205- Courage to Leap & Lead with Rolf Pfeiffer, part 1

You've got courage to leap, courage to lead. Be brave and be bold. Whoa, let it roar. Welcome to the Courage to Leap and Lead podcast, where each of our guests share the stories of courage that helped them become powerful leaders. Before we start today's show, please remember to visit courage-consulting.com. Where you can find all the episodes and other excellent resources, all at courage-consulting.com. Now here's your host, Leadership Courage Coach CB Bowman.

Hello everybody. Welcome to Tuesday and welcome to Courage to Leap and Lead. And today you see I have my little puppy, which is a West Highland Terrier. Up here interviewing with me. Say hi, Paris. There she is. And I have her in my lap because she's not feeling too good today. We think it's because she's been out catching bunny rabbits. So she has a doctor's appointment and she's being especially loving today. So we have a guest on from Germany. No?

All right.

Yes. Let's see if I can pronounce his name right. This is a test for me. Rolf, um, Pfeiffer. Almost?

Yeah, Rolf Pfeiffer. Think, think of Michelle, right? Michelle Obama.

That's a good one. That's a very good one. Well, today, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to talk about an interesting topic, which is the topic of adoption. In addition to talking about Ralph's experience during starting a company during a financial downturn that became very successful— talk about courage, right?— and his courage to, shall we say, leave a firm with a special offer. So we have 3 good topics from one source. So let's go.

Let's go.

Ralph, talk to us about adoption. What happened? Did you have a child by natural birth? What— tell us the story of your courage with that.

Yeah, well, we, we had our first child, which is still around, 24 years old and all going well.

Yes.

Not, not a child anymore, really.

Well, to a parent, it's always a child, right?

And, um, because nature denied us a second child, we said, well, you know, there's space in, in our life for more than one child. And, um, uh, the way to go then was adoption. And, uh, because we were told at the time that we would probably not have a, uh, the opportunity to adopt the child in Germany because they only give children to couples that haven't got the child yet, um, we had to go, uh, abroad. And, um, we—

through— So let me ask you a question. I always interrupt with questions. Is there a large pool of children that need to be adopted in Germany?

No. Um, and the, the pool of couples who would like to adopt is about 10 times the number of children that are up for adoption. Which is why they say, okay, if we've got 10 potential parents for each child that's up for adoption, we can set the rules. And one of the rules is we don't want families who already have children to adopt a child. So they only give them to couples. And as a result, we had to go abroad. And through luck and happenstance, it ended up being Madagascar. So we met people at an event that was about adoption. And they came from Madagascar. Um, it's, uh, right east from South Africa in the Indian Ocean.

Okay. All right. Yes. Okay.

Many miles and many time zones.

Yeah. Wow. Okay. And so you met people? Yeah. Chance?

Yeah. And I mean, at an event that was dedicated to helping people understand how adoption works and what you do and why you have to apply and all the paperwork and everything else. And there was this woman who ran an orphanage in, uh, in the capital of Madagascar. And, um, during a break, she was sitting all, all alone. And, uh, because my wife and I speak French and she spoke French, we just walked up to her and started a conversation. And after half an hour, we had concluded that, you know, this is it. We're going to go down that road and going to work with that woman to, um, to find a child.

So Madagascar, is that a country of people of color?

Yes.

So your daughter— is it a daughter or son?

A son.

Son is a person of color?

Yes.

How wonderful, how absolutely wonderful. And so how long did it take you and what happened next?

Between the time that we made this decision and the time that they They introduced sort of the paperwork to basically— that basically describes this child. It took about 18 months, and between the moment that they introduced the paperwork to us and the moment that we went there, it was another 6 months. So all in all, it was about 2 years.

So many, many questions I hope you don't mind me asking. But, but I think the one that the audience would want to know most is what gave you the courage to adopt a person of color?

We didn't really think a lot about that, to be very honest. We said we want to adopt a child that would hopefully benefit, that would hopefully have more opportunity than where they were at the time. And because we felt that we live in a pretty liberal society, that, that, you know, wouldn't, wouldn't be, wouldn't be much of a question. There was something else, though. Sometimes when you look at small children, and they show behaviors, and people ask, where have they got these behaviors from? Are they these behaviors from mom or from dad? And sometimes when you have adopted children that, you know, almost look like their adopting parents, but you know that, you know, this behavior can't be influenced by mom's or by dad's genes, that can lead to pretty awkward situations. So we felt that if we were in a situation where it was immediately abundantly clear that this is our child but not our biological child, we wouldn't have to face these questions. So it's really kind of silly, but it was a driver at the time for us.

Just explain that a little bit more. I think I'm a little lost. Um, I understand the part about, um, learning behaviors from parents, but your child was 10 months old, right?

Sure, yeah.

What, what could he know at 10 months?

Not much, not much. But, but after that, you mean— I'm, I'm thinking of this situation when you, when you have a child that's sort of 3, 4, 5, 6 years old and they show all the behaviors they show Usually it's perhaps the relatives who will then say, I see a particular behavior in this child. What inspired this behavior? In this sense, are they a copy of their mom? Are they a copy of their dad? There is always this idea of what's the genetic influence of parents onto the development of their children. We could have hours of conversations about that, about the science and the neuroscience about that. But the thing is, we said we want to, you know, we want, we want to make it clear that we have gone down that road of adoption, and we want to give someone an opportunity who might not have the opportunity otherwise. The, we The other countries that we could have gone to because of the organization that we worked with could have been Colombia or South Africa or Vietnam. So we knew that by the looks of the child, you would immediately see that this child is from a, a different origin, from a different background. And it was very clear that we would be the parents who adopted that child. And, and it was just a thought we had at the time, not knowing the potential implications. And there aren't any, any negative implications. It's just, we were naive in a sense of saying, hey, this sounds like a good idea. Let's do it.

So I think I understand where you're going. So this is something I would have not thought of. And I was, as you were speaking, I was trying to think of people, our neighbors or around us that have children and how we evaluate the behavior of the child in relationship to the parent. You know?

Yeah.

We have one little girl who I think is 9 years old. And she was out with her lemonade stand when her mom had her garage sale. And the child actually made more money than the mom did. I said to her, wow, you're You're really raising your daughter right. She's getting to understand business.

Right.

And she uses her allowance to go to garage sales. And she got an electric scooter, this and that. And, you know, a lot of stuff she got for free 'cause she's as cute as a button. And I'm thinking, and then we have another neighbor whose mom talks a lot. And just in general nature, she's a talker. Um, her dad doesn't talk as much, but I've noticed that the child is a bit wild compared to the other child. Now, the child that's a bit wild has an older brother and a new baby sister. The child that had the lemonade stand is an only child, and I don't know if that makes a difference, but it's— interesting to see the mom who talks a lot, whether that's a reflection of the child who's a bit wild. And when I say wild, she's not a bad child. She just is, um, she's very vocal.

Mm-hmm.

And in her thoughts, like I said to her, she would call me CB and I said, no, at your age it's Miss CB. And she said, well, I don't like that. You're a friend. I'm going to call you CB. And I thought, that is something I would never say in front of my parents, right?

Right. Well, is that, is that courageous?

You know, I'm not sure if it's courageous or disrespectful. My parents would call it disrespectful. I might be a cross between the two. I don't know. But, you know, I'm thinking about what you said, and I, I think about how I look at these children and I immediately think about what are the parents like.

Mm-hmm.

Now, the child with the lemonade stand, her mom is also very good at communication. Her dad is introverted, so she tends to take on introverted features. But she knows how to speak up for herself. So it's all very interesting that you said that. Now, I wonder what traits your son has taken on from you and your wife versus what he would have taken on being raised in Madagascar.

Now, that's a brilliant question that I haven't got an answer for. The— I mean, there are certain things, and it's fun. It's funny to notice. So when I— let's say when I do grocery shopping, I sometimes— he will accompany me, or he would have accompanied me in the past. Now he's 18 years old. He doesn't accompany me any longer for grocery shopping.

He's his own man now.

He's his own man.

Yeah.

So he he would, he would observe how I interact with the people who work in the grocery store. So the thing I do is when I, when I want to ask someone where I can find a particular product, I say, excuse me, can you help me find this particular product? And then I observed him being in stores. And every time when he walks up to someone, he'll say, excuse me, can you help me find XYZ? So he's picked this up, he's observed me, and he figured that if Dad does it, maybe it's a good idea. So, and it works. And obviously I look at that and I think, hmm, that's, uh, that's jolly good. I love that, right? The, the other thing is, let's say when we, when we sit down for, for dinner, um, we, we tried and, and teach him table manners, if you want to call it that way, right? So the idea of how you use a fork and knife and things and so forth, he, he doesn't get it, and he doesn't show it. And it's his space for, for, for demonstrating that you can teach me some things, you can't teach me everything. Or just because you do this, I'm under no obligation to follow your example. I can do this differently. So yeah, so we have the, you know, the whole, the whole range, right?

Well, the question for that is, is because he's becoming his own man, and wants to show some difference, versus learning things that are society correctness, and will get you more by being polite to somebody.

Now, at the same time, I keep hearing— so for instance, we, we play tennis, my wife and I. When he was younger, he used to play tennis with us. And there are several people at the tennis club who sometimes I walk into them and they say, my God, your son, he's so polite. He always says hello. He's always got a smile on his face. And I thought, hmm, are they really speaking about our son? Because when he's with us, he can be—

Different. Yes, that's regardless of children or dogs. When I take this one to the stores with me, everybody says she's so polite. We have Westies, they're not quiet like that and very polite and friendly. I said, not so much at home.

Yeah, and it's— I mean, I'd rather have it this way around. that he's very polite outside and less polite at home than the other way around.

Absolutely.

That's, that's, that's going to make life a lot easier for him this way around.

So I want to go back to something you said, that Germany is more liberal in terms of race, uh, acceptance. That to me is surprising.

The part, the part of Germany we live in. Ah, overall.

Okay.

We live in— we live just outside Frankfurt, um, which is a, a properly multicultural city. Um, so, um, people don't notice that someone looks differently than many others. to the extent like you would see that, say, in other parts of the country. Um, the more you go into the, the big cities, um, the easier and the more liberal things are. The more you leave the big cities and you go out into the countryside, it's an entirely different story.

So you adopted him at the age of 10 months. How old was your daughter at the time?

Um, our other son— we have 2 sons. So the other son, he was—

All right, I thought it was a son and a daughter. No, no, he's a son too.

So he's— he was 6 years old.

And how did he feel having a person of color as a brother? How did he adapt to that?

Well, he was incredibly proud of me.

First of all, how did he adapt to having a brother?

Yeah.

Second, how did he adapt to having a brother of color?

Well, you know, we learned— we learned that at that age, children don't see color. And we, we spoke, we spoke with the, the, the people at kindergarten, and they say young children— and maybe the word is misleading, but I'm going to use it anyway— is young children are colorblind.

Mm-hmm.

They don't see color of skin. They start to see color of skin By listening to their parents, interacting with their parents, and if their parents react unexpectedly or funnily or differently, they then notice, "Hey, what what what's going on? Why do you react differently to this person than to that person?" But in and of themselves, they're colorblind.

Hmm.

So he didn't notice that; he was just incredibly proud of his young brother.

Wow. What age did he start to notice it?

Um, I, I don't know. Um, I, I think, I think they say it's somewhere between, between 6, 7, and maybe 9, 10 that they start noticing those, those differences. Um, and that they then either, uh, just take them for granted, it's like the most normal thing on earth, or it's something special. And I mean, for our older son, it's the most normal thing on earth, um, because it's his brother, right? Um, now, truth be told, these 2 boys, because they're 6 years apart in age, they are more like 2 only children in the same family than they are like very close brothers, because obviously the, the difference of age of 6 years is a huge difference.

Yeah.

So it's different to then if they have, let's say, a difference of 2 or 3 years, that they're much more— they're much closer to one another. Uh, 6 years is, is quite a big difference. And of course you can see there's the older one who's been the trailblazer, and then things were prepared when the younger came and And we reacted differently to him and we raised him differently because he was the second child, not because of anything else. And the notion of them being brothers has always been there, but also the notion of they really are very different in terms of their personality, in terms of their preferences. One is very extrovert, the younger one. The older one's more introvert. Um, the older one is more sort of more brainy. The younger one is great at sports and it's great socially. So you can see, you can see big, big differences between the two. Um, which I mean, sometimes you get to see when, when we have friends who have 2 or 3 children and, and they're miles apart in terms of how they show up, what their preferences are. If you applied anything like sort of the MBTI, you'd see vastly different profiles. And so you say, no, it seems to be quite a normal thing. So.

So do you find that his older brother is— well, when they were younger, protective of his younger brother?

He was when it was needed. He would still be if it was needed. But the thing is, the, the older brother has— so we've partially empty nested. He's left home 5 years ago to go to university, and he's in a different city in Germany. So he is no longer living with us. So they don't get to interact all that much these days.

Mm-hmm.

If push came to shove, they will protect each other. But as long as push doesn't come to shove, well, nah.

Yes, I understand. I understand. Now, here's a challenging question. I don't know if you can answer it because of the difference in countries. Here, moms and dads have to teach young Black men how to survive in America.

The talk.

Yeah, the talk. Well, when we say the talk, we mean sex. But in this case, the talk of what to do if a policeman approaches you, how you respond, you know, these things to save your life, really. Is that a discussion that you and your wife have had to have with your son?

No.

Mm-hmm.

And we clearly, we clearly noticed that if there is anything like that, it is not because of any interaction with the police or anyone else that's a representative of government or administration or the public sector. Not at all. The only space that's difficult, which would not have been difficult for our older son, is the interaction with other groups of people that have a migration background. So we have a lot of people in the country who originally came from North Africa, from the Middle East. So they would typically have a Muslim background. And it's not about religion, not at all. It's just the notion of where do you find yourself in the— excuse the impression, but where do you find yourself in the food chain? Where are you on the totem pole? Right. And There are— there have been situations in school where he was bullied by youngsters from Muslim background, from North African background, from Middle East background, because in those countries people of color, Black people, don't count as much as people of usual background, right? So when you listen to people who know a thing or two about the Muslim world, they will tell you that there are Muslims and lesser Muslims, and the darker your skin, the lesser Muslim you are. Now, if you come with that luggage into another country, a, a dark face can trigger reactions that may be based on what they have learned at home, what they have soaked up somewhere. And, and those have been the only situations, and I've That have been difficult so far.

That's very interesting. And how, how did he deal with that? How did you teach him to deal with it?

Well, he didn't know how to deal with it. He was seeking help from his teachers. And we— it took a while until we learned what was going on, because the teachers weren't all that willing to communicate about that. And it took, it took us about 2 years to really find out what was going on.

How did it, how did it manifest at home that you saw something?

He spoke about, he spoke about situations that he'd been bullied. And, and we said, so what happened? Tell us more. And then, then he started to speak and he mentioned names of boys. And we, we started to notice a pattern because the, the names of these boys were not the sort of quote-unquote Austrian names in Germany. They would be names that would clearly indicate that these boys are from Turkish or Syrian or Iraqi or Moroccan or Tunisian background.

Mm-hmm.

So we, we started to, to have to try and have the conversation with the teacher. And they would refuse the conversation. And at some point in time, we escalated and went to the headmaster of the school and said, look, this has to stop. And then he was willing to speak with us. And he acknowledged that he had noticed this but hadn't done anything about it. So we said that, you know, it would be much better if you paid attention to this and you did something about that because this just must not happen. And what they also did is they, they offered our son the possibility to move into another class where there was a teacher that was far more aware of the situation and far more willing to, to put up with that phenomenon. And he was then able to, to deal with the situation and protect our son from from that bullying. But it took far too long for them to really acknowledge what was going on. And you could argue that we didn't escalate early enough.

Well, I mean, I don't— I'm not sure if it was a question of escalating it early enough. I think, for me, it sounds like a question of awareness, you know, not, you know, sometimes we, we see, but we don't see because we don't know what we're supposed to be seeing. And how was he bullied?

Well, I mean, there are obviously all the sort of all the swear words that were used that you wouldn't want, want to hear. And then at some point in time, he started speaking about one of these boys Pulling out a knife and playing around with the knife, not threatening him, but you know pulling out a knife, and you go, hmm. Schools shouldn't be places where people walk around with knives, right?

Right, right.

So so that was the point in time we said, okay, this is this is enough. We have to escalate.

And when the school, when the when the headmaster became aware of this, did he conduct any kind of global awareness training for all of the teachers so that they could understand and, and be alert to what was going on?

We, we don't know. We, we think he must have done something. He must have spoken with the teachers, and he must have spoken with those who, who look after, you know, what, what the children in school do during the, the breaks in the day. Um, but he, he didn't speak to us about that. Um, but we noticed that there was a shift in, in how teachers were dealing with the situation. So our assumption is that he might— he must have done something.

Mm-hmm.

And clearly something that's been effective.

Right.