Jobert E. Abueva

Speaking & Training

Inspiring keynotes and training for intentional leadership and living.

Jobert E. Abueva - Speaking & Training
Whether you are planning a conference keynote, a leadership retreat, or a team development session, Jobert brings the same rare combination to every engagement: a globally seasoned executive perspective, a genuinely compelling personal story, and a practical framework your audience can act on before the week is out. He speaks and facilitates on intentional leadership, goal alignment, and the art of beginning again — for individuals, teams, and organizations at every kind of threshold.

Three Ways to Work Together

A keynote designed to stop a room and send it somewhere new. Jobert opens with the question most planning sessions never ask — what did the year behind us actually try to teach us? — and builds through research, personal story, and the six-step Janus Plan framework to a closing that gives every person in the audience something concrete to do before the week is out. Equal parts provocative and practical. Designed for audiences who have heard enough about resilience and are ready for something more honest.
INQUIRE ABOUT A KEYNOTE
A facilitated session that takes teams through the Janus Plan framework together — creating the shared language and honest conversation that most planning retreats skip in favor of slides and strategy decks. Participants leave with a completed Midyear Reset or Year-End Reset exercise, one concrete recalibration to act on immediately, and a shared vocabulary for returning to their intentions throughout the year. Best used as a kickoff to annual planning or as a second-half reset during a leadership offsite.
INQUIRE ABOUT A WORKSHOP
A deeper engagement for leadership teams navigating significant transitions — a new fiscal year, a leadership change, a strategic pivot, or a culture reset. Jobert works with the team through all six steps of the Janus Plan, creating the conditions for the honest conversation that most organizations have been having around rather than through. Includes pre-session individual reflection work, facilitated group discussion, and a written summary of key insights and commitments. This is not a presentation. It is the conversation your leadership team has been needing to have.
INQUIRE ABOUT EXECUTIVE FACILITATION

Three Signature Programs

The Missing Step in Annual Planning and Goal Alignment

Best for: Annual planning kickoffs, fiscal year retreats, L&D conferences, HR leadership summits

The core argument:
Most organizations approach annual planning the same way most individuals approach New Year’s resolutions — by looking forward before they have honestly looked back. The result is predictable: goals that lose momentum by March, commitments that dissolve under pressure, and a team that arrives at next year’s planning session wondering why the same problems keep appearing.

This program introduces the Janus Plan framework as a structured practice for honest backward examination before forward commitment. Jobert shows leadership teams how to examine what the year behind them actually revealed — not the highlight reel, not the post-mortem — and use that honest accounting as the foundation for goals that hold.

Audience takeaways:

  • A clear understanding of why organizational goals lose momentum and what to do differently
  • The six-step Janus Plan framework applied to team and organizational goal-setting
  • A facilitated reflection exercise teams can use immediately and return to throughout the year
  • One concrete recalibration to act on before the next planning cycle

Building Reflective Practice Into How Leaders Think and Decide

Best for: Executive development programs, CLO and CHRO conferences, leadership academies, SmartBrief and business media audiences

The core argument:
We have spent a decade telling leaders to build resilience, develop grit, and push through. The data is beginning to tell a different story. Burnout is not a willpower problem. It is a direction problem. Leaders are pushing harder and harder toward goals they have never stopped to examine — and the cost is accumulating in ways that no productivity system can fix.

This program builds the evidence-based case for reflective leadership practice as a performance strategy, not a wellness initiative. Drawing on sports science research on elite halftime performance, cognitive science on how breaks change information processing, and Jobert’s own burnout and recovery at the peak of a Fortune 500 career, it gives leaders a practical framework for building intentional pauses into how they think, decide, and lead.

Audience takeaways:

  • The research case for reflection as a performance strategy
  • The specific cost of moving fast without honest self-examination — in decision quality, team alignment, and personal sustainability
  • Three practices leaders can build into their weekly rhythm immediately
  • The Janus Plan framework as a structured approach to the annual reflection that most leaders skip

A Framework for Navigating Life’s Transitions with Intention

Best for: General conference keynotes, women’s leadership events, diversity and inclusion summits, multicultural leadership forums, book club events, association conferences

The core argument:
We are a culture that celebrates new beginnings without knowing how to make them. We set resolutions, declare fresh starts, and charge toward new chapters — without ever doing the honest work of understanding what the chapter behind us was actually trying to teach. The result is that we carry the weight of the unexamined past into every new beginning, wondering why the patterns keep repeating.

This program tells the story of how a boy in the Philippines found a two-faced Roman god in an encyclopedia, how that image informed a corporate burnout, and how that burnout became a framework for beginning again that now serves individuals, couples, families, and leadership teams across every kind of threshold — professional, personal, and everything in between. It is the most personal and most universal of Jobert’s three programs. It is also the one that most consistently produces the quietest rooms and the most personal conversations afterward.

Audience takeaways:

  • The six-step Janus Plan framework for beginning again at any threshold
  • A personal reflection exercise completed during the session
  • Permission to reset without starting from scratch
  • A practice for returning to intentions throughout the year rather than abandoning them

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Jobert brings something rare to a room: a framework that is both intellectually serious and immediately useful. Our team left with something to act on that afternoon.

The Janus Plan workshop was the best investment we made in our annual planning retreat. The conversation it created would not have happened any other way.

Let's Talk About Your Event

Every engagement is different. Jobert works with event organizers before every session to understand the audience, the moment, and what would make the experience genuinely useful rather than generically motivational.

If you are planning an event and want to explore whether The Janus Plan is the right fit, the best next step is a brief conversation.

Schedule a call

Or reach out directly: jobert@joberteabueva.com

For bureau representation and availability inquiries: jobert@joberteabueva.com

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