8.1 Research is “Me-Search”

The link between professional success and resilience has fascinated me for a long time. When I grew up many things were fine in my family and some things were not, just like for many others. As a child, I had always somehow felt that I was wanted and loved. However, for many years there was just too much alcohol and other drugs like tranquillisers being used at home. This created an environment of addiction and co-addiction of which I became a part. It created a secret behind the facade which we were displaying to the outside world as a family. It also created an environment where the really important things like emotions were not spoken about. As a child, you adjust to your environment and since you hardly have any means of comparison you just plod along; at least this is what I did. When everything at home is somehow fragile you are probably not very likely to become a rebel because you feel that your parents just have no capacity left to cope with any sort of trouble. Some weeks were worse than others. I recall that my mum was hospitalised at least three times because of acute intoxication. Once even during the exam period when I was finishing high school. Even when you get somehow used to it, events like these stick with you. Any attempts to talk about addiction and find an ally in my dad led nowhere.

Not surprisingly, this climate of silence in the face of traumatic events had a lasting impact on me. I was depressed and fatalistic. It probably would have been easy for me to take some wrong turns in life. However, there were a couple of important events that helped me to find a good course. Although, one often only realises this in hindsight. One key event happened at school during my 11th grade. Through a school friend I had been told about zis, a non-profit organisation founded more than 60 years ago, which gives study grants to young people. The idea was that once you were accepted, along with a topic which you wanted to do research on, you were given the equivalent of about €400 as a scholarship. You were not allowed to take your own money with you and you had to travel internationally. Also, you had to do your trip alone and stay abroad for at least four weeks. Furthermore, you were expected to write a thesis on your subject and keep a diary to capture your thoughts and emotions. The entire idea dates back to the French architect Jean Walter. In 1899 he cycled 6000 km from Paris to Istanbul and back just because he wanted to see the Hagia Sophia. Since he did not have much money he earned his living by playing the trumpet in the streets. He had experienced this as a very difficult but also utterly exciting endeavour which had changed his perspective on life. About 40 years later, after he had become successful and wealthy, Walter founded an organisation which would give study grants to young people to give them the opportunity to experience similar autonomy and that would promote their success both in their profession but also in life overall. He gave this organisation the name Zellidja, in reference to the lead and zinc mines which he had discovered in 1924 and which his company exploited in the village of Zellidja Sidi Boubker in Morocco. About ten years after the end of World War II the idea of Zellidja inspired the foundation of what is now called zis in Castle Salem, Germany. The organisation still exists today. The only difference being that a study grant today is worth the luxurious amount of €600.

About 30 years ago, two study grants from zis helped me to widen my horizon, stretch my understanding of what was possible and develop way more self-confidence. In hindsight, the experiences I underwent on these trips to Scotland and Iceland were priceless for my development. I learned that I could cycle 1700 km alone and stand to get wet every single day without giving up. I learned that you can live on very little money and still have a good time. I learned how it is to be threatened with deportation and how you can turn this around into getting an interview with the state president of Iceland. Today the word we use for demonstrating qualities such as these is resilience – and I have made it my profession to help leaders all over the world to develop more of this inner strength.

After an apprenticeship to become a cabinet maker and my engineering studies, I first joined the world of management consulting, which was very instructive and exhausting at the same time. Then I joined the mechanical engineering industry. As a manager of a large organisation I learned what it means to experience your own limits. I was responsible for a large international IT programme with around 200 employees in various locations around the world. During this time, there were many changes in top management, but I remained in the saddle. I was in shape, did a lot of sports, regularly ran marathons and triathlons and even completed the prestigious Ironman competition. And I was proud of myself and wanted others to appreciate my performance – but actually I wanted them to accept me because I had always felt that I constantly needed to prove myself in order to be good enough. But there was rumbling in the corporate headquarters. I had critics who thought the programme was badly managed and too expensive. I ignored them and instead worked harder to improve the numbers and please the critics. Moreover, my marriage was in crisis mode. After about four years under immense pressure one of my ears had stopped working properly. I woke up in the morning and could not hear properly on the right side. The feeling of not being able to control my own body was extremely scary for me. After too short a break, during which I received regular infusions, I came back again. But I was weakened and a part of me did not want to do this anymore. In the meantime, my critics had continued their work and after almost a year, I was out. A good measure of this was my email inbox, which went from 200 mails per day to almost 0 within a few days. The feeling of not being used or wanted anymore was very strong and made for many sleepless nights. I felt a great urge to immediately take on the next best job so that I would not feel that feeling anymore. Being persuaded by my wife at the time, I did not do so and withstood the pain and the period of uncertainty. I took half a year for myself and processed the experiences in my first book which is written entirely out of my then martyr mode (so, please don’t read it). After completing this sabbatical, I received a very interesting and lucrative offer for an international management position that I could not refuse. In retrospect, this painful episode had been one of the best lessons in my life.

While I emerged stronger from this crisis and progressed to become an entrepreneur and executive coach after further career advances in the consulting industry, my then boss, who had always been an icon of energy and diligence, suffered a severe burnout shortly after I had left. He never fully recovered. The question “why?” has kept me busy for a long time.

When I first heard about the concept of resilience and the associated research results about ten years ago, I was immediately fascinated. What enables people not only to cope with severe crises but also to emerge stronger from them? What quality enables people not only to survive life-threatening environments such as the concentration camps of the Third Reich, but to leave them mentally healthy and life-affirming? What do these people have in common, and what can managers learn from them today?

In recent years, the urgency of this topic has greatly increased for me. This had to do on the one hand with the fact that in my training as an executive coach I wanted to acquire solid basics in psychology. As an engineer and manager, I was naturally lacking them which is why I completed a several-month internship in a prestigious psychosomatic private clinic. There I got to know a lot of managers as patients who, as I learned from conversations with them, were sometimes just a shadow of their former selves. That touched me a lot. On the other hand, the explosive nature of the topic was aggravated by the decreasing predictability of the social and professional environment. In recent years this has been accompanied by an increase in unpredictable violence all over the world but also by a wave of burnouts and suicides, also in my circle of acquaintances. Understanding the concept of resilience is probably more important than ever in such times.

Today I am one of three managing partners of Leadership Choices and I have learned that I actually love being an entrepreneur. I am very grateful for the way my life has turned out. Together, my wife and I have four children and a big dog which keep us busy. They teach me what is really important in life. I don’t always listen but I am getting better. While I still have the tendency to prove myself and work too hard, I can say that today I am able to connect what I do almost exclusively to what I believe is truly meaningful in life. This is a great gift. Being able to make a good living from what you love doing and what gives your life meaning is for me the greatest possible success in life!

8.2 Want to make young people more resilient? Here is how!

As I have mentioned, a study grant from zis (Figure 8.2.1) allowed me to travel to Iceland to study the scientific whaling programme there – a very political and emotional topic at that time. However, there was one little problem: there was no official way to get to Iceland with a scholarship of just €400, not even 30 years ago. The only thing that was making this endeavour look less like just another foolish idea of a premature teenager was a recommendation letter from zis and UNESCO stating that I was in fact on a mission and that it was OK.

So, I started contacting the Icelandic embassy and asked for their help to get me to Iceland for free. I was turned down of course. So, I started calling them and again was sent away. However, I kept on calling. Eventually they called me back and told me that I could go aboard a fishing trawler that would be leaving Bremerhaven in two days with a course set to Reykjavik. They did not forget to add that I should please never call them again. So, two days later I headed north to meet the trawler. Once we set off, the weather got really nasty and I was seasick for a full three days until we reached the capital of Iceland.

Once we had arrived I continued to live on the trawler for a couple of days in the harbour of Reykjavik. That was partly due to the cold weather – as it was still snowing in May. But mostly it was because of the immigration authority who wanted to deport me since I did not have enough funds with me to pay for my trip home. Also, at that time I looked like a stereotypical activist from Greenpeace or even Sea Shepherd, a militant offshoot of the eco-activists. The year before, they had sunk two whaling ships in Reykjavik harbour and sabotaged the central whaling station, causing millions in financial damages to the whaling industry. To make everything even worse, the pope was coming to Iceland while I was there and I was seen as a potential risk to his health. The only thing that could save me from being deported at that time was an invitation letter which the ministry of fishery had sent to me during the preparation for this trip. Obviously, this letter was at home, 3000 km away. And, for the benefit of younger readers, this was in the time before email and mobile phones. And even fax machines were nothing one would have at home. You had to go to the post office to send a fax. It was quite a big thing. Imagine the upheaval my situation caused at home. My parents were probably petrified from their worrying about their only son. By the time the invitation letter finally arrived I had developed a good relationship with a nice lady at the German embassy whom I had contacted in my dire straits.

Once I was allowed by the immigration authorities into the country, I went back to the embassy to ask her a favour. In a magazine, I had read an interview with Iceland’s then state president Vigdís Finnbogadóttir (the name means “daughter of Finnboga”) about the scientific whaling programme. So, I asked the lady at the embassy if she thought it was possible for me to have a chat with the state president of Iceland with regards to this interview. I still recall how she looked at me with a mix of irritation and amusement in her face. Long story short, a couple of days later I had my meeting with the head of state including me signing into the golden book of Iceland. It might be worth mentioning that none of my clothes even remotely resembled a suit or anything formal. I was really sitting with her in my hiking boots. However, the meeting went well and it even opened the door for me to work on Iceland’s central whaling station, which had been sabotaged the year before (see Figure 8.2.2).

In retrospect, the experiences I had gained on this trip at 19 years of age were invaluable for my development and my later successes. There were numerous crises to cope with and it was necessary to be creative and to improvise – skills that are very helpful in this world. Today we would call this inner strength “resilience” – and I have made it my profession to help business leaders around the world to develop more of this.

Having had a childhood with some challenges, I learned for myself that limitations are only constructs in my head and these insights I would like to make available to as many young people as possible.

Therefore, I have decided to support zis financially by my own donations and also by raising money for them. In June 2017 I went by bike from Heidelberg, Germany to Verona, Italy on my first fundraising trip. It took me ten days to cycle 1000 km across six countries and climb a total of 10,000 metres of altitude across the Alps. I was able to raise just over €15,000 with this trip and started even to get some media attention for zis. In June 2018, I will have gone by bike from Heidelberg to Montpellier which will be about 2300 km and involve climbing about 20,000 meters in altitude. One single study grant costs only €900 including applied overhead costs. My goal is to raise funds for at least 40 scholarships with my next project; that is €36,000 in total.

You can find out more about my fundraising projects here: fb.me/FundraisingForZis

You can find out more about zis here: www.zis-reisen.de

Please feel free to support. Or, in case you have children between 16 and 20 years of age and you want to help them gain more resilience in order for them to feel happy and successful in life, you might want to tell them about zis.