What if the real reason you're stuck isn't your strategy, but your energy?
Now, before you just skip this episode.
I know that sounds out there, but you have to know who's talking today.
It is Klaus Kleinfeld.
He's known for being the only leader ever to have successfully served as CEO of two Fortune 500 companies on two different continents Alcoa in the United States and Siemens in Germany.
He's advised presidents run multibillion dollar companies, and now he's here to share what no one at the top ever admits out loud.
In this episode, Klaus reveals the brutal truth behind high performance leadership, why energy matters more than tactics and how reconnecting with purpose might be the only way out of burnout.
So stick around, because by the end of this conversation, one of the most respected business minds in the world might just change the way you lead and how you live.
Let's dive in.
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When you're thinking about the person who's listening to the show.
If they were to embody and put into practice the things that they learned from you today, how does their life change?
Well, Kwame, I wrote the book.
I mean, if you would have asked me two years ago, Klaus, would you sit down and write a book?
I would have probably said, no way.
There's enough leadership books on the market.
But then I realized that one thing is missing.
And that's why my book is, I think, a very atypical book on leadership.
And that's why I call it not just on business, but also on life, because what people are missing as a framework of how do you lead your life and the understanding of the concept of energy, which I fortunately learned late, but I learned it in my life.
And I got to this for two things.
One is I saw that I didn't only see burned out people in large companies at the age of 40, 50 or so.
I saw it in a very dramatic way also in the startup scene.
You know where I went on a board invested in an individual who was a founder.
And then, actually one day before the board meeting, I get a call that they found him unconscious in the hallway and that he was immediately delivered to the hospital and the doctor said he will not.
We will not allow him to talk to any one of you, maybe ever because if we make the guy survive, he should not ever go back into this dangerous environment that he obviously has been living in.
You know, and That's why I started, because the interesting thing is I saw the opposite of it in the sports field.
I love sports.
I love sports like tennis.
I play it, but I don't play it as well as I wish to.
And here the phenomenon that I saw is, if you today, if you look at a tennis game, you see people that are traditionally older than what it used to be, and they are at their peak, and they stay at their peak for longer.
And I wonder what the hell is going on there.
Why is there a difference?
And it's all about, I mean, how they manage their their energy.
And that's why I thought I have to provide this framework, because it's a framework that's essential if you want to lead your life, not just your business.
As a leader, if you don't have energy, you can't lead people.
You can't energize people.
You can't make them move.
And the same thing is true if you want to build a family, if you want to –
Find a nice girlfriend if you want to keep the relationship with your friends.
I agree 100%.
And Klaus, I knew I liked you.
But now knowing that you are a tennis fan, I like you even more.
And I can see where this is coming from.
Because I remember, let's just use German tennis players as an example.
Back in the day when Steffi Graf was dominating.
When you hit 30, it was a death sentence.
Nobody really moved on beyond that.
And now…
Right.
And so we're seeing this in all sports, which is fascinating.
And I think there is a lot of credibility that you bring because of your background when you're talking about energy, because I think people can kind of brush it aside in the business world and say energy is too intangible.
It is a little bit too woo woo and out there. for me to be of even valuable consideration.
And so what got you to this point where you're saying all right, I'm recognizing that understanding energy and purpose are central to not just success in business, but success in life.
But what do you think it is that holds people back from seeing this and really appreciating it in their lifetime?
I think very often it's very simple that you grow up with some thoughts about what's normal in business and you think that the environment of the classical industrial age where you plow on
I mean, I was born and raised in Germany, and it's all about.
You have to have willpower, you know?
Just sustainability, plow through everything.
My idea about business life was an ultra marathon.
I ran marathon at that time.
I thought it's one marathon after the other.
Until I realized, you know, when you understand that it's managing energy, it's actually different size of sprints super fast sprints and then relaxation time.
They don't have to be equidistant.
There are a lot of tricks that also the high performance world has invented, how you can very quickly recharge.
And then the question came up well, where does this damn strange it is a strange concept before when you don't understand it.
But then when you start looking at it, you see it's so simple.
Where does energy come from?
It comes from body, mind, and soul, right?
And the body, we understand.
I mean if we don't keep our body in decent shape.
Many understand you have to work out, you have to eat well, you have to probably sleep well, sleep well.
But many also don't even understand how sleep really works.
You know they don't understand how important breath is, how you can basically trick your body with breathing techniques.
That they don't understand.
But then you go into the mind aspect.
Mind aspect, I separate into emotional and mental, right?
And on the emotional side, it's common that I hear people complaining about certain individuals who drain their energy, certain situations that drain their energy.
And I tell them that they have to understand everything.
The emotion is you are in control of your own emotions.
When you have an emotion and I don't have to tell you, I know that you believe in that too, you know.
So when you have an emotion and certainly in negotiations I've had that many, many times that the opponent has studied you and tries to get you into a certain emotional state, to reduce your capabilities of kind of rational judgment or rational response,
The same thing, by the way, in tennis and other plays.
So here the emotion is you are in control of the emotion.
There's this wonderful story of Buddha coming to a village and a very mad farmer talks to him and yells at him, curses him.
Then, at a certain point in time, he stops and he says to Buddha now what do you say?
And Buddha sits there, doesn't really move, and he says, let me ask you a question.
There is a man who has a present and wants to give the present to another person, but the other person refuses to take the present.
Who then owns the present?
It's clear who owns the present, the one who wanted to give it away.
I think this is brilliant.
So every time, next time you feel like somebody is putting their emotional on you, just let it drown out.
Don't even listen.
And we can talk about that more.
There are tricks how to do that.
Mental.
Mental, that's another wonderful thing.
Mental is about where you focus.
Where do you focus on?
So there's a great story of this old shoemaker who has two sons and he wants to pass his business on to one of the two sons but doesn't know how to decide.
Sends them both to Africa and they arrive.
The first one sends a note back and says, Daddy, I have really bad news.
This is no market.
Everybody's running around barefoot.
The other one sends a note back and says, Daddy, unbelievable.
This market is absolutely endless.
They are all barefoot.
Send me as many shoes as you can get.
You know, how many times in life have we seen that?
How many times have we seen this different perspective where people see challenge?
You know, you see opportunity.
And lastly and which was a chapter that I struggled with whether I put this in the book, which already tells you something.
It's the spiritual energy.
Because very often when you talk about spiritual energy, people only talk about your.
Get clear about your own values and where you go.
But I also have a chapter in there on spirituality, when you think about God.
You know, and I put it on purpose in there, because it is my book and it's my experience and that has done me very, very well
Lastly, in this whole energy thing, the one thing that completely knocks you off your socks is this aspect of purpose.
Because purpose is to energy what a laser is to light.
When you have a purpose in the morning you will jump out of the bed and say another day where I can work on coming closer to my purpose.
So that's why purpose has been this difficult concept, clearly difficult concept, but one of the most prevalent concepts as long as mankind have existed.
So I probably gave you way too much already.
There's so much to explore here.
And I want to pull the thread on the ability in a negotiation how, if you are talking to somebody who you're in a high stakes negotiation and somebody is trying to get you off your game, a lot of times they will play these head games.
In order to reduce your capabilities.
And that's true, because they recognize that if they put you in a problematic emotional state, an unproductive emotional state, it affects the clarity of thought and then you don't perform well.
We see the same thing happening in sports where people might use gamesmanship or trash talk.
It's not the gamesmanship or trash talk.
They're not doing it for that purpose.
They're doing it for the purpose of throwing you off your game.
And one of the things that I've recognized just in life in general is that sometimes the enemy is within, because it's our own inability to manage our own emotions that puts us, or allows us to stay, in a negative emotional state and then make bad decisions.
And so, based on all of the work that you've done, whether it's at the Fortune 500 level, advising other large companies or startups, or advising presidents when it comes to emotion management for the people at the top of their game,
How do they manage their emotions in order to make sure that they're making the right decisions?
Well, it starts with recognizing that the emotions are within you and you can control them.
That starts with that.
Because many people think the emotion is an automatic that always comes up.
It doesn't.
You can control it.
But you have to learn how to do it.
And you learn by basically a couple of tricks.
One is you say to yourself, instead of going through the motions here and following the logic of somebody talking to you, basically dismissing that or not even listening to certain things or saying whatever, this is the opinion of somebody else.
It's like what Buddha was saying.
If you don't accept the gift, then the gift stays with the other side.
So just basically...
I call it, I open both of my ears, it goes in there, it comes out there.
And there's nothing left.
And if I know it's just there to provoke me, then that works.
There's another trick that comes through breathing.
When you want to really control your physique.
To start controlling your breath is a very, very potent way to do it.
And even during high stakes negotiations, you can relatively nicely do it without the other side realizing that by starting to focus on your breath.
So simply saying like I sit here straight now, you know, I said I concentrate on breathing in.
And breathing out.
As I speak, I can't do it.
But when you listen, you can do it.
And you concentrate like the breath going in, like a wave.
It brings your lung up first, then goes through the lung, goes into your belly, brings the belly up and then it goes out again.
And you do that, and that already makes your mind become very calm.
If you have a sensor like this, then you will actually see that your heart rate goes down.
It works very, very fast.
Your heart rate goes down, you become more quiet.
And you can go further with that, like what many of these high-performance teams like the Navy SEALs are doing to get ready for action.
They do a thing called box breathing, where you take four breaths, then hold by four counts, then exhale in four counts.
Again, hold after this for four counts and start again and do this a couple of minutes, one hour two, five minutes or so is perfectly enough.
You can even do that in negotiations.
So those are simple tricks used many, many times and really works very well.
I love this.
And it's so practical because you've been doing this at the highest of levels.
And I think a lot of times.
If we have people who are talking about it from a scientific perspective, it can almost seem magical.
And you are a practitioner of it.
And so I think it's very empowering for people to actually see it used in that type of way.
And so shifting from like the The actual specificity of a negotiation.
Let's extend this, because one of the things that you mentioned is people are having trouble managing their energy but, taking it a step further, they're getting burnt out, having severe mental health and physical health problems because of this.
I would imagine that being a CEO of a Fortune 500 company would keep you pretty busy on a day to day level.
So for you, just thinking about the incredibly high level decisions that you would have had to make day to day and the tough conversations that you would have had to have day to day, I feel like for a lot of people.
Just existing under that pressure would have been crushing.
So how were you able to perform at a high level while managing your energy day to day?
Fortunately, I was made aware of this energy concept early enough in my life.
That I followed the principles.
So I mean I build a routine that some of the things that I religiously followed and some of the principles that my office knew like, for instance, that they always have to block time in the morning that I can work out.
I don't mind getting up early in the morning, but at least I have to have 45 minutes to an hour that I can work out.
That gets me well into the day.
And then the other thing is, what do you eat?
I'm a big fan of intermittent fasting.
It just works for me.
I've never been a fan of breakfast that much.
So my first meal is typically lunch and I'm very hungry then.
I have to admit.
I also don't want to take my last meal. much later than let's say eight nine or so ideally earlier ideally by eight i would like to be done with that and interestingly at least here in the us that's that's very doable There are places like Spain where they only start eating dinner at around 10 o'clock at night.
That becomes a little tough.
But then you control yourself and instead of eating a big steak or lamb, you eat a light one like some fish or so.
So, and then, when it comes to sleep, I've been sleeping with a sleep mask for I don't know what 15 years.
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So I realized very early in my life.
Funny enough, before I even understood the energy concept, I once had a one and a half year project in Stockholm and lived through the summer there.
And I couldn't believe that.
Early morning, three o'clock, the sun was out and I was like jumping up and down because the curtains in my hotel room didn't close properly.
Right.
And then I remember a very critical presentation once was right before Christmas end of the year.
It was so dark I couldn't even get my eyes, keep my eyes open, because it was so dark, you know, and I realized some.
So sunlight, blue light is so, so important, so, so important.
And light is a huge trigger because it influences the whole hormonal thing.
So there's a couple of things and there are millions of those.
I love these things like micro habits.
And the more you can habitualize, the better off you are, because you don't have to think about it anymore.
It becomes normal just the way you are.
Let's go deeper into this, because when you think about the successful people in the world, whatever it is that they happen to be doing, they have great routines, great habits.
And I think…
We hear that, a lot of people hear that, but it's almost hard to believe that you can get your day to be so routine.
So could you give an example of what that would look like?
Some of those keystone habits that you were able to institute in your life that led to lasting change.
But by the way, the day for me is very different.
Every day is very different.
However, you build in some elements that are routine.
I already said, work out early in the morning, no matter which time zone I'm in.
Work out all of them on sleep, in darkness and cold.
And eat your dinner, the last meal, not too late in the day.
And I don't eat then before 14 to 16 hours after that.
And obviously alcohol, now everybody believes it's a neurotoxin.
I guess we have to believe that.
So much to my undelight.
But that obviously plays a role if you want to screw your body up at the same time.
And sometimes you also need to enjoy life.
So those are a few things.
Then being out a lot is ideal.
So if you have sunlight, when I arrive somewhere, I try to immediately go out and get a little bit of fresh air into my body.
I adjust my watch when I'm on the plane.
The moment the plane lifts off, i switch my watch over to the, the time zone where i'm flying, and i try to start living in this time zone then when i'm on the plane, i'm talking about 10, 13 hour flights, you know so.
So all these are the little things that help, and The routines make it particularly important when your days are so different every time.
That's powerful.
That is powerful and it's helpful for me too, because running a company it's a smaller company.
But running a company and having a family, that's the thing that always throws me off.
Everything changes.
So I'm an early riser too.
I don't understand how people lift after 11 a.m. in the morning.
That seems like –
It's just against my religion at this point.
But, you know, that's my thing.
Just like you, I work out in the morning.
But finding those little moments of similarity and routine.
They are incredibly helpful for just high performance and mental health.
Honestly,
And we should also.
It's nice that you bring up the family part, because I do believe that that is extremely important.
For some people, it might not be family, but it's something else that is not necessarily business.
By the way, I don't believe into this dichotomy.
Oh, here's my business life and here's my personal life.
That's crap.
If you don't like your business life, I live by the principle, love it, change it, or leave it.
At the same time, talk about family for a while, and if you had my Yesterday was Father's Day.
It was wonderful, actually.
But even though I was very little at home, I was literally gone for years from Monday to Thursday evening, Friday.
I was not there.
But when I was there on the weekend, I always had some special time.
I call it special moments with the family where...
Cell phone away calls.
Unless something happened where people would get hurt, then I would take the call.
But other than that, forget it.
It has time.
I can do it later.
I can do it later.
But to have those special moments, I mean, it sounds more special than it is.
I mean, a special moment depending on how old your kids are.
Could be that you grab the basketball and one time we lived in a place where there was a basketball right around the corner, right in front of a little forest, you know.
I grabbed the basketball, the kids loved to play, and then we just walked over to the basketball.
Most of the time, I was the one who was then playing with it, but they enjoyed it.
I was there, they talked, you know.
So it's, it's good, or just having a conversation with them or what.
Whatever is going on, or something bigger.
You know, go to a nice concert, you know get some tickets that otherwise they would not have gotten.
So, but they will always talk about those memories and those things that uh, that they still see as special.
And also they saw that I was there.
I had the attention.
They had the attention of me.
Absolutely.
And I think when you especially when you're focusing on those relationships that we cherish the most, we have to be focused on creating those memories, because if you're going to ask yourself, oh, do you have a great relationship with your your your partner, your spouse, your kids?
A lot of times, or their kids asking about you as a father or a mother.
They're going to think back to the specific memories that they can access the easiest.
And for me as a father, I think about it in terms of highlights.
I'm trying to create an incredible highlight reel for my kids, like with intentionality.
And I think, if you go into these moments, that you're spending with them and saying how can I make this memorable?
How can I create a memory then that steps up our level of presence and interaction, because otherwise we just kind of go with the flow and it might just kind of be mundane and boring, which is okay.
That has its place.
But if we're trying to really deepen that relationship, they're going to look back on those memories.
So we can just try to be more intentional about creating those highlights.
At the same time, we also have to make sure that it's not what we see as a highlight, but what they perceive as a highlight.
And a highlight for them can be to just learn how to ride a bicycle from dad and not some professional teacher.
Right.
Because I've seen unfortunately way too often that families then hire some helping hands or buy expensive tickets and then they go there, but they are on the phone the whole time, right?
And the kids enjoy it, but the father has really not been with them.
So they are way too smart to not see whether you're really there for them.
Absolutely.
And this actually ties back to what we're talking about when it comes to the emotional side of what it requires to live a thriving successful, happy life.
Because we recognize that, when it comes to decision making, we need to be able to manage our emotions.
So we are the persons with the.
We are the person that has the hand on the steering wheel, driving the decisions, not letting the emotions drive the decisions.
At the same time, I recognize that a lot of times we put up emotional walls between us and the people that we care about the most.
And I see this a lot in the business world.
And so we can get locked in and focused on the person who's in front of us, the negotiation in front of us, the work that we have to do.
But then when we're at home, let's use the example that you gave.
When we're here trying to create meaningful memories for our children, we are creating these boundaries, these barriers, where we're saying okay, I'm going to bring in Exactly.
We put our phone up in front of us and we're not connecting with them.
How can we...
Go, develop the willingness or overcome the fear or develop the courage necessary to be willing to be vulnerable with the people that we love the most.
Well, there's two aspects, really.
The one is the question can you compartmentalize?
And that's a lot about mental energy, is about compartmentalization.
So you, not only literally but virtually you, close the door.
You know you have one part, which is your business side, where you deal with whatever is going on in your business, but then you're with with the family for very often much shorter time, but then be there for them at full.
So concentrate and free your mind, that you really listen to what your wife girlfriend, friends have to say and be there in the moment.
I think that technique of compartmentalizing, some people struggle with it.
I mean, it's like we all struggle with it, let's face it.
The monkey mind is there.
The monkey's dancing around in our heads.
They dance there all the time.
And we now tell the monkeys you know you monkey, shut up, go into that side of the door, which is closed for at least the next half an hour, you know.
And the other monkeys, they should be, that's nice, you know, they monkey around with me.
This is my private life.
That's fine.
But I think that compartmentalization is a big trick.
The other trick is what do you focus on?
Focus is also very, very big.
That's the story of the shoemaker.
I think it tells it in a very nice way.
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This is fundamental.
Where people see challenges, you see opportunities.
It's almost like a red light goes on when people come to be like, ah!
We get challenged, the logistics, blah, blah, blah.
You say, ah, that's interesting.
Does that only affect us?
No, no, it affects the whole industry.
Oh, wow, it affects the whole industry.
What does that mean for pricing, for instance?
Is there an opportunity here?
Can we partner with somebody?
What's in it for us?
Is there an opportunity that comes out of this crisis?
And I think that is a trait that many leaders have, I think, learned in most cases over their life, probably early on already.
And same is true, you can use that same thing in your family life.
It's powerful.
I love how we can take some of these skills from business and apply it to family life in a way that's meaningful, while at the same time recognizing which of the business skills should be set aside because it could actually get in the way.
And I love the idea of compartmentalizing because I recognize that when I'm with my boys I have a four-year-old and a nine-year-old now.
And the smaller I make my world when I'm with them, the better.
Because when I'm thinking about business, I'm thinking about politics, I'm thinking about news and all of the strategies that I want to implement.
Whenever I'm thinking about those things, I am not thinking about being present with my kids.
And that's one of the things that people really like lack an understanding of when it comes to the idea of focus, because focus isn't just about what we pay attention to.
It's also about what we strategically ignore and at what time we do it.
So I love the idea of compartmentalizing and giving ourselves permission to again strategically ignore some of the things that might be haunting us throughout the day.
In order to be more present with the people that we love day to day.
Yeah, so I looked into the aspect of purpose in depth in the book and, as it is a concept that's been around for such a long time and I wanted to sort it out.
And provide also some perspective on this.
And I have a chapter in there, which is what can we learn from the dying.
It's a bit morbid.
At the same time.
One of the craziest things about humans is we all know that we will die one day, but we all behave as though we will live forever.
Right.
So, and what is crazy about these things that people say on their deathbed, there's nobody who, at least in this study, has ever said I regret that I haven't spent more time in the office.
Not one.
But people do say I wish I had allowed myself to be happier.
Can you imagine this, isn't it?
Whenever I talk about this, I really get chills, to be honest.
Or I wish I had listened more to myself.
I wish I had allowed myself to be more myself.
Meaning that all these monkeys that talk to you, many of these monkey voices are not you.
And many people unfortunately believe that all these voices that they hear in their head are them.
In reality, it comes from wherever and a good exercise is to sort those things out.
Macy's say this, this is this I consider what I want to be.
And this is not what I want to be.
And, you know, go away.
Just go away.
So I think that's that is an important exercise.
Let's stay on this because I, too, got chills when you talked about it.
It's interesting.
It is shocking in the consistency of the results of the deathbed studies.
And for me, when I live my life, every day there's something that we could be afraid of.
But for me, I want to shift it from the fear of failure, or whatever that fear might be, to the fear of regret.
Because I don't want to be that person on the deathbed saying, I wish I would have done that thing.
And so when I think about you Klaus, you've had an incredible career and you also have a great relationship with your family.
You have balance.
When you think about at the end of your life, looking back, are there any things that you would have done differently?
There's always things that you would have done differently.
I think a person who says I wouldn't have done anything differently is not very truthful frankly, or is not smart enough to realize that we all make mistakes.
So both things are not quite flattering, I would say.
So no, you learn.
I mean, we learn from our mistakes.
Hopefully, we learn from mistakes from others.
There's a ton of things that I feel I could have done better.
At the same time, the real measure is not the hindsight judgment of what you could have done better.
It's more in the moment.
Did you give your best in that time the person you were and did you try hard enough?
And I would say I've always tried that approach.
However, there were moments when I didn't know what I didn't know or branched off at a place, where I misjudged this and didn't end up at the place that I wanted to end up with.
In most cases, as I said before, I've always lived by the principle I love it, I change it or I leave it.
That then meant if I concluded I can't change it, then I left and moved on and moved on in life.
And I've done that quite a bit in my life.
If you look at my brief CV, it looks very straight.
My real CV looks like the normal things in life.
It's like a roller coaster.
Very, very much a roll-off.
This is fascinating.
And I appreciate the vulnerability in your response, too, because you're right.
Everybody's human.
To err is human, as they say.
So we will have those mistakes.
And it comes down to how you performed in the moment with the tools and knowledge and intelligence that you had.
And sometimes we find ourselves in a position where, no matter how well we performed, based on our capacity and understanding, there was nothing we could do to overcome the challenge that we faced.
And for you in the business world, too, we we have to fit.
We have to work within markets.
We have to work within cultural shifts, tariffs, whatever the challenges might be.
A lot of it is outside of our control.
And so how do you manage to to to maintain high and healthy markets self-esteem, while at the same time performing to your best of your ability and recognizing that you may still fall short?
Well, there's this old saying you know lord, give me uh, i think, give me make me understand that I will have the courage to, to make changes and accept those things that I can't change, and the wisdom to distinguish between both of them.
And that will, that will always be, that will always be true.
And a part of it is.
I mean, First of all, I also believe that it's not just all that you need to do by yourself.
I'm a big believer that you should have a large network of people who you can tap into, whether you call them formally mentors or whether you just use them as mentors.
I've had a lot of people who I learned, in a positive and a negative way, what I wanted to be and what I didn't want to be, or how I wanted to conduct myself and how I didn't want to conduct myself.
I've always.
I mean, this is one of the things that give me energy frankly, because I learn every day.
Really, that's what really gives me energy.
But I wanted to also talk about this concept of fear, if you wanted to go back on that, because you mentioned this in passing.
And I think this is a very very, very important concept.
Many people are held back from moving or changing because they are afraid that they know the current state.
They don't know exactly what the future state will be.
And then in their mind they say there are all these many outcomes that could make life much, much worse for me.
And that's holding them back to changing anything.
And I have a great definition of fear.
And fear stands, it's an acronym in reality.
We think it's a word, it's an acronym.
And it stands for false expectation appearing real.
False expectation appearing real.
Because what I think almost all of us have experienced, you know, we have these moments where we came to the conclusion we're still going to go into this dark part, which we don't know how exactly the future is going to look like, assuming that it could be very gloomy.
And sometimes we are pushed into it.
And then we realize turned out quite well, and maybe years later we say, how lucky have we been.
My god, the best thing that ever happened to me.
Right, i got pushed into this, i went through it, i came out much stronger and i learned so much through this process.
So my that's why i think whenever people have this fear, I would say just have a switch going on saying fear.
Ah, fear.
Interesting.
False expectation appearing real.
And that, first of all, distances you emotionally right from what fear does.
It stops you otherwise from even considering to go further or closer to it.
It allows you then to chop it apart and say, oh, what is it really?
What's the monkey that's just telling me I should be afraid of things?
What is that monkey just telling me?
Why?
Let's just separate this.
Write it on a piece of paper.
How likely is this?
How can I mitigate this?
What would happen if this would happen?
Is there a plan B?
Could I do this?
Do I have, or is it all going to happen and I'm going to come out definitely very, very badly.
And there are some areas like that you know, if you whatever I don't even want to talk about, but in most cases so you fear the fire obviously, but in most cases you realize you know what that might be not that bad.
Maybe the outcomes are better than the options of.
The outcomes are better than what I thought it is and maybe I should at least.
Yes,
And Klaus, I'm noticing something.
And tell me what you think about this, because I think it might be two or three times I've heard you say this.
So something bad might appear or appearing bad at the beginning.
So you have that feeling of fear.
And the response that you had was, hmm, interesting.
And it seems like curiosity is a foil that you use a lot of times to elevate your thinking and overcome these emotional challenges.
Can you go deeper into that?
Well, it's first, yes.
And I see humor as an uplifting way to cope with the craziness of human life.
And you should not take everything too seriously.
Otherwise, you might get immediately depressed if you attach some Some humor to it, that's good.
To attach humor to it, you have to remove yourself from the situation.
You have to become like somebody who's an observer.
And the very fact when my mind says interesting, I have become an observer.
If you're in it, you would never say interesting.
You would say painful.
Oh, I got to get out of here.
Run, run, run, run, run.
But if you can say interesting, you are an observer and you say, oh, two cars just crashed.
Oh, that looks bad.
Interesting.
I love this.
This is great because our framework for difficult conversations.
But internal difficult conversations and external conversations is compassionate curiosity.
So acknowledge and validate emotions, get curious with compassion and then joint problem solving.
So it's cool because essentially that's what you've been doing internally there too.
So you're saying, okay, what am I feeling?
I'm feeling fear.
That's interesting.
Well, what am I afraid of?
I'm going to actually go through that and then figure out what to do.
So it's cool to see that the framework in general being utilized at this level.
And then the description that you gave is so powerful.
Learning how to get a new perspective by becoming the observer, but first removing ourselves from the situation.
And there's a there's an old school um humor equation and they say it's pain plus distance equals humor, like if you, if i, get hurt right now it's not funny, But now we put some time into the future.
It's like, OK, now I can look back and find some humor into it.
So I think it's.
It is both a tool and a signal, because if you can find humor in the moment, that means that you have given yourself distance.
That's the signal.
But it's also a tool because it's like action.
Using a defense mechanism with intentionality, without it tipping into an unhealthy coping mechanism that actually does damage.
True, true.
By the way, one thing I saw that you also touched upon earlier was this aspect of how do you deal with other individuals and this aspect of respect, which which i, i feel, to be honest i, i mean, i feel that we can't even talk about it enough these days right, because i always say I have had to let go people many, many people.
And I tried at least, even though I knew it was a very difficult communication with them.
I always did it myself.
And I tried to start with emphasizing the human element of the relationship.
And making sure that there is a human who I very much enjoy in many, many ways.
And then there is a certain performance that is needed in a certain job, in a certain role.
And the performance does not fit.
The performance of the individual does not fit the requirements in that role.
And therefore, I cannot allow that situation to continue.
But it has absolutely nothing to do with my liking of the person as a human.
And I think that this aspect of how do we deal even with difficult things in a respectful way is extremely important in your direct life, particularly when you're a leader, because you are a role model.
You are a role model.
And I do believe society needs, a sophisticated society has to have respect.
I could not agree more.
We have a listener question.
I was recently promoted to lead a cross-functional innovation team inside a large global company.
It's an exciting opportunity, but I'm running into real resistance.
My team includes people from different departments marketing, product ops and even RD, and many of them are older than me and more experienced in the company.
Some are friendly, but others seem threatened or skeptical of the whole project.
I've tried bringing them together around a shared goal, highlighting our mission and the potential business impact, but it still feels like pushing a boulder uphill.
They show up to meetings but don't really contribute or worse, they sabotage ideas with passive resistance.
I know the idea we're working on has legs.
I believe in it, but I'm starting to doubt whether I'm the right person to lead it or if I'll ever win their trust.
How do you build buy-in from people who don't report to you and who may not even want to be on the team in the first place?
Thanks, Alex.
This is a loaded question, so let me start with it.
So I think it is important to build a case for change.
The very fact that you as a leader, or somebody in the upper echelon says that you've got to change is, in many ways, not sufficient for an individual to give their all.
So one positive thing is if you can show the individuals what value it would create for society or for the the future of the company.
I'm not talking about economic indicators, but in the medical industry, for instance, saving more lives and creating new ways to heal or or having safer environments for the employees.
I mean, if you have something that emotionally positively, they can bind as achieving with this.
If the goal is you cut down 20% of the cost, you know what?
It's hard to get emotional over this other than getting depressed, right?
So, okay, that's one thing.
The second thing is to make the case for changes and creating a burning platform.
And what I say, creating a burning platform, how do you do that?
You basically... check what is the competition doing.
Because, in the end, to win is not about the performance of the company or your business in isolation.
You win against others.
And if your customers are walking away from you and others are eating your cake, Then obviously it's code red and you must be doing, or they must be doing, something right and you must be missing out on certain things.
So if you have stories, I'm a big fan of go see your customers.
This could also be internal customers, you know, if you have an internal customer.
If you are an internal service provider, but understand what do the customers want?
How does winning for them look like?
Understand how does their value chain look like?
Can I provide something that makes their life easier, brings down their costs, gets them faster, can allow them to provide something else that they don't have today?
That's the other thing, and that's the competition side.
And that's also the customer side.
So those two things.
What does the customer want?
What is the competition doing?
And tell stories.
In the end, people want the story around the fireplace.
I always say it's my Saturday morning breakfast question whether you've done a good job.
And what do I mean with that?
Saturday morning, those who have have spouses or families.
You're at home, you're eating breakfast and and the ideal one is your kids are asking you daddy, we haven't seen you at all this week.
What, what have you done?
You say oh, i am part of this enormously cool group that is called target 20.
Target 20.
What does target 20?
Target 20 means we're bringing the cost down by 20 this year.
All right daddy okay, and that's why you've not been here all day and missed my games and haven't brought me to school.
Or you say hey, you know you can't.
I am part of this team That allows us to bring these goods to more people because we make it more affordable.
We make it much more affordable and we can allow people who today cannot pay for it.
And our product is so good.
We would like to bring it also to more people.
So we are trying to... bring the price down, right?
For this we need to be more working on our cost structure And all performance, you know.
So that's what daddy has been.
Oh, really?
Your widget now is more available.
So I can tell Johnny next door, who was always saying your dad's product has been too expensive, that you're coming with another version.
Yeah, you can go and tell that, you know.
So that's my Saturday morning question.
I mean, which camp are you in?
If you're in camp one, then you will never be able to enthusiast your team.
There are obviously other aspects.
I mean, you might have not the right people on the team.
Trust is a very, very important element.
If there's no trust between...
To have a high-performance team, you need five things.
We need trust, capability of coping with conflict, clear commitment from everybody I'm in accountability.
If I screwed up, I screw up and I'm going to change it, and a clear understanding of what the results are going to look like.
You have no idea how often I have CEOs who complain about, like the listener, that their teams are not following.
And then when I ask them, well, what is winning looking like, right?
And in soccer, it's clear.
You shoot the ball there.
In tennis, it's clear.
The point goes in.
It's a point.
But in business, the one person says, we need to improve our cash flow.
The next one says, no, it's all about growth.
You know, you ask the top 10 people, you get 15 answers, you know.
And so that's very, very important.
So it's these five things only, trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, and results, clarity.
That's it.
And that is what all of the high-performance teams are doing.
Incredible.
And what I love about this is the challenge to essentially sharpen the sword.
We come up with these arguments and oftentimes we don't challenge ourselves on as to how we can make the argument more compelling or create a better story.
And you're so right.
If we're just talking about it in a mechanical type of way.
We make it so sterile that people can't even connect to it.
But if we can say this is how we're really affecting and changing people's lives.
I mean, you create a story so good that it's hard not to want to get on board.
You have to create meaning.
You have to create meaning for people.
It comes back to the respect aspect.
If they feel that they are just mechanical robots and exchangeable, or if they feel that hey, I got this purpose in business.
I like to be the one helping that.
And that would be a great thing that I can tell my family or my mother.
Mother is wondering why you never call.
Why is son never calling?
Sure you haven't had that before, right?
Right.
I get that all the time.
Klaus, this has been fantastic.
I really appreciate you and the way that you have brought these conversations about meaning, purpose and energy into a field that can often push those things aside, even though they're fundamental to our humanity.
And quality of life.
So I appreciate you for that.
And then also before you go.
I know you have a lot of irons in the fire all the time, but I want to give you an opportunity to let folks know how they can get in touch with you and how they can learn more about the work that you do.
Leading to Thrive is the name of the book.
And there's also a website called leadingtothrive.com.
So there you can find a ton of other things and also way how to get in touch with me and happy to continue the conversation.
On social media.
I am basically active on LinkedIn, but not on other platforms.
That's because I I mean, I can only do so many things in my life and this this is meant I don't.
It's not for me.
It's not that I want to be have a professional career as a book writer.
You know, I have many other careers that I enjoy a lot, But for me it's really important that the concept gets out.
And if I can help one additional person to avoid this having to being found in the hallway unconscious, that would already be worth having written it.
Amazing.
Klaus, thank you so much for joining us.
Really appreciate it.
Pleasure.
Amazing.
Good deal.
Okay.
And then Simone has one more question.
As I understand, energy is contagious.
So we can spread our energy and infect someone else with our energy.
But I think that there are people that it's just impossible.
It's very difficult to spread our energy with certain kind of people.
So how do we know in advance what people can we infect and what people, as you say, change it or just leave it?
How do we know?
There's almost no way you can tell.
I mean, you can slowly crank it up.
You also have to keep in mind that some people feel overburdened overpowered, when you come with too much energy.
So I think you have to be careful in how you crank it up, but a lot is about your emotional intelligence, sensing the other side, which is not just true for energy, it's true for everything.
At the same time.
I think Simone, on the first recognition that you said, that you realized that Basically all leaders have that.
I agree with you, because my definition of leadership is about making other people do what you want them to do at the time you want them to do it.
And so a large element of this is the energy that you have because it's needed to energize them.
Energize them because leadership is about an action.
And very often, yes, it starts with the belief before the action.
But in the end, leadership is about the action.
If you as a leader are not capable on getting execution, you are a failed leader.
So, you have to energize them, you have to make them do what you want them to do.
And that's the value-free definition of leadership.
Unfortunately, there's good leaders or great leaders who have led to the wrong course, and there are great leaders who have followed the right course.
But the principle has still been the same, Simon.
They need energy.
Absolutely.
But then the question of how you operate is more a question of the other side.
So you feel it out.
So it's your emotional intelligence that feels it out.
Very often you just have to break in.
The very fact that people are not responding does not mean that they are not open, that they are ignoring you or opposing you.
Very often it is that they have an inferiority complex and they don't want to show it.
So in this case I think Kwame said that before you can probably not just be humble, but start with sharing a story where you screwed up, where they suddenly feel like, oh my God, it's not just me who screws up all the time, but this gentleman next to me is actually making fun of himself or herself, and that allows me probably to open up and then say, oh really.
Wow, I didn't dare to bring this up, but something similar like that just happened to me and I wanted to speak about it.
I've seen that really, really often, but in the but you have to start.
You have to start figuring it out.
I don't know whether that's uh helpful.
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