Hello and welcome to the Virtual Frontier, the podcast, not virtual teams created by a virtual team. I'm Chris and I'm part of the team here at Flash Up on today's episode. We haven't. Garip Barend is a C-level executive coach. Bernard Manuel and Daniel had an awesome conversation about leadership during a crisis or uncertain times. So here is Episode 17 of The Virtual Frontier featuring our guest, Bernard Garam. So hellbound, welcome very much to all who you're resorted to function.

I'm really happy that we have you today as a guest. Let me introduce it to our audience a little bit about yourself, your own intrapreneur, founder and CEO. And you have worked many years in the high tech industry. And back in 2009, used 2009, you started as a C-level executive coach and speaker. But maybe you want to tell us a little bit more about yourself and your background and feel very coming and where you're heading with your business today.

Yeah, sure.

Sure. Thank you, Daniel. Well, I studied electrical engineering and during my Ph.D. after the studies, I developed together with another friend of mine, a mechanical engineer, a sense of technique.

And we try to sell that sense of technique and no one wanted to buy it. So we were really frustrated and said, OK, let's let's make a start up. So we started our first company got venture capital in, and after five years we had 20 employees and we sold the company then to a big international cooperation. Now, if I tell you this and this way, it sounds like a success. But it wasn't because we were in the five years we weren't profitable and we had to sell it more or less.

It was the year 2000 and it was a roller coaster, this kind of start up. We did a lot of things in the hindsight now, wrongly so. We were focused on engineering and not on selling and marketing, for example.

So we it was we were lucky to sell the company in 2000 and 2000 to that big international corporation.

And there I was then in charge of integrating my former company, and I was in charge to build the service business worldwide. And at the end I was responsible for three hundred and fifty employees all around the globe.

Just great time.

But if you are if you were an entrepreneur, if you have been an entrepreneur and then you work for a big corporation, in the beginning that was great because they invested in us. But after about five or six years, the strategy changed.

So then it was not the right thing any longer to stay in that company. But it still took me two to three years until I really decided to be on my own again. And so I quit my well-paid job in this corporate world and started my business. And this time then as a leadership coach and to be honest, in the first first years, it was quite rough until I started my gym podcast on leadership. It's called Fuel, Often Punk Rock.

That was in 2013. And one year later I started my I call that online leadership platform. I help leaders to master their first leadership role with online video trainings, online workshops, online, one on one, coaching, everything included. And that's my business today. And I'm doing this right now, mainly in in German. But I also started to do that in English. Quite a trip, so the guys have a big background for the corporate world, and then you changed again to be an entrepreneur after many years, weren't?

We want to talk to them a little bit about leadership, leadership styles and how leadership can help and assist companies in this uncertain times that we are right now in and maybe what is ahead of us. So could you tell us a little bit more about your approach and coaching founders and CEOs and special about your most common struggles? Are CEOs or leaders from today's approach?

Sure. The funny thing is the the the most common struggles I see with mainly all managers, all kind of company sizes or even all kind of levels is not really in the beginning how to lead employees, but how to lead yourself. So there are most of the people, most of the managers struggle with how to focus, how to have time for important but not urgent asks. So all the leadership tasks are not urgent. Normally there is and that's a problem for them.

So like strategy, take the time to make the one on one meetings with with their employees. All of these things has to do with self management. And there I see a big issue for most of the managers today. Of course, it's also how to delegate, how to accept that you should now not be the best expert any longer if you just started as a manager because your role has changed. All this comes together, but it starts the struggle with first half.

Take your time to focus on the really important things which are normally not the ones which are urgent, not the operative things. So find time not for the operative, but for the leadership tasks. I would say that's the most common struggle I see with founders CEOs. But even with normal managers or leaders everywhere in all kind of companies, it's very interesting.

So it's mostly about self management and you have to start to train and educate yourself.

Right, right. It's really about self-awareness. I would say. That also implies then what are my values? What are my or what are my expectations? What's my why? All these things you need to think about as a as a leader, as a founder, as a CEO, if you don't have that, that's like the base, like the base ground. If you don't have that and you want to lead people, it's not working.

And the funny thing is, very often when I'm doing workshops or when I talk to two leaders, they they think they just need the technique.

But it's not the technique which makes a good leader. That's one part. But that whole technique will not work if this ground work is not there. And that's self-awareness. That's what are my values. Expectations, what's my why how do I deal with this daily incoming information overload? That's this self-management that's I think the most. Critical thing. Would you say as a coach and the manager and experience you have, that this has changed over the last year and this requirements that customers approach you with, or is this something like continuously that it is continuously, but you are right.

It's it it gets worse. Let me put it like this.

And that's because the how to focus and how to deal with distractions, this becomes more and more a bigger, bigger and bigger struggle. Yes. And of course, if we see it's let's say 10 years ago, it was just email, today it's email or something coming up was like, oh, there is a chat.

There's there's there's there's the distractions are increasingly a problem, I think.

And today it's also more a mindset thing that we are all running.

We are all working in an environment which grew over the last year, have grown over the last 10 years.

There's no bad experience with industry right now just to come.

And that's also something where I think more and more managers say, well, what happens if it's not growing any longer and they are not prepared? It's and it's interesting on and what would you say your opinion defines a successful leadership style overall, maybe especially having in mind the times that they are not so easy and more difficult right now and getting more complex and and more disturbing. What would you say? What is like the basics? Make the basics.

First of all, especially if you are if you lead a team or if you lead a company, you need to have a clear you have to be clear about when you need to lead in a co-operative were cooperative way and when you need to be like authorities. I was just called authoritative, I think.

So you should, of course, most of the time to be co-operative. That's in our world today. That's important because you're normally your your employees should be the expert and not you. Therefore you need to work, therefore you need to lead co-operative. You can't in most of the cases, lead in an authoritative way, because if you the authoritative leader, then you need to know all the details, which you can't any longer, especially if we are talking about, for example, the development team or something like that.

That's a that's a one one important part.

But if we could talk about qualities, about what is important as a leader so that you are accepted as a leader, I think that these kind of qualities are honesty, integrity and dependability. Then you have a bigger chance that people really follow you. So you also need to be consistent and reliable person, trustworthy person.

And one important thing, that's something I learned over the years, already in the beginning when I started in the company, in that you have to take decisions and that sounds obvious. Of course, a leader takes decisions, but really take decisions. And to take a decision means you have to take a decision. Also, if it's not clear if that it can be, it can go wrong.

That's when you really take a decision. That's when you take and then when you take responsibility. And there I see also a lot of people who.

So I don't have enough I don't have enough information. I make me wait sometimes. That's OK. But much too often it's not OK. They are they don't take the decision because they're afraid of the responsibility which comes with it.

And there was one saying, I learned from my first boss in a fake company I sold my company to was my first boss. And he told me. You have to take decisions, but it's your responsibility, and that means as a manager, as a leader, except to get fired. And that's something I found very helpful to to think about that and also if you don't lead, if you don't take the decision, who will? It's your responsibility.

I recommend having those those qualities in mind that we just talked about. Do you think there is something that we can call a born leader, or is this basically possible to learn for everyone that is interesting or that wants to be a good leader?

Hmm. I, I think I believe everyone can learn to be a leader, that it's more about that. You have to answer the question, do you really want to be a leader? Because if you want you want to be a leader, that means that you not just need to learn some techniques how to manage or something like that, but that you have to work on yourself. We come back to what I said before, self-awareness, and that means that you have to work on yourself and that sometimes getting to know yourself can sometimes be not so nice.

Your special picture about yourself and suddenly it's not so nice. So you just have to accept this as the second part of for a lot of people who get into their first get promoted into their first leadership role. They have to accept that they are not the best friend any longer of their team. They are now the leader. They have a different role. And it's not it's not about to be the best friend of anyone of everyone any longer.

You're not part of the team. You are still part of the team, but in a different role. And that can also be tricky. And before you take this kind of responsibility as a leader, you should think about that.

So perspective changes over time. That's right. And that's interesting. I have a question for you, and it fits quite well as a founder of CEO and CEO of Bread Solutions and Flessa Juillet right now, an international team of more than 30 countries. How has your own role as leader changed in recent years and has as a young entrepreneur, has you foreseen those changes that are right now ahead of you?

Oh, that's a good question. I could write a book about this. But first, let me say that during your conversation and while Ben was talking, I had a huge smile on my face all the time because I experienced all these things in the past. And I can only confirm that, yeah, everything is 100 percent right. It's not the employees that are the problems. It's not the market that are the problems. It's not under circumstances that are your main problem.

The main problem is this one, your body, your mind, you. And if you can control this in a proper way, how will you lead other people? And to answer your question, Danielle, this is exactly what I experienced while starting as a freelancer, then growing as an entrepreneur that growing to a global company up.

I'm in the very beginning, I was the resource, I was the leader, I was everything, I did everything by myself. And that was kind of easy because when I decided to do something, I always had to take the consequence just by myself. And then when you grow a certain amount of employees, then you have to take more responsibility and you have to deal with the fact that other people are not as you are. So I've employed other people and then I always assumed they think in the same way that I do, they follow the same wishin that I do.

They would do the same things that I do. That was totally wrong. I didn't even know that there are so many different characteristics in people that influence the results that much. I always thought, OK, this needs to get done, so just do that. And then emotions come into play and they they, they just bring up other different results than I would have expected them.

And that was especially in the last year when we've grown to a global global team that I've realized then culture comes into play that is different, another layer of complexity. And but it came always back to the point that if I want to meet other people first, I need to lead myself. And I can 100 percent confirm what Ben says, taking a decision is not just making an Excel sheet, list all the facts and then calculate is it good or bad decision?

And if it's a bad decision, don't do it. If it's a good one, go ahead. That's not how that's not how it works. You have to make decisions on things, on facts that you know and not on the facts that you want to know. And that brings up a certain amount of uncertainty. But anyway, you have to take a decision and you have to take the risk and you have to take ownership and you have to take responsibility even if things go wrong.

And that's the real nature of taking a decision. And exactly. This is what brings you forward, what brings the whole organization forward. And if you have a leader that does not take any decision, just tells the team we have a problem here, we need to do, we need to do.

And the problem is we nobody will do it. You as a leader have to do it. And this is something that is very, very important. If you want to have progress in a complex world, in an ever changing world with change that increases in speed every every day, basically. So right now, we are ahead in our pre talk of burned, a little bit of focus on leadership in crisis. So this was our hang up, I guess, when we started our conversation.

So leading in in that environment that is changing might be not so hard, but what happens when it gets when it's getting hard and maybe there is a crisis up front? So my question to you would be watching the current economic situation and listening to the analysts of the experts and everything. So a depression or some maybe full blown crisis is coming up. So how could executives on proactively get involved with that without falling into some kind of panic mode? How can they embrace those situations and get ahead of.

Or I would like to compare that to a captain who is on a ship, you know, what does a ship's captain do if he is at sea and he gets the information? Oh, dear. A big storm is coming. What will he do?

Will he say, oh, do we all will die? It will not.

You really don't know what he will do. He will say, OK, let's get prepared for the storm. You will prepare the ship. He will discuss actions with the crew. And he will he will be the guy who stands there and has a how can I say, a submarine position who people will trust that this guy will lead us through the storm. I think that's the responsibility for the guy who's in charge. So be prepared as an executive, any leader, entrepreneur or manager they should work on in this situation in the form that they get prepared for it, like winter is coming.

And I think that's the main issue here. You will need to think in options. You will need to not just say, OK, that's our plan, let's follow the plan, but it's more the approach which will help you go through this storm.

Because you can do a little bit more in detail what you mean by get prepared by maybe a little bit more detail.

I think the point is if if the if the if the shit hits the fan, you need to think about what's the worst that can happen if you now in a situation that you say, holy crap, we in the automotive industry, it's going down, it's already starting, this company is bankrupt, this company fires employees.

What can we do? So make make plans, but don't rely on the plan, make a plan and think in options. What happens if what happens if so that you can. Yeah. Steer your company even in in rough environment. If let's say for how long time do you have for the next three to four months.

If no orders come in, what can you do. Do you need cash flow, do you need all these kind of things to be prepared and to have a plan? What happens if this signals are coming? I think that's that's an important part. That's more on the outside preparation. The other preparation is more the inside for yourself, like. If if something happens like that, if a crisis comes, it's important that you are. How can I say that you that you are in your strength, so you need to have energy and you need to be healthy, otherwise you cannot think clearly and your motivation level is low.

You need to avoid this and that these are very how can I say? Very normal things, regular things, so try to stay fit and healthy. Very important, that is, get enough sleep if you don't have enough sleep, you make you take wrong decisions.

I observed that with myself so often and it's directly combined with less sleep is that my motivation is down that I if I hear something a critical situation, I'm in a totally different mood if I don't have enough sleep.

So. Also, take regularly, take time off, take your time not just for the operative, but take your time to think on the long term, strategic thinking is important in that way. So spend just time to get out of your normal way to change your environment regularly. All this kind of things I think is important. And really, if then, as I said, the shit hits the fan, then. I think always about what's the worst that can happen and how can you deal if the worst happens, try to have options, see yourself, then ask the captain and don't panic.

Yes, it sounds very broad, but I think that's the main issue. It's it comes back to self-awareness. If, you know, if you're in a in such a situation, you need to be in a situation. You need to to have the strength to think properly, to think clearly and to make the best what you can do. If the storm is there and the captain is on the ship, he can say, well, stop, stop, we need to have a break.

It's not working now. So you need to prepare for this time. And then what if the worst comes to the worst? Even if the worst happen, life will still go on as a saying. But it's very true. And I'm telling that because I went through this kind of times, especially with my first company, or you fall down into a depression.

I used to medicine everything in the last year to in order to get into these negotiations where we could sell the company.

So all what I saying here, I lived through that. That's why I'm saying that's what helped me in such situations.

OK, so we got Don fell into a panic mode. Get enough sleep. Is there anything else a leader from today should avoid when it gets to a crisis situation?

I think that the point is that that people will look on you, they will look how are you? How do you behave? So you are you can you can steer your ship into the right direction when you are.

I wouldn't say a tough guy in that area, but if you say, OK, I accept the situation and let's see what we can do, that's our plan. That's where we're going to make the decisions. If the other team members look at you and see that you panic, then the whole team is panicking. That's why I think that's the most important part. Be prepared and don't panic, not wichman. So it helps you in your daily practice as your own fun to do such a difficult situation in times.

Yes, I can. I can again confirm that because for me there are three main components that keep me up every day and that help me to not panic. So the first thing is in fact get enough sleep. That's totally true. When I just sleep five or six hours, try to sleep always eight hours. If I sleep less, then my mind does what my mind wants, but not what I want. I usually try to see my mind, my ability to think as a tool.

But if this tool that's just something, then I lack focus. Then I take poor decisions or wrong decisions and most importantly, I can't lead anybody else. So because leading other people is most likely somehow leading their minds, helping them to find to find the right decisions, to focus on the right things. But this requires I need to do this by myself first. The second thing is sports. I do sports every day, at least either in the morning or in the evening.

But if I do it in the morning, I'm fresh. I feel I feel healthy, I feel strong. I feel prepared for the day. And then things can come as they go. I also talk to talk to my wife daily. She helps me getting coached. She just asks me questions if I'm too deep into some problems and I don't see the positive things again, I don't see the big picture again. Then I stop my working day.

And I think this was a horrible day. I had so many problems. Nothing works. That's not true. Even if you feel nothing works, that's not true. Just step a little bit outside of this problem zone and watch what you accomplished. Watch the big picture and talk about it. That's why I love this podcast, because I always see, OK, we are heading into the right into the right direction. There are other people that think and feel and act this way, of course, that times they they are always there or problems are always there.

And difficult issues are also always there. But they only become hard for you if you want to see them from the right direction. And every problem there is a chance that sounds like, OK, I've heard this every time, but it's so true. It depends on, for example, an important employee lives. So you can either say, oh, why does he leave? I'm so disappointed. Why is why is he leaving? I did everything to make him stay, whatever, whatever.

So everything is a problem for the situation. But if you look at the other side, you could also say, hey, we had a great time, like two, three, five or whatever years. And now there is a time to bring fresh wind into the company. Finding somebody else I'm excited about and this person is excited about the company. So let's make this a new start. It's the same fact, it's the same situation, it's just a different angle of the perspective, how you see things and this is the other important thing is.

I can fully agree that especially the two things you said, the different perspective is a very important and here's again, you only get this different perspective if you're healthy, if you're fit, if you're old, if you were asleep.

You don't see that different perspective. And the second thing, what I also liked very much, manure, is that you say you need to talk about it with someone outside of your team and use I experience the same that my wife was a very big helpful, was very helpful for me, especially in these critical times, because I could talk to someone in a way I can't talk to my team because the team I can't tell the team. I don't know exactly where we are heading right now.

I'm not sure what to do in this situation where you were, where you're down. You don't want to show that to the team, but you need someone to talk to. So I think that's a very important issue here. And to both of you, my questions from your own perspective manual, as far as you on a daily business and you burn for from your perspective as a coach, how well is the majority of the managers prepared to lead teams and employers through difficult times?

And do companies in general have this in mind when it comes to educate their leaders? You first have to be to be honest, I think most of the managers, most of the leaders, they are not prepared, they are not educated. Only few companies I know really put enough time and effort in education of their managers. That's the first thing. What I observe in small and medium sized companies is that most of the managers are not prepared and even a lot of the younger entrepreneurs are not prepared because also that there was no crisis in the last 10 years.

They don't have the experience with the crisis and most of the cases, especially if they are not entrepreneurs, but if they are if they are managers in a company, then if they are if they are employees, then in the last 10 years there was no crisis. So if you are, let's say, 32, you haven't seen the crisis and. That's the one that will hit if we get into a crisis. I think that that will be tough here.

And I'm talking about Germany. So sum to sum that up, no, I think we are not well prepared and I see a lot of manches and entrepreneurs not educated to really lead.

Yes, what I what is my opinion is that most organizations and I don't know how it is in the world, but I can talk for German organizations, German companies that I know that I worked with and experienced, they are not made for flexibility. They are not made for catching opportunities. They are made to preserve the status quo and to avoid risk. That's what they do. And you see that in the culture. So most companies are hierarchical. There is like a CEO then second level management or level management.

Then you have the employees on the front line. And what typically happens is that everyone tries to save his own ass. They try to make decisions so that they can't be blamed. They try whenever there is a problem, they try to find the reason and they try to find whom to blame. But this will not move you forward. There might be an opportunity within the situation that you see as a problem, but you are not able to catch it because you are spending your time with finding the person to blame.

And then you try to talk to this person and what will you do next time to prevent this and so on and so forth. And this person is like, oh, I can't move anymore because now everyone is pointing fingers to me, will I lose my job? So they are not able to act flexible. They are not able to catch an opportunity while others do it. And this is the same in a crisis. There is always an opportunity in a crisis.

I mean, I just found it. I started my company in two thousand eight two thousand ninety nine. So I, I didn't really experience it, but I saw it around me. And there is a concept of antifragile and antifragile is a concept where a company is made to really catch an opportunity in any phase of a market. So when the market is high, they are able to catch opportunities. When the market is low, they are able to catch opportunities.

But this requires a high amount of flexibility. And when I am talking about flexibility, I mean the mindset of the managers. First, they need to be flexible if they want more flexibility. But this is what I don't see in ninety nine point nine nine percent of organizations in Germany.

I fully, fully agree, especially I think this is also a speciality of Germany in a positive way as well, that we are very good in small things which we make better and better.

But what's needed in such crisis you cited is flexibility. It's a you need to change things quickly. And that's not in the DNA of most of the of the German society. There are a few exceptions. Mostly these are small entrepreneurs or small companies. But the big companies, the 80 percent or even 90 percent or more of the population in Germany is based on we want to be secure and that it doesn't fit with flexibility. Absolutely clear. This is this describes it best, it is something companies could adapt because I think there are so many smart people in this big corporations and enterprises, how they could might get ahead of that.

I think of the the smaller the company, the better the chance that you can do that, the bigger the company. The more problematic it is. Being I was in a small company, I'm working with small companies, but I also worked for a big corporation, everything takes much, much longer, which is understandable.

And if you want to change something, it takes so long in a big corporation. That's why I think if a real crisis comes, that will be really tough for the big companies and the flexibility.

And this what you said, antifragile fragile mindset also is easier to implement if you have one or two leaders who go for that in a small company, let's say a 50 or 100 employee company, then in the 10000 or 20000 employees company.

Absolutely agrees or it must it must be started from the top management, from the top leadership.

If they don't if they don't do it properly, if they don't take time to focus on the important things and important things, is how to convince other people how to make them experience that this direction is the right one, not just tell them this is the right direction, but show them make them experience why this is the right thing to do. If this is not done properly, then yeah, I didn't do this properly. So I know why I talk about this.

I, I, I just had something in mind that I and I had a clear plan how I want the company to be. I want to be fully transparent.

My people that work with the company, no matter if it is freelancers, full time employees or whatever, they should feel independent. They should have a clear purpose of what we are doing. So like changing the world of work with virtual teams, putting flexibility in the first place. But I just did it, I just had a meeting and I said, guys, this is this is the new company, this is the new bride solutions. This is the business flash up that will drive bright solutions into this direction than everyone was somehow excited, but also very afraid because of change, simply of change.

I didn't prepare them well. And then I fired some and others left because it was not the company anymore. But they decided they want to work in a different company with a completely different culture and at this example require different people. So I would not have been there with my experience where I am right now. It would have taken much, much longer, I'm sure, even with only forty three people, but maybe more people would be on board.

What I do right now is I completely change everything and it's like building up a new company with new people, new tools, new work and so on. But it was worth doing it. I would just would not recommend it to others because the dynamic is very, very high.

I would like to add something here and this because you described it very nicely. You were the owner. You could change things.

If if you are a CEO of a big company, you are still an employee. Even if you think you can, this needs to be changed, this needs a disruption is coming, we need to change our total business model as a 100000 employee company corporation and. If you want to do that, even if you find the people, if you have a vision, even if you find the people inside the company who would follow you, it still would mean in most of the cases that you need to invest.

That could mean in a big company, which is on the stock market that you say, OK, our turnover will slightly go down, our profit will go down by 50 percent for the next two years, but then we will grow again. And the stock market will not follow you. So we know the owners, the shareholders was are you crazy?

Don't do that.

So that's where I see a big problem in in our world today for the big corporations. They even if they see they need to change, they can't because that would mean that they need to invest in a way which a real owner can do because he says, OK, next three, four years it will be tough. I need to invest, but I will do that.

But if you own the stock market, the stock market will not be will not wait that long. They want to have quarterly results. And that's why you can't do that. Is there any approach idea of maybe both those of you that could help those enterprises and big companies to be more agile and getting in those direction, young entrepreneurs or smaller companies? A kind of. This time, money will do first. Yes, I mean, I see that there are some corporate start ups, so that usually is a good approach to experiment, to have to experiment, to build up new products.

That and and most importantly, to create a new culture. Because if you have a small new corporation that is maybe owned by the big one, by the mother corporation, but it's built up from scratch with an idea, maybe they have access to all the resources that this large corporation has, but they should build up a new idea, make their own experience.

They should be able to build their own culture that is built for flexibility instead of avoiding risks. So this is what I see, what corporations do. And I think this is the way to go.

I think they try to do that. And I understand that way makes sense. But the real problem comes later, because if you have a big corporation, they have their own channels, sales channels, everything that processes. And then now they start a small company on the greenfield. And I agree they are they need to be out of the others and they will be successful. But now think about it. You have a big corporation, one hundred thousand employees, billions of sales, and then you have a small company and they grow.

They grow quickly. Excellent.

But after two or three years, they have one hundred.

Even if they have 500 employees, even if they do one hundred million or fifty million euro sales and the big corporation is still doing 10 billion, you don't have a chance to integrate them.

If you integrate them, this company will become the same.

Like the big corporation and the company, you have to be integrated.

Yeah, but if it's not integrated, it will not have an influence on the on the other part. So. So the only part there would be, in my opinion, to have more decentralized companies inside the company than this can work.

But that still leaves this big corporation with the problem that they say, OK, we have here a small company and it's growing, but what are we doing with our 100000 employees?

They will not change that quickly. We will not change the culture even if we have this small company who exactly shows us how to do it.

We we can't do that there. I see a problem. And to be honest, I don't have a solution for it.

The only solution I can think about is that it's like in life, maybe a big corporation that needs to die and others come up. That might be the solution. Maybe the big corporation has a small child that is growing up bigger and then this will survive. But you put this in a very critical phase. You say that if there is a corporation with one hundred thousand employees and they are in the company like for the last 10, 15, 20 or even 30 years, it won't change their mind.

Yes, I agree. So now there are two opportunities. Either let this large corporation move forward into the same direction as it does and then potentially let it die or create a new startup that is the new child of this corporation across bigger, bigger, bigger and will survive. Or would it be the solution just to release a large amount of those people in the company? Legally, that's not possible. Pay them something like the Germany clauses in common or some.

And then replace them by people with a new mindset. So, of course, this is still a large change, but would this be a solution from your perspective? I hope it will not be necessary in that way because that if things like that happen, in my opinion, if you look on a society, we are not talking now about companies, but we're talking about the society.

If a society has five percent who are not able to to work inside the society to to to to earn their money, that's one thing. But if you have, let's say, 30, 40, 50 percent who you say, well, you are not, in inverted commas worth to work for companies because we don't need new you.

That's that's terrible. That's really tough. So I hope that we have the time to change, to get most of the people educated in a way so that they still can work in companies.

But if it's if if we don't prepare, are prepared as a society and I don't see that right now, then this will be a disruption which is really tough for the whole society, which can go in all kinds of directions, which can even destroy our democratic way, how we live.

And I'm not sure if the outcome is the solution for that.

I just don't know that.

I also don't know and I even if even if if it can be paid properly, even if that's the case. I'm not sure if if that's really where we should heading. As I said, I don't have I'm thinking about that and I don't know exactly how to be prepared for this direction. Only to tell the people he put yourself as a person in that situation that shows that you have options, learn new things on the other side, that's great for people today.

Even if you said, well, I'm doing this job for 30 years, so what, go on YouTube, go on Google and try to learn something else totally different. If you if you were an engineer, a mechanical engineer at VW and you're doing now, you can do something totally different. I just was amazed to see it. I don't remember his name.

He has a YouTube channel called There are some Freekeh. So he's a guy who has built. A video channel, YouTube channel all around the green. Yeah, so where is it? What?

No, that's his hobby. And he makes this hobby as a can make a business out of that.

He has more than 25000 subscribers on his YouTube channel and just started, I think two years ago. So he can think about if I don't like to work with a big corporation any longer or if I see the big corporation wants to fire me, I have something else. But I don't but most of the people I don't think like that, they don't think in options, that's what I think of what you're saying is what I would hope that people I'm working with do by themselves.

So, yeah, if you have a problem, then just ask somebody if you can't solve your problem by yourself. There are plenty other resources out there, either in the company or on YouTube or wherever. You know, solutions. Information is everywhere in place. You just sketch it and you need to use it and then solve your problem. But this requires ownership. You need to understand it's your problem. It's not somebody else's problem. Correct the monkey away to somebody else.

But this is changing people and you can't change people.

No, you can't change. But you can try to. How can I say to to motivate them to go into this direction? So if they are afraid, if they say, oh, we don't have security any longer to deal with it, that's the way how you can do it. And we have a big advantage compared to people of 20, 30 years ago there it was difficult. Today, all information is available.

You need to do you need to have to start something new to learn. I'm convinced that if you are able to learn by yourself, you even need to go to university any longer. You can learn anything because the information is on your fingertips, which was not there thirty years ago. I just found out two days ago a website where they just recently published over 600 or 800 courses in different universities all around the globe where you can get free courses in any matter from engineering over IP, human resource, what history you choose the topic, you know, so and you get their knowledge for free.

I just have to look for it.

Just a matter of do you want to spend your time, five hours to watch Netflix or do you really dig into a subject which where you are really interesting with which you are really interested in and then try to learn things and then adopt it and make a business out of it or be prepared for the next job where they hire you because you are the expert on something you just learned on that. Now, to wrap this up today, I think we talked about learning and continuous learning.

Is there any practical tip or insight which can help today's leaders or entrepreneurs become an inspiring leader or inspiring leadership personality in this unpredictable times? What would that be? Could you give us your insight about yourself? We talked about learning. Is there anything else you would. Can you can see? In general, for the for all the people, I would say my two cents here, for all of the people, manches as well as employees, it's some kind of tough love.

Be prepared and think in options. And the second one for me is security is an illusion. The more secure you want to be, the more in danger you are. There is no real security in life. Deal with it. We have options. We talked about what's available now for the leaders. If you are a leader, show empathy, be a trustworthy person who others can rely on. And if you do that, you create a safe environment for your team and your team members.

The Net also helps you in these kind of situations because if there is a safe environment, your employees are more open to talk about problems and failures and you want to know about problems early enough when they occur.

So that's what that's all my two cents on that I would I would say is reward people in your organization for taking risks. Yeah, very good. And may give them a stage for sharing their experience. So don't force people to take risk because or tell them you have to take risks, you have to you have many options, just try something. But they will only learn from experience, not from telling them. And it's also possible if some some people, some leaders or whoever in the organization took risk and succeeded with that, maybe failed five times does matter, but succeeded at the end.

Make this experience available to others and share it with others so that they can learn by listening from them and yeah, they will probably understand that, OK, our culture in the company is not about blaming any more because this person failed five times and then succeeded and failing five times does not mean you fail at the end. So failing is a way is the process to succeed at the end? Others can experience that within the organization. I think that is a huge step forward.

I fully agree. That's a good point. Great.

Thank you both so much for this interesting talk. Was really enlightening when people would like to get in touch with you young entrepreneurs and founders, how could they possibly find you and get in contact with you?

I have the big advantage that my name is very seldom my last name gave up GCR and WRP. So if you Google me was bound, give hope. You will come to all my website websites like me a few on where I have a podcast, fuel, often book, blog or also my English podcasts, my English YouTube channel or my German YouTube channel, all about leadership. So that's the best way to get in touch with me.

And of course, we're going to link those in the show. Not so excellent. Thank you. More using. OK, so things are going you both and see you next time here on the Frontier.

Thank you very much. Bye. I'd like to thank our guests, Bernd gear up for joining us today. You can find out more about Barend on his website and podcasts that are linked in the schnooks for those of you in Germany. You're not going to want to miss the virtual teams life experience from flashmob on December 12, 2019. There's going to be a keynote speakers talking about different aspects of new work as well as food and drinks. It's going to be an awesome night.

There are only 50 spots available. So register now using the Lincoln Michoacan's. You can subscribe to the virtual frontier or leave us a review and Apple podcast, Google Play, Stitcher or Anywhere Else podcast found on behalf of the team here at floorshow. I'd like to thank you for listening. So until next episode, keep exploring new frontiers.