Carlos Brito, ex-CEO da Ambev e CEO Belron Group: 3 Lições para Liderança de Sucesso

🎥 Dec 20, 2023 📺 Na Prática ⏱ 3m 👁 3591 views

Descubra os segredos da liderança com Carlos Brito! Aprenda as soft skills para construção de times, autonomia, e a importância ...

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About Carlos Brito

Carlos Brito, former CEO of Anheuser-Busch InBev, has continued to speak publicly about leadership and company culture. In a December 2024 appearance, he stated that a leader must focus on building a quality team, attracting top talent, and creating an environment where people are not afraid to fail, as mistakes produce learning. He said that autonomy for team members requires clear priorities, constant communication, and a framework of agreed-upon rules. Brito has also discussed the importance of a company "dream" rather than a mission statement, saying that the passion for a company comes from a dream that touches people and that the company is the group of people. Brito has reflected on the changing role of corporate leaders, stating that the definition of a good leader has shifted from solely delivering business results to proving that one is "part of the solution, not part of the problem." He has cited examples such as companies using their assets to help communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. He has also noted that a company's reputation now depends on treating employees, consumers, and suppliers well, and that leaders must be present in community discussions. Brito has described his own career decision to take a significant pay cut to join a company whose culture and people he believed in, calling it a bet on people and culture.

Source: AI-verified profile updated from Carlos Brito's recent appearances. Browse all interviews →

Transcript (3 segments)

Carlos Brito0:08

I'd like to start by defining what a leader is in my view. First, a leader is someone who, to reach a goal, needs a team—they can't get there alone. A good leader is one who delivers results, who is best in class, better than the competition, better than others, consistently. So it's results with a team—by definition, you need a team. Therefore, the leader must focus heavily on building a quality team, attracting the most talented people, dedicating time to coaching, giving feedback, hiring at colleges and universities, inspiring people so they believe they can do more than they think they can. That's the second thing: with a team. And the third thing is doing it the right way.

A leader who can disrupt the entire dynamic of a talented team is one who believes in talent but also believes they have all the answers and that everything must go through them—very centralizing. This destroys the dynamic of a talented team because talented people want freedom to create, autonomy to try things, to be heard, to challenge, to have their ideas discussed. The leader must understand this, create an environment where people do all that and take risks, without fear of making mistakes, because mistakes produce learning. Risk is like learning to ride a bike: none of us learned without falling and scraping a knee or elbow. If you try to avoid falling, you never learn to ride. Same here: the leader must understand that they and the team members will test prototypes, take risks, and sometimes hit a wall or fall, but that's the only way to learn. If it's a learning experience, you make the next prototype more efficient, and the team gets closer and closer to that inspiring, stretched goal that excites everyone to be on that team.

For a type of talent to work well, they need autonomy. And for everyone to have autonomy and know what to do, you first need clear priorities and clear goals. Second, lots of communication between the leader and team members so things are discussed and decided quickly, so the team doesn't stall. Third, you need to agree on a framework, on some basic rules. So autonomy yes, but within a set of rules everyone agreed on. Fourth, your autonomy cannot hinder someone else on the team. So your freedom to test things must be coordinated with other team members so that people do things that are synergistic, rather than stepping on each other or working against each other. This is only resolved with lots of communication, clarity on who does what, clarity on priorities, and the leader being very present in the team—not to have all the answers, but to always be available when decisions need to be made or when disagreements between team members occur. That's very important.