#60. Gabor Holch: Winners & Losers
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What is up, everybody? Welcome back to The Honest Drink. I'm Justin. You can always reach us at thehonestdrink at gmail.com, Instagram, or WeChat. And of course, if you've been enjoying this podcast, go ahead, rate, comment, and subscribe. Now, we got a special one for you today. Our guest has been on this show before. He was actually my first guest of 2020.

And boy, what a crazy year it's been, huh? It's so much shit has happened. It's been so insane. And I think there's just more to come. We get into a really fascinating conversation today. We talk about some pretty abstract ideas and concepts. We talk about society. We talk about the dangers of picking winners and losers in today's divisive world. We talk about how we react to things, self-awareness, intuition, leadership, and

And he explains how at the end of the day, all people, everybody, no matter what position you have, no matter what job you hold, we are all either artists or scientists. Now you can be an engineer or you can be a literal scientist, but we are all either artists or scientists, even within that field. And it really dictates how we operate, living our lives, doing our jobs and fulfilling our roles in society.

He is such a unique mind. He is absolutely one of my favorite people to talk to. And I just can't say enough good things about him. So without further ado, please give it up for Gabor Holch. ♪

Thank you so much for coming back, man. This is special because you were my first guest of 2020. Right. It was still cold, I remember. Our last episode was recorded in January. Yes. Right? Right when COVID was...

Just starting off. Little did we know. Little did we know. Here we are almost at the end of 2020. So much has happened between then and now. How have you been, man? That's an interesting time that we are looking back upon because, yes, I still remember I was dressed up for winter when I was here last time. And then by the time the interview came out, I was already back in Hungary. I went back to Hungary yesterday.

in the beginning of March. Oh yeah, that's right. Here is, I mean, I think this will be fun for a lot of people who listen to the show. Here is what we were pondering with my wife. So we are getting a little bit edgy because of this COVID thing. It had gone on for long enough, we thought. So beginning of March, I'm going over to Hungary.

And then I'm kind of talking in the present tense just to illustrate that we were thinking like this. So I'm going back to Hungary. I'm staying put for two weeks just to isolate myself voluntarily because in Europe it was not a thing yet. And then I would visit clients in Spain, in Germany, in Holland. And then my wife would join me for the May the first holiday.

And then we would stay in Europe anywhere between two weeks and a month, go down to Dubrovnik, spend some time in Barcelona where some of my family lives. And then by the time we come back to China, obviously this whole thing will have blown over. Obviously. Yes.

And then looking back now and finding like an email that we sent to somebody about travel arrangements and everything, it sounds so naive. So I emailed my friends in Germany and in the Netherlands. And I told them, you know, I hear a lot of things about COVID going there as well and so on. So how is it? And then my German friends are like, ah, don't worry about it. Just the media is making a big thing out of it.

Don't worry. I arrived in Hungary on the 6th of March. And on the 17th, I was supposed to make a conference appearance in Barcelona. And that conference for a thousand people was still on. They only canceled it the following week. On the something, like when it was already around the 10th.

of March, if I remember correctly. So they really wanted to go on. They just waited last minute. Well, but it's not just that. The whole thing, it was not in the zeitgeist that they should have closed. I actually thought of not going because COVID cases were rising in Europe. And I was thinking, you know, if I am not going, I'm not getting my money back. If they cancel, I do. Yeah.

So finally, I just had to wait for a couple of days until they canceled it. That's how sudden it was. Is that like playing a game of chicken to see who cancels first? No. No. It was genuinely just this internal monologue that I think many of us had at that time. It's like, am I crazy or is everybody crazy? Or is this whole thing crazy? Am I overreacting? Am I overworrying? Mm-hmm.

Or, you know, obviously, if an organization that has to take responsibility for hundreds of people is not canceling, then maybe I am just over worrying this whole thing. I overreacting. Well, what was your mindset when leaving China in the first place? Like, was it because you were afraid of what it would turn out to be in China or? Not at all.

My feeling was that it was going away in China. It was getting slightly better. Because at that time, for months, we lived under this kind of siege mentality. There were these kind of red banners everywhere.

All over our Xiaoqiu, you know, our living compound. And then you could hear the loudspeakers, like, refuse rumors, do this, do that. It was genuinely this kind of siege mentality. Really? They were, like, blaring messages on the loudspeaker? Yeah, that's right. That's right. And, of course, you know, the shops closed down, then they opened up again, then they closed down again. We didn't really know why. Yeah.

In Shanghai, the illness itself didn't make itself shown in Shanghai itself. Just until today, I know one person personally, directly, who was affected by COVID in Shanghai. One.

i don't know anyone directly that's it so we didn't we were not subjected to the fear of catching the virus we were more under this in this kind of siege mentality as i as i try to express it in europe it was much more tangible left and right you just heard about it she got sick he got sick she lost somebody it was completely different but in shanghai no but that was a strange moment of we had this system in our living compound

you get a piece of paper with the stamp of the day on it when you leave the compound. And then when you go back, you have to give it back so that they can see that you didn't stay overnight anywhere else. And I was rolling my suitcase out and the security guard asks me, so when are you coming back? And I said, I have no idea. He said, what do you mean? Well, I'm going back to Europe. I don't know when I'm coming back. And then he said, okay, then you don't get a ticket, you know.

So I said, all right, it doesn't matter because by the time I come back, we will not need a ticket anyway. And that was the case, except three to four weeks turned into seven months. In a way, it just feels like with all the confusion that was happening at that time,

But like after everything that's happened between then and now, it just feels like life was a little more simpler then in a way. I don't know. I took it very badly, to be honest. Oh, really? Yes. Yes. This whole thing in China, I took it very badly. So I went, I never left Hungary for the seven months. My family was here in Shanghai. I was in our house in Budapest.

And finally, I never left. I never did go to Germany, Barcelona and so on. I just stayed where I was, apart from a very short time in Vienna. I was in Budapest, but the fact that there is more space there, there is more green and European people, they react differently.

And then I was just kind of confirmed in my belief that at heart I'm European. Because that kind of mentality, it relaxed me much more than what happened in China. - Why is that? Is it just 'cause you felt you were just with your own people, your own culture? Like, is it sort of tribalism a little bit? - No, I didn't feel like that at all because my wife was here in Shanghai. So actually I have lived in Shanghai for 18 years now.

And I haven't stayed in Hungary for more than two weeks for 20-something years. So was it just the space, the confining in a way? No, it's just the way Eastern Europeans panic and the way Asians panic is completely different. Oh, enlighten me. Eastern Europeans panic in a way so that they try to, how do you say, they try to kind of outwardly pretend like nothing is going wrong.

And that create a false but soothing sense of security. - Oh, okay, okay. - A little bit like in the army, you know, it's like shots or bangs start going off and then you look at the officers, "Oh, you know what? Turbulence on the plane."

You were saying that last time. One of my favorite metaphors. Sorry for repeating myself. No, that's good. So, yeah, in any kind of difficult situation or than anything, any kind of emergency, you look at each other and there is this one guy who stays calm. Maybe inwardly he is afraid, but outwardly he is keeping calm.

And that was the general feeling in Hungary. Yeah, sure, why? We are going to close the restaurants. We are going to use the restaurants to cook food for the doctors. But don't make a fuss out of it. And somehow it agreed with my internal sense of security much better than what happened in China because people here, they have this routine of turning everything into a movement, if you see what I mean, of turning everything into a campaign, right?

And I'm not saying, I'm really, one thing that this whole coronavirus taught me is not to compare apples and oranges. It's not to maintain one attitude is better than the other attitude because it's so personal. But for me personally, Europe was more relaxing, even though it was in a sense worse than China. I understand. I understand what you're saying.

it's like going along with that too like in terms of like everyone being individual and like reacting differently is like during this whole time or during this whole year with covid and

a lot of other things are going on in an international kind of scene. There's a lot of kind of like pointing of fingers and winners and losers, right? Like, what do you think about that in terms of where we're going forward? So like, it's almost the end of 2020, thank God. But 2021 doesn't promise to be that much better either, right? So like, where do you feel like we're headed towards? Yeah.

It's an ironic time. It's an absurd time, so to speak. So first of all, a lot of people, what COVID-19 did to them is consolidated them in their bubbles, in their respective bubbles. So whatever you believed before COVID-19, you believe it even more now.

This is what the virus did. So those people who thought that there must be order and predictability and there must be like a central authority who takes care of it all, they believe it even more now. Those people who think that you have to take care of yourself because nobody else is going to do it, they believe it even more now. What a lot of people don't realize, and this is the interesting thing for me, is that these bubbles are still privileges.

So an almost older voice that came out of COVID-19 comes from people who have the privilege of a bubble. And that's still the minority, numerically speaking. Well, can you explain that? Can you clarify that? Well, for example, my two favorite examples is e-commerce and home offices. So if you look at e-commerce, and lots of people say, you know, it's irresponsible to move around when you can order everything online. Right.

But ordering online, it still depends on people who cannot stay at home. So if only they thought like this, then your entire e-commerce bubble would collapse. If those motorcycle couriers would say, like, you know, I'm not going to leave at home as well. I'm going to order online as well. Then who is going to deliver those goods? So what people don't realize is that if you are on one side of the debate, you depend on the other side of the debate, right?

it's not it's not who is right it's it's where you feel at home just like in my case so if you want to stay at home stay at home but as you said don't call people who move around stupid because they deliver your food they deliver your i don't know your your diapers for your kid they deliver your medicine

And then if you are one who refused to wear a mask and wants to move around and thinks that staying home is elitist or cowardly, right? Then move around, take personal risks, make sure that you're not a spreader or a super spreader. But on the other hand, also be aware that the more you move around, the more likely it is that you are going to need those people that will move around eventually because you need a base, you know, anybody just like...

Just like an ambulance service or an army or anybody else who creates logistics, you need a base where there is safety and predictability. And this is why I feel it's so hurtful that people call winners and losers because actually usually those losers that they point fingers at are the people who carry them on in their journey of whatever they think is right. I can understand that point of view and I agree.

But is there a differentiation to be made between, let's say, people who are keeping the system alive

running, you know, like couriers and post people, you know, like people who are working and who don't have the privilege, let's say, to stay indoors and just confine themselves at home and have to work because the system depends on their labor versus people who are not working like that or not involved in the system, but just, you know, like moving around anyway, just because they feel like it. Well, how relative this is can be illustrated in one way. Let me ask you back.

Do you consider yourself one of those people who moved the system? No. All right. Now, just imagine a lockdown in a city and just imagine all those people who have to stay at home with families, with kids. Normally they move around. Let's say they were salespersons. And one of the reasons why they wanted to be salespersons is because they like meeting people and they like to be in a different city every day. And suddenly they say, all right, you are staying at home and you are doing your sales job via a broadband network.

And then they say, let's say, hypothetically speaking, you know, thank God to the Honest Drink podcast because the only thing that keeps my spirits up

is that I can listen to these people from all over the world. Some of them still go out there. Some of them, they'll still travel. So I think all of us move this thing forward because human beings are not as simple as an e-commerce or fintech network imagines, right? These are rational networks that think in terms of what economists call an econ. An econ is a hypothetical, perfectly rational human being.

that makes perfectly rational decisions. But the problem is we are not econs. We are people... That doesn't exist. It doesn't exist at all. It's just an algorithm that explains how algorithms work. But it doesn't explain the uses of the algorithms. And the interesting thing is that, you know...

Maybe one of those motorcycle couriers or maybe one of those medical doctors that you think are the ones who move the system, they go home. And the only reason why they can carry on is because they put on an entertainer's CD or they listen to your podcast. So you move them and then somebody moves you and then somebody moves them.

And this is how this whole thing fits together. And this is what people don't understand when they point at a country or a factory or an individual that refuses to close down or closes down entirely as unfair, stupid, irresponsible, and generally going in the wrong direction. Somebody has to go in the wrong direction. Otherwise, nobody's going anywhere.

I don't know if I'm very abstract here. You are being abstract, but I love it though. I love it. Well, it's the idea that we're all like one large organism. We are. Right? Yeah, that's right. And we always think of ourselves as from very individual, very self-centered points of view, most of us, right? Yes.

And we don't understand that everything that happens, everything that we do, everything that we feel and that goes on is all interconnected with each other. We live in a pond and there are ripples going across all of us that every one of us is creating. Yes. And feeling. Yes.

You know that I deal with intercultural leadership, which is on one hand very social and on the other hand very personal. So we are all in a way locked up in our own mindset. So if you are an outgoing extrovert with a lot of curiosity and a lot of flexibility, you cannot not see the world that way. This is the way you see it. It's obvious. It's common sense. And then if you are a cautious introvert,

whose life is all about building predictability and reducing risk, that's the only way you can look at things. And that's a value system that is not just typical for an individual, but also that's the way companies work. That's the way families work. That's the way entire countries work.

And one of the most interesting things for me to see was how countries see each other as I was moving back and forth. So during this whole pandemic, let's say since the beginning of 2020, I have been in China, Hungary, Holland, Austria, China again. And then one of the interesting things for me was that the way China reacted to this virus feels itself completely justified. Yeah.

And when I say I'm in China is an abstraction, but lots of Chinese people that I talk to, and certainly the political leadership of China is quite annoyed that the rest of the world is unwilling to accept China as basically the ultimate winner of this reality show that has been broadcast.

The pandemic, like why can't they see that we have won, basically? Yeah, China doesn't get any recognition, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, recognition for it, but also just an admission that they are doing everything right. But if you turn it around and then you go back to Europe, and I have been in Europe for seven months now, and I talked to a lot of people. China keeps coming up when I enter a room. Everybody knows where I'm coming from.

So one of the things that you don't realize when you're here in China is that a lot of people outside of China, they basically see this whole thing as China talking for like at least half a decade about shared destiny and connecting and Belt and Road. And then China closing the door and then telling the rest of the world, well, this is your problem now, basically. So a little bit as if China

that all that idea about leadership were not there anymore. Now- Well, do you think that sentiment is accurate? I don't think any sentiment is accurate. Sentiments are not accurate.

- By the very nature and definition of sentiment, it means it's not accurate? - Yes, definitely. Yeah, so we, you know, human beings, we always have a head to head and a heart to heart communication and we shouldn't confuse the two. So here is the sentiments are not about who's right. Sentiments are about, so for example, just a couple of minutes ago, you asked me how the temperature in this room is. You know, that doesn't matter. It doesn't depend on how much the thermometer shows you. It depends on how you feel.

If somebody, if it's 19 degrees and somebody feels hot, you don't explain to that person that it's not hot. You do something about it because that person subjectively, but very tangibly, feels hot. So this is how sentiments work. And this is one thing that neither side understands right now, that coronavirus is a crisis,

and it pushes us into extreme. Whatever you believed before, you are going to believe it even more now. But that is going to take us farther away from each other. This is not, we are never going to agree about these things. US and China are extremely good examples. You cannot just keep pointing at the numbers. That's never going to bring people closer together. And to me, that's absolutely fascinating because that's what I'm dealing with in my work as well.

So if there is an entrepreneur or a startup owner or a CEO, they are looking at these narratives and they are asking themselves, so what do I want? Which kind of internal culture do I want to build now? I'm responsible for the entire company. If you're a CEO, you're a vice president, you're responsible for thousands of people. So do I build a fortress like China or China?

Do I build a crazy tribe like some other countries did? What do I do now? What's the brave thing to do? Because there is responsibility and there is safety, but we have been talking about courage and disruption for the last decade as a positive value. So where is that now? And I'm not saying anybody's right because I don't think they are. I do try to add this value

element of empathy to the discussion so that people are not too angry at people who think differently from them. But in the meantime, it's absolutely fascinating, in my opinion. Well, is what you see is that the world is just getting more and more divided? And it's this idea of isolationism, like everyone's being more isolated, barricading themselves off, like, oh, this is us, that's you. We'll handle our stuff, you handle your stuff. There's no more community.

In it all? Like when the shit hits the fan, so to speak, right? When a crisis really hits. Well, a couple of things. I generally don't believe in the world like consistently going anywhere. I think the world is going helter skelter and back and forth in everything. I also think that this situation is temporary no matter how long it lasts.

So if you study history, I mean, there have been pandemics that lasted a year. There have been pandemics that lasted 15. Still, we can consider it temporary. And of course, pressure, stress always makes people more selfish, always makes people isolate. That's what it does. So we will see how long it lasts and we will see how permanent or temporary the measures that we are taking must be.

And that makes me think of something else, which could be a little bit disturbing. But I am, you know, I used to be a diplomat. Now I'm a consultant, but I have a long lasting love for history. And one of the things that it keeps making me ponder is what if the last 30 years of my life and the way we lived was the temporary one?

So I, you know, I was 18 at 1989 when lots of radical changes happened in the world. I come from Hungary, obviously, nobody has to tell any of the listeners what happened in that part of the world at that time.

We are in China. Nobody has to tell us what happened here at that time, but also lots of other places in Latin America and Africa and lots of other places as well. So I was like an 18-year-old idiot jumping in the streets of Budapest at that time. And something has ended and something began. And we celebrated. And then came massive consumerism, a lot of freedom, a lot of understanding, a lot of

flexibility, diversity, adventure, right? Yeah. Or peace. Yes, exactly. As a diplomat, I got insight into data which showed that we were living in an unprecedented, how do you say, in an unparalleled peaceful era. The level of conflict in the world, the level of poverty in the world, the level of illness in the world, it hit everything.

rock bottom in many different ways. People like Yuval Harari, they keep talking about this and they say, well, they kind of extrapolated that this will keep going on for a long time and artificial intelligence and so on will take care of us. But what if that was a period?

Yeah, what if the peace and prosperity was the anomaly, right? Unfortunately, that is a possibility. Well, if we look at history and we look at the larger swaths of time and history of human civilization, it might prove to be right. It might prove to be like that the more normal state of the world or the more natural state of the world or default state of the world is constant change and upheaval and

chaos, maybe to a certain degree. And that the windows of time of where certain regions are experiencing peace and prosperity and growth are the few in between. That's exactly it. And there are certain personal aspects of this to me, because I was there in a Budapest house. I was away from my wife. I felt a little bit sorry for myself.

And then I started looking around and especially what does everybody do during the coronavirus lockdown? You start going through your stuff and you sort it out, you know, all the things that you didn't do before. The old clothes, the old photographs and so on. And here is the story. Thank you very much. Here is the story. My father was working in China in 1980s.

writing home letters to my mother on this kind of thin airmail paper, you know, so that you don't have to pay so much because you paid by weight. Oh, so the paper was lighter. So there was no Skype. There was no Zoom to talk to each other every day. There was a letter every week. And then before that, I spent some of my childhood in Baghdad, Iraq, because my father was an expat engineer there. And we moved back to Eastern Europe because of the Iran-Iraq war that broke out there.

And then on the wall, there were the photographs of my grandfather who was in the war and didn't see my grandmother for two years. And then before that, there was my great-grandfather who was in the hussars in the Italian front and didn't see my grandmother for I don't know how long. So I was sitting there with my self-pity for not having seen my wife for four months, surrounded by all these people who were looking back at me and said, you know, like, number one, you know...

It doesn't compare. Yeah, yeah. Like get over yourself. Exactly. Like your tolerance for like what is a crisis has like lowered compared to their days, right? Yes. And the other thing is, you know, when certain apps come in or when the stock market collapses, then we keep talking about what a crazy world we live in and how unpredictable everything is. Come on.

Sit down and talk to your grandparents or great-grandparents if you want to know unpredictability. Well, that also proves your point in terms of the natural state of the world because at least in your family, at least going back to your grandfather and grandparents and probably even before then, they were always touched by war in some way. They were either evading it, moving away from one, or fighting in one. Yes. Right? Yes. Or some kind of upheaval.

Yeah, so I call it upheaval. And maybe even in your younger days, you know, you experienced that. So like right now, you know, like you said, like maybe the last 30 years, 20 years, whatever, however long it was, is like this anomaly. Is this like, what is this piece? What is this like? Yes. There's no war. There's no nothing, at least in the places, you know, you're living.

And that is like a short window maybe. And maybe we're heading back into one. We will see. It's also up to us. I mean, on one hand, I'm very proud of ourselves as humankind that we are weathering this conflict so well.

Because it's very peaceful and very constructive, in my opinion. So you feel like we are handling this well? Yeah, sure. Sure. I mean, you watch TV and you see people going out in the street to protest and clashing with police. And then everybody's thinking about where is this going? And then they find some kind of resolution and they go home. Then I always feel happy. On the other hand, I would like to come back a little bit to that bubble idea that I mentioned to you.

So the kind of upheaval, the kind of separation, the kind of insecurity of entire existence, a lot of people exist in that today in the same city where you live. So if you look at, again, I don't know, right now I am here. My daughter is at home preparing for her exams. So I asked her, what do you want to eat? She said she wants sushi.

"What time would you like to eat?" "At 6:30." So I go online and I make some sushi delivered to her at 6:30, right? But those people who deliver that sushi, they live in a completely different world. Typically in China, it's somebody without a Shanghai hukou, you know, it's somebody who is like not registered in the city. So there is a bigger than 50% chance that the person who delivers that sushi is separated from his family.

Oh, yeah. Typically him. Let's say family is back in Liaoning province. Yeah, more than likely. More than likely. Almost a certainty, probably. And then 11-11 is coming up, this big shopping spree day in China. And I read in the press that a lot of those delivery people, they just crash under the pressure.

So I don't believe in winners and losers. I think, as you said, this is an organic system and we have to be aware where we are in it. Yeah, what is our place or what is our kind of role and who are like, but there are kind of winners and losers, not in the sense that who's right and wrong, but who's benefiting and who's not benefiting from the system. Precisely. Right? Yes. And how interesting it is that I would consider the two of us on the winning end of this equation. Oh, absolutely. But sometimes we feel sorry for ourselves.

That's the sentiment. As you said, that's the feeling. Well, isn't that just part of being human, right? It is. I mean, that's exactly it. Like, and also to your point, it's like, you can't really fault people

us for feeling sorry for ourselves because this is just what the hand we were given, right? So like had we grown up, let's say in your grandfather's time or my grandfather's time, I mean, who knows how we would have weathered that or who knows how resilient we may have been in that time because we would have been growing up in a whole different set of circumstances.

And that would have shaped us, right? We're just shaped by our environment, I guess. Yes. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So we carry with ourselves some kind of a source code. And somebody wants to see change in the world all the time. And they are curious and they go out and they collect information and they push for change.

And then some people, they crave for safety and predictability and order, right? And everybody, it always starts with our brain and with our own body, then what is around our skin.

We make that change happen or we make that safety happen in our homes. And then it starts radiating out and that's when it becomes leadership, that's when it becomes politics, that's when it becomes art, and that's when it becomes messy because there is only one public space. You know, in my sock drawer, I order my socks in whichever way I want to. I just chuck them in and I don't even mind if I mismatch them in the morning or I like sort them by material and season and color, right? That's my business.

But then when I start organizing stuff as a doctor or a retailer, an entertainer or a manager, then these discussions start taking place. Who is right? Which one is... Because it affects other people. And you're in the public space at that time. Exactly. Exactly. And then it's worth remembering how relative this all is and how relative it remains unless we agree where we are going together. Yeah.

And this is what has been taken away from us right now. We have no goal. We are up in the air. You see what I mean? There's no direction. Well, there's no agreement on anything. Yes, exactly. Because the common goal has been taken away. We went back into a crisis mentality. We went back to emergency. So nobody plans half a year ahead now. Nobody does like a five-year plan.

Seriously, nobody seriously believes they will know what it will look like five years from now. So we start using our gut. We start looking at each other and then we start saying that person wears a mask out in the street. Like how stupid is that? What is he afraid of? Does this person think I will infect them? I just came out of my quarantine. You see what I mean? Then it becomes an emotional discussion instead of rational discussion.

Well, when you flip on the news these days and you watch journalists or news networks, I mean, do you feel they're perpetuating that? I mean, because every news network and outlet has their own agenda now. Right. And their own narrative that they want to tell, they want to spin. And it's so clear. Yes. So is that just an example of that, I guess? The human brain was designed by whatever you believe it was designed by.

to make fast decisions based on limited information. So information never ends. You never get enough information to make a reliable decision. And all those people who, when something suddenly changed, started thinking and comparing, they died out because they were eaten by those tigers that they were still wondering whether it's a tiger or one of their...

fellow tribe members, if you see what I mean. So we are programmed to make snap decisions. To make rash decisions. Well, it depends because if you... Well, I guess rash is just a matter of perspective, right? Yes. So the human brain is designed so that when we err, when we make a mistake, it's better to err on the safe side, right? So if I see a shadow emerging from the darkness, and if I don't know if it's friend or foe,

it's safer to assume it's a foe. And just get out of the way first and then assess the situation. Get out of the way or punch. Again, it depends on your temperament and depends on your training, so to speak. If it's a rattle in the bushes and I don't know whether it's my prey or someone that looks at me as prey, it's safer to assume the latter. And that's a judgmental position to be in, but that's how we survive for roughly a million years, right? And then we carry this through to a modern era

where it can be completely misleading. Because let's say, for example, if you criticize my approach to the coronavirus, the brain center that fires is exactly the same as if you physically threatened me.

So I will react internally and I will act it out externally by either pushing back or running away from you verbally speaking. Fight or flight. Exactly. So there is like a verbal fight or flight instinct. You're interviewing me, you're saying something like, oh, I don't know, just a chuckle, right? I'm saying, and this is how I felt. And then you chuckle at the wrong time. And then I decide, okay, yeah.

what an intolerant person you are. And then I either fight and I insult you back or I flight and I kind of avoid your questions.

or give you a silent treatment. - Yeah, like passive aggressive. - Yeah, exactly. So this is the kind of discourse we are having with each other. And the media that you are referring to right now, they are in the dark as well. I mean, what do they know? Nobody knows anything. Scientists don't know anything. The numbers go up and down for different reasons that we can talk about if we want to. And then it's their job to write a newspaper about it. But what do you do? You are under enormous pressure

you are a human being yourself you have your own concerns especially i mean when we say the media i think more than half of the time we talk about the american media and and then you know situation is not good there maybe the same journalists are having family members who are affected they are under stress they they fill in the empty space with their emotional messages the interesting thing about it is that

we tend to forget that it's created by other human beings. So once it's media, we assume it's rational or it's objective. In these days, why would it be? If you see what I mean. - Well, everything is like that, right? Everything that we put up on a pedestal, and the very idea of it becomes like a symbol, right?

We forget that, hey, this thing was created and run by a human being just like you and me. Yes. And we do this all the time. We do this in workplaces. Once you sit up straight and talk in a slightly deeper tone of voice and slower, then your opinion sounds more official. Or once you put it in a memo, you sound more official. Right.

But you're an emotional human being just the same. Psychologists and people who are specialists in organizational issues, they do these very funny experiments like how does before lunch and after lunch influence judges' decisions? What kind of judgment do they pass out for the same crime just before lunch and just after lunch? Number one, it's completely different. Number two, it's completely predictable.

Whether it's like more grumpy before lunch? Yes. Yeah. So if you have anything from a pocket ticket to, I don't know, public urination, and you go to court, and if you can choose, don't go to court just before lunch. Because you're going to have a harsher sentence. That's good to know. Yes, exactly. And your boss is exactly the same. You know, that's why, for example, no public speaker wants to be the one right after lunch. If you can negotiate yourself out of that spot, then you do. So in a way, we keep pretending that,

that as managers, as professionals, as citizens, voters, judges, policemen, we are these econs, we are these rational human beings, but those things don't exist. Yeah, they don't. And that's why it's like, I feel like the fields of like behavioral science and psychology, these fields are like kind of a little bit under looked in that, like when you think about everything, whether it's politics or business, anything, it's all about dealing with people.

It is. It's all about dealing with people. There's nothing that isn't about dealing with people. Well. And the way people think, right? Their psyche. In my job, if you take away people, you have nothing left. Well, almost in any job, right? Yes. I don't know. Maybe somebody who deals with that. Well, AI was my go-to place as well.

I find this slightly scary, but once I was at a conference about AI, and then I listened to one speaker after another, and one of them told us about how AI can make weather reports without human involvement. Another one told us how AI can write poems and write a novel without human involvement. Yet another one told us how AI can read books without

and summarize them for students. And another one told us how AI can learn certain disciplines like literary theory.

or meteorology. And then I thought about this, why don't we put this into a circle? You know, an AI can write a book that another AI reads and we don't need people at all. - We're obsolete at that point, right? - Yeah, that's right. But I would also feel that then the point is gone because all that stuff was invented to serve us, human beings.

And again, I don't know what we are talking about right now. Tell me if we are veering from a topic too much. But I think the very important thing is we don't know how long this COVID-19 is going to last. And I think it is a task that we have every minute of our lives because we are going to come under enormous pressure in the next couple of months and years.

And it's very important when you face that pressure and that pressure has like a human avatar, which is another human beings, always to use this kind of empathy.

that that person is not just somebody who stands in your way. He's not just somebody who expresses an opinion that is contrary to yours, but it's a human being with a backstory. It's a human being with their own fears and hopes and emotions and pressures and all of those things. And I think that would make it significantly easier to weather this entire storm.

that is likely to continue for a while. Well, when you talk about the immense pressures we're going to face in the coming months and years, do you feel it's a different pressure than what people are already feeling now? Is it something else that you foresee? I do think so, because we are still primarily focused on the health aspect of this crisis. So this is a little bit like

10 times the 2008 crisis with the added aspect of the virus, which gives it a name. But all that other stuff is going to be there as well. So people will lose their jobs or are losing their jobs. Let me put it this way. People are losing their savings. People are ostracized. I mean, again, those people who listen to us, they know that

people have a tendency to be more afraid of certain kind of people than other kind of people. How many of these stories we heard, right? When it comes to virus, there were certain places and certain times this year that people were more afraid of Asians than anybody else. When it comes to rioting, there were certain times and places where people were more afraid of Africans than anybody else.

and so on and so forth. So these things will all follow and they are, okay, somebody invents a vaccine, which people claim to have done every now and then, and then life goes on with the virus somehow. But somebody, let's say, invents a vaccine that is universally available and there we go. The health aspect is solved.

you're not afraid to go out after all, right? But just remember the repercussions of the 2008 and afterwards financial crisis. - What about the housing crisis? - Well, it started with the subprime, you know, it started in the finance industry, but then it kind of radiated everywhere and how long it lasted and how deep it went. And this is going to be much deeper. This is going to be much, much wider in scale.

Because I mean, the 2008 crisis, if you didn't have investments, it was not for you. But this is going to be much bigger in scope. - This affects everybody. - Yeah, exactly. So once, let's say, day after tomorrow, somebody says, "Here is the vaccine, it costs $5, you can buy it, you can self-administer it, you don't have to worry about COVID-19 anymore." All that other stuff is still going to be there and it's going to stay with us for years.

Right? Not just the negative stuff, not just people losing their jobs, not just people having lost their family members, not just who was responsible for all this. Because that is one thing that is going to come back big time after we are over the healthcare emergency. Oh, yeah. Yeah. A lot of pointing of fingers again. Yeah. Also other things like working from home. Was it a temporary emergency measure or is it here to last? And... What do you think? What do you think about that? Oh, I...

As a leadership consultant, my job is to prepare people for situations that are at least partially confirmed to be there, to be tangible.

And as an individual, I'm fairly go with the flow. I'm fairly zen. Yeah, well, you definitely are very zen. I mean, the way your philosophy and your outlook on things is definitely very zen. Right. So if you ask me as a leadership consultant, let's say if I were the consultant of a government agency or a Fortune 500 company, I would say I would cut people into three almost equal chunks of a pie chart.

There are those people for whom this is an opportunity and they have been working for it and waiting for it for a very long time. There is one third who just cannot wait to get out of it. And there is one third that is quite undecided at the moment. And how happy they will feel in this new reality depends on the kind of solutions that we give them, including the physical environment, including the digital logistics, but also including the psychological support.

As an individual, I love working from home, but I know it's not for everybody. So I tried to coach one of my best friends through starting up a startup and trying to run it from home. - Well, do you think it benefits, like you mentioned the idea of like introverts and extroverts before. Do you think working from home benefits one over the other? Like let's say maybe it benefits introverts more, plays more towards their tendencies?

because the scientific background of different work styles is that if you use them well and consistently, they always benefit you, any of them. If you use them badly and haphazardly, then they turn against you, each of them. So if you look at, let's say, extroverts and introverts working from home, I'm an extrovert, but I love working from home. Why? Because my home office is a base, right?

I can make these kind of tours out of it, either mental or actual. So when I worked from the home office in Hungary, then I did my run in the hills, and it was very safe because my house, I mean, our house in Hungary is up in the hills. Here in Shanghai, I can...

just go online and tour one call to the United States, one call to Japan. It makes me feel like I'm touring around. And then when I finish my calls, I go and make a cup of coffee. I read a couple of pages in my book. So I absolutely love the flexibility of it. But on the other hand, extroverts like me, eventually they get very antsy because of the lack of real human contact. So in this case, for example, my family helps me an awful lot.

And even this kind of back and forth that I did, it helped me an awful lot to have experienced the coronavirus pandemic from Europe and from China. It was like half a year here, half a year there, but at least I could, even the quarantine, it was an experiment. It was an adventure. Now, introverts, they're a little bit different. Initially, introverts took it very well. So the experience that makes me say that

is coaching a lot of introverted managers through lots of lockdowns, all kinds, including quarantines, including having been locked down at home, at a friend's place, at a hotel. I mean, one of the executives that I coached, she spent eight months in a hotel room because she went on a business trip and then she couldn't leave anymore. And also my sister- - Eight months? - Eight months, eight months. She went to Denmark on a business trip in February.

And then she left last month. So it was quite tough. My sister is a psychiatrist who treats people with lockdown issues. So introverts, they thought they would be happy chappies. They thought...

know this is amazing i can order everything online i all i need is my computer and so on their entire universe was kind of sucked into a computer screen until the human being started revolting anything from depression because you don't move because you you get blue light like 12 hours a day um

And also because there are simply physical needs that you forget about, you forget to satisfy. And even though they don't know they have social needs, but they do have social needs. So introverts just in extroverts, they get antsy and they call their friends or they go for a run or introverts don't. Introverts think they are okay there, but eventually the pressure starts mounting. And also introverts have a tendency to internalize the pressure.

Not to snap, not to give it out, not to raise their voice. So it just kind of boils and brews inside. And that can become ugly if you don't take care of it. Yeah, faster. Everybody has a faster. I can see it now. So in any kind of temperament, there is the pros and there are the cons. There are the opportunities and there are the dangers. And I think our job as a human being is to understand

to harness the pros and to take care of the cons so that we don't become a problem. We become a solution to other people. Yeah, I guess it's just navigating the strengths and weaknesses of everybody's kind of like personality profile, character, right? Yeah, that's right. And that's why self-awareness, self-knowledge is where it all starts. Yeah, I mean, but that is so underappreciated, I think, the whole idea of self-awareness.

Right? The whole idea of self-awareness, I mean, it all starts with there. I've talked to so many people, so many different experts, including you, and it all seems to go back to, well, like, first you have to have self-awareness to address the problem.

To fix anything, to find a path forward, you have to be aware of who you are, what you are now. Otherwise, any exercise in it is almost futile. But I'm reading your body language now, and it tells me that that almost seems like an unreasonable or unfair request to have self-awareness. The only reason it may seem like that is because I just don't...

I just don't feel like anyone really talks about it, self-awareness. Like coaches do. - Tell me why. - People like you do. - Yeah. - But like just regular people like that I talk to, like no one really, no one's ever talking about their own self-awareness. - That's an amazing observation. Do you know why that is? I mean, what is your first feeling about why that is? - I feel because it's human nature to be in denial. It's more comfortable almost to be in denial.

to avoid anything that's scary to confront. And usually a lot of internal and very personal truths about yourself are the scariest things to confront. So naturally you shut down. Going back to what we've been talking about, it's that tendency to want to point fingers, to find external things or external problems, to be like, that's the problem. The winners and losers, going back to that, the right and the wrong of it all.

So I feel like that's our first instinct is to be like, no, that guy or that person or this thing is what's causing the problem. Instead of being like, hey, you know, like, I guess it's a hard pill to swallow, but, you know, there's a lot of things I need to work on about myself. This is what you said just now. It's an extremely simple, but extremely important problem. So just imagine whatever your job is, and I'm not just talking to you, but I'm talking about thousands of people who might listen to us.

So imagine whatever your job is, you're facing a customer or you're facing somebody whose problem you are supposed to solve. You can be a manager and you are in a meeting, or you can be an engineer and you are listening to somebody who is complaining about the problem with a machine, or you can be a medical doctor or a priest and you're listening to somebody sharing your problems with them. And just imagine as you are listening to them, or you're sitting in that meeting, or you are a pilot and you're driving a plane,

There is like this kind of thread of mushroom stuck between your teeth or you have a very bothersome case of athlete's foot.

and you simply just cannot focus on what is in front of you. You cannot, because this kind of thing is, it keeps going. Do you know that kind of feeling? - It's just really bothering you, yeah. - Now, a lot of people think that self-awareness is that kind of thing, that you have to get out of the way so that you can focus on the real thing. You know, when people are afraid, when people are jealous, when people are, they have a desire that they cannot, that cannot materialize under the circumstances.

That is self-awareness. When you tell yourself, you know, I am impatient right now. I wish I could tell this person to polish up his grammar because he keeps, you know, saying things that I don't like or using language that I don't like. I...

I wish he had more empathy. Let's say we are in a meeting and the boss keeps putting down people in that room and somebody says, "I wish he stopped doing that because those people will lose motivation." And very often because this is emotional and because this is not strictly speaking part of the professional agenda,

A lot of people think it is like that mushroom in the teeth or between the teeth or that athlete's foot. Get it out of the way, get rational, get professional, focus on the real thing. But self-awareness is not like that. Self-awareness is actually something you should cherish. You should go a little bit deeper into because the athlete's foot you can cure, the mushroom you can get out from between your teeth. But the self-awareness is the language of understanding another human being.

It turns into empathy. And then I realize when I am like negotiating about the $300,000 deal, it's not just me who is nervous. Everybody in that room is nervous. Everybody's afraid. What if they screw up and they have to be responsible for this? If I'm a medical doctor and I'm dealing with a difficult case and I'm afraid of making a mistake in my diagnosis...

It's not just me who is nervous. You know, my nurse is also nervous and the patient is also nervous. So this is why everything starts with self-awareness. And it's so interesting to me, and this is something I experience in my job, that in professional environments and some other environments as well, we wear these kind of uniforms that we think protects us from ourselves, protects us from emotions, protects us from pressure, and we can be rational. But it's not the case.

And last time when we talked with each other, we talked about the vulnerability of inside these high power executives. It's so common sense, but we tend to forget about it. Yeah, we put on this facade of these like incredible people, these leaders, these strong visionaries, but some of them are probably the most insecure of them all.

Well, because of the position they're in. Because of the position that they are in. Yeah. Like you put anyone in that position, like the immense amount of pressure, the expectation, the responsibility, the expectation. I mean, everything, right? It's of course, of course. Like, yeah. Like when you put it that way, it seems like, duh, of course. Yes. But like most people don't really, I guess, notice that or realize. Yes. The...

You know, something that I feel gets paid a lot of lip service but is not really maybe that much understood or really like explored is the idea of like EQ versus IQ. Now, in your work, because obviously you work with individuals, you work with people, like is that something that comes up a lot? Is that something in your research that you have to kind of try to understand is the –

is like what is EQ and the importance on like establishing someone's EQ and can it be improved just like maybe like IQ? - Yes, so there is a reason why I'm a little bit cautious with both IQ and EQ is because in our times, so I feel a kind of shift within my own lifetime starting somewhere in the 90s, concepts like EQ,

and IQ, but more EQ than IQ, tend to become commercial products. What do you mean? What I mean is that EQ, for example, in itself, let's say at the beginning, it's a discovery. IQ can be measured, although a lot of people question the measurement itself. But then why is it that, you know, it's a well-researched fact that

If your IQ is very low, and let's say you work in a company or you are a member of a family, then you cause a lot of problems to the people around you. And as the IQ keeps going up, those problems become easier and easier. And if your IQ goes up extremely, then you start causing problems to your environment again, right? Yeah.

- So there is like an ideal range of IQ. - I think it's the idea of like being in harmony with people around you, right? So if your IQ is too low, you're not like on the same wavelength as them. But if your IQ is too high, you're also not on the same wavelength as them. - Exactly, yes. So now comes EQ.

And it says there is an emotional quotient that can actually fix all of these things. So if your IQ is very low, but your EQ is your emotional quotient is high, then you can be a great person, you can be a great helper and so on. If your IQ is very high and therefore you have a tendency to create a lot of conflict around yourself because somebody who's always right assumes that everybody else is always wrong.

Then EQ can help you sell your ideas, sell your solutions, make it more palatable so that whenever you feel, whenever you prove to be very smart, everybody else around you doesn't feel too stupid, right? This is the first step. But then if you look at it, then EQ becomes a product. So somebody who, let's say, creates an assessment system about EQ, right?

He says, don't hire anybody in your company without measuring their EQ, right? And then it separates. So the value of the product separates from the value of the concept. I myself face this as a dilemma because if you believe in EQ in certain situations, then you promote it to the people who really need it. If you push it as a product, then you promote it to everybody, right?

And this is what's happening, especially now that we carry a computer in our pockets all the time, that first something becomes a solution and then it becomes a product.

And then that product is marketed to you whether or not it's useful to you in that kind of situation. So that's why I'm very- It's commercialized. Yes. That's why I'm very careful with concepts like EQ. Because there are, let's say, the problems that EQ solves as a concept, let's say, if you read books on EQ, another way to solve those problems is to sit down and talk to a very wise person.

to sit down and talk to your mentor or talk to your grandmother or talk to your spiritual leader or whatever it is. It's not necessarily EQ, it's just the realization that that head-to-head conversation doesn't solve all the problems. But that part is really true. That part is really true. Now, it is especially true, again, because digital solutions tend to go to the head and not to the heart.

Digital solutions, they are based on data. They are supposed to be rational. They are supposed to be based on rational analysis. But the way they sell those solutions to us is emotional. Yeah, the marketing of it. And that's very important. So I always say to people that I work with, let's say there is a new app that makes you understand your EQ and gives you tips every day.

So on one hand, be grateful for the help because it can give you realizations. But on the other hand, don't forget it's a commercial app whose number one goal is to keep you hooked to the app. Everybody in the world, it doesn't matter if you're a primary school teacher or you are working in construction or you're a CEO of a company or you're a jazz musician. All of us are either scientists or artists.

So you can approach any profession, any way, parenting, for example. There are people who are like scientific parents and there are other people who are artistic parents. There are people who have to create tables that one of, a friend of mine,

when he had a baby, then he heard from other parents before the baby was born that the baby would not let you sleep. And this person is a banker. He's actually, he was the head of the, like the China Bankers Association for a long time. And we went out for lunch one time and he says, you know, the baby was at that time like half a year old.

And he said about a year before the baby was born, they were planning to have a baby, he started talking to people who had a young-born baby. And all of them said the number one problem is the baby doesn't let you sleep. So he basically interviewed his friend with a newborn baby, and he created a scientific, what do you call it? Like a... Like a graph, like a chart, something? No, it's deeper than that. The algorithm. Oh. Yeah.

So he decided to crack this problem. He's a financial analyst by training. So at the time when we had lunch together and the baby was six months old, then he claimed to have cracked the code

of baby sleeping patterns. So he said, me and my wife, we have no problem because I interviewed a lot of my friends about what they give the baby to eat and when and, I don't know, the temperature of the room and all of those things. And now our baby sleeps like six hours a night, which is an amazing feat if you have a young child

a born baby. Some people are like that. They approach everything in a scientific way. And some people are artists, even if they work in something very rational, right? There are people who are watchmakers or financial analysts or builders, but they work basically on intuition. Now, there are teams around them who then turn it into quantified methodologies, but the original idea, the original approach is intuitive.

Like once I was flying from Munich to Shanghai, and there was a very intriguing guy sitting next to me. He's obviously an artist. So I started talking to him, and I asked him what he did. And he said he was a piano tuning expert. He goes from place to place, and he tunes concert pianos in very famous concert halls. And, well, if there is anything mathematical, it's piano tuning.

But I'm an intercultural expert and he started to, suddenly I picked up on one thing that he said. He said, you tune pianos differently to different audiences in the world. Like Germans and Japanese, they like their pianos tuned similarly, but Chinese and Americans, they also. So I said, oh, wow, you know, a C is supposed to be a C, a G is supposed to be a G. Yeah, like what else can you do? He said, no, no, no, no, it's not like that.

you know, the, he said like the Chinese G is softer than the Japanese G. Softer? Yeah, it's softer. I said, come on, it's, it's a piece of metal. It's supposed to resonate within the set. But no, if you, if you approach something with an artist's soul, then anything becomes art. Everything is malleable. Everything is adjustable. It is. Shapable. Yes. So everybody, no matter, I'm talking again to people who listen to this, it,

It doesn't matter what you do. It can be the most complex or the most simple job. You're either a scientist or an artist. I personally find it fascinating. It doesn't even matter which profession you are in. And then you can turn it into science or art, into intuition or an analytical task within any profession.

It just depends on what the best kind of like combination of things for that specific situation or that context or that person. Maybe, I don't know. Because I feel like I keep trying to get like an answer from you of like, okay, what's the best way to do this? What's the right way to do this? But like your approach is different.

is correct in that, in that like every situation is different and it's just about, there is no better or worse. There's no right or wrong about it. It's just about how you kind of cater and build around what you have, right? What you're working with. Yes. So if, if you work with me as a consultant, we would always start from the personal profile.

the question that you asked me, what's the right way to do it? I would never answer that question without a personal behavior profile. Because if you tell me what the job is, first, I want to see how you approach any job. You know, how you make fried eggs in the morning.

how you organize your closet. I mean, there are consultants who actually observe these things, but I'm a leadership consultant. So I would answer these questions through creating a leadership profile and also walking around in your office. So like, for example, your shelves here in this studio are full of memorabilia. I can already tell something from it. Or that I'm like sentimental. No, it's not really that. But for example, that is a sort of extroversion.

Really? Because I've always thought of myself as an introvert. Well, that's a deeper conversation, but let me give you a counter example. I am coaching one executive who has been, who has occupied the same office for about two years. The shelf, there is this kind of furniture in the office full of shelves, completely empty, not a single thing. And I started coaching this executive online and then we moved to a...

face-to-face coaching. And then I told him, listen, one of his complaints was that the people that he does business with, they don't have empathy towards his position, that they don't understand his difficulties, the pressure he goes through. And one of the things I said to him, look behind you, you have an entire, it was a very nicely furnished office. Obviously the company spent a lot of money on it,

You can imagine like two dozen empty spaces of this kind of shelf spaces, completely empty. And I told you that sends a message. People don't know anything about you. It's a blank space.

The problem is that blank spaces are filled with content. That's how the human mind works. So if you keep your shelves empty, then people assume that empty space is the message that you're sending to other people, that you don't want them to know who you are. So while we were working on a different kind of communication with his team,

how he works with his team, how he arranges the meetings, how he discusses daily tasks. We also worked on this, when somebody steps into your office, what do you say first? You don't have to reprogram a human being, but if a human being complains that other people don't understand him, then you can call the attention, well, you know, you have to give them a chance.

- You have to help them understand. - Yeah, exactly. Have you got a family? Have you ever done sports? Have you won a medal in your life? Have you ever done a costume party? Whatever it is,

Show people who you are. - But does that go back to the idea of self-awareness? - Yes. - Right? It goes back to that. Like he wasn't self-aware enough to be like, look, I'm not even helping people understand me. If I want people to understand me, I gotta give them a little something, right? - And then again, some of the blame goes back to the corporate culture that we are working because this was an engineering company. And I told him, you know, I don't see anything in the shelves. When you talk, you only talk about work. You don't do small talk.

And then he says, well, listen, I'm an engineering manager. You want me to talk about what? The weather? You want me to talk about football? It's a waste of time. So in a way, a lot of times we are programmed to do this. We are trained to try to be rational. But the problem is that there is this underlying discussion. And however smart you are, however high your IQ is, I cannot trust you if I don't know you. Yeah.

Well, like with working with a lot of leadership, people in leadership positions, like, I mean, this guy was saying, you know, it's very lonely. It's, you know, people don't understand me. Like, but does that pretty much apply to a lot of leadership positions? I mean, isn't that the most lonely position to be in is in a position of leadership? Sometimes you're the most isolated sometimes, right? It's like, it's the most isolating and lonely position to be in. That's true. So the higher up you go,

the less honest people will be with you. You have to just accept that. And you have to, again, turn it around and walk in other people's shoes and realize when you have a certain amount of influence or power, then people take a risk being honest with you.

So you have to understand them that they are not honest with you because it's a little bit like talking to a police officer. Anything you say can, will be used against you, right? Now, when I work with executives, then one thing that I make them realize, and this is again, the kind of awareness that we are talking about is you own the conversation, even if you don't want to, because you are the ambassador or you are the CEO or you are the general manager of the factory.

So if you want to change that, if you want people to be more honest with you, you have to initiate that discussion. And you have to be very consistent because the biggest mistakes that leaders make is let's say you are the leader and I am working for you. And you say, come on, Gabor, I'm open to feedback. Just tell me what you think.

And when I give you a critical piece of feedback, then you hammer me down. And that's the end of the conversation. - Yeah, and they'll never do it again. - Exactly, because I took a risk, came out of my shell, and I got punished for it. And this is where it doesn't matter whether it's fashion or art or corporate or politics, leaders keep making this kind of mistake.

So if you feel lonely and you feel like you want more honest discussions with the people who work for you, then you have to decide that you are going to let these opinions in. And you have to sit on your hand when they do. And you have to bite on your tongue when it's almost there like butt. Yeah. You know, but I had a reason and I work hard and I took a risk and so on. Yeah.

One of the exercises that we do with high-level managers is these kind of prearranged minutes of silence when they talk to their teams. So I have this exercise when a high-level manager talks with their team, they can open the meeting and then measure 10 to 15 minutes of silence when everybody else can speak and they cannot. And we jump into this exercise where

Most managers think, do you know what would happen to the meetings? I mean, in my company, I am the brain. If I don't speak, nobody speaks. That would be deadly silence. I was about to say that. And then I say to them, you know what? Just humor me. Just, you know what? Let's make a deal. You don't speak for three minutes. If there is three minutes of silence, you can speak. It never happens. Really? Like, I mean, I feel, I don't know. I feel like in, okay, maybe in Western culture, but I feel in Chinese culture,

where it's a lot more vertical, kind of like the power dynamic and hierarchy. I feel in Chinese culture, if like the law band, the boss doesn't speak, no one else is, everyone else is just going to sit there. No one's as like boisterous or like, you know, as forward to be like, okay, then I'll take over this conversation. He's not going to speak. The way I started using this exercise was American or German managers in China. That's how this exercise matured. And

I got a lot of resistance to the idea. And what actually happens is that, you know, the manager is supposed to listen. So let's say there is half a minute, one minute of silence. People come out of their shell. They start speaking. From the corner of their eyes, they keep looking at the boss. But the boss is doing the exercise, although nobody knows in the room that they are doing the exercise. Mm-hmm.

So then people just speak and then speak and then speak. And let's say the manager, bottom line, I mean, the lowest is 10 minutes. So the manager listens and there is a dialogue. So I still remember when the first German high-level executive came back to my coaching and that was face-to-face coaching. I gave him this exercise two weeks before. And that executive was like a kid.

He was absolutely jubilant. You know, he said, I sit down with my people and I shut up for 10 minutes and they start speaking and people who never spoke before, they start reflecting on what other people say in that 10 minutes. It's absolutely amazing. You know, the person was radiating. Even to me, because at that time it was an experiment. So even to me, it was kind of weird.

And the manager that I first tried it with, he was an extreme extrovert. So it was very, very hard to make him shut up. And then he kept, in his case, it was 15 minutes. He kept these 15 minutes, he was listening, and then he started contributing to the conversation. Now, the interesting thing is that after we did about a year of coaching, I had the opportunity to work with his team as a trainer because the program worked very well. And he said, could you train my team?

So I had like a sidebar with many of his team members. You know what? Nobody in the room noticed that he was doing this exercise. Nobody in the room noticed that deliberately for 10 to 15 minutes, he didn't speak. That's surprising. It is surprising. It's just simply that they had an opportunity to speak and he had an opportunity to listen. See, that's a great...

But like in my own experience, because I've run a company before in the past, right? I've since closed the company. But while I was running the company, it was a fashion brand, right? And we were doing clothing. So I would hold these meetings with a lot of the staff.

And it would be about pricing. So when we had put out a style, designed something, and we had the sample laying out there, we'd bring all the samples in to the meeting room and we would go through one by one and we'd go over the cost of it. And then everyone would look from the designer to the retail director to everybody, right? Marketing people, they'd all be in there. And we would have meetings on where we should price these garments, right?

And I purposely did this because I wanted everyone's input on this, right? I wanted to see the eyes because for me it was just a simple formula of cost times however much profit I want to make, markup I want to put on it and that's the price, right? But I wanted more than that. I wanted more information than that because it's a human thing, right? It's a humans are buying this. So I wanted it to come from everyday people. We had young people on the staff, people who were in our target demographic. Anyway,

So we would have these meetings and we would go through style by style. And every time I would put in my best effort to encourage people, everybody to speak up and be like, okay, what do you think about this? Give your comments, your critiques, even about the styling, about the design, about the pricing, whatever. Just say something. Okay.

And no one ever said anything. So the whole meeting was only just me talking because I would sit there literally for maybe a minute of silence waiting for someone to say something and everyone would just be kind of sitting around.

like too afraid to say anything maybe i don't know if it was fear or or what but and then so the whole meeting would just end up me being like pricing and commenting on the garments myself which defeated the whole purpose of the meeting in the first place so after after after a couple months of that i just canceled that meeting altogether because it just wasn't working

So like when you tell me about like, you know, these exercises that you have people do, the people you're working with, and they can just sit there for 10 minutes silent and, you know, everyone just starts talking. Like that's really surprising to me. And I wish, like I wish that could have been, you know, my case as well. But that wasn't. Yeah. I mean, what I could say about this as somebody who uses behavioral tools for leadership coaching is,

There was some kind of subliminal messaging there. Now, don't get me wrong. Everybody gets into this. Even the most experienced executives get into this. I get into this trap. I got into this trap today. What trap is this? It is that you call out to people to share their opinions, but on the other hand, you send a subliminal message out

not to share their opinions. And then you fill the remaining space with your own ideas. And that is, I mean, today I was coaching a management team online and there were these big silences that you mentioned. And then I kind of filled it with lecturing on a call that was supposed to be coaching.

So there is no end to this. I mean, we are human beings and we are sending these kind of subliminal messages. But what do you think is the subliminal message that we're sending? I don't really want to hear you. I just want to talk. So if you really, really want to hear them, then you will find a way

to hear them. Or if you don't, if you really decide now is that their turn to speak, come hell or high water, now I'm going to make them speak, then you will make them speak. Now you turn this table around and you put yourself into their position. And then comes the strange exercise when an introvert starts speaking up, when an extrovert starts listening.

It's a kind of discovery I had the pleasure of going through this kind of experience many, many times when an introvert starts sharing, an extrovert starts listening, and they come back and they are radiating. You know, there's always like this golden aura around them. And they said, this is amazing. It never happened to me before. But it's a process.

And it can be a fairly difficult process. It can be a fairly laborious process, so to speak. Because let's say if I'm a systematic introvert and I say, well, one of the exercises I give to introverted managers is I ask them just very casually, I ask them, in your company or in your industry, who is your hero? Who is the kind of person that you admire, you take as a role model? And they casually mention a name. And I say to them, reach out to them.

contact them. And then there is this paralyzing fear. You're like, oh, whoa, no, I can't do that. Exactly. And in a month, the same manager says, you know, I reached out to the VP of my company or I reached out to whoever, like a celebrity in business or the inventor of this and that. And they come back and they are radiating. They are a little radiating. And they say, I did it and I did it my way because I'm a systematic introvert.

So I went online, I saw how I can contact them. I engineered the message. I put it together line by line. I gave it to one of my friends. I got feedback and eventually I sent it to them. Do you see what I mean? So it's not just turning an introvert into an extrovert. It's actually making an introvert reach out in an introverted way. Well, do you think they're radiating because they realize that

Like it's these things that they would have thought were like impossible or completely out of reach or completely unreasonable are actually quite simple to do if you just actually try. Yes. Everybody has a next level to go to, but very often we self-censor and we decide we don't deserve that next level. And then this is this kind of breakthrough that you can go through that next level. And the interesting thing is that you go through that experience a couple of times and then you don't believe that

in not deserving that next level anymore.

Well, it's the trap of identity, right? Like you spend so much time with a certain self-identity that it becomes you and you feel like, well, this is just who I am. There's no way I can be like this next level or whatever this other person that I envision because this is who I am already. Like this is already set in stone. Yes. But identity is fluid, right? Well, forgetting two things. Number one, you got where you are somehow.

So go back five years, go back 10 years, talk to your 10 year ago yourself. And most of the time, unless there was some kind of trauma in your life, your 10 years ago yourself would be fairly proud of where you are right now, right? So your 10 years ago yourself wouldn't believe in the possibility of being where you are right now. So this is number one. And then number two is that the next level

is something that you can achieve your own way. A lot of people see it as a kind of sideways move, right? For example, I am a successful corporate manager and now I have to make keynote speeches. And then they imagine I have to become a completely different person.

So far, I was an engineer, I was systematic, I was a perfectionist, I was conflict avoiding, and now I have to become this Tony Robbins style public speaker. No, you can actually engineer a public speech. Or I have been an artist, I have been a little bit of an intuitionist, I went into marketing because I was a graphic designer, and now I became the head of a department, right?

So I have to learn to be systematic. I have to be, I have to be, I have to learn finance. I have to learn, I have to become an entirely different person. But no, I mean, if you, if you can use your intuition, if you are a good big picture person, then you can use that to conquer the world of finance just the same way, because you know who you can trust. You can spot talent.

you can inspire people to work together. You can use the tools you have in different ways, right? Your own way. An idea, a belief that's really helped me in the past really like year and a half really is this idea of letting go of identity. I used to be so caught up in this idea of

this identity and my identity, I envisioned it as like this ball and chain, right? And this long chain behind me that I'm dragging around. And every link of that chain was all the events of my past. - You're painting a picture. - Yeah, every screw up, every regret, every bad decision, right? Was this long chain behind me, like tied to my ankle, right? I'm walking around with it and I'm looking back and I'm dragging all this weight around.

And then I realized that like, that's just in my own head because no one sees that chain. No one could possibly see that chain because no one knows or cares about my past history. Like no one cares about what I did in the past. No one even remembers. No one knows. Right.

So why do I keep hanging that around me? Why is it still like a chain to me walking around when you can just let that go and realize whether it's true or not. I believe that like you can wake up each morning pretty much deciding who you want to be. Like a choice, right? Like you're saying like engineer who you want to be. Like it's a choice. Like I can wake up tomorrow morning

and let go of my entire past because that's not a real thing in that anyone can see it or knows about it or even cares about it. It's just in your own head. You wake up every morning and you can decide who you want to be today. Who do you want to be today? And you have the power to a certain degree to make that happen, to make that a reality if you're willing to let go and you're willing to take action about it, right? And the next day you can wake up and you can decide to be someone else. So this idea of like,

kind of starting new every day, like truly starting new every day was like this big realization I had. Now, maybe a lot of people already know this. Maybe a lot of people already feel this. I don't know. I don't think so. But to me, it was like this huge revelation I had where you can just let go, man. You can let go. And every day is a new opportunity for you to be who you want to be. And that's really empowering. Yeah.

Well, people who are listening to you right now, I think there are a couple of, I mean, there are, let's say, 40% of people who are listening to you right now, they're having a revelation. They say, yes, yes, this is something I always thought, but then you said it in much clearer words.

And then there would be another 30% who are saying, "What is he talking about?" There are two things that we have to realize about this. Number one, all of those little, what do you say? - Links in the chain? - Links in the chain, they are decisions that you made.

So they are conscious decisions. You chose to act that way. But then the other side of the equation that you have to realize is that tomorrow you can choose in a different way. So everybody tends to err. Everybody tends to be biased on one or the other side of this, right? So some people tend to be biased in the sense that,

I made these decisions so far, I have to be consistent. So I have to go on making the same kind of decisions. - What kind of like your past defines you? - Other people have to be biased on the other end. It's like, I have to recreate myself every single day

Which is again, if you have no history, that's not healthy either. If you keep recreating yourself every single day, that's not healthy either. So what we actually do is we take those little links of chain and we recycle them into a kind of future that we want to build for ourselves. Both of them are true. But, and this is it, the trap of identity, as you said,

On one hand, we have to realize that we have a choice. But on the other hand, we have to realize that the choices that we made so far, they are based on who we are. They are based on certain, well, they call them preferences based on, you know, some people are more flexible, some people are more consistent, some people are braver, some people are more safe, and so on. So we have to respect preferences.

this part as well. We have to understand that that's also a reality. We have to accept who we are to a certain extent. And in my own life, for example, that was a somewhat painful but very revealing process because I was trained first as a social scientist and then I was trained as a diplomat and then I was trained as a management consultant. And all of these are fairly consistent data-based processes

how do you say, very low risk professions where you have to watch what you say, you have to be very methodological. And then around almost 40 years of age, I had to realize within the community of consultants and diplomats, I'm a bit of an artist. So this kind of Zen that we talked about,

I had to accept the fact that I will never be a McKenzie kind of guy or I will never be an ambassadorial kind of guy because in Hungarian we say, what's in my heart is on my lips. One of the reasons why I left the diplomatic profession behind is because I simply cannot, how do you say, be too diplomatic about

Because to be diplomatic, you have to self-censor. You have to self-censor. You have to have a protocol of what you say and what you don't say. And that was just not for me. And then I went into the, I did the certified management consultant degree. I went into management consulting. I worked together with strategic consultants. And then I realized I'm not on that level of consistency. I'm not on that level of abstraction anymore.

as the McKenzie type of consultants are. So now I am in this intercultural leadership field, which is a little bit the art of the science, so to speak. Well, to me, that's far more interesting. I love it. Yeah. Yeah, it's the kind of thing is like when you write a book about intercultural leadership, it's just on the verge of writing a novel. Yeah.

So I absolutely love it because it's about human behavior. It's about the diversity of approaching the same task in different personal ways. And then I think I found my niche in that. But it's a lot of searching and it's a lot of accepting your limitations, so to speak.

So is there a lot of, like from a personal level, right? Talking about you, Gabor, like, was there like a lot of personal growth that you've experienced through your work? Yes, definitely. Definitely. And the personal growth, interestingly, is partially what you can do and partially what you cannot do.

So understanding where your limits are? Yes, and accepting with a smile what those things are that you cannot. For example, in my profession in management consulting, there is an awful lot of money in being in the middle of projects.

So for example, you are the person who gets the client, gets the job, and then you subcontract to other consultants all over the world. Like in my profession, for example, it's a very lucrative field of getting a global contract and then subcontracting to people who can do it in the Arabic language and Japanese language and Chinese language and so on. It's just simply not for me. You put me in the middle, it's like logistical chaos, right?

And eventually I just had to accept that. I'm not that person. I'm a good networker. I can get the client. I can be in the middle. Then I screw up because I'm not detail-orientated enough. You have to accept that. You're not like a coordinator. No, not at all. Not at all. And you have to compare yourself to other people to find out that you're not a company. I'm an ideator. I'm an inspirer.

But I'm definitely not a coordinator. So then you have two choices. You just withdraw from that field altogether, or you find a great coordinator and surround yourself with those kind of people so they can get the job done. Well, cheers, Gabor. Cheers. Man, I love talking to you. I really do. Have we just talked for two hours? We have just talked for two hours. Does it mean you will have a two-hour episode?

It doesn't necessarily mean. Sometimes I trim the fat in the beginning or the end. Usually only in the beginning, but it really depends. I've had two-hour episodes before that I've published. It really just depends on, I have to listen back to it and see how it goes. So listen and make sure that we make sense. It makes sense. The only problem is like, do I understand everything you're saying? I mean, that's really the issue. But I love having you on. I think I learned something every...

every time I speak to you. And I mean, you have an open invitation to come back anytime. I mean, there's always something we can get into. Like even today, like we had no idea what we were going to talk about, but we sit down, we get going, and then it becomes a very fascinating conversation. Likewise. Likewise. It was just a kind of fleeting mention, like, let's do this again, ha-ha. Yeah. And here we are. But I think it was exciting. I saw you got out of quarantine. I'm like, hey, welcome back.

man it's been a while and we're like hey wait it's almost been a year since our first episode and we're like we should do one again I mean my first episode with you was very well received very well received that was the favorite episode of a lot of people yeah but thanks again Gabor thank you do you have you did a TED talk recently right that's right a virtual TED talk those things happen these days but hey man I'm glad you're back likewise and thanks again thank you very much thank you brother

Cheers, guys. Cheers. All right. That was Gabor. I'm Justin. All right, guys. Be good. Be well. Bye, everybody. Peace.