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What do you really need to be happy? Another startup? Another spiritual method? A list of 15 books you won’t finish?
This podcast isn’t here to tell you what to do. We explore deep ideas of freedom, and then we go through the door and meditate briefly.
Dmitri’s Door is not a self-help show. It’s a slow, introspective dialogue — a place for poetic inquiry, not productivity hacks. If you’re seeking simple answers, this may not be for you.
But if you're drawn to philosophical reflection, non-duality, self-awareness, and the search for inner freedom, you're in the right place.
Each episode is an exploration, channeled in real-time — influenced by Krishnamurti, Alan Watts, Zen, and lived experience as a founder, builder, and seeker. We are here to explore together.
We’ll explore the roots of fear, desire, creativity, entrepreneurship, and what success really means. You won’t be given answers, but rather questions that help you find your own.
If you're building a life — or a business — from the inside out, this is your space.
Open the door. Let’s explore the unknown, together.
===
[00:00:00] Welcome to Dmitri's Door. Thank you for stepping in. I hope you take a comfortable position. Breathe in, breathe out. Take a cup of tea and join in. Where we'll explore the root of freedom, fear, desire, creativity, entrepreneurship, and what it all means. You won't be given answers, but rather questions that help you find your own.
Yeah, welcome to Dmitri's Door. In today's episode, I'm gonna have a dialogue with my really good friend Joppe. Joppe is a special kind of person because he's been always searching, always looking deep inside of himself and inside of others, [00:01:00] and he has found something. He found a new way of communicating a new method.
Of dragging out the truth about your soul out of yourself. He calls it descriptive communication. In this episode, we're gonna touch upon that, but we're also gonna go deep into what is leadership and how to really get a team to be united towards your goal or a shared goal. So. Without further ado, strap in, sit down, hopefully in a meditative sitting position where you can really take it in.
As always, Dmitri's door is not about content. It's about the energy. Oh man, that word people don't get that word. I don't get that word. Replace it with a word you prefer. It is about presence. It's about what you will learn yourself out of it, and not about what we say specifically. It's about your interaction with the content, about your [00:02:00] ideas that you generate as a result of listening to the podcast.
So once again, without further ado, this is me and on leadership. Enjoy.
Welcome thank you for being with me here today.
My pleasure.
A little bit spontaneous, uh, podcast recording as we were working together.
And, I had this feeling that the conversations we had were very interesting. And I really felt that it is a time to actually put it on a recording because I always feel that some of the best conversation in life. Happen between people and they never record it. And I think people can get a lot out of it.
So welcome to the podcast called Dmitri's Door, and let's explore where it takes us. There's a reason I really thought that, hey, let's do it right now. Let's sit down and record. It was because we started talking about leadership. And we both worked with companies with leaders, and we both worked in organizations where people are leaders.
And I'm always exploring within myself what it means to be a [00:03:00] leader. , And I guess you have a lot of experience as well with teams. So maybe to get it off, , what do you think about leadership? , What is that quality?
It's a very difficult question.
I know time and time again that no matter whether it's like volunteering or whether it's companies or co-creation, that two things can happen. Either people think they don't want a leader, so there's like a flat hierarchy.
.
But then eventually leaders still emerge from that. It's not a flat hierarchy or there's a strong hierarchy.
But then leaders think that simply because there's leadership and hierarchy, people will start doing stuff. And I don't understand that or that people assume that because, , a company has , their values, the three vs or whatever, that therefore people follow that as if leadership has nothing to do with loyalty.
And I don't understand that as if leadership has [00:04:00] nothing to do with meaning. And I keep noticing time and time again that people will more likely follow those who create clarity and safety, and who include people in decision making and who let people do things the way that they think it should be done, but it doesn't happen a lot.
And I find it strange that after all these years of companies and CEOs and startups, as if people still don't get it, and I don't understand where that comes from.
what I realize is that there's so many kinds of leadership and in my mind I kind of judge some kinds of leadership.
And what is confusing to me very often is that there are kinds of leadership. That I would not want to work with. . But that they are highly effective when it comes to making profits. Right. So you can Right, right. You can exploit people. Right. You can be like not caring about people. You can fire people [00:05:00] very easily.
. You can put very high, objectives. And pressure. People micromanaged. People, psychopathy, psychopathy. Yes. That's the word. And then very often that leads to profits. Right, because you're not valuing people properly and therefore sometimes the markets reward poor leadership. , And therefore I'm not so much interested in that kind of leadership, even though it can be effective in terms of, again, money making, but people don't feel good in that environment.
So as you say, I'm also interested more about, okay, what does it mean to be a leader where you can actually take care of your people and where people can feel well I'm curious also what you said about , that it means loyalty and meaning and clarity. Those are the words. . . That kind of you mm-hmm.
You, you, you put there. I'm curious, what do you mean by that?
Well, I mean, if there's no sense of meaning in what we do, then why would we do it? Hmm. What is meaning? Well, that's a very deep question. So, there's this idea that people work for money, [00:06:00] right? Sure. Which is true.
Yeah, we need to pay the bills, but I think it's way more than that. If that would be the only incentive, then it would be really easy, right?
Yeah,
sure. But people are driven by more, so then meaning comes in automatically. I think purpose and meaning to me means to be driven by something that is, that we want for ourselves, for our children.
For our environment, and then we can create something bigger than I can do by myself, right? But how many companies or managers do that?
Not a lot.
Not a lot. Nobody really talks about that, and I think one of the reasons is that too many managers, leaders, they're busy working.
.
And if you're a manager, I don't understand why you're working.
You shouldn't be working, you should be managing.
, And I get it because you're a manager and you have a team, and then somebody leaves, all of a sudden you have one and a half jobs. . And the thing still needs to happen. And your boss is pressuring you. And [00:07:00] the boss is pressured by the, , investors.
. Or the shareholders, uh, more profit, more this, more than that. And I think that we don't really ask leaders the question, what do you want? We don't really ask employees, what do you want? And then even if we do ask, we don't really listen. We don't really do anything with it. Or if we ask, we don't really ask it well enough in en enough different ways that we get an answer.
I feel like we have created a world where there's all these pre-programmed answers. Right. like, I've seen this happen at companies where a company gets the feedback form, right?
. And then leadership gets back, oh, everybody's happy. But it's, most of the time the case, it doesn't make any sense. People don't really complain about anything. , Why don't they complain about anything? Or why don't they think that things could be better? It's 'cause they are primed to give a certain answer.
Also in a forum, it's very different what I answered than if we would sit down and talk for an hour.
Right. Have like a real conversation. Right.
So one thing I see time by time again, is that in a meeting, a leader [00:08:00] asked, does everybody know what to do? Yes. Thank you. And then we, then you start. But people are programmed to answer yes and think that they have to be able to solve it by themselves.
How many people feel comfortable in a meeting to say, I have no clue what we're doing.
Right? You're immediately left out, right? Immediately you're left
out, you're judged. How dare you, kind of thing. Doesn't make any sense to me. So people need to feel safe and part of it, but are they part of it and do they feel safe?
And then there's things like, psychological safety. A team or something, but I've seen places where that exist and still there's no psychological safety. How is that possible? None of that makes any sense. And I think that has to do with the fact that very little companies, in my opinion, have an actual strategy that it's also seen as important.
Right. I feel it, that there's two layers. Oh, okay. Let's say there's infinite amount of layers, but let's pick two layers. I feel like there's an outer layer, which people do. Because they feel it's important or they read it in a [00:09:00] book. Right, right, right. And then there is the real layer, like the meaning behind it.
Right. So for instance, values is a good example that you mentioned. I think very often people go like, well. Every hardware business review article says we should have values. Yes. Yes, exactly right. So what do you do? Will you hire some consultant and you go like, okay, let's put some values.
'cause the numbers show that companies who have values are outperforming companies that don't have values.
Yes, exactly. Therefore,
let's go get some.
Exactly.
And so the companies just go and, they have some fancy workshop and then they come up with values. But these values are not their real values.
Exactly. And I feel like values are something you discover and not Yeah. It's not something you come up with. Exactly. You already have values and so , the outer layer is this thing. It's , okay, well, everybody says we should have psychological safety teams, so let's just hire some people and we check that mark, but we don't actually want psychological safety.
Right. We just want to have , the box ticked
, And or we don't even understand what psychological safety means. I was working at a company. And [00:10:00] I was talking about the necessity of that conflict is important, right? Because if we have conflict, we can overcome it as adults and then we're more of a team afterwards.
And this person was part of HR and then said, no, but that'll make people uncomfortable. That's , not psychological safe. That's madness. If you ask me. It doesn't make any sense, right? So with these values, , the three Vs or whatever, as you say, or even, um,, a mission. A lot of it is just not real.
And if you ask me if you want psychological safety, if you want to have real values, it's got some kind of system where the leadership has to believe in it , and also remind themselves why are we doing this this way?
But, but most people are just stuck in working. You see it all the time. It's like people don't have time. Because there needs to be more profit.
Mm-hmm.
So everybody's in this, in like this constant state of a little bit of panic.
, My feeling also is, and I do feel that we maybe need to address also some of the ways of how to tackle all this.
. So we don't, , [00:11:00] list the, the complaining points of why the world is wrong. But I was like, okay, what do we do about it? But , to add to the fire, I feel that, like you said, it starts at the leadership on top. Mm-hmm. Even in flat hierarchies. Mm-hmm. But. I feel that very often people at the top I work with, a lot of startups don't actually know what they want.
Or they want very simple things, and that's okay. Mm-hmm. There's nothing wrong with that. But , if you don't have your basics covered you cannot pay for your family, for your house, then what do you want? , Most people want just financial freedom or financial security at least.
. If that is the thing they think about the most in their life, day to day 24 7 going, how to save my family, how to pay for the bills. Mm-hmm. How to pay for the kindergarten. Well, the main value of the company will be mm-hmm. Seeking money. Mm-hmm. Because that's what you are seeking.
. So you don't have the mental space to even think about. Real values or real mission. Yes. 'cause you care only about survival.
You've worked a lot with startups. Yeah. So , if you ask anybody at any startup, what do they need? What do they say? Money, [00:12:00] investment, investment.
Right. There's always the same investment. Okay. Yeah. In your own experience, I actually genuinely curious what you're gonna say off the a hundred percent of the companies that say that they want investment or need investment. Now, how many of them actually need something else first? Uh,
I would say a hundred percent.
Right,
right.
So there you go.
Yeah, a hundred percent because first of all, most of them are not investable. . So most of it's kind of going like Exactly. It's kind of going like, I know dating. Right. And you go like, I, I want to have a wife. It's like, okay, did you take care of yourself?
Exactly, exactly. Are
you taking care of your body? Are you going to the gym? Are you developing? What do you have to offer? Exactly, exactly, exactly. In a dating table. Exactly right. It's like, well, no, I want to have the best partner in the world. Okay, but have you worked on yourself first? So with companies, it's kind of the same.
So if, if I'm single and all you see me do is ask. Other ladies, , do you wanna date me? , You immediately understand that's creepy. Right? Right. Exactly. Yeah. And if I'm a company, I'm a [00:13:00] startup and I keep asking for investment, that's the same.
Yeah.
And if I am a corporation and I, what would be the corporate version of that?
Well, maybe profit.
Yeah,
we need more profit. Okay. That's not a motivator, that's an end goal of sorts. Doesn't make any sense to me. I don't understand that.
Yeah. And also in my experience with startups and investment, like the ones that raise money, the easiest are the ones that don't actually ask for it, don't need it per se.
. They kind of go like, um, well it'd be nice. Yeah. But it's not like we'll be fine. , There's some companies, , I remember. , They even had a disclaimer on the website that, hey, if you're an investor you have to follow these 10 criteria and only if you do this only then we'll talk to you.
That already goes like, huh, these guys are different.
I mean, if you have a company and you have certain values, how many people actually hire on that?
I don't think a lot because in my experience, most companies, don't hire expertise per se. They just hire because there's a, gap.
They just need someone to do a [00:14:00] thing. . So , what I'm trying to say with all these things is that nowhere is there, there really a structure for any of this. And of course there's companies do it well. There's plenty of startups who know what they're doing or corporations or middle big companies.
But I see it a lot that leadership is seen as something that just by default is expected to exist in a good way.
But
I think if you would interview people and you would ask them, how many leaders have you had that you respected and they respected you and you felt safe? I don't think you get a lot of yeses out of that.
A lot of people saying, yeah, I've had most of the leaders were like that. Hmm. Like most leaders are just there because they, and just ended up there. And leadership is a skill. Being good at your job doesn't mean you're a good leader. Being an expert doesn't mean you're a good leader. Something very different.
So what does it mean? Like, let's start solving the world here. What can we start with?
You said something really interesting in the beginning and that is that, there is different types of leadership. Probably [00:15:00] in wartime, I don't want a leader that's super empathic towards my feelings, right?
So depends on that. But if you ask me what I think is good for the world, then it goes like this. So. A leader understands that I am important, A leader himself. Yeah. I am important. And leader also understands that you're important. Yeah. And understands that we are important and that our environment is important.
And I really believe that if you follow that logic, then we can create something that works.
Hmm. I love that. I think it's a, A person who is. Seeing the full picture in some ways. Yeah. You understand? And like different layers.
I'm a system. We are a system, and we're a system in our environment.
People always say the same thing , to me. . , A company needs to make profit. Yes, of course. So if the company doesn't make profit, then there is no, , team.
Yeah. Right. I wish to see more that helping employees is on the same track as making profit.
.
And the numbers are really, really [00:16:00] clear on it. If you look at the research, it's shows time and time again, happy employees stay, so there's less turnover. You don't have to spend a lot of time, or you have to spend less time on recruitment and replacing people, , happy people are more productive.
Or they are less ill and all that. Still, , there's not a lot of tension for it per se, and I think one of the issues is that how to take care of people is misunderstood. It's not a list of tricks, and I think any parent can see this immediately. Imagine that I give you a book on the 10 tips, how to raise your child, and one tip is, , set boundaries.
Another one is give love, and the third one is, um,, explore with them. It really depends on how you interpret that, right? Sure. So set boundaries. Okay, so I need to set strict boundaries, but wait a minute, doesn't it depend on the child, right? Right. Okay. So the individual, the employee is an individual too.
So we [00:17:00] can't have the same guidelines and same rules for everyone. It doesn't make any sense. An introvert needs different kind of leadership than an extrovert. But how many leaders can do that? How many leaders understand that? ? And that, to me, it all starts with the question, what do you want? You ask the leader, ask themselves, what do I want?
How do I want it? What do I want for the company? And for this, I believe there's a really simple structure of questions you ask yourself as a leader, what do I want to achieve for the company? What do I want to achieve for the end user? And what do I want to achieve for myself? And then you go to the , employee and you ask them the same questions,
but then there's a problem that comes up which is that, , people have different needs, right? So you have to compromise then with that. And for that, you need time. So if as a manager, I don't have time, I cannot do this, this takes a tremendous amount of time, and this also never stops. You have to do this every month, every year, every day, constantly.
This is all you're doing. What do you need? What do you need? Right now? [00:18:00] You have to help them, ? If your recruiter says, I want to try a different strategy, and I wanna work together with , the marketing team on that,
.
Maybe I should say yes, and I have to support them in that. And of course, the HR person has to be, reasonable in all of this, right?
It has to be all within the confinements of the company. But people don't ask themselves the question, what do I want? And we don't ask our employees either.
I agree with you and, I, maybe I'll ask you this, right? So I find it extremely important that you talk to your employees.
In fact, I don't like the idea of calling them your employees. . That in itself already creates a conflict. Right. So the moment you call 'em employees, you are kind of like, well, there's you and there's me, and we're not in the same boat.
But what I'm curious about is, uh, and I really wanna ask you this mm-hmm. Because we did it together. Mm-hmm. We worked together. For those who are listening data might not know, we worked together in the same company where I was a CEO, and you were a chief of happiness. , And I even then felt that it's important to talk to people, but [00:19:00] I think then I also did it wrong in many ways.
And I'm curious, what do you think about that? For instance, remember we introduced a concept called clearing, where we sat together and asked, what's working for you? What's not working for you? Mm-hmm. It's basically another way of asking, what do you want? What do you need right now? Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
But also now when I look back at it, even though.
This is something that was done.
Mm-hmm.
It didn't work very well. . I know that when we did it in a circle
.
, Then some people just didn't want to be in that circle. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Didn't wanna share at all. And then in one-on-ones, for instance, it worked. I remember very deep session that we had with you.
Mm-hmm. It's still one of the most powerful one-on-one sessions I've had in my life. Mm-hmm. It was really beautiful, but still it didn't work. . Sometimes when you introduce these things, I feel there's some sort of resistance. Recently I had a workshop with a team in Estonia and I also gave them some of these tools.
And I could feel in the team that some people were like, oh,
mm-hmm. You know? Mm-hmm.
Oh no. Some self-development questions. I don't wanna do this. We're just here to make money. I don't want to talk [00:20:00] even about it. In your experience? 'cause this is something that you do right now, like how do you deal with that?
I'm not a CEO, so it's easier for me, right? Yeah. But I also feel like, so when we work together, , in the end, how consistent were we with that?
Not at all.
Well, there you go. Yeah. So I feel like when we set a strategy for these things, if I'm a manager, let's say I'm a team leader and I wanna implement this.
Let's say I have a team of, , eight people, so that's eight hours of conversation.
Yep.
Let's say I do it once a month, so I have to find eight spots. That's a lot. I think that's a lot. , In order for this to work properly, we have to do it enough so that people get used to it so they realize I can say what's on my mind and we can continuously work on this.
Right.
So is there time and space to do this? Six months in a row? And how many leaders follow up on this, especially when the employees [00:21:00] might even try to get out of it? , But now I come back to the being busy again. I've seen this happen. I find it really funny that there might be things in place for employees, but they themselves don't show up.
Why? What do you think? The employees
or the CEOs
employees?
Well, they're busy.
They're busy. Yeah, they're busy. Where are they busy?
They believe that doing work is more important
most of the time in my experience, they have too much to do or, and or they don't feel safe enough.
Meaning that even if they don't have too much to do, it feels psychological, like they have too much to do.
Right.
So this is then seen as a waste of time. Secondly, the leader might try and get out of it. Why?
I think the same, right? The same answer. It's exactly the same, right? So
If, let's say you want implement this in a company of a hundred people, then C-Suite has to commit and the leaders have to commit and push for it.
They also have [00:22:00] to believe in it, but that also means, wait, this, because this shows their complexes. It also means that the leaders have to be able to do this. And there's a lot of leaders who wouldn't know how to do this.
Yeah.
Because it's difficult. It's hard. It's hard to sit down and help somebody open up.
And you have to
have the experience. You have to have the experience. You have to, it's like we talked about a bit earlier before I started recording that it's like playing guitar. Right, exactly. It's kind of, um, sitting down and having either the clearing exercise or descriptive communication session.
You have to know. We have to know what questions to ask, what tools to have, how to react to people when they open up, what to do if they don't open up or if they don't answer your question. I've seen you do descriptive communication a few times now, and I saw that you asked them a very simple question, what do you want?
And people fall silent. Yes. Right. Hard. They just don't even know.
No. And I think that one of the main reasons they don't know is because. , They don't trust that they can answer. So if I'm , , the CEO or if I'm the project manager and ask you, what do you want, a lot of people will [00:23:00] think in the back of their heads, I'm not gonna say what I want.
I don't wanna be crucified or, , bullied out of here.
Well, I think it's safety is one part, but the other part is actually, and this is something I learned recently, again, through experience of having these conversations and I was, um, a moment which. Really gave me a deeper understanding of what could happen is that I met a person who genuinely didn't know.
It was not in a corporate setting. It was more of a a festival setting where we had a session with one person. . And I literally asked her like, what do you want? . And she said, I don't know. And it took us two hours.
. Literally, I'm not kidding. . Of talking
to her together with my wife, Valerie. To get her to admit that right now, in this moment, all that she wants is a watermelon. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. It's a simple
thing
because we were like, Hey, what do you want? Do you want a blanket? Mm-hmm.
Do you want, you want some food? Mm-hmm. They want water. They want tea. Mm-hmm. Do you wanna go for a walk? Mm-hmm. Do you want to do some exercise? And this person could not admit to anything, [00:24:00] and it took us two hours to convince her that it is okay to share. To another being. . What she wants.
Why do you think it was difficult for her?
My feeling is that , it's self love. My feeling was that for many people, it's difficult to love themselves. . And it is even more difficult to ask someone else to love you.
Wait, I have a question. . So self-love, I have a feeling like intuitive understanding, but , what's the practical version of that?
Because self-love can mean so many things. What? How does that translate into real life? Oh, no.
Like for example, practically knowing that my body right now wants to eat right, right? And what does it want? Does it want a burger? Which is probably not good for me right now. It might be good in another moment.
, Sometimes I love a burger.
Mm-hmm.
But maybe in this moment I want something nice and fresh, like a watermelon. And being able to know that my body actually wants something. Identifying the correct . Something and then going to get it. Or in this person's case, asking someone else to bring it.
Yeah. Yeah
but this is interesting, actually. We're going full circle now. So if I answer the question, what do I [00:25:00] want, what do I get in return?
I think if you answer it to yourself. Then you basically get an action planner right away, right? You can get it. Wait,
wait. , What's action? Think about the beginning of our conversation.
Action is, well,
.
You get up and do it right? Which
is,
I can
tell you, but I'm curious to see if you, if you gimme a
few more questions.
Yeah. Gimme a question.
Thinking how to not spoil it straight away. So action. is a direction, right? Yep. Okay. What does that give me?
Well, I think it comes back to our kind of self-leadership.
Yeah. Yeah. To, right.
So you are able to describe to yourself.
It's the same. It's the same. What do
you want
If I have direction?
Yeah. Now I have a plan. If I have a plan, I have.
The solution
of meaning.
Meaning, okay. Purpose. Yeah. Alright. Yeah. Yep.
Okay. Earlier we're talking about what is purpose? What is meaning? Yeah. It's just direction. . So if I'm a [00:26:00] leader and I ask myself what do I want? I create direction.
Therefore, I create meaning and purpose. Yeah. Your values come probably from that.
I, I love this because. Oh, thank you so much. I love this a lot because I feel that very often when we come up with a question of purpose in leadership, oh, it has to be this beautiful, weird sentence. Mm-hmm.
And sometimes leadership and purpose just like, get me a watermelon.
What I like about it is this. So, , let's say I ask you what you want to say. I don't want anything.
Yeah.
Right. Or I dunno what I want. And then they need, what do you want now? Well, I'm hungry. I want a sandwich. Okay. Just you want a sandwich? So what do we do? Well, we go out mm-hmm. Of this caravan.
Mm-hmm. And we walk and buy a sandwich.
Buy you sandwich.
Okay. Yeah.
I eat the sandwich or order it. Then actually ordering is eat the sandwich.
Yeah.
Now what?
Well now I'm gonna be thinking about what's the next thing that I want.
Right. So
this same question again.
Yeah.
So what I like about this is that it's an arrow. And it will never stop. . We're driven [00:27:00] by purpose. And purpose doesn't have to be, I'm gonna change the world. . It doesn't have to be all these big things that companies and people think about, but when we come up with a purpose, when we say, answer the question, what do we want?
How many people take that serious? If I work somewhere and I get asked the question by my team manager, what do I want? And I say, , for this project I would like to create, , an AI tool. , . And then as a leader, I'm like, okay. Well, no, no. How about, how about you help? So now I ask the person in order to create this AI tool, what do you need?
What do you need from me? How can I support this? I'm not gonna do it. . And I ask you, do you need a reference? Do you need information? Do you need budget? Do you need tools? Do you need. , Support.
Yeah. More people,
whatever. Right? Yeah. And you can tell me and then it's my job to help you with that [00:28:00] now.
Yeah. So I provide you with that. I do this with the whole team. . , I'm not working. I'm providing them all with this.
Now we have a follow up meeting.
If people have done it, we have reached all of these goals all of a sudden. . Simply very fast. There's no other way. Well, the other way is somebody going, oh, I didn't do it. Well, that's very strange. I, as a leader asks you, what do you want? I want to do it like this, or I want to do this.
What do you need? Do you need this, this, this, this, this. Yes. I need these things. I provide that. And now you didn't do it.
.
What happened? And now we have a real reason to have a conversation. The employee has no excuse.
Yeah. Right. 'cause they've been given everything that they've given everything.
And I'm not angry with you. Yeah. As a leader. I just simply see, hey, it didn't happen. So now I can ask you the question, what is going on? And you cannot come up with excuses. There are no excuses. So either you're then able to say, well, actually, I don't know. Uh, my partner [00:29:00] left me and, , I can't think straight.
Yeah. Okay. Now we have a new one. , Let's get you help. Yep. Right? Or you say, uh, no, but I, I don't know. It just doesn't work well. Okay, wait a minute. Are you in the right place? I can ask you a new question. Maybe you're doing recruitment, but you don't wanna do that. You actually want to be, , the coach, Or we can help you understand, hey, this is not your place. You shouldn't be here. And no judgment. I have no judgment. There's nothing, there's no animosity here. But we ask you to do these things. We provided you with everything that you needed. You have all this, you have, if you need freedom, we give you freedom.
If you need guidance, we give you guidance. You didn't do it. Therefore, what is going on?
What if there are things you cannot provide? Like, say budget is a common one. Well,
I mean, as leader, it's my job to then help, , figure out a compromise. Mm-hmm. So at least I don't want the employee to feel alone in this.
So let's say it's a startup, right? Startups never have money, right? So we're like, well, I need 2000 k. Well, that we cannot do.
well, you, you need, [00:30:00] well, yeah, so I want to 3D print the prototype. Okay. , Let me make some calls. Uh, does anybody know anybody with a 3D printer? And I know this sounds dependently simple, but we don't do this.
Most of the time we don't do this.
, It reminds me of one thing I always say when it comes to parenting, and I think it's the same to my personal feeling about leadership. I feel like as a parent, you have one job, and that, to me, that summarizes parenting. All you have to do, you have to remain on the side of the child.
There
you go.
No matter what happens, even if they do something wrong, you can accept that , doing something wrong. It doesn't mean you say, oh, let's find that you broke my favorite iPhone. Yeah, of course, of course, of course. Of course. You just be like, Hey, you know what? I love you, but because you, you broke the iPhone, I feel bad because it took me a lot of time to buy it and now I feel that.
If it was an accident, well then it was an accident. But if they did it on purpose, it'd be like, well, look, now I need to work more to be able to buy a new one. I'm gonna have some emotions, but it's not because I don't love [00:31:00] you. . It's not because you are wrong as a person, as a person's fine, but the actions that you did, yeah, were not acceptable.
And don't get me wrong, you of course still need somebody to participate, right? Sure. So if you have somebody in your company that's just not. Interested in collaborating at all? Well, then you have , a whole different kind of problem.
Sure. But I think with employees, , it's the same
you know, I feel that very often, managers and leaders, they're never on the side of the employees. No. They kind of go, why not? Why not? , Well, my personal theory is, I, one is , it's in the core of the word management.
Why do you need to manage someone else? . If you're managing . It means you're not trusting, right? . Managing is not freedom. Managing is like, I'm gonna put boundaries. Mm-hmm. And you have to do what I say.
Mm-hmm. It's not co-creation. . And it comes from Frederick Taylor, who came up with the word management.
All of this story where the reason management exists today is because we were trying to optimize, how to manage the outputs. . So I think it's in the core of the whole study of [00:32:00] management, which I studied at university, we call people human resources.
It's like a resource. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And we manage it. Mm-hmm. So I think that's , in the core of the problem is that. You put that as a conflict. . Depending on the size of the company . You have conflictual interest, like as you said, shareholders, investors mm-hmm.
That you have to report to and they want one thing, and then the employees or people working, they want a different thing. Mm-hmm. So there is a conflict and you're not . Properly communicating to all parties to make sure there isn't one. .
So basically you constantly have this conflictual situation, and I think it comes down to also trust.
Because one of the things why management exists in the first place is because Frederick Taylor said that his core belief is that the employee is lazy and cannot be trusted. What, what, what kind of system are you gonna build? If that's a core belief, right? You're not gonna be like, oh, if they're lazy, cannot be trusted, oh, please help me.
Right. Do what you want. , You are the best version of yourself. Express yourself in my company. If your core belief of the whole science of management is that [00:33:00] employees are lazy, not to be trusted, you're gonna build a prison, right? So I think that's at the core. If we trust and believe that employees have our best interests.
Then we can build a different world. Again, it's the same with parenting. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right? If you believe your kids are good at their core, you love them, you trust them, but you know that they're developing and going through different stages and they have to learn and they won't be perfect at day one, but you're there to support them.
They will grow into beautiful human beings. But if you constantly fear for them, you constantly repress them and put them into a prison cell, you're gonna have issues. So I feel, to me, that's where the court is.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
I mean, this is really complex, but I am working somewhere and I feel overwhelmed. I have too much to do. let's say that I go to my boss and I say it's too much. Okay. What's the obvious solution? Obvious solution is, uh, get help, right? Yeah. Okay. Well, that often doesn't work. Why not? [00:34:00] Because it's not per se that it's too much work.
It's that I don't get the support that I need, and that support can even be just psychological. support, I don't mean like checking in on you per se. As I said, these things aren't tricks. But almost always, you see this if you take a random person. You create a safe environment, they will become more creative and they will become conscious risk takers.
Hmm. So a person might think they have too much work, but if I treat them in the right way and I support them properly, they might all of a sudden say, oh, actually not too much at all. It's easy. . Does that make sense? And what I mean by that is that, I know I just said like , we were talking about the clearing, for instance.
A manager might think, okay, what if I just plan a weekly chat with all of my employees, , once a week?
.
. Well, it, it [00:35:00] really depends on how you do that. Are these talks useful? Does something come out of it? Do people walk out of that? , With a sense of support and less work,
Or are we doing this and we're having coffee and it feels like a waste of time on some level.
So even implementing that in itself doesn't mean anything if it doesn't have a real function.
It's like what we started with when I was trying to say that we have different levels, right? So level one is well, you just put it in the calendar and you go, okay, we're gonna have these meetings 'cause we'll listen to this podcast.
Yeah, yeah. , From now on, eight meetings per month, right? Yeah, exactly. And then you go into the meetings and they go like, okay, what do we talk about? Right. There's nothing happening. It's,
it's the same with, you can hang, hammocks in the office and you can have a fresh full of beer and pizza Fridays and all of these things can work.
And all of , these things cannot work at all. It depends on how you do it.
One of the things [00:36:00] that possibly depends on, and I'm not sure on this, but one of the things that possibly depends on is that the leader's ability to be observant. Mm-hmm. Exactly. And like to actually see. Yes.
Right. So for instance, if I go like, okay, I'll listen to your. He has this great, , system of descriptive communication. These are the questions you should ask. Okay. I'm gonna book my first meeting with Joshua. Mm-hmm. We sit down with Joshua and, Hey Joshua, , I listen to this podcast.
Let's have a descriptive communication session.
And Joshua just goes like, like, yeah. He doesn't say anything. Mm-hmm. Right. But his face has a cringe. Right. You have to notice the cringe.
Yeah, exactly. And be
like, do you think it's a good idea to have it and be like, well, you know, man, I dunno. Maybe I'm tired. Or I think it's a waste of time. Yes. Or you should have the courage to say, do you think it's a waste of time to do this?
Exactly,
yeah.
And then he say, well, you know what? I have 15 tasks to do today, and tomorrow's a deadline and you pull me out of it to have some crazy self-development meeting and be like, okay, but do you want me to tell you why it's important? And you have a conversation about that. But I think a lot of [00:37:00] managers will be like, well, , just power through it.
They'll be like, okay, sit down. What do you want?
Exactly, exactly, exactly. And the guys just like not
ready at all. Well, well, I
mean, also it can also create a problem because the other person might think they have to answer or that I have an answer in my mind. Right. That they have to please. It doesn't work.
Exactly. It doesn't work. , I'm not sure if this analogy works, but this comes to my mind. I saw this, , YouTube clip. There's a woman and she would play the piano and she would play the same song twice first. Without feeling, she would play, it sounded like music and then she would play it , with feeling.
And the difference was night and day. It was completely and utterly. It was not the same music. It was insane the difference. And to me, if I sit down with a person and I want to understand what is that they want, well I can either go through the motions and then we go nowhere. It's completely, utterly useless.
Or I [00:38:00] can do it with feeling. Now how to do that is really fucking hard. It is very difficult to write down how that works. This is also one of the reasons why I have it written down, how descriptive communication works, because it's not a trick. It's the mind, body, and soul working together at the same time.
It's about logic and intuition together at the same time. And you can see it. When it works, you can see it work. You see the difference. You see somebody turn on and all of a sudden they trust me and you can tell because their whole body posture changes from tense and or defensive to opening up and relaxing, and as soon as they open up and relax, then the honest answers come and they do that because they feel safe.
I feel like we've reached some sort of a core point that I'd like to discuss. Or have a dialogue about, and I feel this is so crucially important in anything that we do is this difference between like fake action and deep [00:39:00] real action.. And I think you brought it beautifully.
You can see it in artists or dancers. Some are just doing choreography, they're just making movements that they've learned. They're beautiful, but there's no feeling. I
have a better analogy. Okay.
Go for it.
Maybe that works better. I love this one too. So there's a lot of martial arts and, , they look great like or something, right? Yeah. Beautiful. There's like a dance almost as people always say It look like a dance. And there's a guy currently in China, this MMA fighter, and he said. I don't believe this bullshit doesn't work.
Why do they say that? Well, he says that because the people that practice this, these Tai Chi masters or whatever, they never pressure tested in real fights. Yeah. And you have these Tai Chi masters who have been doing this for 15 years and he says, I will fight you. And if you win, I will admit that your thing works.
Yeah.
And then there's these clips of these to Chi masters who get just beaten to a pulp. 'cause they cannot fight [00:40:00] because it never , has been pressure tested. And when I started to do a Brazilian jiujitsu, I had exactly that experience. So with the Brazilian jiujitsu, we would first practice the move.
So you and I, the teacher would show us, we would reenact the move and it would work like that. always, and I felt great. , Swift move like a, yeah, like a cool thing. It looks cool, you feel manly and all that. And then after half an hour of doing that, the teacher would say, okay, so you're gonna do the move on him, but he's not gonna let you.
Mm. And all of a sudden it doesn't work at all. You should have to learn how to use it while the other one is trying to push against it. . And then you slowly figure out how it really works. And I feel with this kind of stuff, it's the same whether it's leadership or communication or psychological safety or conflict resolution, whatever the hell it is, everything is different when you start actually applying it.
And that's what I mean with the book like writing down the [00:41:00] rules. You could read all the books on karate. . Let's say you could do that with your brain. You could read all the books on karate. But I do one year of karate. I kick your ass all the time. Right? Every time. Yeah. The guitar, you read all the books.
I'm playing the guitar. I do five months of guitar. I rock and roll your ass out of there, right? Absolutely. Easily. So. Uh, too many times people see these things as lists, as tricks. Yeah. And all the companies who want that tell us exactly how this works. But these things are really complicated. It's really, really complicated.
These are not easy things to do. There's no app for it. There is no two hour workshops that's gonna teach your leaders how to do this. You need tons and tons and tons of reputation, but companies don't wanna invest in that be and that makes sense. Also, it is really expensive if you have 10 managers and you would have to take every month for 10 months, one hour out of their schedule.
That's a lot of money.
Yeah, it
is a lot of money, so I get it. But if you [00:42:00] want it, you will have to invest and you have to help them to be able to pressure test these things that they learned.
Yeah, I think that's a beautiful analogy. thankfully my martial arts teacher always was into pressure testing.
Right, right, right out of it. And you kind of learn very quickly that well, it doesn't work. Exactly. None of it works. , If you don't put it in a real fight. And even in a real fight, it'll take you years and years to put the simplest technique into action. , That would be Oh wow. It worked, right?
I had a few fights where I'm like. Later look in slow motion and I'm gonna, I did that move,
right?
Like, where did that come from?
Right. There you go.
And I think that's also one of the important things is that the ability that you have, it needs to travel from your logical brain center into your intuitive, subconscious center Exactly.
Where you make the move without thinking about it. Exactly. You cannot fight and think, right, that's just not gonna work. And this move is either already in your brain or like subconscious brain. And you'll do it automatically or it's not. And I feel that it's also the same with, [00:43:00] like you said, like these conversations, right?
So when we have a session with you, or even this conversation we're having, we both have to have an intuition of what to say, exactly what to ask. And that comes from a lot of experience. Yes. And I think there's no, easy way to get to there. And my feeling is that the company building world.
He is overly focused on the logic solution side of things and is afraid to invest into intuition. Well,
I'll be honest, this cannot be measured either,
Let's say a company would hire me and I would stay there for a year and I interview a hundred people and I work with all of them, even if things culturally would get very good.
, How can I prove that it was this? I cannot, so I can't show any statistics. I can't show the investors or the shareholders that it worked. I know it worked. And companies they have find it difficult.
I feel that in the end it'll reflect [00:44:00] in results.
Yeah. There will be results. But , you cannot prove it was me.
No, you cannot.
What we can prove is 10 people clicking on a smiley face. In an app?
Well, you know what? I feel that it in some ways, like sports teams, right? They have coaches, they have psychiatrists. , They have a lot of different people, , who help. I recently had a interview with, uh, Jex, , from, eSports.
He is a world champion in Delta two. And we were talking about it and he was saying, oh yeah, there's a lot of support. There's all kinds of people from therapists to physical manual therapists to psychiatry, to doctors, to coaches. And that's in eSports where I take football or some huge game, they have a whole mass of people.
And in some ways, they understand more than many corporations do in terms of what people need in order to perform, ? Because at the end, we can get through sheer practice to be,, top 10% of the world. [00:45:00] But it can become top 1% or top 0%. It's no longer about technique.
Now you're dealing with your brain, you're dealing with your feelings, you're dealing with emotions, whether you have a good relationship at home or not. 'cause every little bit will affect your performance. And I feel companies don't take that seriously. And I agree. It's super hard to measure.
I feel that very often when you help people on these paths, it might not even result in profits, but it might result in people choosing a different career or closing down the company.
Yeah. I would say 50% of all the founders I coach. Should stop doing their business. Yeah,
yeah. I know
what you mean. Right. They should not have that startup because the core belief idea of the startup is just already corrupted.
They never wanted to do that business.
They'd rather be a musician or an artist or someone else, but they don't because they want money. And so where's to get money? Oh, startups a lot of investment. I'm gonna make a startup.
It's the same way a thing with a lot of people think they want to be a leader. [00:46:00]
Yeah.
And then they're the leader.
It's not easy.
No. Actually, I think one of the things that, it's a thought I had, is that you see when you actually choose a career path, like say a doctor. . Or a musician. Mm-hmm. Or a truck driver, doesn't matter. No judgment on any profession at all. But what I think is very interesting is that in a lot of these professions.
It is clear what you need to do to be good. It is very clear.
.
It's very easy to imagine, but when we talk about leadership, people have no idea what they're getting into. ? So for example, if they go like, oh, I wanna build a startup, for instance, some people believe it's all about the product.
Some people believe it's all about investments, some people believe, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Very few people understand that being a leader is about actual, like people . Dialogue, conversations, putting processes in place, figuring out all these things we talk about, meaning, values, very few people [00:47:00] understand what does the job actually entail, so they have an imagination in their mind as to what being a CEO leader is.
And there is no way to know what it is in reality. So very often you getting into the wrong job. Yep. Because you don't know what you want. Mm-hmm. They're coming back to this, to your question, what do you want? , If you don't know what you want, you might assume like you want money from a startup, but do you wanna ask you, , work with people?
Well, it even also happens with the people before they even start working in the sense that, , most people look for jobs that are available. They don't look for what it is that they want. So the, it already kind of starts there. And of course it's also luxury. It has to be, whatever you want has to be available, I guess.
Or you have to be able to set out a strategy to get there. But the amount of people that I speak to that apply to jobs, they say, I don't even wanna apply, but I need money. Let's say they get hired, that's their start. Their start is, I don't really wanna be here.
It's like dating. I, I don't want it a hundred percent like dating. I don't want to have a [00:48:00] relationship. I wanna have sex.
Right,
right. Or I don't wanna be alone. Yeah.
It's a terrible motivator.
Yeah. I
wouldn't do it,
but I get it. We're all human. We're human. Yeah. And those are needs that we have.
Yeah. And even like financial needs, there's also needs that we have.
But if we want people to be happy and to flourish and to be their best self and to. , Grow into their potential. Then we need to answer the question, what do you want? And as leaders, we need to make space for that.
And I also feel that once you answer that and you start going and applying for jobs, you're much more likely to get one.
Yeah. Because in No, exactly. Same with a partner. Yeah, same with a partner, same with everything.
Life
life's a bit easier. So what do you want? What do I want? Yeah. I want to create a better world to improve communication.
It seems like you've thought about it. I have thought about it, yeah. Prepared for this question. I could tell you much more about it, but Yeah. But that's what I want. Mm. What do you want?
I want a sense of community,
right? There you go.
Yeah. I want a [00:49:00] sense of community around me, where people can honestly rely on one another.
And if I'm able to do that for myself, hopefully help others. To also figure it out. 'cause I haven't figured it out yet. It's, , hard to create community and I think most communities are really north communities at all. , So yeah, that's what I want. I wanna have a real sense of community,
that's why I'm doing the physical AWA village. I think it's easier in the physical setup. I would love for online communities to work. I would love it 'cause it's so much simpler. But I tried it and failed many times. So I feel like now I want to a physical space.
Yeah. I feel we're reaching
saturation.
Saturation. Yes. I agree. I think it's also a, maybe a skill to feel for when a conversation is coming to announce a hundred percent. , And I think it's beautiful. And I think it's beautiful to have you on this podcast. Thank you. For [00:50:00] those of you who don't know, we are in a caravan sitting here in a middle of a parking lot next to , the Baltic Sea in tall Estonia.
The weather is, well, not to say horrible, it's beautiful in some ways 'cause , the waves are nice, but it's raining and uh, it's been beautiful to have you. Thank you for being on, , the podcast. My pleasure. Alright, have fun everyone.
That was me, and Joppe, on leadership, and now I invite you for five minutes of contemplative contemplation, contemplative meditation, where we close your eyes, sit down comfortably, wherever you are. If you're driving, don't close your eyes. But if you're not, close your eyes. [00:51:00] Take a few deep breaths.
Hmm.
And this time let's contemplate on the position of leadership in your life. Even if you're not a leader of a company or a team, you are a leader for somebody. It might be your kids, it might be your parents. Sometimes it's friends who need your attention and help, who believe there's love inside of you, and so they come to you.
Hmm. Let's contemplate on whether you are able to take their side fully.
And whether you are able to take your own side for yourself fully and stick to it,[00:52:00]
close your eyes, watch your breath, and observe your thoughts on this topic.[00:53:00] [00:54:00] [00:55:00] [00:56:00]
Let this slowly come back. It was a very short meditative pause in your life. I recommend having longer ones whenever you have the time and the power to create the environment for yourself to be able to sit and do nothing for 15, 20, ideally for the five to an hour minutes from this episode. As always, to step through the door, I'm gonna ask you to take an action, and this week's, this episode's action is to find somebody in your life.
And choose them to be the person you're gonna be on their side. Wait. Choose them to be the person whose side you're gonna be on for at least two weeks. No matter what they do. No matter what they say, you are gonna be on their side. Ideally, it's somebody who is maybe a little bit [00:57:00] challenging for you might be your parent or your kid, an employee or your boss that you don't necessarily see eye to eye with.
It doesn't mean you will agree with what they do and the actions that they take. It doesn't mean we accept everything that they do and they say, but it means deep in the core of their being. We want them to be happy and we want them to find happiness and joy and love. And so this means that we can disagree with their actions, but in the end, we want to guide them and ourselves towards happiness.
So. Pick one person and try your best to be on their side fully and let me know how it goes. Have a great day. This was Dmitri Sarle and Dmitri's Door over and out.