The global CHRO and chief people officer at Jose Cuervo had completed a personality assessment just a day before his sit-down with HE. Adib Estefan saw his beliefs reflected back at him in real time: a focus on authenticity, openness, and speaking not just from the mind but from the heart.
“These things I learned about myself were things I’m passionate about and have been committed to for my entire career,” Estefan says.
If one spends any amount of time around Estefan, that is readily apparent. He’s authentically humble, soft-spoken but engaging, and radiates a kindness that allows people to open up to him. These aren’t traits one can just assume or playact. It may sound silly, but he just seems like a good guy.
Jose Cuervo’s CHRO has serious global experience. He’s lived and worked in Mexico, Switzerland, Brazil, and China. He’s taken the best parts of those work cultures and worked to imbue them in his own practice and approach. Estefan’s present remit includes more than 26 distilleries, bottling plants, and distribution centers in Latin America, North America, EMEA, and APAC.
He’s learned so much from where he’s worked, from the Brazilian capacity of tackling a complex environment to the workplace priorities Eastern European countries place on maternity and paternity leave. He was inspired by the Asian work ethic and commitment to excellence and by Western Europe’s leadership style of granting autonomy, empowering, and trusting the people and the process.
Just a year into his role at Jose Cuervo, Estefan already has a lot to be proud of. The CHRO and his team are building AI into specific HR processes and redesigning the company’s approach to employee development. That includes ongoing evolutions in performance management, training, succession planning, and talent attraction.
Specific AI Deployment and Training Opportunities
On the AI front, his team introduced an AI agent configured to provide guidance modeled on a senior organizational development director with 25 years of experience. Employees used it to help develop their annual performance goals.
The exercise was intended to help employees connect their work with company priorities, and Estefan was thrilled at employees’ embrace of the process. But he warns that without intentionality, AI will accomplish nothing.
“Everyone talks about AI, but if you don’t find very specific uses of it in very specific processes, it’s just a generic capability,” Estefan explains.
His team is releasing a second AI agent focused on learning and development. It uses development needs discussed between employees and their managers to help create an individual learning path. Crucially, Estefan says it also follows up with employees, something managers may not consistently have time to do.
Alongside that work, the team has started implementing coaching focused on performance and potential instead of treating coaching as a response to poor performance. A mentoring program is currently in development to support employees’ careers.
Estefan is also excited about a broader organizational training redesign. That redesign is focused on three fundamentals: what categories of learning employees need, which programs address those needs, and which channels should deliver that learning.
The CHRO and people leader wants to help Jose Cuervo’s leaders and teams perform well in the short term while preparing them and the organization for larger goals and its sustainability over the long run. That is what transformation is all about.
He is strengthening Cuervo’s employer brand for different talent segments with the aim of accelerating hiring and improving the quality of talent attraction.
“There is so much more we can do, and it’s only been a year,” Estefan says.
Starting at Trust
As a global CHRO and people leader for an instantly recognizable brand, Estefan says that at some point in his leadership development, he had to relinquish his desire to control everything.
“I remember a CEO I worked with in Switzerland always said, ‘Trust but verify.’ That verification was very important to me, but eventually I realized that my starting point needed to be trust. What’s important to me is giving people a clear vision of what we want as an HR function, connecting that to the different strategic aspects of our business—short-, mid-, and long-term—then motivating them, connecting them to that purpose, to the joy of such an old organization that makes us all proud, and then just facilitating execution for them.”
When it comes to cultivating that sense of transparency and humility that’s so identifiable, Estefan says that whatever it is that you lead with, just ensure it’s authentic. People don’t expect perfection from their leaders. They expect authenticity, consistency, and the confidence that someone is listening. The best leaders are those who can bridge their personal and their professional lives without feeling like they’re putting on an act.
The easiest way to do that, Estefan says, is to be passionate about what you do.
“Everything else becomes so much easier when you find what moves you,” the CHRO says.
The leaders transforming HR aren’t simply looking for vendors. They’re choosing strategic partners who understand that decisions about risk, insurance, and employee benefits impact both their people and their business.
At Lockton, we begin by understanding your organization—its priorities, challenges, risks, and ambitions. Combining global expertise, local knowledge, and data-driven insights, we help you navigate complexity, evaluate opportunities, anticipate emerging risks, and make informed decisions with confidence.
Because better decisions begin with a deeper understanding of what matters most to your organization, today and tomorrow, and the right partner helps turn that understanding into meaningful, lasting business value.
