On teams...

When I was a kid, my parents did not have much. Both of them were studying and we were living based on BAf?G which is a student funding program in Germany. We never starved, but from a material perspective we did not have much more than the essentials.

Why do I bring this up? In 1989 - I had just turned 7 years old - I watched Michael Chang win the French Open... as the youngest man in history to win a singles major title.

I was hooked... I wanted to become a tennis player. My aunt bought me a racket and a pack of tennis balls (4 balls were in that pack) and I played as much as I could in our tiny little apartment in the city centre of Aachen.

Our poor neighbours... every day - especially on the weekends - they could hear how I bounced the balls against the wall, how I screamed when I "lost" and how I celebrated when I won my French Open.

My mom constantly asked me to stop in order to not disturb our neighbours. But our neighbours told my mom: "If he does not do what he is doing, he would be an odd kid. Let him play."

To this day, I am amazed by our neighbours' reaction... but this is a story for another time.

Being hooked on tennis, I wanted to join a club. Some of my friends from school were playing... so why couldn't I? After all - at least in my imagination - I could easily beat all of them.

So I asked my parents and they asked my friends parents how much a tennis club would cost. Back then, it was at least 100 Deutsche Mark per month. Which was a bit more than 10% of our overall monthly budget.

It was out of question that my parents would be able to cover that. With that 100 Deutsche Mark, they could support several members of our family back in Iran. I understood... but I was still disappointed.

My father who liked the idea of me doing sports had another idea. "Why don't you play football? You love that game, too."

And yes... he was right. You could basically put me in any sports were there was a ball involved. And football - to this day - is one of my greatest loves.

The good thing about football: It only cost 48 Deutsche Mark per year i.e. 4 Deutsche Mark a month. That was less then a Pita Gyros back then which cost 5 Deutsche Mark.

So the deal was sealed... they signed me up for football. In hindsight, this might have been one of the best decisions in and for my life.

Because football taught me the joy of playing a game. It taught me to fight in order to win. And most importantly, it taught me the values and dynamics of true teams.

Ever since that age of 7, I have played football - and later basketball - almost on a weekly basis... when I was younger multiple times a week. Whenever I could not play for an extended period of time, something in my life was missing. And whenever I was back on the pitch, I realized that missing piece was football.

Why does it inspire me so much? Why does it inspire my son... and fortunately now also my daughters?

I believe there are many elements to this. One certainly is what Daniel Pink refers to as "Mastery". Continuously improving your game, practicing something and then being able to do it - especially in a high-pressure context - that just feels good and it drives me.

That same longing for Mastery also drives me at work. I am never done improving my workshops, never done improving my work as a coach, never done improving how I run meetings, never done improving how I create content.

Once I realized that deliberate practice can move us closer to perfection at whatever we do, I was hooked on constantly working on myself... both my thinking and my craft.

The other element that makes a game like football so inspirational to me is the joy of winning (and yes also losing) with my teammates. The camaraderie in great teams is a feeling that one can't explain... it needs to be experienced.

Ever since that age of 7, I have been looking for that camaraderie in various aspects of life. Obviously, I looked for it in team sports be it football or basketball. I also looked for it during my studies, when we created study groups especially in anatomy.

I looked for it at work and found it in many cases during my time at Bain, and later in a startup I co-founded with my friend Mario Adler . To this day, I look for creating this camaraderie in my own company.

And of course, I am very grateful to have found a wife who is not only the mother of my children, but also my companion... i.e. she and I are the most important team I am on today.

During all these years, be it on a football pitch with other kids or adults, be it at work, be it on a board of directors... for me the key ingredients of any well-functioning team are the following:

1. Care
2. Communication
3. Humbleness

Care means that every member of the team truly cares for every other member of that team and the team as a whole. It means that we want to see others do well. It means that we support wherever we are needed.

Communication does not need a whole lot of explaining. Yet, it is still very important. Great team members need to know how to ask for support, how to offer support, and how to align.

Humbleness means that people do not consider themselves to be above any task. On the football pitch, this means taking on any position that can help your team win. At work, this means taking on any role or task that can help your team succeed. It does not matter whether you are a developer, a sales person, or the CEO of a company. If a job needs to be done and you can do it, you do it.

Obviously this list is not complete, and we can certainly look at many models ... but wherever these three are missing, I have not seen a group of people being able to be come a truly great team.

And if these three ingredients exist, almost everything else can be created e.g. trust. Trust is the result of care, humbleness, and communication. Seeing that someone cares about me, seeing that someone is willing to do anything in their power to support me and my team, and constantly interacting with that person in a respectful manner... this builds trust.

I am not sure whether I would have learned and ingrained these lessons had I not signed up for football at the age of 7 and instead played tennis. I am sure I would have also learned a lot on the tennis court, but I highly doubt that I would have become the team player I am today.

There is this quote by the Spanish football player Sergio Ramos: "I'm not interested in the Ballon d'Or. I would have played tennis if I wanted individual trophies."

When I heard that in 2019, I thought: "This describes me really well."

Is it nice to be recognized for individual contributions? Yes it is. But does it beat the feeling of winning with your team? No... for me, it does not.

But, it is important to understand that not everyone feels the same way. Not everyone takes their joy at work from being part of a team and achieving something amazing with their team.

There are people, that first and foremost aim for individual success... and that is OK. The important thing is to not bring them into your team. On an individual basis they might be able to do excellent work. But in a team, they will be considered as Divas.

Nobody wants to be on a team with a Diva.

Succeeding as a team takes work. It also takes a clear strategy and discipline in execution on finding the right people to be on your team.

Despite knowing what to look for, it is not always easy to identify the right people during an interview process. But once you start working with people, be very cautious to look for whether they care about their teammates, whether they communicate well, and whether they are humble enough to do whatever it takes to win with the same level of enthusiasm as it would be their most favorite task.

Yesterday, I went to another football match of my son's team. They won 5:2 and he scored a goal. At the end of the game, I asked him: "How was it?"

His response: "We won... that is the most important thing. And yes, I scored a goal."

This is the right order of putting things: Team first, everything else second.

#FromNothingComesNothing