#318 Master Your Inner Game to Avoid Burnout with Klaus Kleinfeld, Former CEO at Alcoa and Siemens

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What is really determining sustainable success of any individual is how you handle your inner game and how you handle specifically your energy and your purpose. And that's not just built on what you achieve in business, but it's also foundational for what you achieve in life. Because if you don't have energy, I can guarantee you you will neither be successful in business nor successful in life. I Fear stands for an acronym. It stands for False Expectations Appearing Real. Because very often these fears are made up in our mind by looking at uncertainty. And in the uncertainty, we very often emphasize the negatives more than the positives. And in reality, if we look back in our life when we have basically decided that we change and do something different, and when we look back and all the concerns that we had many, many times, I think more often than not we will see that those fears were not granted.

Welcome to Data Framed. This is Richie. In theory, all this new tech is supposed to automate everything, make our lives easier, so we can all go and live the good life in practice. I'm stressed, you're stressed. Everyone's just counting down the minutes to the weekend. So today we're going to look at techniques to avoid burnout. Our guest is Klaus Kleinfeld, a seven time CEO including stints running Siemens and Alcoa. Clearly, Klaus is no stranger to high intensity jobs and he's just written a book called Leading to Thrive that collects all the lessons he's learned from two decades running large companies. One of my favorite things in the book is how he compares high performing individuals to athletes, which makes me feel better as I spent all day sitting in front of a laptop and shoveling snacks down my neck. Let's hear Klaus's advice on how to avoid burnout. Hi Klaus, welcome to the show.

Hello. Hi Richie.

Let's start with a big question. Why do so many people burn out at work?

Yeah, right. I think they don't know how to manage their energy and they think that there's endless energy in the tank, you know, and they keep pushing, pushing, pushing. Funny enough in the beginning it was like a car. You know, you go on ride, you know, you have a full tank, you get up in the morning, you are fresh, you know, you, you're young, you push, you push, you push. The damn thing goes faster and faster and faster. And if you don't refill it, then you know what, you know, it comes to an end. And if you're lucky, you're not involved in an accident. But also if you're unlucky, it stops some place that's not very nicely inhabitable and you don't like it. You know, that's one of the reasons why I wrote the book Leading to Thrive.

That seems very appropriate. It's like if you run out of energy at some point, then that's going to be disaster. You are going to burn out. Now I know in your book Leading Thrive, one of the big ideas is that high performing workers are a lot like high performing athletes. Can you talk me through what that link is?

Well, the link is very simple because what you started out with, I mean even in the, in the group of young entrepreneurs, you know, we have amazingly many examples of people who burn out even when they are not 30 yet, you know, so I had one situation in a company where I invested where the founder and CEO burned out, was found unconscious on the floor and was immediately brought to the hospital. And the doctor said, you know, if you want to continue to live, you should not go back to that place, you know, so what's happening? Interestingly, I always thought, you know, being a bit of a creature of corporations, that this is more a question of people who are older, you know, but it's now actually melted, come down also to the younger generation. The interesting thing is average life expectancy of leaders, actually not life expectancy expectancy to be in the job of leaders as well as founders has come down, you know, and continues to come down at the same time. When you look at high performance sports, it's exactly the contrary. I mean, when you look today, I love tennis, so that's the sports that I'm most fond of. And you see the age of the top performing tennis players has gotten higher and higher and higher and they stay in the top for longer. So that got my attention. I said, what on earth is going on? Because in a way we in the business, we are also high performance athletes. But it seems that these other guys who are doing athletics have learned something that probably we can massively benefit from. That got me onto this journey.

Certainly the example of someone just collapsing at work, I mean I've had bad days at work, but that's, that's pretty extreme for sure. And so, yes, certainly something you want to intervene before you get to that state. All right, so I know your book is built around these ideas of inner game and outer game. Can you talk me through what they are and what the difference is?

Yeah, I think most business books, almost all business books, are around those things that we associate with being good in business. So you talk about how can you create a vision, how can you turn a vision into something that motivates larger groups? How can you then execute on this? How do you hold your cash together, how do you build products, blah, blah, blah. It could go on and on and on, how you manage your boards and build high performance teams. But in my experience, this is an interesting part. Happy to talk about it. A lot to be learned from that. At the same time, what I have seen, what is really determining sustainable success of any individual is how you handle your inner game and how you handle specifically your energy and your purpose. And that's not just built on what you achieve in business, but it's also foundational for what you achieve in life. Because if you don't have energy, I can guarantee you you will neither be successful in business nor successful in life. So this foundation has very little been spoken about for leaders. And I think it is absolutely essential to have sustainable success. And as we only have one life that we lead on this planet, I would also suggest that we look at it holistically and don't just talk about your life in business, but your life also in private life. Those two things are also heavily intertwined.

Absolutely. I have to say, one of the meanest questions I tend to ask on this podcast is like, how's your work life balance? You have so many high achieving guests on here. That's a question almost universally answered badly. So it's interesting that this is something you've chosen to talk about.

I even have a chapter in the book on work life balance, and I feel that this is really a misunderstood concept. So if you are at a point where you feel you need to distinguish your work life from your life life, and you do the work life just because you need the money, you know, I can highly, highly, highly recommend. You know, even when I didn't have any money, I stuck to the principle of basically love it, change it or leave it, and found some passion around certain things where I could create value and basically love it. And so because work is has to be part of your life, it has to be you Spend way too many hours there. And we can skip ahead onto. I mean, there's this research that has been done on what do people most regret when they are having their last breath. And what they do most regret is that they say, there's nobody who says, I wish I had worked more. I mean, there are people who say, I wish I. It was one of the five most regrets. I wish I had worked less. That's one. But the things that I find most chilling is the one where people say, I wish I had allowed myself to be more like me and not be more, not follow what others wanted me to be. Or the, the most chilling one to me is the one saying, I wish I had allowed myself to be happier. And this is so, I mean, it's so profound because in the last breath they also realized one thing, and I hope we can talk about a little bit more, that happiness is your choice. Happiness is your choice. You have it in your means, even if you have no money.

Okay, Yeah. I mean, certainly like at the point of deathbed, that's, that's when people speak the truth and because they got nothing to lose by lying. So, yeah, it seems like you're going to get some honest answers there. Do you want to expand on that about choosing to be happy?

Yeah, I think probably start with the start. I mean, because when people. Energy is probably for many people a pretty vague concept. And I think it becomes less vague when you say, well, it's not rocket science how you get energy. I mean, we get out in the morning and usually we are energized and during the course of the day it burns through. So you have to understand this is a fleeting resource and you have to refill it with multiple ways. But what are the sources? The sources are physical. I mean, it's basically the old saying is body, mind and soul. You know, I split the mind part into the emotional part and the mental part because they are two different mechanisms, you know, and once you understand that there are these four sources, then you have to ask yourself, oh, okay, I need energy, so I exert energy. But how can I basically either make sure that I don't exert too much energy so that I have energy conserving mechanisms, or how do I replenish my sources on the physical side, most people understand it these days. You got to have to keep your body healthy. This is about exercising it, eating the right things and getting enough sleeping, breathing. Well, that's well understood. The emotional side already is where I've seen a lot of people just looking at wow. Klaus never thought about that. Because a lot of people think the emotion is something that is imposed on you, right? So people talk about their emotion as though somebody else put that on them when they realize that in reality, the emotion comes from you. So it is your response to an outside thing. So if it's your response to an outside thing, then you have control over it. You have to just train yourself, you know, if you allow somebody else to take control over you because they provoke you, because they know which buttons to push, because they know to distract you, to annoy you more, you allow that to happen. So there's this old story about Buddha going around in India, and one day he's at a village, and there seems to be a farmer who doesn't like what he's preaching, and he's going there and yelling at him and cursing him. And Buddha sits there and says nothing. And after a while, the guy stops talking and says, well, now, what do you say? Buddha? And Buddha says, well, I have to ask you something. Somebody has a gift and wants to give a person a gift, and the other person refuses to take the gift. Whose gift is it then? And it's clear it's the one who wants to give it. The gift doesn't leave, you know, so basically leave the person who wants to provoke you with their anger and whatever, you stay calm. You can train that. You can train that through things like breathing and just simply listening, listening techniques. The other one is mental. On the mental side, you know, how do you. How do you deal with mental energy? Mental energy is basically about focus. It's about positivity and focus. And the question is, how do you keep that? And there's also another wonderful story about the old shoemaker who has two sons. He wants to pass his business on, has two sons, sends them both to Africa, different direction. One to the east, one to the west. And then the first one sends him a note back and says, father, I have very bad news. There is no market here. Everybody runs barefoot. Okay? The other son sends a note back, father, this is amazing. Send me as many shoes as you can have. This is an endless market. Everybody is barefoot. And what do you say? And the fourth energy is spiritual. And that's the one that I think is least understood and almost not talked about. On the spiritual side? Yes. I mean, to basically find something that has a greater meaning for you. And ideally, I mean, I'm a believer. So I think that the belief in a higher power can have an unbelievably positive impact, particularly when you go through very dark times. And you need an internal source of strength, you know, and by the way, I mean, you can try it out. It's nothing that you decide for the rest of your life. You know, you can basically say, I try it out for a while, maybe it helps me. And then I don't like it and there's no necessary. And some people feel like, oh, you know, I have to commit to it. And once I'm stuck into this belief and maybe I find out it's wrong. Right? You can make the decision every day, every day, Try it out. Try it out for yourself and maybe you do feel better. For me, it has done a lot, a lot of good things. And lastly, I mean, these are the four energy sources. Lastly, the one thing that I found once I discovered it, I found this kind of, I mean, knocked me off my feet, literally, because I always struggled with this concept of purpose. Purpose has been a concept that has been around as long as people lived. And a lot of intelligent people have written about it and societies have lived to what they considered as a purpose. And I always struggled with it. But when I found out that what purpose does to energy is what a laser does to light, right? It basically light is diffuse, you know, and the moment you concentrate it and put it into a laser, it goes through even the strongest walls. So the main thing here is if you have energy, you have diffuse energy, good energy. But the moment you have a purpose or multiple purposes, this puts the energy at work and your likelihood to achieve something in that, you know, and to jump out of bed the morning the sun comes out, you know, say, I want to use this day in the best possible because I want to get this done and can be some purpose around business, can be something around your family. Most people have more than one purpose in life. That's the other thing that people have been struggling with.

Absolutely. So all these principles sound absolutely amazing. So the idea that, yeah, if someone is giving you a hard time, then, you know, maybe you don't need to react to that or having purpose, these all sound great. I guess the tricky part is the practicality of how do you just incorporate these habits into your life? So I know it's a big question. Do you want to start with maybe the emotional side? Then how do you control your emotions in a good way?

The emotional side is relatively easy. Honestly, the first thing, as I said, you have to understand the moment you feel there's an emotion raising in you, you have to almost train yourself that your second power switches on your observant Power switches on that. You say, oops, what's happening here? Why is that happening? And in most cases, it sensitizes you that some external stimulus has led you onto a path of thought that has raised your anger. By the way, there's also positive emotions. We can talk about that. I mean, love the biggest one of those. You're also negative. If you are unlucky, very bad. We don't want to talk about that today. But very powerful in both directions, but the moment. So you have to train yourself to be sensitive. It's almost like you have to put your own radar on and say, oops, what is just happening? Then you reflect on what's happening and then you say, okay, I am now the master of my own emotions. This is extremely helpful when you have difficult work conversations, difficult negotiations, because a lot of people use this on purpose that they're trying to find out. You see it by the way, you see it in all the political debates where they study the opponent and try to tease the opponent to say things that they would have liked to never say. Control yourself. Then it kicks in and you say, I stay calm. This is not my opinion. This is the opinion of somebody else who I don't give a damn about. And where does that person even take the power from to control me? I'm just shutting down. And you can do it by just thinking of something completely different and not listening at all. You know, you can shut your ears literally, virtually just sit there and make nodding, nod, you know, and one other thing is, you can also, while this happens, you can concentrate on your breathing. You can say, I breathe in, I concentrate while it's going out. Breathe in. Because that not only defends from the emotion to erase, but it also gives you strength. So you basically use the time when the other person tries to power you out by recharging. And actually when the person has shut up, you can very calmly say your arguments and say, well, everybody has a right to their view. Leave it there, even if you haven't listened. And then you go into your arguments that I do think it's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's really not that difficult. It takes a little bit of training, but it's super enjoyable. Even the training. I mean, I remember when I started this, when I first realized that long, long time ago and my first moments where I tried it out, the power that it gives you over yourself is so motivating. And in the end of the session, you smile because the other side tries to provoke you and they don't get anything out of you, that's one thing on the emotional side. On the mental, the physical side is usually very well understood, although I think sleep is about to get understood. But then on the mental side, it's a lot about what you focus on. I mean like the story with the shoemaker sons and it's really fascinating. Do you see always a challenge on something or do you see the opportunity? Right? So I mean that's again another training that a lot of super successful entrepreneurs have done that already during their school days, you know, and where the on purpose when there's a discussion and there's a general consensus over a certain argument, you know, they actually force themselves to take the opposite view view to take the opposite view just for the sake of it and see can I actually find good arguments for the opposite view. Not that you have to internalize those, but just to see is there anything else in there? Is there anything else in this other side? And I think this old saying, luck is when opportunity meets preparation is very, very good. Because a lot of people who we consider lucky because they did something at a time when nobody else did it, why did they do this? What enabled them to do it? Because they had trained themselves to see in an unconventional way, to see where there's challenge, to see opportunity. And there's another one of my I'm full of mantras. Another one of my mantras is don't believe in conventional unconventional wisdom is almost always wrong. That's the way I would put it. Conventional wisdom is almost always wrong. That's a good one to start with. To be honest, I went to school at a time when tectonic plate shift was just about to get an understanding in geology. And my good friend, when the first time was probably in fifth grade, the map of the world was rolled out in front of us. And when the teacher asked, what do you see? He hit his hand up and said, oh, this once was one. And the whole class laughed. And the teacher laughed and said how ridiculous an idea. But it's not ridiculous, it's obvious when you look at it. All these things fit together when in your brain you put them together. He saw that and the rest of the class. And at that time it was a conventional wisdom, the conventional understanding. And he was laughed at, which is another one of my mantra. Every great idea runs through three stages. The first is getting laughed at. The second, basically people tell you it's impossible to make happen. And in the third one, everybody has had it.

I've got to confess, I thought like tectonic plate tectonics was a 19th century theory. I don't think you're that old. I think I've got my history of science wrong. But yeah, no, that's very true. Is that often, like new ideas? There's a lot of people who are naysayers about it. Yeah, some new ideas are stupid, but some new ideas do work. So yes, it's important to keep an open mind.

And if you don't question a conventional wisdom, you know, great inventions will never come come. Will never come. You know, so that's on the mental side, on the spiritual side. We talked about it already. It's really your own discovery. And check it out.

Yeah, and I do like the idea that just simple things like breathing techniques can be positive benefits or it's not something it's going to take years to learn. It's just like something fairly straightforward. You just got to build the habit.

Even meditation, I mean, I put probably 10 different meditation things in there into the book, really simple ones, you know, where you use all of these meditation practices, use breathing at the core. And while you control your breathing, you actually can also control your mind because in the end you want to switch off your monkey mind. And to switch off your monkey mind, first you have to occupy it with something else. So one of the simple meditation techniques is by focusing on the wave of the breath goes in, it goes out. Then you can count different counts of in and out or holding the breath. Then you can also say, I go through the body, I start with my fingers, then go up one arm, go up the other and go to the feet. So the whole idea is concentrate on the breathing at the same time, shut the monkey brain off. By occupying the monkey brain with another activity, the monkey will always try to get back in. And then you say, oh, monkey brain, just a second, I'm not done with my left foot and now comes the right foot. So it's actually when you do it like that, I mean, it is relatively easy to learn because I see so often that people say, oh, I tried meditation. I can't do it because I really have to clean my brain. I have to stop my. That is very difficult. Only the biggest masters achieve that. And there are ways how you can shut it off much more easily. The mantra is one. I mean, that's a good one.

Yeah, definitely. Again, fairly simple techniques that don't take like two. Well, if you want to be a master of meditation, maybe it does take a while, but like just to get started, something that's fairly simple. So I guess as you related to this, I think for people working in data that the hardest thing is maybe the mental energy. Certainly you need to spend a lot of your day just focused, doing deep thought, like thinking the hard thoughts. So, yeah, what are your tips for improving mental energy?

It is also not that hard. Number one. I mean, again, if you sensitize yourself, right, when you see something that looks like, oh, you know, this potentially a disaster in the making, ask yourself, does that only have negative sides? You know, so, because most things in life have an opportunity also. And the other thing also, which I would highly recommend is think of your thoughts as thoughts that belong to certain places. So, for instance, when you have loved ones and you want to spend an evening together, I mean, how many times have I seen, and I wouldn't also say I've been guilty of this at least multiple times. Where you have a day where you have so much going on, so much unexpected, your mind is overflowing, you have an appointment in the evening, you don't want to miss it for the first third time because you really love this person. You want to show the love, and you have selected a great place to have dinner. You are there, but your mind is not there. And unfortunately, devices have not made it easier. So I put the device away. So what I would highly suggest is compartmentalize. So you basically say, okay, I'm now here with this person I like a lot. I want to spend the time with that person and I want to show respect and connection to that individual. So I now close the door, literally close my mental door. All the thoughts that belong to whatever has been going on in my mind, I put into this other compartment. Boom, closed suck gun. And if any of the thoughts wants to come out, I say out back, back there. The only. And I tell in my office, you can call me, but only if there's something that people would get hurt by otherwise, later tonight or tomorrow morning, we'd see each other again. Anyway, this has time. I'm now spending the time with that individual and I want to spend the time. So compartmentalization is not that difficult, frankly. I think, again, many of these things are how you personally, how you train them. And if you visualize it literally like different compartments in your brain and just sort out your thoughts and say, these thoughts don't belong here. Now I open the other door, and the other door is thoughts of friendship, thoughts of what happened in the life of the other person I'm interested in that. I want to learn on a social show some gratitude. Gratitude is a good One compassion is a good one. Emotional intelligence relating to the individual. The moment then your mind gets engaged, you will see that the other thoughts will leave. And not only that, that you will also see that you will gain energy from that. And you usually, in this case, you can use this to recharge. Right. When you. When you are with somebody who you really like, you know, and enjoy an evening, you know, usually this gives you energy.

Shutting the door on work at some point is turning off that part of your brain, focusing on people around you, just sort of caring about what they do. That sounds easier said than done. So I guess do you have the techniques for sort of combat mentalizing things?

Yeah, I think it is not that difficult. And I would even say I do not know any serious leader who is not capable of it. In fact, some master that technique. So much to the point, Steve Jobs, you know, who people were saying had his reality distortion field, you know, so that's a compartmentalization technique where it even goes so far that things that do not fit into their own reality gets completely locked out. But in the end, it's basically the same thing. And it can be. Sometimes if you go too far, it can be bad. But in those cases, it was a coping mechanism for them to stay focused. And where they said, I've thought about this long and hard enough, I'm not going to give up, even though I have now five to 10 things that speak against it. And then I guess their logic kicks in. Conventional wisdom is almost always wrong, wrong. And also and saying, I will now lock all the conventional wisdom into this other thing and all the failures. Yes, I've learned something. But the rest of the failure I won't see as a failure. I stay on the course and I will move. So my recommendation is this is essential if you want to be in a leadership position or even if you want to really sustainably control your energy, you have to learn the compartmentalization side. And as I said, it is. I mean, it's really not difficult. First visualize it and really think, visualize it and control. You have to establish a controller of your thoughts. So also in the emotional side, this is essential, you know, so the voice that tells you this is that thought belongs there. This is that thought belongs there in the beginning. In the end, later on, it becomes natural, very natural. It's almost like you go into a certain environment. When I come into. Came into our house when, when we started to have kids and I literally closed the door, my compartmentalization was, you know, automatic. Really, really automatic.

Okay, So I like the idea that compartmentalization can be useful for shutting these down. And this is something you can learn. If you are a leader, you maybe have like, control over, like when you respond to messages, that's easier to do. I feel like in a lot of workplaces, you know, you've got your phone on you all the time and then people can send you emails, they can send you messages, and there's some type of expectation that you will respond out of hours. It seems like a terrible culture, but do you have any advice for like, how to deal with that kind of thing?

I think that even in the most high pressure environments, you will see that even though you feel the expectation is that you are always on, you don't necessarily have to be always on for everything. I have been. I mean, when you run large companies, yes, I have been always on. However, you know, I told my office and my team, you can reach me anytime. I mean, anytime with things that, where people get hurt or where they are at risk of getting hurt, anytime. Other than that, there are certain boundaries. There are certain boundaries when I do have my phone on. But I would not really appreciate if you were to call me about, hey, with this contract we are going into difficult. I think you really have to set the boundaries yourself. There's no one else to blame. And in the end, there are environments where you might feel enslaved. Go back to the other principle. Love it. If you don't love it, check whether you can change it. In a way, can you carve out your own liberties? And if you feel you can, if you tried it and you can't, then it's probably a good idea to not stay in this if it's cancerous. And I've made that decision many, many times in my life and it has normally served me enormously well. I mean, maybe we talk a minute about a concept that holds people back very often to make that decision, which is fear. Very often people say, when I ask them, when they talk about the environments and tell me how terrible it is and that they've tried certain things and it seems not to work because they have an abusive boss, those things happen. You have abusive leaders. You don't want to work for anyone who's abusive, to be honest, unless you learn a ton and then you can utilize that in somewhere else and also learn what you not want to do. But then when I ask them, so why are you staying in this abusive relationship? They in the end they say, I don't know whether it's going to be better somewhere else. And if I go to another place, maybe the same thing happens. And here, at least I'm appreciated. Appreciation should shown. So yet getting beaten up twice during the day, that's how my boss shows appreciation. You know, you know, there's this, you know, so and this concept of fear, I think fear stands for an acronym, a sense for false expectation appearing real. False expectation appearing real. Because very often these fears are made up in our mind by looking at uncertainty. And in the uncertainty, we very often emphasize the negatives more than the positives. And in reality, if we look back in our life, when we have basically decided that we change and do something different, and when we look back in all the concerns that we had many, many times, I think more often than not, we will see that those fears were not granted. In reality, it was probably one of the best decisions that we took.

Yeah. So I would say I love the idea of trying to set boundaries. And even if you don't succeed, I mean, you're not going to get boundaries unless you ask for them.

You have to try. You have to try. And I'm not saying in many cases you can be more productive with this. And people appreciate that, really appreciate it. And sometimes you even start setting a standard and what's the point? You get burned out. Again, this is the thing of you get burned out if you don't again, love a change of Oliver. That's why it comes down to love.

It, change it or leave it. I like that idea. Okay, so back in the start, you said that you gave the analogy about energy is like, you know, it's like the, the, the gasoline year and your car tank is going to run out at some point. I want to talk about ways to avoid like running out of energy. And it seems like just stopping work, taking that break is going to be important part of that. Do you want to talk us through your, your position on downtime?

Yeah, I think the, the most fundamental thing is that downtime is productive time. And before I got to know the energy concept, if you would have asked me, Klaus, what's your analogy to life? I would have probably said, well, life is an ultra marathon. And at that time I ran marathons, and my trainer was an ultra marathon runner. And I thought the more marathons you can run one after the other. When I ran with him the New York marathon to relax, he ran another marathon in the Central park right after it, just for relaxation, you know, just to get his muscles going. And he really was not faking it. He's a good guy. I love him. You Know, So I thought that that's ultimately what I have to do until I realized that that's not the way the world works. The way the world works. It's sprints, multiple sprints, multiple long or short or sprints. And then after this recharge time, time. Now, the recharge time doesn't have to be equally long than the performance time. In reality, there's a lot of things that can help you to recharge very, very quickly. We talked about this breathing thing. I mean, box breathing. Basically, it's 4 in, hold 4, 4 out. Hold 4 is a technique that basically all special forces use before they go into an exercise. Because it brings you back mentally very, very quickly. I mean, five minutes, good enough. Boom, you know? But those microhabits, I mean, the most dramatic one you see when you see the tennis matches, you see it currently in Wimbledon. So when the surf. The time between the surf can be maximum 20 seconds. Every top tennis player uses a routine that they have learned called neuro linguistic programming. So in their head, they run a movie in their head while they. While they get the new balls. You see them squeezing the balls and suddenly throwing one or two away. This is a routine that the moment they physically do that, they anchor this. That's when in their head, a real movie goes. And the movie shows them in the best moments that they've ever been in. And even if they are one point before losing, the moment, they turn around, they have the next serve. They are. They feel, if they do it well, they feel like they are newly on the course. So those are things for quick recharge. Microhabits. Like a friend of mine who works in Hong Kong in a high rise there, he takes his phone, gives it to his assistant, takes the elevator down, walks around the block a few times, moves up again. The whole thing doesn't take longer than 10 minutes. Goes back into his office and he's refreshed. He's completely refreshed. And some people like music. Just say, hey, I'm not listening to. I knew some CEOs who have a nice stereo system in their office. Or today you can use nice earphones and just listen to a piece of music. And the music then brings them back to a place where they feel really happy. Surround your environment with things that you like. You see here, this is my home office. You see some paintings that I personally love. It's not that I necessarily think that their artistic beauty is, but it's something that gives me energy. It's a scene captured at places that I Like the old feng shui principles of finding ways how to get quick recharge. But again, downtime is productive time. If you don't have downtime, you basically go into survival zone. Survival zone. Interestingly, in the beginning feels really cool because when you get pushed in survival zone, adrenaline gets out. And adrenaline makes us superhuman. We focus a lot adrenaline, but adrenaline burns through. If you can't move back into performance zone very quickly, then you are dropping down into burnout. And once you're in burnout, it's very hard to creep up again. Really, really hard to creep up again. So basically toggling between performance and survival. Survival is also helpful because it broadens your comfort zone. So once in a while to push this and to say, okay, I'm going into an uncomfortable situation. I'm not saying don't expose yourself to uncomfortable situations. Y do it with the understanding, whoops, I have to have a way to get back. A way to get back, by the way, is also by training a lot, I mean mental training works as much as physical training. And that's another trick, you know, if you can then immediately see, okay, I can now conceptualize this and I have full control, boom, you're back at performance zone.

Okay, lots of great ideas there. I would say with the box breathing, they said it was like a special forces technique. Also do that in yoga class, so quite widespread.

It's very cool, right? It's very cool. It's amazing how it works, right, isn't it? I mean you can be completely worn out. You do this for 5, 10 minutes and you feel like you're Superman, you know. Really cool.

Yeah, certainly. I love all these ideas. It's like little tips for just like improve your environment, you know, have some pictures around, you know, play some nice music. It's gonna just improve your mood and help you relax and yeah, maybe take a five minute break rather than just trying to, to push through all the time. I'd like to talk a bit about the, the outer game. You spent a lot of time on inner game. So particularly like if you're a manager, what responsibilities do you have for like the, the, the inner game of your colleagues or your direct reports that part.

I think you ideally want to give an environment for purely, I mean purely for performance reasons. You need to make sure that your team basically is, is highly charged. Right. That's one thing. The second thing is, I mean there's this old debate around who is a better leader is a leader. A better leader who's loved or who's feared and I think the best reflection on this is a very old one came from Machiavelli. And Machiavelli, I think, said it partially right. Listen until the end. If you are out there because you might not like the lead in, in the end, if you are loved by the populace, this is a fleeting thing. If you are feared, this is something that's more permanent. However, in today's world. So that's why you have abusive bosses. Because fear, unfortunately, is the carrot does something, but the whip sometimes even is stronger in humans. That's sad. That's sad. But the good news is today an environment where literally good talent can get a job anywhere. If you are not creating an environment that attracts top talent and creates this environment that allows them to flourish, number one, your performance is not going to be great and number two, your overall performance of the company will go down. Right? So I think as a boss, you just have to make sure that you create an environment where you basically can get top talent, can keep top talent, and have top talent being in great shape.

That sounds like a great idea. I guess the dream for every manager is sort of being able to get and keep all this top talent. How do you create this culture then where people are avoiding burnout? What can you do?

I think you. First of all, I think I would highly recommend introduce this framework to people. I mean, I wouldn't have written the book if I would have thought that this is a widely understood concept. Actually, one of the reasons why I wrote the book is because I saw that, that it's so little understood. People don't have a conceptual frame on how to lead their life. And the energy concept is a very, very good conceptual frame. How to lead their life and how to lead their life in business for sustain and sustain. I would introduce them to it. I would also tell them, hey, find your own routines. Part of it is also make sure that you are not draining energies too quickly. Because when we talked about emotional style, mental side, this has a lot to do not with just necessarily gaining energy, but that you're not allowing to drain, have energy drained from you so your batteries last longer. Then on top of it, what mechanisms do you have like this microhabits, you know, where you can quickly recharge, you know, what's your, what's your thing? You know, what's your thing there? So I would, I would recommend to introduce them to it. Tell them this is what, what top performance athletes are doing. What's any top performance athletes would basically yawn if you tell them this. As the latest Latest discoveries of the business world. They will say, yeah, yeah, right. You know that you learn at boot camp, you know, so we have to learn it at business boot camp.

I like the idea that you want to make sure that you've got an office environment where people aren't having their energy drained. Do you want to give us examples? Like, what tends to drain people's energy? Like, how can you avoid that sort of thing?

I have had the pleasure to be on a number of boards, and I won't say in which company that was, but in one of the companies, I learned that management had decided to stop a certain practice, and I forgot they had a term for that. And the practice was basically that it was part of the culture that by late Friday afternoon, the boss would come to the younger folks and throw a bunch of stuff on their desk and say, I expect an analysis of this by Sunday afternoon. Right. Because we want to present it to the client, send them something on Sunday, or by Monday morning, we're going to do that. And then if the person says, but I actually plan to be at the wedding of my best friend, which is tomorrow, and I'm going to fly there, so the boss would look at them and say.

Right.

Your choice of life.

Okay, so that's like a pretty horrendous loyalty test. And yeah, I can't imagine you keep many people if you do that regularly.

There are still organizations that see this as. As an initiation ride. Right. And have a number of those initiation rights. You have to ask yourself, is it an initiation ride where you do it once or twice and then it's over? Or is this part of an ongoing culture?

Absolutely. Certainly as you. Seems like the former hazing kind of thing is not great, but it's better than it being every week when you get something dumped on your desk, it.

Would be a problem and you would become an alcoholic, you know, so it's the other problem.

Absolutely. I think I would definitely burn out if I. If I was getting things dumped on my desk every Friday afternoon. Okay, so I know in your book, one of the concepts is that there's a difference between measuring the performance of individuals and their alignment with business values. So I guess talk me through what the difference is and how do you choose between employees who are like, maybe strong in one but not in the other?

Yeah, that's one of those conundrums that young leaders find hard. Experienced leaders, all of them would tell you the same thing. I mean, many people basically think about it two by two. You have values, good and bad, and Performance good and bad. And we're talking about those that are very high on the performance scale but very low on the value side. So those are the abusive bosses, you know, and when you are a leader and you put your team together, you might have situations where the abusive bosses have the best performance. And you know that the company culture that you want to build is not at all in line with this individual. On top of that, that individual might be a real good sucker up to upper management. So being very pleasant to you and kick down. So what then happens is very often when you have to make a decision, what do you do with that person? You accept that and you let the person in the role while you are out there in every all hands meeting. You talk about the new culture that you stand for and how you want people to cooperate. But a lot of people in the room know that this person is counter to that. So I can guarantee you, you know, you can save yourself a lot of time. You know, this is the point where, where, where you have to decide do I really want to change the culture and the direction where performance and values are aligned or do I accept these outliers and performance in the end is really what matters. The values is secondary if you don't set an example and I, I call it a public hanging, you know, so, so where you basically make sure that that individual gets eliminated it relatively quickly and you really make clear that the reason for the elimination is that that person's values are not aligned with the values that you stand for and that you want the organization to stand for. So if you have that as a problem, I can highly recommend to make that choice as fast as possible.

Okay, so I guess most companies will have some sort of performance review in place. Do we need to have alignment of value review as well?

Yeah, I mean the value review can come through. First of all as a leader, I mean honestly, I assume you spend enough time with the individual and you have to develop also your sensor sometimes. The problem is, as I said before, that these people are very good in kissing up so it's harder to find out. And they are also very good in terrorizing their team. Team to not say what's really going on there. I think a lot depends that you have an open culture where you kind of figure that out. Things like, I mean a few people leaving exit interviews where the person has nothing to lose and then tells you what has really been going on is a good one. I'm a big fan of the net promoter score for employee satisfaction. Now that can be Tricked. I understand if you see in an environment that it's all up there and at the same time you have some regrettable losses, you know, doesn't, doesn't really work that well together. But in the end, as a leader, you have to have your ear on the ground and develop these sensors. And some of it is, I fully agree, is not that easy. But in most cases it's also not that difficult. I mean, usually, you know, usually, you know, or you, you don't want to know, you, your nose is telling you that something small, you know, you see it, for instance, when you have somebody of that team meeting you alone in the hallway and you want to start a conversation and the person will not really engage with you. Right. And you say, hey, how's this going? How's the relationship on the, on this, with this customer and the person? I'm not really that involved. You know, you have to talk to my boss if that, if those things happen all the time, they are not the natural behavior if you have an open customer culture. Right. So those are some of the things.

Okay, yeah, that's fair. Like hopefully you do know which of your colleagues are awful and you probably want to get rid of. So actually one bit of jargon that was introduced in your book was the idea of mercenaries and missionaries in your organization. Can you talk me through what these are and what their attributes are?

Mercenaries, as in war times, you know, you can fight, fight the war, war with mercenaries, hired guns, or you have your own troop who are fighting for a common purpose and are missionaries, are behind whatever you want to achieve there. So you have to be clear. It becomes very clear when you use this. That's why I'm using this war example, because it's clear the mercenaries are there. As long as you can pay them, you can pay them well. Well. But you don't really have control over them. Right. And they definitely are not on the value side. For them it's just, we win the war, we do this. The rest, you don't care. You pay me for winning the war, period. Right. You get that, Right. So it's very hard if you want to build a very value driven company to build that purely with mercenaries, partially also because a mercenary defines their value by something that sells. So they will not feel a loyalty to your organization or it will take. I mean, there are mercenaries who sometimes become missionaries, but that's extremely rare. Most of the time they basically go from one company to the other and do their job there and rake in a lot of money and then they are gone. So it's very hard to build a new foundation with a solid culture just purely on mercenaries. You, it's fine to have a mix of mercenaries and missionaries, but if the mercenaries are in the majority, it's very hard to build a sustainable structure there. And with the missionaries it's clear, you know, they are in there with their life. You know, they have signed up for this mission and they're going to go with you. And they have the same vision, they have the same values. So that's behind add.

Okay. So I suppose it's going to depend very much which industry you're in or even which department is whether you're going to get more mercenaries or missionaries. I'm thinking something like, like maybe finance is probably going to have more people who are going to be money motivated or like sales teams are going to have more people are money motivated. I guess compared.

It's not about money motivation. I think even missionaries can be money motivated. That, that's not, that's not necessarily the defining thing. It's more the. That they don't give a damn about values. So basically it would say, okay, show me the job description. And usually the job description does not have this kind of corporate values or culture elements in there. It's basically, oh, this is what the job requires. They say, okay, come and I'll do it, dum, dum, dum, dum. And the rest. I mean we don't engage. I don't engage with the other stuff. I don't care about the other stuff. So I don't want to build a company for the long term firm. I'm here to do my job and I do my job. If you have any problem with that and other than that, I'm out.

Okay, fair enough. Yeah, I think there's definitely people where maybe they don't care about their values in that particular role. But I guess as a leader. Do you have any tips for inspiring your team around a vision?

Oh, yeah, a lot. I mean, frankly I cover that in the book just to make the point. I mean, as much as it's important for an individual or not important, but very powerful for an individual to have a purpose or purposes. It is equally important, I've seen, particularly in turnaround situations, to give people a purpose of why they do that. Right. And I've seen that multiple times. I have my test on my Saturday morning test. You know when Saturday morning you have breakfast with your loved one, friend, wife, kids or so, and you haven't been around for the whole weekend. Somebody asks you hey, what have you done? What have you done in the week? And you say, I am now part of this gigantic team that cuts down 50% of the cost. Most people would say, all right, okay, have you read the news today? And the conversation is over. You know, or you'd say, you know what? We are currently building this machine that if we succeed, can do minimally invasive interventions so you don't even need to be put under. You know, it is completely easy to do neurological or cardiac cardio interventions without having to open the body. And we can save gazillions of lives and make, make their, their surgery much more pleasant and really do. Would just go in and go out. Don't even have to stay in the hospital for this. Say, wow, tell me more about this. This is what you're doing, this is what you're doing. And I've seen this many times in my assignments. And I had many of these turnaround situations that I had been pushed into. I mean, one time I was pushed into the medical X ray and angiography unit of Siemens, which is the birthplace of Siemens Medical at that time was highly unprofitable. Many people had tried to restructure it. When I came on board, my colleagues who were in other businesses welcomed me with, hey, here comes the guy who runs the rusty nuts and bolts business. And frankly, anybody on my team who could get a better job with computer tomography or MRI or ultrasound, they left. So we had a massive drain. And I had done some time before I accepted that position in the hospitals and saw that this business was capable of doing interventional practices better than any other of the modalities. And I think the people didn't see that. So one day we had an all hands meeting. I invited this young patient, she was in her early 20s, and I had asked one of the hospitals that I was friendly with to recommend somebody. So I brought her in. And I didn't tell them what was going on. I told them, hey, there's a lady I invited today. I want you to listen to her story. She talks about her story and says she was a great swimmer. And then one day something odd happened and she had blood clots. They found that there is this disease and they were risking that she would die young. And then through a number of minimal invasive interventions around her heart, she was reestablished to health and could lead a normal life again. And there she was, beautiful, energetic, and she told that story. And while people were listening, they realized, wow, she's talking about that. Because all of this was done with equipment that we manufacture here and allow doctors to proceed to make something like this and bring a normal life back. And the medical you need to record who works on anything. And I gave her a list of all the people who had worked on the specific equipment that she was treated with. And then she read out the names and asked them to come on stage. And this is in the northern part of Bavaria. People are not easily moved, let me put it this way, but there were people, tears in their eyes seeing this. And that evening, this was around noon time in the evening, the head of the labor union came over and knocked on the door that was always open. And he said, hey, Dr. Kleinfeld, I want to thank you. And I said, why? What do you want to thank me for? He said, you gave us our soul back verbatim. And I said, right, okay, tell me more. And he said, you reminded us why we are here, why we are here. So they had completely forgotten that. And frankly, that was the day when I knew the turnaround will work super, super well. Because they understood, understood that there was a higher purpose, that there was something that bigger than just getting this business turned around. The better we could do it, the more lives we could save. So it's really, really important to translate that vision into something that's meaningful to individuals. And the moment you have. We did the same thing at Alcoa. We invited an astronaut and to ask the astronaut to talk about the last minutes in the capsule before the countdown ends and what thoughts go through the mind. And it's literally this thick aluminum hull that will separate the person from the very bad outer space environment very quickly. And understanding that there are people behind it who make this, who have very high quality standards, People get it, you know, people get it and suddenly they say, well, this is what we're doing, you know, this is how we're impacting things. That's a purpose that's bigger than that. And funny enough, I mean, the three richest men on this planet all have had powerful visions. If you look at Elon Musk, he came through interplanetary mankind. This was his vision and still is. And all of the things that came from it came from this idea. I want to have interplanetary mankind and multi planetary mankind. I mean, if you think of Amazon, there's a reason why, why Bezos called Amazon Amazon, the largest river. And he had already, with founding this, the idea of this is going to be the river of goods, the largest river of goods going out to the people, right? And look at what happened on Microsoft with a computer on Every desk. So there's a reason why they were able to build this. Obviously all of the three are also very, very good on execution, which is another other element there.

Okay, yeah, certainly. I mean, I particularly love the. The story of the X rays and just being able to connect workers who are not necessarily at the front line. They're kind of the building. You know, they're manufacturing some product and then just being able to see the impact on the customers or in this case, like the patient. So I think, yeah, bringing it back to, like, why you actually in business, beyond just making some money is incredibly important.

Cutting costs by 50%. Send.

Yes. Maybe the chief financial officer gets excited, but everyone else.

No, no, no, no. Even the financial officer. No, even the financial officer doesn't pass my Saturday morning test. You know, if. If they don't have anything better to say, you know.

Okay, wonderful. All right, so before we wrap up, do you have any final advice for avoiding burnout at work?

Well, I think most of the things I said, first of all, adopt the energy concept, a as of principle. You know, secondly, downtime is productive time. And then spend a little time on thinking about your purpose or purposes. And once you have those three things together, you're pretty much set not just for business, but for life.

Absolutely. I love that a lot of these ideas work outside of the workplace as well. They're going to help you in life in general. All right. And just very finally, I always want recommendations for new people to look out for. So whose work are you most interested at the moment? Is there anyone else you think I should be reading or looking?

Well, obviously Leading to Thrive is a very good book. I would recommend Tylee and there's even a website called Leading to Thrive, funny enough. So what fascinates me, I mean, I'm an addict with things like what defines longevity, you know, how can you stay healthy longer, stay healthy long or die fast? That's really the ideal scenario. I'm very interested in a lot of these things that go on there. I wouldn't have invested in probiotics company. We have a company that brought Omnibiotic here to the US Because I do believe that gut health is foundational because it determines a lot of these micro inflammations that go on in your body. As the gut becomes leaky, liver gets stinged and all these things start learning a little bit more about how your body is your biggest healing and. And that fascinates me tremendously, Tremendously. You know, and then on the technological front, obviously, AI is something that I think everybody should start using and also get into it. The sooner the better. Try it out, you know, and it's not that difficult. Don't feel really try it out. It's going to have a big impact. Yeah. So. And I think that there are some. A lot of other inventions that are close to happen, like quantum computing. This is real. And nuclear fusion, I think, also is becoming more real than most of us would have ever thought in our lifetime, you know, so those are things that I find enormously fascinating.

Okay, so there's a very wide range there from Probiotics to quantum computing. Different fields, but both absolutely fascinating.

So. Yeah, well, Probiotics is the fastest one, too. I mean, I would not have brought the company here to the usf. I have learned about it in the US Europe, and saw the benefits directly on me. Directly on me. I've been taking it for 25 years or so and really has helped me a lot and has helped me also to learn about how the body really works.

Absolutely wonderful stuff. All right, super. So many tips then, for improving your work and the rest of your life. Thank you very much, Klaus.

Pleasure Abdela Regime and hope you all enjoy. Enjoy it. Thank you.