This is the first time that the “The CEO is the limit” podcast has been recorded with an empty chair. Francisco Pinto Balsemão, mentor and founder of Expresso and SIC, left us on October 21st, at the age of 88. He was more, much more, than the politician and businessman. Much more than a name in the media, than a prime minister in a difficult and challenging decade for Portugal. He was – and will continue to be – the architect of a way of thinking about leadership: thoughtful, demanding, forward-looking and free, always free.
He founded Expresso when Freedom was still a country’s dream. He believed that information could be a public service, even when those in power didn’t want to hear it. He made SIC the first private television in Portugal, broadening horizons in a country that was still learning to look to the future. And Francisco Pinto Balsemão was always future, his time was the future and he taught us – the several generations of journalists he helped train and the hundreds of people he worked with – how to build it better than any inheritance from the past.
NUNO FOX
Often, it is when the leader leaves that we truly realize the weight of their presence, the dimension of the legacy they leave us. With rare serenity, Francisco Pinto Balsemão – the man who has always been a journalist – showed that leadership is not about imposing ideas or speaking louder.
Leadership is about listening and having a constant desire to learn. It’s about teaching and inspiring. It’s about cultivating irreverence, excellence, rigor, seeking a plurality of opinions (especially those contrary to ours), as guidelines for everything we do. It’s about having the ability to anticipate the future and, more than that, help build it. But, above all, show that it is only possible to do this in a free space, in a culture of Freedom.
It is when the leader’s chair is empty that we realize what he leaves us, the size of his legacy. This episode of the podcast “The CEO is the limit” is about that, about what leaves the eternal leader Francisco Pinto Balsemão in his people, in the many workers whom his leadership touched along the way. Because, in truth, the leader has left, but his chair will never be truly empty.
Cátia Mateus podcast The CEO is the limit
The CEO is the limit is Expresso’s leadership and career podcast. Every week, journalist Cátia Mateus shows you who the Portuguese managers who marked the past, those who direct today and those who promise to shape the future are, how they started and what they did to reach the top. Inspiring stories, told in the first person, by those who dare to make things happen. Listen to other episodes:
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The post Francisco Pinto Balsemão, chairman of Grupo Impresa (1937-2025): What remains when the chair of the eternal leader is empty? appeared first on Veritas News.
