Good afternoon, my name is Anna Shcherbiy. That’s an issue of
Faces&Cases podcast and we are talking about marketing, PR and business. Find
more information about us on www.facesandcases.net. Today our guest is Olaf
Hauer. Good morning, Olaf.
Good morning, Anna.
Thank you. It would be great if you would tell us more about yourself,
about your profession and what you are doing here, in Russia.
About myself…
Yeah!
First of all, I’m German in this life.
Yeah, we know it. But it’s nice.
51 years old. My son is 24 years old. My profession is, as you know,
psychologist. Social psychology is my special subject. And what I do is
organizational development, so I work with organizations, with teams and with
individuals when it comes to development.
So today we will talk more about psychology part of your work, but I
know also that you’re a trainer. Will you tell about this part of your life also?
Yeah, I would say even first of all, because my profession, psychologist, is
rather something that is acting in the background. I don’t announce that, I don’t
make statements on that, I just work with people, with teams, with entire
organizations and, of course, knowledge of psychology helps me to get along
with people.
Yeah, I think it helps you a lot. Okay, let’s start from… You have mentioned
that you were born in Germany. But you got your education here, on the territory
of ex-Soviet Union.
Yes.
Why did you make such a decision?
Actually, it was rather not me who made the decision, it was, I would say,
life made the decision for me. I was just asked at the end of 10th grade, which I
finished on a quite high level, I was asked if I would like to study abroad. I said:
“Yes, in England”. And they told me: “No, in England it’s impossible, but you could
instead study in Soviet Union”. And I thought it would be nice to study abroad,
regardless of the country, and as they told me that I can go to Soviet Union, I
decided to go to Soviet Union.
Sounds very interesting. It was something special for you, because have
you ever been before this to Soviet Union?
No.
You were not afraid?
No. (laughing)
It’s very nice to change your life so easily. So, we also know that you are
the managing partner of iNTG.
Yes.
How did you get the idea to start such a business here, in Russia? And
what can you, as a psychologist, offer to business people?
Well, that’s a number of questions. Let me start step by step.
Let’s do it!
So how did I come up with the idea to found iNTG? Look, part one is I for a
number of years worked for BMW, the German car manufacturer, and I
conducted a number of projects there. For the last four years, I worked in China.
Four years in China, with Chinese people. We developed whole organizations.
For that I had to work with teams of Chinese top managers and with Chinese
individuals. So I happened to collect huge experience in working with foreigners,
especially with foreigners from a completely different culture. When I stopped
working in China, I started considering what could I do and where could I do
that. First, I came up with the idea that I still like to work abroad, so I thought
that it would be nice to continue working abroad. Second, I know Russian, so
Russia to me is like second homeland, second “rodina”. And that is why I came up
with the idea to continue doing business in Russia.
Okay, and the second question was what can you, as a psychologist, offer
to business people here, in Russia, or abroad?
Yeah, look, this is… I would really rephrase this question, because I
wouldn’t come from my profession as a psychologist. I would rather say I have a
certain background, which is a multicultural background, which is a
psychological background and a kind of scientific background. That enables me
to realize sort of scientific-based complex approach to any, let’s say, issue or any
kind of problem. So I can tackle problems on the level of the entire organization,
of a company. I can tackle problems on the level of teams like top management
teams. And, of course, on the level of individuals. And that enables me to do some
work on the field of change and development. So as I found my business partner
Ludmila Murgulets and, at the same time, a very interesting person from
England, Paul Bourne, you took an interview for him, we decided to combine
German, Russian and English approach – psychological and practical and an
odds-related approach. So we started working here.
Do you have any special method in work?
No, I wouldn’t say that I have a special method. It’s always a mixture of
methods, and what I combine is… First of all, I am myself. So, that is very
important to be authentiс, so I express my feelings, I express my thoughts. I think
I’m quite good in that, and I do that whenever they occur. So, in this respect,
people know that they would always get some honest answers from me. But
when it comes to methods, I combine consulting, coaching, training, facilitation
and even mentoring. I would say mentoring is a pretty interesting approach. So I
use to make a mixture of these approaches depending on the person and the
issue I deal with.
What is the most common tasks or objectives you get from your clients?
Oh, that’s really a wide range of things.
Let’s talk about that!
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So look, for instance, with the Swedish construction
company we just conducted one day of work. It was a workshop with about 50
people, and it was dedicated to the questions: what are our unique selling
points? What is the market, and what’s our place in the market? How can we get
our message across to the customers – our message on our unique selling points?
And how can we define who our customers are? So that was a one-day
workshop, and we had to make a preparation on within three days. So this is one
thing.
Yeah, helping to sell and to find the key objectives for the team. But except
selling, what else?
So we have from short projects to large projects. Let me talk about a large
project we are running right now. The large project is with a pure Russian
company from a state-owned company, which is Rosatom.
It’s a big one.
Yeah, it’s a big one. And we work with a special company in the field of
“atomaschinostroyeniye”, atom machine building. So, what’s the issue? The
General Director thinks that there are some issues in the behaviour of 3800
people, which hinders the company to make a great success. So the task is to
change behaviour and mind of 3800 people within 2,5 years. Right now we are
working with 200 people chosen as the leaders of change. We are working with
them on the weekly level of evaluating their own behaviour and changing this
behaviour based on a structured feedback each give each other. And I’m the one
who leads all that stuff.
Cool, sounds very interesting. What instruments or tools do you use for
this project?
Yeah, first of all, analysis. So we had to analyze what the current state of
the company is, we had to analyze if all of the four top managers… I need to say
that we started working with the four top guys of this company. I worked with
them for four months. It was not a team building, it was something like working
with four very different individuals who are all very strong and very special. And
supporting them in building up a more or less teamworking-like atmosphere, so
that each of those four different leaders could, how to say, contribute to the
success of the company. And that was rather an approach of team coaching
training, individual coaching and mentoring.
Did you have… Because it takes a lot of time, I think. Did you talk with
them separately or together? How it happens?
Of course, at first we had several meetings with the Chief Operations
Officer, “Ispolnitelny Direktor”. Afterwards we had meetings with the General
Director, then with the whole team. And we were, how to say, introducing our
idea on how to tackle working with 3800 people and how to cascade the work,
you know. Start with four people, 50 people, 200, 500, 800, 1800, so on, so on. So
we introduced that, and we introduced the way to work, and I said: “Guys, we
need to start with you, from you. If you won’t be able to work according to the
corporate values, then nobody would follow and you wouldn’t have any success”.
So the issue is we are implementing two corporate values, which is “dostizheniye
polozhitelnogo rezultata”, achieving a positive result, and the second corporate
value is, as simply as that, teamwork, “komandnaya rabota”. And we did this: at
first we worked with the four top managers in order to make them a team. And
only when they went through four months of working together, with all ups and
downs and with different issues, then I said: “Guys, now you have to make the
decision whether or not to stop the project with 50, 200, 500, 800, 1800 so on
people”. They decided to do so, so we started working. And with them, as I
mentioned, we worked on different levels starting from group level, meaning
interactive workshops, team coaching, special training – 1,5 days - on basic skills
in effective communication, because their communication with one each other
was very ineffective, which, of course, hindered them to come to solutions. And
of course, we worked on individual level, which means individual coaching. So
with a number of them we had individual sessions.
Okay. Individual sessions are possible when you have four people or ten
people, but what about 50 or 200 people? The next level from this project?
Good question. (laughing) If you really want to do individual coaching
with 200 people, you have to have just more coaches, simply as this. But usually
coaching is an approach for, I would say, pretty self-reflective and relatively
intelligent people who are able to take an approach that doesn’t give them any
answers, just asks questions. So those guys, of course, were prepared to that.
Two of them said: “No, we don’t need coaching”, and I though perhaps they don’t
need coaching.
Fair enough. (laughing)
Yeah, okay. So we need to figure out who all the people that are rather,
let’s say, interested in coaching number one, and would react on the approach of
coaching. Not everybody reacts on that.
Okay. So if we talk about 50 people or 200 people, the one method is to
take ten more coaches or 20 more coaches to work, or the second method is
what?
The second method is very simple: we don’t do coaching with them, what
we do is just split. Currently we are working with 200 people up till end of July.
What we do is we split those groups into small teams of four people, and the
leaders of those small teams were trained by me in March and April.
Before.
Yeah, so those 50 people were also split in small teams of four people, and
I worked with them once a month within two or three days. So I led their
meetings, and they learned how to conduct their team meetings that they had to
do each week. So it was rather a training approach, and of course, then I picked
those people who, from my point of view, were either very capable or were just
hindering themselves in being effective. And with those people I worked on an
individual basis, let’s say, throughout the day I had 10 people and with each I
worked for about 45 minutes.
Okay, so it means that you somehow chose some leaders in those teams,
and you were coaching them. Let’s talk about leadership. Is it possible for a
person to become a leader or it’s something that you have to be born with? Some
special features?
Anna, you know, I shall say that this is a question that people obviously
have been thinking about ten thousand years or at least two thousand years – 2,5
thousand years or three thousand years. And, obviously, there is no clear answer,
otherwise we wouldn’t repeat asking that question. From my point of view, first
of all, I think that a lot of things is already given to a person on a genetic level.
Genetic level doesn’t mean only, let’s say, some certain abilities like talking
loudly. Genetically I also think social patterns of behaviour. And I think that each
person can more or less define their place in a team. Naturally, not all of the
people would pretend being the leader. So let’s talk about those who pretend
being a leader. I think that those who pretend, at least 50% are able usually
naturally. The other 50% can at least learn something about leadership or they
have to consider one being a leader. We can just refer to a very, I’d say, bright
example from history: look, Adolf Hitler used to work with certain people in
order to enhance leadership skills, and it worked. I wouldn’t say to the better of
the world, but it worked.
So it means that everything is possible?
Actually, yes. But the question is also to a person if it’s necessary, number
one, if he really would like to be a leader. You know, I often see situations like
this: person is a leader, or let’s say, at least a manager, and as a manager you are
supposed to be a leader as well, because you have to deal with people. And some
of those guys in their heart don’t want to be leaders. They would like to lead
processes, but not people. And that’s an interesting question: is it really worth to
push a person to learn something, which they naturally would rather not like to
do.
Yeah, it’s a big question. You have mentioned that you have worked
before in China and other countries all over the world maybe. Let’s talk about the
problems in business that you mentioned or you met depending on the
geography or maybe on the city. Are there any special things that you mentioned
before?
Yeah, of course, I mean, meanwhile I have achieved… let’s say, reached the
level of my life where the word “problem” actually is not any longer in my active
vocabulary. So it’s rather all situations. What I learned in China was at least two
things. Number one is: culture matters.
What are they in China, for example?
Culture?
Not culture, but the problems that you have met there, in China, that you
need to solve.
Most of the foreigners that worked there for BMW thought that China is
just another developing country, like their own country used to be a developing
country, let’s say, 50 years ago or 30 years ago. So they approached China just
like you just have to train them a little bit, to educate them a little bit, and then
they become a developed country. And this is actually wrong, because then we
foreigners would not have understood, let’s say, the way people judge the values
that they lead themselves by. And I personally saw that Chinese people were
very clever in telling us those things that we would like to hear, but doing a
completely different job and giving a lot of explanations. So when you want to
avoid working in an atmosphere of double standards, then you have to learn
about the culture, about the way of thinking, about the way of behaving, about
the dos and don’ts that are given in the Chinese culture. Personally, it took me
two years to understand that I was behaving in a way which was not too effective
for first two years. But then I, let’s say, started understanding that you have to
accept different culture. That’s another, for me, decisive issue. If a person can
accept that beside his own point of view there are millions of other points of
view, if he really can accept this point, then he’s made a big step towards success.
Because when you accept that there are different opinions, then you will be able
to deal with different opinions and to find a compromise, at least a compromise.
Yeah, this is an issue. Coming back to the question what are the problems, the
problem is that usually the people cannot accept what is different from their own
life experience, what’s different from their own values, what’s different from
what they were told, what is good, what is bad. Usually they can’t accept. Usually
they would say: “Oh, that’s wrong”.
But you have mentioned that there are two standards in China that you
have met, and you have to work with it or what was your approach in China?
In China I kept being a German, number one. That was very important,
yeah. It was very important to show you are the representative of, number one:
Germany, number two: German business culture, and number three, of course,
particularly of the company BMW. BMW is translated into Chinese language as
“bao ma”, which means very beautiful horse, which is highly appreciated by
Chinese, so the brand itself is being appreciated. So I kept being a German, at the
same time, I said: “Guys, in this situation, on this problem, I would act in this way,
being a German. So please tell me how would you solve the problem”. And they
always told me a different story. And then I said: “But why can’t we do it like I
suggest?” and they told me: “You have a white face and a big nose, you can’t do
that”. We wouldn’t be able… We wouldn’t be accepted. So we tried to find a
combination of both parts of problem solutions, and that usually worked very
well.
Okay. Let’s talk more about facilitators and about this profession. It’s
quite new here, in Russia. So can you tell us more about this profession? Maybe
do big companies have to have such a person in their company or not?
Okay, facilitation or facilitators. First of all, let me mention this: when I
used to work for Stockholm School of Economics, then in the executive MBA
programs the Russian-speaking groups always told me: “Olaf, please don’t use
the word “coaching”. It causes unnice feelings, unnice associations”.
Because of training in sport?
I don’t know. So they said: “Choose something else, but avoid “coaching”.
And it was obviously the same reaction to the word “facilitation”. So let’s just
come back: what does facilitation mean? In Russian it means “oblegcheniye”.
So you made easier companies’ life.
I make the process of solutions finding easier. I make easier the process of
communication between people, because usually communication in teams in
Russia is very low-effective. And you can tell it by several skills and several, let’s
say, observations that makes the communication process really, how to say,
ineffective. And, of course, that causes a number of problems unsolved. And
facilitation in terms of “oblegcheniye” of course helps people to understand what
could we do a little bit differently in order to make our life easier, our working
together easier, our collaboration easier, our communication easier.
So it means it would be nice for every big company where about 200
people are working to have such-called psychologist or coach who would sit in a
separate room and when you have a problem in your office, you can it solve: just
knock a door, open the door and say: “Please help me, otherwise I will die!”, or
something like this?
(laughing) You can, you may think of this kind of approach, and I would
say some of the large international companies really do have such a service. I’d
say anywhere I would rather put my focus on bring people, especially top
mangers up to a certain point where they would be able to lead a discussion in
the same professional way as they lead their business. Usually leading business
also means leading people and dealing with people, so you have to be in a certain
way at least semi-professional in dealing with people as well as you deal with
issues or technical questions. So I would like to say it’s not easy to bring up
people, you know. You can’t have just people who know what it means to
facilitate a discussion.
Okay. Recently you have mentioned that Russian people are
communicating, but communication is not so effective because of some factors,
but you have not mentioned them here. What are they?
Saying so I of course risk to be regarded an anti-Russian person I’m
completely not.
I’m Ukrainian, so don’t be afraid. (laughing)
So there are some different things that Russian people even regard as
completely normal, whereas German people would say it’s just rude:
interrupting, parallel dialogue. One person talks, and ten others speak at the
same time with each other. So there is… the next is long speeches, meaning it
takes long time to express themselves, to come to the point, “mnogo vody”. Of
course, as a consequence people don’t listen, people don’t get the key points.
That means they think having got the key points they would rather put focus on
different points, and so on, so on. And this is a constantly ongoing process going
in cycles.
Olaf, how do you manage to stay flexible in different situations? How do
you stay away from clichés and stereotype patterns when you work with
different companies? Because I think you have special methods you can use for
everyone, but you don’t do it.
Yeah, that’s a really nice question. Really it makes me think are we just
number one: from time to time I put myself into new circumstances. So I went to
China for four years, then I came back, had one year of break in Germany, then I
started coming to Russia figuring out if Russia gives me a future. Now I work
with Russian companies, with international companies, in Germany I work with
German companies, I work on, as I mentioned, on team level, individual level and
on organizational level. And I always speak out the truth.
Sometimes it doesn’t help.
What helps you always? Lies, truth, nothing. But it makes life easier at
least for me.
So can we say that if a person changes his or her life very often, it means
that he or she doesn’t want to stop and to develop? Every three year or four year
you start a new life, leaving your country or something like that. As a psycologist,
what could you say?
I wouldn’t recommend to do so anybody.
Why?
Because when you start something completely new, then it’s also a risk. I
mean, meanwhile I’m sure that everything I start will work out well, but it takes
time to develop something, to bring it up to a certain point. You will have to go
through a different phases, you would like to say: “Why? Gosh, why I started
that?”, but in the end it’s nice to come up with a good result.
Okay, and you have mentioned a company, Rosatom, where you have four
leaders in one team. So how it generally works? Does it work really when two or
four or three very strong people are working in one team? Because they are very
clever, both of them are thinking they are clever. How it happens in life? How to
help those people?
Look, there’s I would say three answers: first of all it’s no, of course is
doesn’t work. Second, yes it works, but… And third, yes it works. Let’s start from
it works. It happens very seldom. When there are different leaders in the same
team, then the decisive precondition is that they accept each other as strong
leaders, which means you have to be strong enough yourself to accept another
strong person beside you. Many people are not as strong, so they can’t stand
strong people beside themselves. So that’s case number one: it works. And I have
at least two cases: one is a Russian St. Petersburg construction company, where
the owner is a very, how to say, a visionary. He has ideas that go far beyond most
of the people’s horizons and at the same time he’s got a General Director who is
rather a structured person, who thinks through all the matters and tries to
combine them and put them into a certain scheme or certain, let’s say, gestalt.
And thinks that it doesn’t work. And then they collide. And then the visionary
would say: “It will work, let’s just think it through again and again and again.
Let’s invite some different person that we would talk to”. And in the end it
always works. And, look, the General Director naturally has to accept his owner,
it’s clear. But the owner at the same time would not kick out the General Director
just for being different. So they accept each other, they appreciate each other,
they have, of course, arguments and sometimes they raise their voice, that’s
clear. But finally they understand that they accept each other and they
appreciate each other very high. So this is an example for category number one:
different leaders in a team – it works. Now an example for category number two:
it works, but… I would say the company I mentioned, Rosatom, is rather a case
that belongs to this part. So four different personalities: one is the General
Director, the other is a Production Director, the next one is “Ispolnitelny
Director”, Chief Operations Officer, and the fourth one is Economical and
Financial Director. Two men, two women. Two women about 42 I would say.
Maybe 43, maybe 41.
About 40.
Yeah. The General Director about 40, and the Production Director 63. So
they have even different life experiences. So, 63 one is, of course, someone who
socialized in Soviet Union. And that was really different, so I would say they have
achieved a state of “mirnogo sosuschestvovaniya”, peaceful co-existence. What
they clearly achieved is they accept each other more in terms of “He’s really
different. He’s different from me, and I need to take him as he is, otherwise it
wouldn’t work”. So this rather the category it works, but… But in the end
everybody knows: “If I want to, I can go my own way, and I would push my own
things through even beside the team”. Yeah, and third question is very very
simple: you have leaders or people that pretend to be leaders, and it doesn’t
work. And it would not work, because they would not want to be one of three,
four, five, six leaders. They would like to be the one and only, which means thay
can’t accept that there is someone in their “okruzheniye”, their space, which is
also strong, but in a different way.
- Okay. Our traditional question from our partner, HOP&SCOTCH English school,
is the following: what foreign languages do you know? Because you speak
English very well I may say. Do you have any method how you learn languages?
I only know two languages beside my mother tongue, which is English
and Russian. I would say I can speak Russian even better than English.
Cool!
No, I don’t have a special method. I know that there are people who just
need to live in a natural environment, and then they naturally catch up with.
Personally, I have a friend who speaks Russian without any accent, and Russians
didn’t believe that she’s German. She also speaks Slovakian, and Slovak guys
didn’t believe that she’s German even when she showed them her passport. So,
I’m not like this, I’m rather the type of going to school, learning lesson by lesson.
I’m just a structured person, so I learn “naizust”, I learn “grammatiku”, grammar
and all that stuff. I learned it, I understood it, I could use it on the level of, let’s
say, basic skill, and then I just plucked in the vocabulary. And I “rukovodstvuyus
poslovitsey “vek zhivi – vek uchis”.
That sounds very interesting, thank you. You know that our podcast is
called Faces&Cases. We are always interested in some very exciting people, and
you are one of them. And very successful people. So one of the questions for you:
what are the rules of success from you, from Olaf? What are they?
I mean, this is rather I have a feeling that is not a question towards me,
because first I would talk about what is success? And I sense that to most of the
people success is number one: lots of money, number two: lots of reputation, and
usually behind the reputation is somewhat power and decision-making influence
power. So, I have a feeling that both of these categories do not really appeal to
me. So that’s why I’m probably not the right person to answer the question what
are the secrets of success. What I dream of is I want to live in a warm country
with palms and, you know, blue sky, all that stuff, and have my houses and my
home and all that stuff. And I would do my business from my video cabinet.
Giving lectures?
Let’s say, team facilitaion or individual coaching or whatever. Or giving
speeches. I would invite people to come there, from time to time I would
probably sit into an airplane and go to a different place in the world. So that
would to me be a success when I start living like this.
Okay, but rules how to get this success? Like to be structured or to know
the objectives you want to get or what are they? You, as a psychologist, know
what to tell to people to get their goals!
Yeaahhh…
Yeah, what are they?
So okay, if you get me onto these rails of giving some suggestions, first of
all I would say accept yourself. Number two: love yourself. Number three: “ne
lomay sebya”. Number four: when you accept yourself, and accept your way of
being successful, stop measuring yourself against others. Number five: be
successful.
(laughing) Thank you very much. It was really nice. It was a good
conversation, and I’m sure your advice will help our listeners a lot. So, I wish you
good luck with all your beginnings and hope that you will give us regards from
somewhere very warm place on video.
Sure!
Good luck, thank you.