206- Courage to Leap & Lead with Rolf Pfeiffer, part 2

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.

Right. So on the average, what was the relation— the ratio of numbers for people of color, people from the Mideast, and people from Germany? in the schools?

Um, it's probably, um, I'd say probably 60%, uh, German background, 35% mostly Middle Eastern background, North African background, and, uh, about 5% people of color.

An interesting combination. It implies really quite Quite a bit of diversity in that, within that. And so how did you talk to your son about this once you became aware and you spoke to the school? I mean, did he take classes in self-defense? What, what happened?

No, we, we said, okay, one, one thing that if, if anything happens, you're going to, to go to the teachers and speak to the teachers about that.

Mm-hmm.

Don't, don't fight. It's no point. Now, the good thing is he can run really fast. If there's anything that's gone wrong, run. That's how you can do— that's what you can do better than anyone else.

Okay? Yes.

Don't fight, run. But also seek support from teachers because they're there to support you.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and that worked, and he's still faster than anyone else, so that's, uh, that gives me, uh—

It reminds me of the movie that I can't think of the name of with, uh, Hanks.

Yeah, Forrest Gump.

Yes, exactly. Run, run, run. Well, I'm so pleased that you, uh, were willing to discuss adoption because There's so many children out there that need to be adopted. I know that one of my close friends— well, a few of my close friends have adopted, and one of the things that they've decided to do is to be sure to go back to the hometown where the child was adopted from so that they could understand and appreciate the culture that they came from, as well as the culture That they're living in now. And so have you had a chance to take him back to Madagascar?

We have spoken about that. And he had— there were several occasions when he said, I would like to do that. But that was mostly during the years of the pandemic. So we were unable to do that. So we, we still have plans for doing that. But it's, it's on the books, but we haven't, we haven't gone back there. Yet, but we will go back there at one point in time. And he also already said that who, who he wants to be, um, uh, there with. Um, so who are the people that he wants, um, for, for him to join, uh, this, uh, this trip. So, um, that's, uh, that's really good.

Who does he want to be with?

Um, well, I mean, obviously, um, us, and then, uh, his brother, and then, um, One of his godfathers.

I get the chills. You and your wife have done wonderful. It's such a wonderful story. Now, I want to talk to you about some other, some additional courageous moments in your life. One was starting a company during a financial downturn. How does one have the I want to say guts. It's beyond courage.

It's pure guts to do this.

Did you, did you, did you start it knowing there was a downturn? Or did you start it and then there was a downturn?

We caused the downturn.

That's a perfect answer. The—

we, we had started to work with each other, the 3 of us. So my 2 friends and I, in 2006, and we had started work as the, basically the German subsidiary of a British firm. And over 2 years into 2008, we had realized that there are a number of things that work well in this setup, and then there were a number of things that didn't work well. And eventually we decided that we were going to separate from them. and start our own. That was in the summer of 2008. And you could see the dark clouds on the horizon, but it wasn't— hadn't really materialized. So when we decided that we were going to go down that road, it was maybe September. Lehman crashed. And we said, you know, we don't care, we're just going to go ahead with this idea. Now, this is where I think courage is like beauty. It's in the eye of the beholder.

Oh, yes. Wait, did you read my book? That is a phrase from my book.

Someone, someone looking at this from the outside will say you must be insane. We knew that we would get to keep the most important client that we had worked for over the previous 2 years. Because when I went there to negotiate the separation, David, the guy who owned the firm, said, look, Rolf, if you leave us, we will not have anyone who will be able to serve these people. So by God, just keep them as a client.

Wow.

Which was a shocking great outcome from the conversation, right? And the second thing was—

Wait, wait, wait, timeout. I want to know if you can remember, how did you phrase it so that you could walk away with their clients?

If I only remembered.

That would be a great book, right?

That would be a great book. Now, the thing is, I was basically at the time the wingman of the guy who started the whole thing. So this German subsidiary, who's a former boss of mine, okay? And he and David had fallen out, which is why he said, look, Rolf, it's better that you go there. Because your relationship with David is much better than my relationship with David. Your relationship is not strained, it's not broken, it's a good relationship. You're on good speaking terms, and he seems to enjoy speaking with you, which was all true. So I went there.

Did he, did he ask for a percentage, a referral fee, a share?

Not even, not even. He just said, look, I, I, I've always enjoyed working with you, and I understand that you will not stick around. I understand that you want to move on. Um, it is what it is. Um, and he was a, a very inspiring person. He was not a good manager in the sense of being able to say, okay, now how on earth can I then control the work that you do with them. I will not be able to put in any, any accounting or controlling mechanisms to find out how much work you actually do with them. So what would my commission be, and so forth and blah. And he said, you know what, take them, run with them, it's all good, it's all yours. So it was a blend of the quality of relationship we had And his unwillingness to get into this nitty-gritty detail of how do you build a contract and manage the relationship and so forth. And so I phoned home and said, guys, we're out. And by the way, we get to keep the client.

This was—

this is probably what would be an Andy Warhol-like moment of fame, right? Your 15 minutes of fame. So, um, and we knew that they were a very good client and they were in the pharmaceutical industry. So they said, financial crisis? What financial crisis? We're in pharmaceutical industry. We haven't got a financial crisis. Let these guys crash and burn. We just go straight ahead and do what we always wanted to do. So we knew that we had a, a very good client relationship With a company that could, could allow to ignore the financial crisis of 2008.

So we knew.

So we said, let's go.

That— talk about synchronicity. You had it right.

Yeah.

Okay. And this firm was pure coaching or consulting or—

One-to-one executive coaching and executive team coaching. So really just those, those 2 things. No consulting work, no, no other work, just executive coaching and team coaching.

That's just amazing. Yeah.

And it, it worked.

And then how did your relationship with your former boss— then what happened after that?

Well, we stayed on speaking terms. And then something really interesting happened in the sense that David continued to manage his firm in the way he wanted to manage his firm. And there were several of his associates who at one point who had— we had worked with very closely, You started to reach out to us and say, hey guys, uh, we see that you have separated. It's sad to see you go, but let's stay in touch and let's keep the relationship going. And you, you get a sense of where this is going?

Oh yeah.

They, they at one point in time started to say, if there was, you know, any work that we could do for you, we'd be happy to do that. So they, his associates, continued to work with us because obviously he couldn't control that in a sense that, you know, you only work with me and no one else. So some of his associates who we were good friends with, they started to work with us, which helped us. So it's, it was all about building those relationships. that were stronger than, you know, some of the other things that might govern who works with whom and, and, and what have you, right?

And what did he think about this? Because obviously he must have known.

Um, I don't know, because I, I— there was a point in time when we— our relationship ended and we didn't speak again. Um, so I don't know. Okay.

And then so that business continued to grow and continue and continue. And then what happened?

Then what happened? In about 2014. So we'd been in business for 6 years. I received a phone call by someone who I had worked with for a number of years. He said, I'm in this other firm. We may have work that clients want to give to us that we can't do. Would you be interested in working with us? And we said, why not? And from there, we started to build a relationship where we started to refer work to one another.

Okay.

Some clear rules, and we had commissions and percentages and contracts and things. So it was all very nicely set up. Now, I was invited to join their partner meetings. I was invited to join the meetings with all the people they were working with, and we invited her to join our meetings. And so a relationship was starting. In 2017, the founder of this other business passes away. They then need to find out what the next steps are for keeping the business afloat. And in 2018, she calls me and says, would your firm be interested to become a shareholder of our firm, effectively bringing these 2 firms under one roof? And I thought that what a brilliant idea.

Yeah.

I take it back to my other colleagues and say, hey guys, this is the idea. What do you think? One person says, brilliant. 3 people say, let's have a look at that. Sounds interesting. And 2 people say, over my dead body. Now there you've got these 7 people in a room. With very opposing points of view. So I explain and explain more. The result is one other person says, brilliant idea. 3 say, maybe we can consider this. 2 say, over my dead body. So I concluded that the amount of work that I would have to put in to try and convince these 2 was not worth it. So I phoned her and saying, we will not do this, but I will do this. Because I was so convinced of the quality of the idea that I said, I am not going to be held back, in particular by these 2 of my 6 colleagues. These 2 will not hold me back.

But my question is, they were asking for you to bring over your entire company, right? I think you were going to answer this and I jumped the gun. Why would they accept just you instead of the entire company?

Um, well, the obvious answer is because I'm so brilliant. But that's not, you know, not the answer anyone wants to hear. They said, we've got an issue here. The founder has passed away. The people who were still there felt that they wanted to continue and they wanted this company to continue. They didn't want it to simply go under. And they realized that I could be the answer to some of their problems. And apparently, I was convincing enough for them to think that I could be the answer to their problems. And so they said, look, that's fine, because you're the most interested and probably the most interesting of the whole lot anyway. So I went back to my 6 friends and said, look guys, this is it. I'm going to become a shareholder of this other firm. I can be in both firms if you don't mind. And it didn't take long for us to say, no, this is not a good idea because I need clarity as to where I am and where I belong. Okay. So I decided to call it quits and move to the new company. And eventually there was one person who was among those who said, you know, I could be convinced, who then decided to be the person, and they nominated him to be the person to negotiate my exit from that company. And we were sort of very clear about what we wanted. There weren't any, any difficult emotions involved. So we could get this settled rather easily. And so I, I moved away to the other farm and where I am—

Wait, wait, wait, what happened to the man who agreed— person who agreed that it was a good idea?

He left.

And joined you?

No, because he at the time was in a phase of his life where he said, you know, I'm totally happy to do the work we do. I have no interest whatsoever of being involved in managing a business. I'm beyond that. I've done enough of that. And so what he did is, at the same time that I negotiated my exit, he says, guys, I'm also leaving. So the 2 of us negotiated together, and we had the same conditions for the deal. And he said, I'm going to be willing to stick around and do work with the clients I serve, but I'm not interested in being a shareholder anymore. I'm not interested in having any managerial responsibility, any leadership responsibility in this business. I'm just happy to stick around as an associate, do work, and enjoy myself. He was in a state, in a phase of his life where that was what he wanted to do. And I told him—

So with 2 major— I'm sorry to interrupt. This is like a Robert Ludlum story. With 2 major people leaving, did that company survive? Wow.

They survived because they had— the other 5 had reasonably strong client relationships. And part of the deal was that there'd be one client that had a very special relationship with me, and they always made it clear, we want you and no one else. So they agreed for me to keep that client. And I keep them to this day.

And so that client moved with you to the new company, they followed.

And then everyone else, all the other clients, the agreement was that I would hand them over, we would discuss with each other. So that was pretty amicable. We would discuss with each other who would be the most appropriate people to pick up the responsibility for the client relationship. And as one does, we then looked at who were the people that had worked with me in these client relationships. Who do I think, given the client contacts, who would be the people that would most likely be sort of best foot forward for the company with regards to keeping the relationship and building a relationship? And I introduced— we made an agreement for each and every company that we had been serving, that I managed a relationship with. And we then decided that I would introduce these colleagues to, to my main contact. And I said, after I've introduced you, it's, it's yours. Whatever you make of it, it's yours. It's no longer my role. So I'm not in charge of making you successful. The only thing I'm in charge of is introduce you to that particular person with that particular company. And then you're on your own. We're all grown-ups, you know how to do this, and you're on your own. And that worked well.

The client that followed you, did you have to give your old company a commission?

No. I said, this is my client. I'm happy to give up everything else, but this one, I'm not going to give it up. And because I had built a client relationship, I had been the key person in the client relationship, I'd done most of the work. I said, you know, there's no way that I'm going to let you participate in this because I've been in this all throughout, and none of the others has ever really been able to set foot into that client relationship alongside me.

Mm-hmm.

So that was pretty clear. There was one, one person who didn't like the idea, but everybody else said, look, let's just leave it. It's okay.

Well, I'm not sure if you can answer this question publicly. So feel free to say confidential. When the client moved with you, did the fee structure change? Nope. Oh. You have had an amazing business and personal background, and I am so appreciative to you sharing it with us because within this discussion there is a wealth of knowledge that you have shared. One final thing Your book that I can barely see behind you. Can you bring it forward?

Yes.

My Prism. And that— tell us more about that.

The idea was that sort of the 6 of us who've written this, are all executive coaches originally from 5 different countries on 4 different continents. So if you're looking for a global book, this is a global book. And we were— we had the idea of bringing all the, uh, all the experience that we have as executive coaches working with very different people in very different countries and very different companies and very different roles between the two covers of a book. And the main idea was, how can we, when it's important and useful, understand and then override our autopilot and choose more mindful behavior instead?

What do you think— I have another question. I know that was going to be my last question, but I have another question. It seems as though recently there has been an slaughter of discussion around mindset? Is it overdiscussed? Is it just beginning? You know, where, where are we going with this?

I think it is— it's probably not overdiscussed. It's underutilized.

Oh, I wasn't expecting that. Every—

when I was walking the dog this afternoon and sort of preparing for this conversation, I had this idea that there are so many ideas. A fraction of those ideas are good ideas. A fraction of those good ideas will be implemented well and become great results. And if we only use the understanding that we have around how mindset matters more, the world would be a better place. And the gesture to go with that is, I said earlier that my wife and I play tennis. So we also watch tennis, of course. And we watched the French Open recently. We'll watch the US Open when they come around. And you sometimes see those Tennis players do this, this gesture. They say the, the real mastery in hitting that ball down the line or across the court or score that point is not your ability to, to swing your arm and to hold your hand in the way that, you know, the ball goes where it needs to go. It's the mindset that allows you to To do what you know you can do in the moment. Going back to—

What is that mindset telling you?

Um, well, that mindset is this idea: I, I know exactly what I need to do in this moment, and I, I can, I can translate the idea of where I want the ball to go into an action so that the ball goes exactly where it's supposed to go. and the opponent has no opportunity of returning the ball. And you score a point, right? You score a winner. And it's this whole notion that goes back to the 1970s, the Tim Gallwey, In a Game of Golf, In a Game of Tennis, who says performance is potential minus impediments. And the mindset to me is one of the biggest impediments. And therefore this gesture of I was able to do in the moment what I know I'm able to do, and there was no impediment. There was nothing that stopped me from hitting the ball in a way that it touched the court in the right place, and my opponent had no chance, no opportunity of returning the ball, and I scored the point.

What is that quote again? Performance is the—

Performance is potential. Minus impediments. Tim Gallwey, in a game of golf, in a game of tennis.

Performance is potential minus impediments.

And so we know an awful lot about that. Not— there aren't enough people who know enough about it, but generally speaking collectively, we know quite a lot about mindset. It's too difficult for too many people to then really put that into action and create, create the results they want. So that's why I say it's underutilized.

So I'm thinking about that, what you just said in multiple ways. One is I play pickleball. And I am just awful. And so I'm thinking about my mindset in relationship to pickleball. And how pickleball players are antagonized by tennis players. But I'm trying to get to where you are in relationship to something I'm trying to achieve, which my pickleball coach says, it's easy to play pickleball. It's impossible to master it. First of all, because of the rules, they're so complex.

Mm-hmm.

As I miss the ball, is it my mindset that's missing the ball, or is it my skill that's missing the ball?

Um, it's probably a combination of both, or it's one or the other depending on the situation. So if, if I know, if I see in tennis, if I see the ball coming at me and I know I will not reach this up no matter what I do, Then that's probably my skill that doesn't allow me to return the ball to the opponent. If, however, and I know that in the moment when the ball hits the racket, I know, is this going to work or is it not going to work? I sense it in my— I play right-handed, I sense it in my right hand, but that's too late. to make any change. So the ball will fly wherever it flies. And that's mindset. And if I only— there are simple rules. One rule is watch the ball. Don't watch where the other guy stands, watch the ball. The other rule is try and use the whole court and try and hit the ball so that it falls Close to the lines, because then it's more difficult to return. And it's these three simple simple things, right? Watch the ball close to the line and far down the line. Use the whole court. That's mindset. Sometimes I'm able to translate that into the ball flying where I want the ball to fly. My skill allows me. My skill doesn't stop me. My my moderate skill level doesn't stop me from doing what my mind wants to do. very often my moderate skill level will stop me from being able to do what my mind wants to do, which is why I say that at one point in time I was asked for a biography to describe who I am. And I said, I haven't lost the hope of one day being a decent tennis player. Because I'm competitive. I'm not good. I mean, there are so many people among the executives I work with who've been champions and they won things and they are so fantastically competitive. I'm not. Okay, so I needed a nice way of saying, look, I'm not as good as you, but you know, I, I keep on trying. The, the other, the other thing is, um, I, I, I realized that I just want to, want to keep growing and I want to keep trying and I want to keep hitting the ball in a way that that works. And I want to enjoy myself doing that. So I'm not going to be fiercely competitive and trying to do everything I can. No, but just want to enjoy myself. And if I enjoy myself, I watch the ball, use the full court, maybe I hit more balls better. Yeah, so I'll keep working on that.

This has been an amazing interview. I am now going to start working on my mindset for my pickleball. And I have learned so much about negotiating from you. And of course, how to love your children. Ralph, thank you so much. This has been a wonderful interview.

Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation, Siphiwe. That really has been an energizing conversation. I clearly walk away from this with more energy than I walked into this. Thank you.

Thank you. I love that. Well, audience, I hope to see you next week with all of your courage in place and in use. This is CB Bowman on Courage to Leap and Lead.