Jesus Mantas on why the room matters as much as the person

What this conversation is about

When this episode was recorded, Jesus Mantas was IBM's Chief Strategy Officer, a member of the Biogen board and an advocate for more Hispanic representation in technology. He and Glenn Llopis have been friends for at least 15 years, and this episode of Personalization Outbreak feels like it: a relaxed, honest conversation about inclusive leadership and what it takes for people from different backgrounds to thrive at work.

Mantas describes a gift he believes Hispanic and Latino culture gives leaders, which he calls hyper empathy. He also makes one of the clearest cases in the archive for a core idea in Glenn's work: the individual and the environment have to change together.

The edit

Both men know the pressure to fit in. When Mantas came to the United States from a country where he had been part of the majority, he found himself judged by how he spoke and how he looked. Glenn remembers being a young executive on his way up at Sunkist:

"They said, Hey, you've gotta tone down your passion. And my dad ... said to me, son, you're gonna double down on passion." — Glenn Llopis · 00:04:08

Mantas describes a quieter edit that happened inside families, something diversity professionals call covering:

"The parents didn't want the kids to sound Hispanic, so they didn't wanna teach them Spanish. ... they wanted them to blend" — Jesus Mantas · 00:05:22

Many of those children grew up barely speaking Spanish and now feel the loss. At work, the edit shows up as a hidden bias that Mantas sees often in the United States:

"People confuse language skills with intelligence." — Jesus Mantas · 00:14:52

How they reclaim who they are

Glenn's father gave him the opposite advice from his bosses: double down on passion. Glenn believes many people are now doing the same:

"In fact, I actually think Jesus, that what we're all experiencing right now is a massive reverse assimilation, meaning that we're all trying to reclaim the identities that maybe were taken away from us at certain parts of our careers as people from the Hispanic community." — Glenn Llopis · 00:01:15

Mantas passed along advice he once heard Lin-Manuel Miranda give at an event: adapt your latinidad to the context and the situation, but never suppress it, because it is your superpower.

For Mantas, that superpower is empathy and authenticity. The people who work with him know him as a person, not a role, and that matters most when they need to trust him and take a leap together. He coaches the people he mentors the same way: use empathy to understand the system, agree with your managers on the gaps to close, and make promoting you the easiest decision they can make.

What leaders and organizations can take from it

Mantas's central message is for executives. Habits, he explains, are shaped heavily by the environment and by what management rewards, so focusing only on the person misses much of the picture:

"So if you only address the individual, you are at best just only addressing half of the problem." — Jesus Mantas · 00:08:12

"Think of the fact that there are many cases where someone that is a low performer in an environment goes to another environment and becomes a rockstar. And therefore it's not the individual, but it was the environment that created the low likelihood for great individuals to succeed." — Jesus Mantas · 00:20:10

• Change the room, not only the person. Leaders are accountable for putting people in positions where they can succeed.
• Make hidden biases visible. Mantas once recorded himself answering every question in the opposite language from the one it was asked in, to show how easily fluency gets confused with ability.
• Make the right thing the easy thing. Very few people intend to exclude anyone, he says, but people do what's easy more often than what's right, so design systems where inclusion is the easy choice.

Glenn closed with the questions every leader can ask about the room they create:

"Who do you let in, in your decision making, in meetings, et cetera? How do you see those you let in? Who do you let them be? What do you let them do and how do you let them do it?" — Glenn Llopis · 00:21:03

How this conversation connects to Glenn's methodology

Glenn's body of work comes down to one idea: without agency and without knowing the rooms where you belong, you can't have the conviction to reinvent yourself on purpose, or the strong identity that guides how you live and lead. Mantas states both halves of that idea as plainly as anyone in the archive.

• Agency (the Individual). Treating culture, empathy and passion as a superpower instead of something to tone down.
• The rooms (the Environment). The same person who struggles in one environment can become a rockstar in another, so leaders must change the room.
• Conviction and reinvention on purpose. Glenn's reverse assimilation: reclaiming the identities that careers once asked people to set aside.
• Identity that guides how they live and lead. People know Mantas as himself, not his role, and that is what makes them willing to follow him.

See the body of work behind the method →