Second Crack – The Leadership Podcast (Episode 47)

This transcript is AI-generated and may contain typos and errors.

[00:00] Michael Andrei: Winning and losing? The question is here, like,when you win all the time are you a winner? And also if you lose all the time, are you automatically a loser or can you be also a winner when you lose? The big picture is consistency in my opinion. If you try to find the beauty of the way in it and the, the beauty of the process, I think that's already winning for me and this is giving me the joy and happiness in the end. Dear listeners, a warm welcome to a brand new episode of Second Crack the Leadership Podcast. If you're new to the show, this is where we explore everyday leadership dilemmas and paradoxes, and where we invite you to self-reflect. I am Gerrit Pelzer. I work as an executive coach and I bring to my coaching a combination of Western science and Asian wisdom.

[01:05] Gerrit Pelzer: Joining me today, as always is my dear friend and business partner, Martin Aldergard Martin specializes in driving change and transformation within organizations, and what we both have in common is that we always put people at the center of our work. Hi Martin.

[01:23] Martin Aldergård: Hi, Gerrit. It's time for our monthly conversation and today about volleyball and professional sports.

[01:32] Gerrit: Yes, today I am particularly excited because we have a very special guest on the show and it's special for many reasons. For one, we both grew up in the same town Düren in Germany. Second, our guest is the first professional athlete on our show. And what a few of our listeners might not know is that Düren has an amazing volleyball team, the SWD Powervolleys they play in the German Bundesliga.

[02:03] That's the highest national league here, obviously. And so we are honored to welcome the immediate past captain of the team and now athletic coach, Michael Andrei. Michael we are super happy to have you here today. A warm welcome to you too. 

[02:21] Michael: Hi guys, and thanks that I can be part of it.

[02:27] Gerrit: Happy to have you here. Michael I already mentioned your role as a captain of the power volleys, but your career goes far beyond that. You joined the German national team at the young age of 18, and you went on to win third place at the 2014. World Championships and second place at the European Championships, besides Germany, you have also played professionally in Luxembourg and France.

[02:57] And now while you've retired from your active role as a player, you continue to support the team in Düren as the athletic coach, and people can also hire you as a personal trainer. On top of that, you are happily married to another accomplished athlete. We were just talking about the Iron Man or Iron Woman to be more precise, and together you have a wonderful daughter. have I left anything out, anything you would like to add? 

[03:26] Michael: No, you're good. you summarize it pretty good.

[03:30] Gerrit: Okay, so our listeners may be surprised because typically we focus on leadership challenges in the corporate world. But of course, leadership plays a big role in professional sports as well. And Martin, myself and our listeners will be curious to hear about the challenges you have been facing as the captain of a team that's been competing at the highest level. And I would like to start with this: yesterday I spoke with a former CEO and I mentioned our interview today and he said, you know, I can't imagine how it is dealing with this transparency and this permanent pressure when you're playing in front of thousands of people at the World Championship. Everybody sees what you're doing. They see not only the aces, they see the mistakes. Everybody can see the results. And as a CEO, okay, you are also in the spotlight and people will monitor the share price, but it's not like all your actions take place in a, in a fish bowl behind glass wall. So how do you deal with all this pressure?

[04:37] Michael: I mean, I, I can tell one story from the European Championship 2015. It was in Bulgaria and Sophia. It was in front of I think 13,000 people, against Bulgaria the first game. And that was the loudest atmosphere I ever have played in. And you could not hear each other on the court. It was pretty crazy. Also like communicating in the same time on the court and off the court in timeouts and so on, it was almost not possible. And well, I, I also made one stupid line mistake, for example. I never did that before, but I was overwhelmed in the start of the game. So that was really tricky. I was around 29. So during the game, I was grooving into it. I, I tried to be more in the tunnel and I think finding the flow to get into the tunnel that was helping me over my career a lot. When you're in a zone, you don't realize the people so much outside. And this is coming for sure with preparation before or with the trust to your teammates. And if you have a good inner circle in the team, it's way easier to deal with it as a team. But yeah, it's for sure it wasn't easy.

[06:07] Martin: So this, this is interesting. When you're talking, it seems like it's coming more from inside. 

[06:13] Michael: Yeah, right. The external pressure it's bigger from the from the outside, then from the inside. For me I didn't try to think too much about negative outcome and about the expectations. I tried to think more about, okay we say it, it's easy, think about point by point. But this is, this is the hardest, hardest thing. Like also control your frustrations if, if it's not going your way, like being empathic to your team. There are a lot of emotions going on during, during a game and controlling emotions is sometimes pretty healthy, but sometimes you just need to let them out. For me, it was like when there were crucial moments and I had a good moment and I made a big stuff block or something, or a big point, I was letting everything out and it was coming like out of the gut. That was pure. But also when the opponent made some good things, I try to be more poker player. You know, don't try to react too much on it and being a little bit more composed and don't show the, the enemy that you're, that you're weak at the moment. That, that has a lot to do with body language and eye contact, which I was pretty good at. But other, other players struggle with that big time.

[07:49] Martin: There is so many things to unpack here. I'm picking up on your role as both a player, because of course you have your individual game, when you are in your individual zone, but now also as a captain, the leader of the team, and your body language and how you communicate confidence to your own team and also the energy towards your, competition, right.

[08:12] Michael: Yeah, it's funny when I was younger, I was in teams, I was not the captain. So that changed a lot from the perspective kind of because I did not have too much pressure for me, like taking care of the others so much. As a captain, you are more in the position that even when, when you're good, you gotta be the shepherd. You know, try to have all the sheep around you, and when things are bad that's usually the moment when the sheeps are trying to go away, you know, out of the stall. And you, you gotta try to get them physically, but also with eye contact, sometimes a smile trying to lose the tension. When there's tension in the room. And also when you have the feeling it's too quiet on the court energy wise, you gotta push a little bit more. And I sometimes I felt myself, I was more a cheerleader to the team than sometimes involved into the game. For sure this is tricky because like you said, Martin, you gotta concentrate also on your own performance, individual performance. And that's, that's a fine line sometimes.

[09:27] Gerrit: Can you explain a little bit, you said already sometimes you need to push a little bit more, sometimes you need to hold the sheep together. It, it sounds a little bit abstract for me as somebody who never played volleyball, outside of school. Do you have some practical examples, what do you do specifically?

[09:45] Michael: What we do is usually coming after a point, either you win it or you lose it, you come together in a huddle. This is where you can get the contact, the physical contact, which is really important because when somebody makes a mistake he feels, feels a little bit, yeah, some feel shame, some feel embarrassment, some are angry on themselves. And I think if you can get in contact with those guys or you make by yourself a mistake and the guys come to contact you, it released the stress a little bit. Also, I said, the eye contact and maybe some little words, fine words, what I said, it wasn't possible in Bulgaria which would make it really hard. But for example, when we were playing in, in our home arena the atmosphere was just right and you still had the chance to make some little adjustments. And in the end you got a, a game is really long and you can adjust pretty good. And you can still win it when you are down 2-0 and everything is against you.

[10:56] Gerrit: And, and you mentioned something about eye contact. What, what does that mean? 

[11:03] Michael: Well first of all, I, I was really good in playing with my eyes also against the opponent. So my thing was picking one opponent player all the time. Mostly it was the, the same position I was playing against. And I was looking in his eyes a lot.

[11:23] Gerrit: You stared him down. 

[11:24] Michael: I stared him down. And I have dogs, you know, and with my younger dog, he is a male dog. Sometimes I stare at him and I wait until he is looking away. There's a thing of domination also, and you can play with it a little bit and, and you can see a lot in the eyes of people, fear, insecureness, et cetera.

[11:48] Gerrit: Interesting because I never thought about that in volleyball because you don't have any physical contact with, with the opponent team, so that's really interesting. 

[11:58] Martin: I'm thinking about the importance of body language in leadership. If the eye contact can also switch so quickly from being an eye contact of domination, to also being eye contact of confirmation, of acceptance, of building trust and a positive relationship. And, and of course, it's not only about eyes, it can be in term of your voice, in term of your posture, right? And how aware we need to be as leaders. I imagine you on the court, you need to switch, you can stare down and try to dominate and bring fear to your opposition. But then if you have a guy that made a acceptable mistake on the court quickly, switching your body language to not building fear and domination, right.

[12:49] Michael: Yeah, that, that I think as older you get as an athlete, it was my case as, as more I had the feeling on the court, okay which kind of emotion I need to use right now. I think in private world this can be also sound pretty plastic, you know, pretty mechanic using your emotions. In the private world, it's, it's better to just give your, honest emotion where you are. But in, in the corporate world, but also in the sports world, it's, it's really important to be aware of your emotion and how to use them. Because like you said, a lot of people look at you and if you're not aware of your body language, of your emotions, of your voice, etc people could have a complete different picture of you then you think.

[13:43] Gerrit: Hmm. 

[13:44] Martin: And, and this is something that we speak about many times, Gerrit, and I use this example of stopping before you enter a new meeting for instance. You come from one meeting room and then you enter another meeting with a different team and they haven't met you yet today. And you need to be self-aware. What do you project? And as you're saying, they all, they are all going to look at you when you enter that meeting room. And what energy do you bring there?

[14:12] Gerrit: Yeah, and it also reminds me, Michael of what you said before, right? When there is this, enormous pressure, thousands of people around you, it's so noisy that you can't even communicate with your teammates. I think that generally emotions are also contagious. So if one person in the team, especially when you're the captain, you get nervous. And it will show, not only through maybe mistakes, but as you said, through your body language, then the rest of the team also gets nervous. But it could be that maybe, half of the team is nervous or, it might take just one person, especially the captain, if he or she can then demonstrate calm and confidence it'll be contagious in a positive way for, for the players. Would you agree with, with this theory? 

[15:01] Michael: Yes, of course. I had, when I was like 28 that was my prime. And I had a lot of anxious moments before games, especially in front of a lot of people. And I was working with breathing exercises and try to breathe my heart rate down basically. And, and I think this is what you can use in, in every kind of job and when you're anxious, when you're afraid, if you're nervous there are tricks to calm you down. Also what I did sometimes is like putting my my face into cold water. There, there's a reflex in your brain that you can use that when you have a panic attack, for example. And I guess this is happening also in pressure situations in office or when there's a lot of responsibility going on. So you gotta deal first with your, with your inner problems. And then if you're good with them then you're way easier when the pressure is there.

[16:08] Gerrit: The, the inner reminds me of a book, The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey, and he actually made up this formula. It's performance equals potential minus the interference. Right. And I think, okay if I don't wanna compare tennis and and volleyball, but let's say if you are able to serve perfectly in, in your training why don't you do it all the time in a game? Well it's the so-called interference that gets into way, but that's usually nothing physical. It's what's happening in your head, right. And so if you can develop this, then you, you can, let's say you can utilize your full potential at least more often. Which then also leads back to the emotions. Because the emotions can get into the way and you, you can't turn them off. You can only deal with them. But you said something before, which reminded me of a LinkedIn post I saw from you recently where you were talking about not taking yourself so seriously. And, I, I was wondering if you could talk a bit about this. So what, what does it mean for you, and perhaps more importantly, how do you do that? 

[17:22] Martin: Well, first of all when you make a mistake, for example in a game and two, three thousand people are watching it. You have the feeling like I said before, you think about like being ashamed and whatever. But from the three thousand people, maybe only a thousand people realize that you made a mistake first of all. Second of all they will forget this mistake pretty fast. And you gotta realize that you're not the center of the universe. That it's not about you in the end, it's about the team, it's about the energy, it's about winning for sure. But it's not about you. You gotta put your ego beside even  when you get subbed-out or not playing and so on. Team comes first, you gotta try everything to help the team. And even if you're not playing, you can have a big impact on the team in supporting your teammates, et cetera. But I'm, I'm thinking, and I added a but, because to me, taking things seriously comes very closely with being extremely professional, being able to perform at a high level. So if I'm not taking myself too seriously, what do I need to take really serious.

[18:43] Michael: I think that in a game there's room of like having a little bit fun, being a little silly sometimes, but also understanding when do I need to be serious right now. I think you can play with it a little bit, for sure you shouldn't, should not make yourself a clown there. But on the other side if you can be just yourself in the moment and don't think about what other people think about you, if you can do that and a lot of young players have problems with that then you perform the best, in my opinion.

[19:23] Gerrit: Yeah. And you mentioned also before keeping the big picture in mind and I don't know if my interpretation is correct, but I would see it in two ways. Like this one mistake or this one match if it goes wrong, it's not the end of the world. There is maybe the longer competition the whole season. But also besides, maybe in your case, the volleyball, there's also other perhaps more important aspects of your life, like your family, right. 

[19:54] Michael: Yeah, I said that to a lot of people. I have a mantra and when, when things are going down, I, I count until 10. Try to breathe, and I think also about what, what's the worst possible thing, what can happen? I will not die here, the sun will go up the next day, even if we lose, my family will still love me, and my teammates will still respect me and my team. The other things are just not interesting and not relevant.

[20:27] Gerrit: Yeah, that's really beautiful. And I feel reminded of, my, I could call him spiritual ta, spiritual teacher Thich Nhat Hanh who says: If you have a conflict with somebody, especially a loved one, your, your wife, your husband, your partner, your children, it can get very excited. But then if you take a moment and think about, well, how will we both be in 300 years from now? You're gone, right? So you suddenly put things into perspective and that can be also a nice start to resolve a conflict. 

[21:03] Martin: I want to add a different perspective or perhaps looping back a little bit. I'm thinking in the corporate world, results is key. You can, you can lose a game, but you cannot repeat losing for a very long time. And I think it's the same in professional sports, you are only as good as your last game. So if we lose a game, or in the corporate world, if we lose a quarter or if we lose results over a year, coming back to the basic process and having the discipline, for instance, in term of our practice, how we work off the court, so to say, when there is not game day, that is then critical. To to be serious about practicing, to be serious about showing up, to put in the hours to become better. And then when we keep working on these, results eventually will come. So we don't need to worry about losing a game or two or three, if we put in the practice hours. 

[22:09] Gerrit: I, I totally agree with what you say. There is a saying, trust process. A lot of teams are in, in the NBA, for example, are saying that they're investing in a process and eventually it'll happen, or, well, the hope is there that eventually it'll happen. But there are a lot of little factors, for example, how is the competition working, how are the other teams working? So you gotta also look like what are the other teams doing, what you're not doing? Are they doing things better? Are they working harder? Are they working smarter? Are they more talented? Et cetera. And like you said, the big picture is in the end it starts with the recruitment, getting the right team together. And I think in a corporate world it's the same. If you have about one, two players, they can be the team cancer. One or two guys who spread the cancer they can finish the whole season pretty fast.Even if one, one player has the wrong wife or one girlfriend and she is poisoning the atmosphere around the environment, it can have a negative effect. And this we already try to research in the recruitment when we, and I'm also involved in it, to find the right characteristic of the player for your team what's needed. And this, this is tricky. Yeah, it's, it's a wonderful example. I think I, I see so many parallels, many areas also in the corporate world. Number one, we often think of events and actions that they take place in isolation. But in reality, it's a so-called systemic issue. So whatever I do as an individual may have an impact on the other people around me, the whole organization, business results. And I've also seen myself that sometimes people cause trouble, they cause disharmony, they're not really team players. And then you try to work around this. You, you try to develop them further, but the real change happens when you assign them to another role or when they leave the organization. 

[24:32] And the last aspect here is the importance of recruitment. I see that in many organizations, in the corporate world, the recruitment process is not taken seriously enough. There may be not much preparation and succession planning, and then somebody leaves, somebody dies in worst case, and then we need to replace them quickly. But we haven't really figured out who and, and besides the professional knowledge, who are we looking for in terms of personality. So what you're saying there from the sports world makes also perfect sense for me in the business world. 

[25:12] Michael: Yeah, if I can add something. We are pretty, the volleyball world is pretty small, we have a lot of agents, for example, they're taking care of the players. So you have information already about the players, you know the player, but you can make a lot of background checks. This in the corporate world maybe not so easy, especially when you are in a business interview. Everyone is talking about what they can do and they will do it and yeah, for sure. You have a little bit more proof in a pro sport world because okay, if you take a young talent it's a gamble for sure, but if you are taking like a 25-year-old player and you know this player changed every year club, you know, okay, that might cause trouble because this guy is not easy.

[26:05] Martin: Now, if you have recruited, so to say the right people, but nobody's perfect and everybody needs continuously to develop themselves, so this matter of giving feedback, and in, in sports and in volleyball, when everything is so transparent, it becomes obvious when somebody doesn't perform as expected. So how, how do you deal with feedback and, and how open and how direct can you be? 

[26:31] Michael: This depends a lot on the coach and coaching staff. Because those guys set the right frame of the environment. And feedback and criticism is really important in our sports because if you cannot handle that, you not belong there, in my eyes. When I came first time to a national team, the first thing what I got was you're doing this wrong, you're doing this wrong, you're doing this wrong. And I was thinking why am I here when I do all, all this stuff wrong? But when I realized, hey, they just want to make me better and try to just filter everything out, what is not so good, we tried to build the foundation a little bit stronger to make myself better. And, and they wanted to challenge me with that. I was really responsive on that, I liked the challenge. If somebody says to me, I don't believe you can do it, I'm fired up and I wanna show that I can do it even better. 

[27:33] Not everyone is reacting like this. So it's a fine line of understanding also the athlete. Like you said before, Martin, sometimes it can be a troublemaker, but a troublemaker can also fit into the team if the acceptance is there of the team. Because you want also character on the team. You want energy, you want also a guy who is fearless, et cetera, but he can cause trouble. And I'm coming back now on being the shepherd: if you can hold it all together, no problem. But if this guy is spreading negativity, this can cause a lot of.

[28:19] Martin: I think this is so interesting and important, and one thing, every player is individual. They have their own drives, their own ways to be motivated. So your feedback, what I'm hearing from you, needs to be tailored to each player, to draw out the best energy from them. The second thing is, of course, it depends on the situation. Sometimes you can be more forgiving and saying it's okay, and sometime you got to really criticize the person and showing that you're really disappointed and this person, you know the guy can do better. Sometimes you just need to look at the guy and the guy knows by himself.

[29:03] Gerrit: I mean, feedback is so immensely important in any area of life not only in sports, it's in the business world, but also in your private life. And I liked exactly what you said before. I always say: also when feedback is at times unpleasant, it's always an opportunity to improve.

[29:22] Martin: But in the corporate world, I think feedback is still quite rare and many leaders are scared of giving feedback. It's like we shouldn't criticize people, we only talk positive, even this what they call the hamburger technique, you know, say something good, say the bad, and end with something good to kind of try to, to make it smoother. Why is it so difficult when we know it is good? 

[29:50] I don't know. I can talk about one coach, his name is Tommi Tiilikainen, it's a Finnish guy. He was one year my coach. Then he went to Japan and South Korea, made a good career. And what he did was like every month, one time, he was individually sending a message to every player. And then the message was: what was good, what was bad, what can we change, how can we change it. And he asked that feedback for himself which was first when I was thinking, okay will, will it harm his authority? Hmm. It didn't, it was working out because he, he was in touch with the players, he knew what was important for the others and he was reacting on it. So of course you gotta speak a lot and so on, but sometimes you don't have the time to speak all the time about your personal feelings and whatever. But if you have uh, a thing once a month coming back all the time and everyone is kind of sincere about it and and honest, then I think this could work really good. Hmm. and a feedback culture is nothing that you just switch on, right? You, you practice it and make it a habit. And then people getting comfortable and they see both the, they see the positive side of the feedback, not only the scary, negative side of it.

[31:18] Michael: Right. 

[31:21] Gerrit: In our preparation, Michael, you said something like 'volleyball is the game of mistakes'. And uh, we touched on it briefly, but I wonder if there's anything you would like to add, why is the game of mistakes?

[31:35] Michael: Um, there are a lot of mistakes happening in a volleyball game, there are between fifteen and sixty mistake what can happen. There is no game you do zero mistakes. And I had one coach Vitalainen(?) and he was making a presentation before every national team starts with the new players who came first time to national team. And the presentation was about acceptable and unacceptable mistakes. What was for the leader acceptable and what, what was not acceptable? For sure when a mistake happens it's not good. But if you can also think about, 'okay I did a mistake, but yeah I had the right to do it. I need to kind of risk it and so on', and it was like nobody is kind of frustrated about it. But if you do like the unacceptable mistakes too often, you get a tough time there. 

[32:38] Martin: I had this question, andthe limit between being fearless in the court, performing at your maximum level, in the flow without having second thoughts, versus being scared of making mistakes, which will hold you back in all kinds of ways, right? 

[32:55] I had in, in the back of my head, in every game I had a big error management going on, it was like a big Excel table. It was like, okay, I have, now you talk about plus minus statistics, your points you made divided against your mistakes. And if you are plus, I don't know, five or plus ten, hey, you are in a position to make a little bit more mistakes, but also you gotta look on a team. If the team is making five service errors in a row and you are the next server, maybe you won't put too many risk into your service. So you gotta find a little feeling about the whole mistake thing. When is the right time to make a mistake or not? Hmm mm-hmm. And, and work on your basics so that, that you get the margin. If you have a margin of error, you have a buffer, you are five points plus, you can push the limit more. But when you are below, you know get back to basics, don't try to, to do the fancy stuff, just get the first serve in. This analogy also translates very well to the corporate world. We might have our established business, which is the cash cow, that's all about operating a process, getting the basics right. And then we have other parts of our business where we can innovate, we can do new products that might fly or not fly. Yeah, because we know we have the existing business there that's supporting the risks we take 

[34:31] Yeah. There, there's one thing, for example last season we had one game, we we did in the first set we did two service mistakes and two aces, but we did not win the set. And then in the third set, we made eight service mistakes and only one ace. But we won the set. So you, you can make mistakes, but can still win. And, and this is the beauty of it. it depends also on your opponents and on your, on the people around you. What, who are against you, but also on your competition and so on. And you gotta find a way of still winning when you're doing a mistake. hmm. Playing a safe does not always win you the game, right?

[35:21] Gerrit: Yeah. Yeah. I also like the description of acceptable and unacceptable mistakes. And I think we are sometimes not so clear about that in the world of business. First of all, I think almost every organization every company will tell you, they say: yeah, yeah, you know, of course people make mistakes, it's human and then the key is to learn from it. But many times it is like people, you know, there, there is a mistake, but people still get punished for it, even though before say it's okay, but we just learn from it. And I like actually this distinction with the unacceptable mistakes. I myself worked in manufacturing in the chemical industry and safety is the highest priority, right? So everything that's related to safety, there is zero tolerance for mistakes because it can cost lives. And again, maybe leaders, business leaders may want to be clear also about the different levels of mistakes that are acceptable, but, but bottom line is by playing it safe, you can't win.

[36:26] Martin: Hmm. I wanted to come back to this word winning and then contrast it versus losing and defeat. What does winning mean?

[36:37] Michael: Well, winning is, is a funny thing. Like winning is above everything, like you wanna go into the season and win a title. If I will be like our club the last years all around like position three and position five, six the last ten years. So but before every season we went there and said, Hey, as a team, we wanna win, we, we wanna get a title. We wanna work for something with a really, really successful output in the end. Even if we know that the other teams might have more money, have a good environment. But yeah we try to work a little bit more on a team idea and just to make a difference.

[37:20] But winning and losing the, the question is here, like,when you win all the time, are you a winner? And also, if you lose all the time, are you automatically a loser or can you be also a winner when you loseAnd, and that's the question here. I was thinking about that really often because when I lost for example with my team, a cup final recently, I could have cried and having a pity on myself and whatever. No but I, I had the urge to step up and protect my team and try to be together, think about the future, take it as motivation maybe for bigger things. And I think if you find the right mindset, you can still be the winner when you're losing. When you, for example, like we said before, trust the process and think a little bit more in the long term. And also some teams are winning all the time because they have maybe five times more money and they can get freaky players and we can build the environment way easier. But are they winners or are they lucky in the end? That's the question I wanna put in a room here, because the right answer for that is kind of hard.

[38:40] Gerrit: Yeah, this is actually the statement I have the strongest reaction towards to today. This, the winning all the time does not necessarily make you a winner, and losing does not make you a loser. And I see this a lot in many areas: in politics, in business where people want to win at all costs. But it also raises for me the question and what legacy do you want to leave in fifty years from now, a hundred years from now? What do you wanna be remembered for? And we see I'm coming back to the pressure on people. And I see now the, the broader society, especially young people with social media under pressure to always be in a good mood, to be rich, to look good, to be active in sports. And when we look at other so-called successful people, take maybe the music industry, there's a lot of drug abuse, there's suicide. So what is it at the end of the day that really counts or maybe coming back to what you said earlier, what's really the big picture? 

[39:45] here 

[39:46] Michael: The big picture is consistency in my opinion. You were talking about a lot of extremes. Winning is an extreme, but if you put the bar a little bit lower, for example we three won already today because we woke up. We are healthy, you all guys look healthy, I feel healthy. So that's already a win. So put the bar from your goals a little bit lower and go with this little, like in a cycling sport is like the little ettapes, like the checkpoints, try to reach the checkpoints to win in the end, everything. But if you only think about, for example, I want to be a millionaire, and when you reach that goal, are you happy or are other guys happy? Usually not, so because they want more, they want more, they want more. But if you try to find the, the beauty of the way in it and the, the beauty of the process, I think that's already winning for me and this is giving me the joy and happiness in the end.

[40:51] Martin: That's absolutely fantastic Michael and I think that almost sounds some very powerful closing remarks and I think it's time to wrap up today's episode, which we usually do with some reflection questions. I can go first. I am thinking of this last question here about what makes me a winner or what makes me a loser, and think about what does winning actually mean to myself based on where I am, where I want to go, my situation? Being a winner is not defined from the outside. I can take charge of that. What does it mean to me? So this is a very powerful, full reflection question for myself out from today's conversation.

[41:45] Gerrit: Yeah, and I would like to come back to not taking yourself too seriously. So the questions associated with that for me are: are there moments where I take myself too seriously? And what can I eventually do to take myself less seriously? 

[42:06] Martin: My question is a little bit more general.  We were talking a lot about stress and the pressure from the public and so on, and what can we really do like in social media everywhere in the business life and real life to, be a little bit more, how can I phrase it a little bit more sensitive about what you say, and what you put out in the world. Because in those times at the moment things are written really fast and the consequence about is, almost not there, to put people down. Even in politics, you see it at the moment. And, my question about that is what can we do better about that? I'm thinking about this a lot because the awareness is changing and this, the trend is a little, little drastic at the moment. I, I think this is a beautiful reflection question and it draws the parallel from you as a captain at the volleyball team at the court, as a role model to the corporate setting, me as a leader in the meeting room how I show up, to the bigger picture that you mentioned.

[43:21] Gerrit: Martin it's funny, I I had exactly the same thought. And it also leads me then to, well first of all, saying a big thank you to Michael. It was wonderful having you on the show, it was a conversation I enjoyed very much. Question is now : besides your work in the volleyball world what other services do you offer, who do you offer it for, and if somebody wants to work with you um, how can they contact you? 

[43:47] Michael: Like I said before, I'm the athletic coach of my team, but I also I'm self-employed as a personal trainer, nutrition coach, I do workshops for companies, motivation workshops, but also team building workshops and health workshops. Because I think what in a corporate world is sometimes missing is the consistency of good habits. Like you gotta be the Ferrari, but you treating yourself more like a small car, and if your, your body and your soul is not working right, you cannot transfer it in, in the business world. And this I want to change or wanna try to help to change in companies, but also with health insurances et cetera. So you can contact me over LinkedIn, you can find me, and yeah I think that's the easiest way. 

[44:38] Gerrit: We will certainly put a link to your LinkedIn profile into the session notes. And this concludes today's episode. If you would like our support in developing your leaders, be that in a company-wide initiative or individual executive coaching, please do not hesitate to contact us. The email address is: hello@secondcrackleadership.com. That's all in one word. And if you enjoy the podcast, please remember to subscribe and tell a friend about it. And if you could leave a positive comment or rating, we would certainly appreciate that. Bye for now.