna be, or that, or that good sibling that I wanna be. That's my inner stranger." And so I made it nebulous on purpose. But in that talk, I talk about this idea of what a, um, I have an acronym.

Not only does it send you sensations, it has consciousness. It has lived intelligence. And so if you're quiet and still enough, you can actually tap into that. O stands for opening. So open yourself up to that wisdom. Don't be afraid, no matter what your belief systems are. H stands for harnessing. So harness that, make the mental connection.

See what works, what doesn't. Not everything's gonna work. And A is acting. And I like to put a caveat and say act with courage, because it takes courage to change. Uh, no one can make you change. Change is something that you have to kind of live through and figure out for yourself. And so with all that said, in general, I leaned as well on adaptive resilience.

as best as I could. So adaptive resilience is basically when you're in it, when you're, when I'm in the S-H-I-T, how are, how am I gonna remain flexible and/or create strategies for that? Yes, I was depleted of energy. Yes, I didn't feel good. Yes, my hair fell off. Yes, I had all this, uh, diarrhea issues. But how am I gonna actually m- maintain center with that?

Mm-hmm. And so with all that said , that's how the adaptive resilience framework, s- uh, started. It was that most leaders wait until they're overwhelmed. But the framework- Mm ... identifies those signals, those patterns, to help them convert that into clarity. So the idea is really taking that adversity and changing it and transforming it into gold, into wisdom.

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