#133. Gabor Holch: Beneath The Armor
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I love it. I love it when Godward's on the show. It's always a fascinating conversation with him. Dude, when he walked in, like he came strong. He always comes strong. Like he came like a force. I was like, dude. No, but that's what I love about him is that he comes with such energy and a certain intensity about him. But I feel so comfortable talking to him. And I feel we can always talk to him about anything. And he'll always put it in a relatable way, even high level concepts. Totally. Yeah.

It's like he's lived through it. He's helped people through it. He's been through all this stuff, you know, and then he comes on and it's like, we can get that perspective. Yeah, I was really surprised because I was able to relate what I've been going through to what he does professionally. Well, on the surface, right? Like his book is about high level CEOs, executives, but then he talks about like the soft human tissue of these people. And it's like, we're all human beings. So without further ado, please give it up for Gabor Holch. Hey.

Before we started recording, I kind of cut you off and you were talking, you were trying to like talk about this point in your life right now.

and how exercise is helping you. You want to elaborate a little more and we can start off from there? Well, there is the hardship part and there is the exercise part. So I think everybody, first of all, yes, I mean, I'm going through a very hard time right now.

Personally, you mean?

One in 2020 and one in 2022. Both of them started with a casual business trip with a carry-on suitcase. And then for the two times different reasons, once because of the pandemic and the second time because of this zero COVID post-pandemic lockdown in Shanghai, I went on a business trip in Europe and I wasn't able to return for over half a year. Wow.

So this happened both in 20 and then it happened in 2022. With just the carry-on luggage. Yeah, that's right. I was supposed to go away for two weeks, 10 days. And then in 2020, I went on a business trip in March and I returned in September, but I came out of the quarantine in October.

and in 2022 again i went abroad in march and i never returned officially right so now i'm visiting back that time we kept in touch with my wife on online basically then we decided that we would move the family headquarters over to budapest so this this was one of the main reasons and then uh i mean

You know from our pre-recording discussion how stressful it is to renovate. We had to renovate Budapest apartment. I lost my father very unexpectedly in the meantime. And there were a couple of other very hard times in the family. Yeah.

Well, I think it's impressive how you landed on your feet because I can't tell you how many stories I've heard, including my own life, how drastically our lives look different pre and post pandemic. Yes, that's right. That's right. And I haven't answered the exercise bit. Oh, yeah. So I think, well, it really depends on your personality, but negative energy comes out in different ways frequently.

for different people. I am an extrovert. I am fairly restless. I am, how do you say, I have a proactive personality. So I try to reach out and I desperately need quick feedback from the rest of the world in private life and in professional life as well.

And of course, one of the problems when you, well, pandemic was very much about isolation, not only in the physical sense, but also in the symbolic sense, which means that it's a little bit like playing ping pong in the way when you fold up half of the table and then you really play- Play as yourself. Exactly, exactly. There is not much, you know, you sit in front of computers very often. For example, I coach high-level managers at technology companies.

who are not allowed to switch on their cameras. Oh. Because they are, they are, they were locked down and sometimes now they are, they are working in a, in a technology company where could, there could be something on the whiteboard, there could be something behind them. They are, they are simply not allowed to use cameras. So you coach for hours and hours basically talking to yourself. Wow. Right? And also, you know, sales was more difficult so you reach out. So this kind of frustration, it has to come out somehow and, and,

When I have a temper, so if I don't control this, it can become quite nasty. It becomes this kind of sour remarks to the people who are immediately around me. A little passive aggressive. Like it leaks. No, it's not even passive. It's not passive. It's very openly aggressive. And the problem with that is during the lockdown is that

One of the disadvantages of the situation was that when we became upset and when we became either passive or openly aggressive, we hurt the people who were closest to us because those were the people that we were locked down with. And you really have to carefully manage this. And for me, this is exercise, always has been. I have been a martial artist since I was about in my early teens.

And I discovered that martial arts is amazing because in a martial arts class, and then eventually if you practice against a full-size boxing bag, then it's a mental fight. It's an imagined fight. You can do all of those things that are considered antisocial in real life. And that's an amazing liberating feeling. So this is what I meant by...

because when I arrived, you said, "Oh, you look great." And I gave this kind of bittersweet answer because I understand why I look fit and self-confident because I did an awful lot of sports.

But also inside, I don't feel as good as I sometimes do. So it was like those negative emotions were driving your exercise, right? Absolutely. Yeah, that's right. Literally. I mean, if somebody did like a Rocky style footage of my face while I was doing my running, it would be this kind of distorted face. Wow. Well, thank God you have that outlet, right? Because imagine, you know, some people never find that outlet.

Or never really realize it or never take advantage of it. And then it just gets bottled up. And then who knows? Who knows what explodes, right? Well, I mean, do you know the hit the pillow scene from Analyze This with Robert De Niro? It's a little bit like that. I mean, it's so fascinating because everyone's gone through different experiences. But if you think about the overall mood of the world...

We're still recovering. Like some people are not even in recovery stage. They're still like living that pandemic mindset. And if you think about the billions of people around the world and how they were impacted, if the overall mood of the earth is a bittersweet, sour kind of mood, that might explain a lot of the decisions that are being made at the macro level. Because the entire world is still sick a little bit.

Very much so. Very much so. So there is evidence to support that. For example, I work with much more completely burned out executives as a coach now than I did, let's say, five years ago, or interestingly, even during the pandemic. Basically, high level managers, you know, I...

In China, in some other Asian countries, I coached executives who were locked down with their people in factories, in offices.

But at that time, they basically bit their belts and they did what they had to do because they told themselves, this is the time to be the kind of leader I always told myself I would be one day. And in crisis, if they previously ever quoted Winston Churchill or one of their big idols, then- Like this is the real test now. This is the time to be the Churchill or the Hillary Clinton or whoever were ideals. And then they went through it and people keep telling themselves today that-

the crisis is over and now we are getting back to normal but it's very much not true if we look at the objective indicators of what normal life should be i have to think there's a lot of trauma right like there's so much trauma deeply embedded trauma it's almost like being in a war i mean and even in a war some parts of the not every piece is being impacted every part of the world this is like a war where every single person in the world was impacted like you could not

Help but be impacted. And it's that stereotype or cliche that I've heard from veterans before. It's like, who are going through PTSD, it's like the real battle begins when you get home from war. Yes. Right? Yes. Because when you're caught in the moment, you're just full of adrenaline or whatever. You're too busy to deal with the immediate impact.

you know, impact of what you're dealing with, then all that starts flooding in afterwards, right? It is that you go back to normal life. And as you said just now, normal life is much less eventful than a crisis. So in a crisis, you always know what to do next, because life throws you a never ending to do list on a very short attention span.

And then you go back to normal life, which could be a normal day at the office, which could be your family life, which could be, I don't know, you do a strategic job and you are supposed to draft or you are supposed to build a new business. But tasks in normal life are much fewer and farther between than during a crisis.

And basically what the human mind does is that it feels this empty space with content and with meaning. And this meaning, this content is very often negative these days because people are not so inspired as they were before. They don't have as a clear picture about the future. Even if they do, they don't trust the future that much. So basically just imagine that you have an hour to think. People think about completely different things today than in 2017. Yeah.

And this is why. And then people also tell themselves, and this is the interesting thing I noticed when I'm coaching high-level managers, is that people have serious post-traumatic stress disorder issues, and some of them are overgoing a different kind of trauma now than they did before. So they are not even at the PTSD stage anymore.

But since the objective crisis is over, they keep like slapping themselves in the face and they say, stop whining. Now it's not COVID anymore. Now you can go back to the office if you want to. Now you can work on the long-term future. You can stay with your family. But then in the meantime, there is this kind of bad vibe that many of the people don't know what to do with. It's almost like you don't have the excuse anymore of the pandemic. And so-

Maybe a lot of people are also realizing what they were doing before, they didn't really enjoy so much. And they kind of don't want to go back to that life. But at the same time, it's like, well, I don't have an excuse not to go back anymore. So it's a feeling of being lost. There is a rhetorical technique that we use in executive coaching. And that's to...

Catch a rhetorical question that the coaching participant says, utters, and turn it into a genuine question that you have to answer. And one of the most powerful questions that you can turn from a rhetorical question into a real question is what is wrong with me?

Because people keep asking this question in difficult situations. They look in the mirror and they say, all right, it's not COVID anymore. There is no lockdown anymore. I get back my office. I get back my future. What is wrong with me? Why do I feel so bad? Why do I have such a vague idea about the future? And why does it not motivate me anymore? And then the coach or psychotherapist or whoever you work with

turns around the question and this says, all right, could you please answer this question specifically? What do you think is wrong with you? And when you start working with this question and basically put your finger on the pain points, then genuine healing or growth can restart because then you can say, right, I

What is wrong with you? Is it that you ran out of money during the pandemic? You lived up your savings? Is it that, let's say, the family was locked down together and you are not on so good terms with each other as before? Is it that you lost your team during the pandemic? There was huge turnover in teams, for example. And one of the big questions, sorry, one of the big problems is that

New team members who came on board during the pandemic, leaders don't know them and they don't know each other. Very often they haven't met face-to-face. And then the leader is in charge of creating a community. And everybody's telling us because...

technology has very strong marketing, that it's easier to create a global community with technology. So this poor international leader sits in the middle of the spider web, which is made of radio waves and wires,

And says, what is wrong with me? Why can't I keep my people together? Why can't I motivate them? Why can't I give them meaningful feedback? Like, why can everyone else do it but me? Of course, and everybody tells you they can do it because they put it on LinkedIn and they make like this successful selfie. Yeah, that's right. You know, I'm just sitting here listening and I feel, I'm getting a little triggered right now because I feel like a lot of the things that you're saying

Personally, you're basically saying all the things that I've been going through, personally have been going through. And even when speaking with my fellow brethren here, I'm in that position where I feel like, what the hell's wrong with me? Like, what is going on with me? I am not who I am or who I recognize. And I even went to see a therapist for the first time in my life.

And I felt like it was bullshit. So I said, it didn't work for me. Right. But, but nonetheless, I mean, I just feel like what you're saying right now is hitting all those buttons that I, that I've been, that I've, I've grown, you know, from work, my, my, my company reduced by half, right. During that, that time to my personal career, right. Has been going downhill because of the economy. Right.

I just gave birth to twins. My wife was pregnant during the whole lockdown. Wow. We've been moving around nonstop. It's just everything. Just bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.

hitting me like a, like I'm literally fighting Mike Tyson. Right? And that's how I feel like. You're fighting for Mike Tyson. Yeah. And I'm asking myself, what is wrong with me? There's so many Mike Tysons. There's nothing wrong with me. I'm fighting Mike Tyson. No, no, no. From an outside perspective, this is what crisis times do to us. So,

You mentioned war, Eric. That's why it's a similar time because you mentioned a couple of things that would be enough to take away your self-confidence one by one. So just giving birth to twins in itself would seriously interfere with your sense of identity, especially men, right? Because a baby rewrites your entire role in life. Yes.

Um, all those things that we consciously know are important. Like for example, uh, men are fairly protective of the separation between their professional and personal lives. They like carving out space in the flat. They, they like coming and going as they please. And then suddenly a baby, uh,

Little things, like it rearranges the apartment. You get home, it smells different. There are baby bottles and diapers everywhere. You have a much bigger pressure to come and go at certain times. So this is enough. And I said a baby, not two babies. So already we compounded that. Plus, if your professional life doesn't go as it usually goes, then it upsets this whole epicot once more. And then in the out...

Now, for example, anybody that you are in touch with through your struggling career is also upset, even if they don't admit it, because they are going through something bad.

Or if they are the lucky few who really benefited from this pandemic, they were manufacturing medical masks or they were selling one of those IT systems that everybody started using suddenly. Their life is not so easy either because everybody else is annoyed and impatient and inresponsive. Yeah.

So this kind of vibe is just going around and around. And this is, I would say, and this is why, well, I really loved your five seconds about psychotherapy, but this is why...

why people either they can be professional helpers like myself or they can be your church group leader or they can be a very wise aunt but what they are basically doing is answering this kind of question like what is wrong with me another thing that you can do but it's quite difficult is to prioritize these identity crises that are piling on one on top of the other sit down with the people who are who are um

affected and talk to them. It's a very, very difficult choice because as a professional and a father, which one do you tackle first? I want to give you your flowers because what you're just saying right there... He's going to send you a bill by the end of this session, right? In those five minutes of what you were just saying right there, five, ten minutes of what you're saying right there, compared to my hour session with my therapist who did not even get close. Like he hit the mark. Yeah, because you were just bam. Like the finger went ba-bam.

You went right to the pulse, right? And you're funny because you're laughing about the whole five minutes of therapy. Second. Five seconds of therapy. I agree because I literally spilled my guts and literally what the person said to me, word for word, was, yeah, I've never talked to someone as chaotic as you. I have to think about this and how to work with you. I'm like, what? Yeah.

It's like, what a thing to tell like a client or a patient. You know what I would have done? You're so much more fucked up than anyone I've ever seen. You know what I would have done? And I've done this like in just a regular doctor. Like, I remember going in something like very minor compared to what you're going through. And it was that just like...

Why, how can you even be in the profession that you're in, whether you're a doctor or a psychotherapist, if you have no empathy or compassion, like if you're just treating symptoms. And I literally, and this is like supposed to be a well-respected person. I literally walked out. I said, you have no business being a fucking doctor, doctor.

And I just like walked out. And I would have done that. I mean, I think in your situation, because mine was just like a minor. Maybe I had a stomachache or something. Was it the same therapist? No, no, no. It wasn't a therapist. It was like a doctor. Like a physician. Yeah. And I was like, but it was. And I had to go to that person's, you know, because there's another doctor that I trusted that was in the same group. And I was like, I don't know what, you know, like how can that person even be in your group?

organization. But going back to what you were saying, I feel a little bit of guilt because I don't think I fully kept up with both of your lives. So many things have happened to both of you. And good and

sort of challenging ways. And I remember going on a walk, you know, like when Bruce was in town and you shared a couple of things and it's like, we're not good at sharing these things because we don't want to burden other people or they're just really deep sort of things inside of us. Right. And for you, like with having a kid and it's joyful, like none of these things are bad. Like you're, you, you know, this is the best thing that's ever happened to you, but there are challenges associated with it. And then you and, you know, all of this stuff, pandemic has really,

just crushed us in different ways. And I think the show itself has been a little bit of therapy because when, because people always ask us like, how'd you get started? Right. That's like the number one question. Like, what do you, what's the show all about? And I think part of it is like, somehow we all needed a little bit of therapy from each other and somehow we all needed a little bit of empathy and maybe we weren't willing to just like kind of

Be like, hey, Justin, I'm really fucked up right now. But somehow we were drawn to people that we trust and somehow the show has provided us maybe a little bit of an outlet. But if you go and look back at a lot of the episodes, when we talk about this mini midlife crisis, that kind of stuff, it's like a cry for help almost. Oh, absolutely. I would agree. But I think this is why we all need to...

from people like Gabor where we can incorporate, like we're not gonna be professional coaches, but we need to have these techniques always in our lives. It's like, we're not gonna be professional athletes, but you need to have physical fitness. And so it's important for all of us, our listeners, everyone, to be able to take some of these things, to learn, and then embed this into your daily life so that you're creating self-therapy for yourself every single day. Because I think what the crisis did was it changed things so quickly that

that things you wouldn't necessarily notice in the short term, immediately you saw the difference. Well, it's like we're constantly adding updates to our own personal operating systems, right? And you have to be very proactive to do that. I don't think that just happens reactively. I think it's a proactive approach to learning.

and self-improvement and listening and really keeping that mind open where you can start slowly and gradually improving your own operating system that way. - This is exactly, it's a toolbox. So it's not mystical or it's not that difficult to understand. It's a little bit like when you feel, how do you say, when you feel not okay in your body and you cannot move as usual, then a yoga instructor says, "There are all those muscles and tendons "you usually don't stretch.

So I will show you a technique to stretch most of those muscles you usually don't stretch. And then he teaches you to do the downward dog. And that's as simple as it is. And that's how complicated it is because the downward dog has like 2000 years of history in it, but you can learn it in five minutes. And the kind of tools that let's say coaches use is exactly the same thing. So going back to Eric's example,

example because you touched upon a very very profound thing which is life is this kind of upward downward curve right and then something suddenly drastically cuts it so if it was a downward curve it never comes up if it's an upward curve it never fully realized itself and that's when the kind of guilt comes that you mentioned

because you wanted to speak to people, you wanted to help them, but you didn't have the time to realize the kind of plan. If your life went well, it's because why would you have thought about it? If your life didn't go well, then because you were occupied with your own troubles and you didn't help your friends. The way to understand this and way to approach it, there is a very good tool for that as well.

Which is the so-called Kubler-Ross curve or the stages of dealing with change, which was the name is a psychiatrist who dealt with grief. So basically when a family loses somebody, there is always guilt in the family. I should have said this. I should have done that. I didn't do enough.

And it's so interesting why they started using the same psychological mechanism for change management in companies, for example, because it triggers very similar emotions to grief. Even if nobody dies, just the pandemic cut our lives short or there was a merger or something like this. And I deal with this as a coach every single day. And one of the very interesting examples is

is how when I was interviewing executives here in China, international executives for my book, Dragon Suit, and how in the middle of the pandemic, most of these executives said, I am not leaving China right now because it would be something like a betrayal to leave my Chinese team in the middle of the hardest times. But then by the publication of the book, which was this August,

All of them, except for two, and I interviewed something like 15 or 16 executives, all of them were gone except for two. And I talked to them, and some of them, they talked to me about the same kind of guilt as... Because...

You just wanted to do something or you promised to do something, then you didn't do it and life took you another way. Well, it's like the world died basically, right? Like the world as we know it, like died before we had a chance to do the things that we needed to do. Something like that, yes. And then of course it went back online and people are still coping because there's like a step, like there's a major shift. It's like it died for two or three years and then it came back online and then everything is sort of different and you're still coping constantly.

with all those changes, because normally it's just a day-to-day thing. You don't feel the difference. So we're kind of, in a way, grieving the way things were before. In another way, you can have survivor's guilt even if nobody died. Mm-hmm.

Even if just other people went through a very difficult time or lost their money or lost their business or had to leave abruptly from the place where they lived for years. So like what Howie, well, all of us, but like I think like Howie had a lot of change in his life. So what he's been through, it sounds like when you're dealing with executives, right? They're just human beings just like Howie, right?

And like, you have to address the human being first. Oh, we talked about this at one of our other podcasts. And that was very interesting that one of the things I learned coaching executives is that they just get these heavy armors and outweighed responsibilities. But I actually learned this as a coach, because when I was a young coach, then...

how do you say, most of the executives that I coached outranked me by far, right? You just started up your business. Let's say you have been running your coaching business for four or five years. You start coaching CEOs. You look up because you feel those people are demigods, basically. Yeah.

And then you start talking to them and you get to this soft human tissue underneath all the power and responsibility and so on. And this was seriously, seriously tested during these times because the responsibilities became even bigger. Like one of the Chinese executives that I interviewed for Dragon Suit told me most people in my position, in my executive position feel this is not what we signed up for.

When we worked hard to become COOs or CEOs or CFOs, we never wanted to be basically battlefield firefighters. We wanted to run a healthy business. We wanted to plan strategy. We wanted to implement it. We wanted to give feedback. We never wanted to deal with this level of pressure.

Of crisis. Array of critical issues. Exactly. This conversation reminds me so much of our first conversation because we talked about trauma. We talked about cabin fever in our first conversation. We talked about the midlife crisis. Right. Right. Which all has threads kind of tying to what we're talking about now as well. Yeah. And I do remember very specifically we were talking about, you know, these CEOs, these people we put up on a pedestal.

who we think are these gods, or these heroes, you know, these leaders, and we look up to them, and they seem like they know it all, and can do it all, and they have this suit of armor. And I remember very clearly what you were saying then, was like, when you peel everything back, they have the same questions we do, and they're just as unsure about life as we are. Right? They wake up in the morning and get out of their beds,

feeling just as insecure as anybody else. If maybe even more so because of the responsibility they carry. And because they cannot share it with so many people. Yeah. Because there is a very strong pressure on these people to create an image of security and self-assurance. So if you look at, especially if you look at the...

How do you say, especially if you look at the workplace, you get to the top of any hierarchy, there is almost nowhere where you can cry on anybody else's shoulder. You don't want to do it upwards because it's already your investors and your board. You definitely don't want to show weakness there. Exactly. If you are a CFO and you share your weaknesses with the COO, there is...

internal competition is a disaster. You don't want to show that face to your people, to your clientele, to your suppliers. So most of the time you toughen your lips. And if you're lucky, then you have friends or you have a support group or you have a family who would understand what you're going through.

Like it's hard to show vulnerability. And so your outer armadillo shell gets tougher and tougher while your inside gets more and more tender, you know, and then one day when it gets exposed. And then I think like I imagine as a parent, it's the same thing because you're the CEO, the executive in the family. And then you can't be weak because like you're dealing with babies. 100%. I literally think about babies.

that. I literally think once the kids get a little bit older and they really, you know, we have language and we can communicate and they actually watch me and probably, you know, follow my footsteps in a way.

I am not showing them any weakness. No way. Because I think about that. I think about that. I know you do. That's why it's funny to me. Yeah. Because also on the show, sometimes I may not reveal as much because I think about... And I know my peers listen to this. They listen to me. And I have, as a certain role, I don't want to come across as weak. I want to do some self-check of the thinking, though. Because when you first said that, it didn't come across like...

Is that healthy? Should you be completely invulnerable in front of your kids? Is that a good thing? - Well, I'd argue it isn't, but yeah, go ahead. - So there is a complex dynamics here for the following reason. A lot of leaders and a lot of parents, in fact, they listen to the call these days to show vulnerability, but what comes out of their mouths is a fake scripted vulnerability because they are still afraid to show their vulnerability,

their corporate values or the parenting book that they read, they said, show your vulnerability. So they create the message that sounds like vulnerability, but actually it's not. You know, it's the kind of thing when at the job interview, they ask you, what are your biggest weaknesses? And I said, I care too much. I work. I'm a workaholic. So what I would say is that

Show your vulnerability if you're comfortable showing your vulnerability, but if you're not, don't launch into this fake scripted vulnerability. - Like it has to be honest. - Be genuine. Yeah, exactly. - And it can't go, I think it's a spectrum. So it can't be like fake, obviously, 'cause then it's like, it defeats the whole purpose. Then it's just like some kind of virtue signaling or something.

But if you go to the other end of the extreme and it's like complaining or victim mindset, that's also not healthy. And I think you want to avoid the victim mindset, but it doesn't mean you can't show vulnerability in an effective, useful way.

Right? But it's not going to be like complaining. I mean, I dance around that, you know? So if I wasn't, I wouldn't say anything. I would just be like. His kids are going to grow up and be like, my dad is just like, he's stoic. That motherfucker is stoic. Well, I think it's, to me, I think it's setting an almost unachievable, well, not almost, it is a setting an unachievable precedent for a young kid because they're going to run into moments where they're going to feel vulnerable. Right?

Right. They're going to have questions. They're going to run into all different sorts of emotional issues as they grow up. And if you're setting an example where indirectly you're signaling to them that's not okay, then I feel like they're just going to bury that themselves. Well, it depends on how you approach it. So first of all, you have to give more credit to people around you, whether it's your kids or the people who work for you as a leader. Right.

Because when you have this kind of conversation and then suddenly, you know, the bottle pops and the person says, you know, actually, I can admit I don't always know what to do. And I actually, I'm in serious doubts very often. And then your coach or your wife or your husband will say, you know what? They know. People who work for you, they know that. Your kids know that.

So you don't have to actually say it out loud because especially if your kids are old enough to understand the world a little bit, let's say they are older than five or six years old and the parent says, well, little kids, actually, you know, I don't always know what to do. Believe me, your kids know. Because one of the things, for example, they already noticed the conflict between your language and your body language. So they know... It changes, right? Yeah, no, the conflict, the conflict. When you say...

Children, everything is okay. There is no problem. Go back to your... We call that incongruence, right? There's not congruence between your behavior. And that incongruence is actually worse than just owning it.

Well, it's simply that they know that you lost control. You don't have to say it out loud. So unless you want to cover it up and actively try to make them believe that you didn't lose control, you can just genuinely and honestly lose control to some extent. And maybe let's say five minutes afterwards, you can have a chat with your kids or the people who work for you and say, listen, I was afraid. I was panicked. It happens. And this way you can be a role model as well.

Because you can, whatever you do, you teach other people to do. Well, and they sense the incongruence, right? So like how you respond to a situation is going to be like patterns that you have. That takes time to change, right? You can not be as anxious of a person, but it takes time. So whatever your reaction is, if you mask it or you try to hide it, that incongruence, right, is going to be even worse. Like it's going to be perceived as,

something confusing to your kids. You know? Like, it's very, very confusing to them. And then I imagine that I have to just...

guess that what kids go through is not any easier than what adults go through like if you just move schools you move to another country you're like in first grade that's like an executive going in and first day not knowing what they're doing and taking over a team i don't imagine it's any easier so they're going through the same experiences and so like they're watching us as well and they can sense it like kids are so smart right and if we model something that is different

They're going to notice that and then they're just going to soak it in almost like instinctively. Well, intuitively, yeah. Right. One of the reasons why I'm so interested in intercultural relations and expat life is because I was an expat kid. And I can tell you my entire world collapsed regularly every three or four years. You know, we moved to a different city. I went to a different school. How young were you when your life abroad first started? Four. Four.

You were four years old. Four years old. And so you were already an expat kid living abroad when you were four years old. Yes. That's kind of all you knew. We moved to the Middle East and my father was an engineer. He was an expert in machines producing light bulbs at the time. So that was the first time we moved to the Middle East. And I remember, so what Eric said is so astute because I remember the kind of

of references that I had to relearn. And this is, I hope it's not going to sound politically incorrect or racist or anything like this because I was a young kid growing up in Hungary. And then you're four years old. And by that time, you learn how to tell the difference between men and women.

And your parents say, well, you know, one way to tell the difference is to look at the way they dress. And those people who wear a dress, they are the women. And those people who wear trousers, they are the men. And now imagine you take this four-year-old kid and throw them into the streets of a big city in the Middle East, right? Where the men wear the galabia, which to a European looks like a dress. So I remember how confused I was.

to see those people in the streets, not to mention all of the things that the people who surround you. And then you have to reprioritize everything. And one way to deal with it is, as you said, is to control the negativity and to try to show a positive picture to others. But another way to deal with it is to share and tell people, listen, I am not at my best right now.

If you're a parent or if you're an executive. Some time ago, Justin, you asked me, but how do you prioritize these kind of things? For example, you have your private crisis and your professional crisis. When I went through the absolute worst a couple of months ago, then I very openly told my team in Shanghai, listen, people, I am a little bit brain dead right now.

So could you please like double second guess the decisions I'm making, check more carefully the documents that come out of my hands because I'm not at my best. I don't even trust myself, but you know, at the time when you don't really trust yourself, then you cannot trust yourself to discover your own mistakes either.

And we really make stupid mistakes at that time. Yeah, and that makes so much sense because we have to separate our identity with what's happening, right? Because I...

I know, I mean, we're all quite self-critical, the three of us. And then sometimes the narrative then becomes like, I'm not a good person or this is just how I am. And that's really damaging, right? Because you're associating this negativity with your identity. But what you just said was different. It's like, hey, I'm not at my best now. Or like, I'm going through a difficult time. And to that, you're signaling to the people around you is like, hey, we're a team. We're gonna work together. We're gonna get through this. We're optimistic about it. And then you will see me at my best.

Yeah, it's a difference between being a bad boxer and having a broken finger. Yeah, exactly. Momentarily, you must admit that you do have an imperfection that you have to overcome in order to get back

to your normal self. And this is very important because I perfectly agree with what you said, that we too easily, when we are not at our best, then we rearrange and redefine our entire identity. And we think, okay, now this is what I am, right? You said as well that you're not your usual self or this is not who I am right now. Yeah, I don't recognize who I am. I don't recognize who I am. That's right. Because yeah, I mean, there could be

that makes us unrecognizable in the mirror. If we have an injury or if we have a stye or something, then you look into the mirror. Is that what I am now? Temporarily, yes. Permanently, no. It's also that fear, right? I think that almost conclusion you draw is like, this is not me. I'm not who I used to be. I've said that to myself before and I think it's coming out of a place of

Of fear. Of fear that I will not get out of this. Right? You're afraid you'll be stuck in this situation forever. And it doesn't only happen with, you know, personal things about your identity. But like, you know, whenever we're in a bad situation, we're always fearing like, oh, will this end? Will this cease? Mm-hmm.

Because if it doesn't, that's like the biggest nightmare you can think of at the time. Yes, yes, yes. And you're not alone with this. I can even look at very high level of the kind of strategic decisions that I deal with when I work with C-level executives. And then you can look at companies don't go public right now because they don't trust the future anymore.

They, um, mergers and acquisitions are at very low levels because those people cannot trust the image of the future that they have in their minds.

people are reluctant to make big decisions. They can't hedge, right? You can't hedge. Yeah. Not just they cannot hedge. Okay. I think it's a combination of they cannot hedge because they don't know what will happen next, but also because the end state, the vision that they have in their mind is not attractive enough because they don't believe it will actually happen. Right? Companies keep telling us, okay, we are going to grow this way. We are going public this way. But

But they don't really trust it. It's more like people are trying to convince themselves. They're telling themselves that. Exactly. Let me ask you a question then, okay? When there's optimism, people are sometimes more willing to do things. But then I think about investment philosophy. It's like buy low, sell high kind of thing. When there is a lack of optimism and trust, is that actually the time to act?

Or I don't know, what are your thoughts on that? - It really depends. It really depends. You can make both kind of mistakes. You can make the kind of mistake that, and this is the mistake I have the tendency to make, when you keep pushing when it would actually the time to give yourself some time to think and recover. And you can make the opposite mistake of staying in that hot bath a little bit too long.

And convincing yourself that even if you tried, you would probably fail. So I have to look at the specific example of that person, not by the least, because it very much depends on your personality. And it very much depends on your values that you built up through that.

through your family upbringing, your education, your professional life, of which kind of mistake is easier to make. Sometimes people just make both kinds of mistakes in different situations. - 'Cause like when you look at like success stories or like companies that innovate or people that have innovated, a lot of times it comes from the toughest times. It's like you learn the most during like the crisis because you're forced to. Like in good times, sometimes we get soft.

in tough times, then we react, right? And so innovation happens as like, this thing happened and like there was no other road. So I had to find a new road, you know? And I have to think that like a lot of this- And the upside is the greatest when things are bad. Yeah. Because you're starting from a low place. Because you're starting from a low point. And then it forces you to think differently and not just incrementally. Right.

Well, that's like being like an opportunistic, right? Like opportunistic, like, you know, in the business example, people like what you were saying, I really think people are making moves when exactly when times are bad, because let's say prices are low, um, people are desperate. So people come in and take advantage of those and exploit those situations and

And, you know, if you bet correctly, you can make a lot of profit. Yeah. It's like when your back is against the wall, then you're going to have to figure something out. And it might not be the most conventional thing because when things are going well, everyone just going to the same market, just all doing the same thing.

Well, one big question is the lessons that you learn in one time period, how applicable they are in the next time period. This is quite important because, for example, if you look at the generational differences, which are cultural differences in companies, then there are all these lessons that came from the baby boomers and then my generation. I was born in 71 about working hard, accumulating a lot of reserves, being ready, embracing in advance for difficult times.

And a lot of those lessons were lost on the millennial and the younger generation because they just didn't find those lessons very useful. So when a baby boomer said at a law firm to one of their young colleagues, you know, work your ass off now.

Try to accumulate prestige. Try to get close to being a partner. Try to save a lot of money. Buy three apartments because things will definitely go wrong and you will need all this influence and all this money and all this security.

And of course, the millennials said, no, I really want to add value and be my own person and so on. But now they are beginning to learn the utility of these kind of lessons. So these kind of lessons are coming up again. Or let's say you becoming a father of twins, right?

You could share the wisdom that you learned from that. And that could be completely lost on the next person because they are either well before or well after. They could be living in abundance and they're like, what are you talking about? Well, and this is like what our parents like,

We always talk about like growing up and then our parents, it's like another language. It's like, why are you telling me this mom? You know, like none of this applies because she grew up during crisis wartime. And then you realize, first of all, it's so deeply inculcated inside you that it's in there. It's like in there. It just hadn't come out. And then one day you realize that actually your parents having the benefit of having 30 more years on the planet, they actually know something.

Right. And then if you haven't lived through a crisis, the world is about crisis. It's just like, if you don't hit one, you're just being lucky at some point in your life. If something hasn't happened in your lifetime, either you haven't lived long enough or it's just like human nature that we don't live that long. And it's happened like in every generation. Yes. Completely agree. Yeah. And this reminds me of something I want to ask you, Gabor, because I've always felt from our previous conversations that,

What I've always appreciated about how you contextualize things is you put things in the context of time and even sometimes history of how humans have evolved in certain ways. So on this topic of building a framework of preparedness almost and how that changes depending on what era you live in, where you live, what generation you belong to,

Where do you think, with all this talk about the future of, let's say, AI and how that is going to reshape basically everything, right? This huge question mark, and Howie and I talk about this all the time, this huge question mark of the skill sets that we deem valuable today may be completely different today.

five, 10 years from now. What's your opinion on that? And do you have some sort of hedge on the future going forward in regards to that? - That's a question I often contemplate. And also that's a question that comes up in my work very often. So for example, in October, I'm going to make a keynote speech on how people from different cultural backgrounds use the same technology differently.

So, for example, how the same app communicates differently with different people depending on their cultural backgrounds, how people build different apps based on their cultural backgrounds. So, for example, in China, the typical response time is much faster than in Europe.

So of course, if you build a European app and a Chinese app for the same communication purpose, then you build it in a completely different way. How self-driving cars will drive differently depending on where they program them, where the program was written. These are absolutely fascinating questions. I think there are two things to keep in mind. The first one is that however complicated the tool is, they are always tools, right?

And when we flip over and we think that the technology itself is like an alternative universe rather than a tool to connect people, then we start worrying very seriously, right? Then it becomes existential, right? It becomes existential. So let me give you two examples. One is when you can use computers to play chess online with another player, you know exactly what the computer is for. But when two computers play chess with each other, what's the point?

We understand that the computers now can play better chess than humans, but what is the point of two computers playing chess? And if computers always beat humans, is there still a point of playing chess with computers? Or should we, you know, let computers play chess with each other and then humans play against each other because that still has the

the original point of chess. Well, I mean, just like on a technical note, like, I mean, I know you're making a bigger point, but two computers playing against each other help the algorithms improve, right? And then, of course, innovation or learnings from one industry then go into other parts, right? So like, you know, we invest in the pure science of

or computers playing against each other because then we can adapt those algorithms to other fields, right? I mean, like we started off with like, you know, Deep Blue and chess and then like AlphaGo and all that stuff. But then we've used that machine learning and pharmaceuticals or, you know, other types of industries. So there, I mean, but that's more of a side, you know. - I don't think it is because just imagine now how they use artificial intelligence in marketing, for example, or in creative professions.

And then you say, there are, okay, first of all, there were artificial intelligence tools that could write copy. I mean, do copywriting for marketing, right?

And then people realized a lot of these copper written materials that computers write, computers read as well. So you have to optimize them for certain search engines and certain algorithms. So basically now you can write books with artificial intelligence, which humans wouldn't read, but artificial intelligence does. So you're almost writing in that language for that purpose. Exactly. For both. Yeah.

It's like human beings and computers. We all live together because humans need to use computers. And we use the computers as proxies sometimes between humans because I tell my AI to do something. It reaches out to your AI and it does something and it comes back. Except computers communicate much faster than humans. So eventually the humans just stand aside. Because if you use AI to write your Twitter feeds, right?

And then you realize, wait a minute, if I tweet within five minutes, only a thousand humans read my tweets, but a hundred thousand bots read my tweets, then if I customize it to humans, it's not so important after all. So this is, but then if the humans are left aside, then what's the point of the whole thing? Is AI, you know, working with the executives that you work with, is it,

A topic they're concerned about that they bring up?

And then goes back to their office and they are absolutely terrified of what's going to happen next. What's the fear though? Exactly what I told you just now. Am I becoming irrelevant? By cherishing these artificial intelligence tools, am I investing my money into my competition, which is a thousand times more powerful? Am I using the company's money to build a robot that will take my salary?

That's crazy. Really? I mean, there is absolute fear is not even the right term. It's like we're building our own enemy. What Justin just asked you about some of the people that you're coaching, these high-level, C-level executives, you just said that a lot of their concern is about the future, about AI, eventual growth.

Near future, actually. It's not even like long-term future. I'm talking about even next year, the next couple of years. The better the tools, the nearer it is. Exactly. Because the biggest thing that I've found with AI, because I use it all the time and I'm always trying to keep myself up to date with it, is that the growth of AI year by year, that exponential growth,

is almost unfathomable, right? Number one, it's unfathomable. So you can't even guess how long away before, let's say, this AI gets to this maturity level where it really is taking over our jobs, like our jobs, all of our jobs, right? We don't know. We don't know. Nobody knows. But also, it's unfathomable and you can't even guess where it can go.

A lot of experts are talking about where it could go. The next three to five years, what's the next step? But the fact that this exponential growth...

growth if you want to compare it to let's say iq levels of you know let's say einstein to to uh somebody that's like an iq of 100 and they have real in-depth conversation that's only a 60 increase of iq but i'm sure that person of the iq 100 is going to have a little bit of trouble keeping up with einstein right that's only 60 that's not even one x right but once you start doing one x which is

At the rate of AI right now from like ChatGPT, let's say ChatGPT 3 to 4 is 10x. Just think about that in perspective. Now what's next? ChatGPT 5 or 4.5 that's coming out very soon, right? What's that?

Right now, ChatGPT-4 is already at Einstein level. What's next? I would argue that it's not really Einstein level, but anyways, continue. Sure. Only Eric is Einstein level. Because it's still not general. It's not general intelligence yet. It's not at that level. But at what it does, at the speed of what it does, because speed is also construed into intelligence level, right? This calculation speed, the diversity of memory is more powerful than human.

So, yes, we have certain types of creative thought or other types of calculations that maybe the AI cannot do as well yet, but it's really close. So that's the thing that... But it's not... I just have difficulty. I mean, it might change, but I still have to do most of the things for myself. The AI is just not good enough. The shit that I have to do, I got to do myself. You know what I'm saying? It can't do shit for me yet.

me yet it really can't like it can help do something and get like 60 70 right but it it actually can't like it can't order my meals for me like i can't make doctors apply i mean like i need to have the conversation no it can't no no it doesn't it doesn't because it can't get it right that's the problem yeah it doesn't get it right i think we can put the question different way you said order my meals or make a doctor's appointment but i think the the real issue here is

that when you order meals and order doctor's appointments, those are human issues, right? So the whole thing makes sense because there are humans on both ends of the equation. If you look at, let's say, the 10 biggest companies, 10 most valuable companies in the world, Amazon only makes sense in an artificial intelligence world if there are humans on both ends who are looking for each other because artificial intelligence doesn't need Amazon, right? Artificial intelligence doesn't need Google either, right?

Because they don't need an interface to look for products and information. And AI certainly doesn't need to advertise because, you know, the product would just speak for itself, the solution. LVMH is one of the most valuable companies in the world, makes absolutely no sense in the world of artificial intelligence.

Because the AI doesn't drink and doesn't aspire to expensive bags and so on. So I think this is why this fear is not grounded. Because the moment AI or machines take over one aspect of life, then humans either, how do you say, bring that to the next level or create an alternative next to it, which makes much more sense.

for humans themselves. So my favorite example is mobility technology, right? And how, for example, from the mobility with animals, we upgraded to steam engines and then internal combustion engines. If you go back to the time of Jules Verne, science fiction writer in the 19th century, then of course it's logical that

When engines, steam and combustion engines take over mobility, then horses disappear from the world. Not that equestrian sports become one of the most valuable things you can do with your life. And if you're a horse riding instructor, you make much more money than a cab driver. So I think the same is going to happen with artificial intelligence as well.

because people will just let machines do the kind of stuff they don't want to do so that they have the time to do the stuff that they really want to do. And they create much more LVMH style companies, which make no sense in the artificial intelligence world, but make all the sense in the human world. Yeah. I mean, that's what my intention, but I'm not like rejecting the idea that some, you know, bad things can happen. It just, I don't know. It doesn't, it doesn't quite work for me. Like if I want to read a book,

Like, I just want to read the book. I don't give a shit what AI does, right? I want to enjoy reading the book. There's just so many things I want to do. Now, if AI decides somehow that like humans shouldn't exist anymore, then there's an existential threat, right? But I view all of this stuff as just technology, like whatever name you want to give it. Because I think in prior times, there were similar threats. And in fact, maybe even more threatening than AI. Yeah.

Right. Based on where the society was at the point, like fire or whatever it is. And then people are like, oh, this is going to this is going to it's going to be so scary. So this might be the thing that changes everything. It could be. So I'm not, you know, rejecting that outright. But at the same time, I just view all this stuff as a tool. It's just based like computers. Or go to a large international leadership conference and look at what the key issues are.

So you go to go to a conference of the Communist Party in China, you go to a leadership conference hosted by Harvard Business Review, or you go to a halal banking conference in Riyadh. What are the issues? What are the most paid keynote speakers in the world? Do they talk about how to compete with machines, how to make the same amount of decisions in one tenth of the time?

No, that is not the kind of speeches you will hear. You will hear speeches about the most more equitable societies, about building socialism with Chinese characteristics, about politically correct and sustainable leadership, about employee well-being, about the spirituality of money, let's say in the case of halal banking or sustainable banking. These are the big issues.

To me, it says exactly what you said. These things are tools. People are afraid that these tools are going to invade their privacy and going to replace them. But when these technological tools become mature, then people realize I can actually delegate things that I didn't want to do anyway, so I can focus on like the, you

you know, the top of the pyramid of needs on spirituality, on self-actualization, on an equitable society, on building communities and all those things. Am I too optimistic here? Well, what happens if like there's an AI government system though? Like, so let's go on how he's like, well, maybe more aligned with what you're saying. Let's say that like,

We at some point find that AI governance is actually better. Let AI do the decisions, not like human beings. So then that's a threat to the actual government, right? What happens if that happens? There's a total possibility. But here's the thing that what I've been finding is that there are – first of all, I follow a few particular AI experts or speakers online.

and I try to keep up with, with what's going on and their concerns. and there's, there's two very obvious sides to this. There's one side of experts, um, that are, I've mentioned recently, uh, this guy, um, Ilya Yudkowsky. There's also Mogadat, who is the former chief business officer of Google. Um, like these people are, are basically preaching, uh,

All right, we really got to be careful with this. This is not a joke. This is not like the Industrial Revolution. This is not like, you know, that kind of stuff where the horse carriage is replaced by the car.

This is something that is technologically so advanced and unfathomable to the common human brain that because it can replicate itself, it can create itself. We don't have technology that can do that. But that's the direction we're going. So you cannot say that jobs will never be fully replaced because new jobs will come out.

This, if it goes wrong, there will be no more jobs. Like, if it goes wrong, right? It's like we're dealing with an alien technology. Yes. There's also a lot of people... Alien race. Yeah, they actually use that as an analogy, right? So we can't use our human-centric, you know, perceptions. I don't want to turn this into an AI chat, but like... We're fully there. Too deep in that, I want to still keep it with the topic with Gabor, but in terms of the possibilities of...

of disruption in terms of workforce is real. It's legit. You're saying like an existential threat. That is real too. If it goes, there's a lot of bad actors before even AGI or like super intelligence comes in, which I think what we're kind of talking about is,

You have bad human beings. You have bad actors that would use that to affect society at large. So that's another concern. And we're already seeing that. And if only one bad actor is out there, but they have access to the technology, it's apocalyptic. It's not like before, to raise an army to do stuff. And there's way more than one bad actor out there. But to shortcut this a little bit, so what?

Right? Like, I mean, like, why do you study all this? Because how does this help any of us be better fathers? How does it help? And like, what's the point? Yeah. So real quickly, let me just wrap up what I was saying. So that's one side, right? You have people painting the picture of, all right, the warning, right? You can't just be dilly-dallying with AI. You can't think, oh, it's only going to bring abundance. It's only going to make our life easier. It's only going to be a tool, right?

The other side of people are positive, right? They're like, look, we're going to work on creating AI that works for us, right? That helps human beings, helps the society. We're going to work hand in hand. It's going to be like a hybrid system of human and robotics or AI intelligence. Yes. You have both sides of the party and they both agree.

have good points but both don't know what they're talking about in a sense because you cannot guess so I think the point what I'm trying to get to with Eric is that

Why do I keep up? Because A, I'm interested in technology. B, I'm also trying to think about trying to guess as much as I can prepare, be flexible moving forward with the near future. Because I think that's the most important. It's not about five, 10 years down the line, because I don't feel like you can really plan for that right now. You can maybe do some basic planning, I guess. But in the near future, within the next one to three years, you're

What are the adjustments I'm making that's going to be most impactful in my career and people around me? That's all I can do. And why? And I think the big question is why? Because the

These changes, however fast they are, they are incremental in a way. So if you watch a science fiction movie and they take you 100 years into the future, maybe you say, I don't even want to live in that kind of future. Because machines can create efficiency, but they cannot create happiness and values and so on. But if, let's say, we created a time machine, which I think we can agree we should,

- Absolutely. - And then went back and took, let's say, Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Alexis de Tocqueville and took them here and showed them today's future. And I said, "What do you think the dangers are to live in a world controlled by machines?" I think they would say, "Buddy, you are already living in a future. You are already being controlled by machines. Look at that Uber driver or Didi driver. I mean, his boss is an algorithm.

And a lot of people who are in the gig economy, their bosses are algorithms. And even if you sell a product through Amazon, really your market is an algorithm. Even our beliefs are shaped by algorithms. Exactly. But if you ask that Uber driver, why did he or she become an Uber driver rather than working for a taxi company? Do you know what the main reason is? Flexibility? Exactly. Freedom.

Yes, this is what those drivers say. I want to work for an algorithm, basically, because then I don't have an unpredictable human boss who is breathing down my neck and tells me what to do. So I think this is a quite good example for, let's say, the positive side of it. What these algorithms take away from us, we don't mind it that much. But what they can give us...

are very not incremental and quite fundamental. So I'm hoping that now what Eric said, you know, some crazy person controlling this technology, James Bond villain style and destroying the world with it. That's only always a possibility. That always was a possibility. Even today, like. Yeah. So the first moment they, I don't know, people discovered mandrakes and then somebody could have poisoned the virus.

well and wiped out an entire city. I mean, humans have fascination with fear, right? Because before AI was like nuclear weapons. Well, Gabor, um...

Does any of what we've been talking about have anything to do with your book? Are there any threads there at all? Yes. Yes, yes, there are. Because I want to get to your new book that you wrote, Dragon Suit, The Golden Age of Expatriate Executives in China. First of all, congratulations, man. Thank you. How long have you been working on this book? Four years. Wow. Cheers, cheers. I'm pretty sure you were already probably starting working on this book.

When we first met already, right? Yes, of course. First of all, the reference of the Golden Age, those of you including yourself who read the book already know that this reference goes back to 2014. Because that's when the European Chamber of Commerce announced that the Golden Age for multinational companies in China has ended.

for very specific reasons. So in a way, I've been working on this book for nine years. But I started the interviews in 2019, actually. So it was a long process. And the interesting thing was, and why so many of the things that we talked about will also be mentioned in the book, because I basically ushered all of these people I interviewed through all this.

So many of them at the beginning, they were all China-based international executives. They talked about their experiences in China. And then the pandemic came. Some of them were locked down in China. Some of them were stuck outside of China. Some of them came back. Some of them didn't. So that's why all of these things are, they appear in the book in one way or another. So when you started thinking about the book in the beginning, it was more about the lessons maybe learned during that period of time. But then you went through

Like another period. And then through that period, you're learning and then you're capturing that in real time almost. At the beginning, it was basically a disconnect that I discovered because I worked with most of the people interviewed in the book as a coach first.

And on one hand, if you coach people, it's under very strict confidentiality. So you cannot tell anybody else what you hear. But then I go to a networking event or then I go and make a keynote at the conference. And then I hear the questions from all of them. Many of these are outside of China. So I go to Europe or I go to Japan or I go to Indonesia. I talk to executives who ask me all these questions about foreign business in China. And then I start thinking...

If only I could tell them what I heard from this executive during my coaching session. And I kept thinking about what to do about this. So what I did is I had to wait until the coaching contract expires. And then I went back to my coaching clients and I said, listen, I'm working. At that time, it was supposed to be a paper. I'm working on this paper. I would like to interview people.

Could I interview you as a writer as opposed to your coach? And then I systematically brought back some issues that they mentioned during the coaching calls or coaching dialogues, depending on face-to-face or online coaching. And this is how most of the interviews came by. And then I realized I have to add on the perspective of people who are at meta level, so to speak.

people who are not expats in China, but who help expats. So that's why I included executive search people, coaches, George Hu as a mental health expert, and a couple of other people who support and have an outside perspective from expert life. - Yeah, just to get as many perspectives as possible, right? Get a more rounded picture of the whole thing. - Yes, exactly. - We are talking about humans. It is kind of a human experience in a way.

Exactly. And for example, where do successful expats who cannot show their vulnerability, how do they vent their negative energies? I mean, George, who is the one who knows it best, right? Because he told me, and I quote him in the book, that people have a lot of negative energy and they vent it in different ways. And sometimes it happens in the same day.

the expatriate husband and then the expatriate wife and then their teenage kid comes to my office at different times of the day and try to deal with the negative energy that they give each other in the family. - I mean, this is like a special moment. It's almost like a mental scientific experiment that happened globally, like Shanghai lockdown, right? Like, I mean, from a sociological point of view-- - It's an evil experiment, but yes. - It's an evil experiment because they talk about this. Well, what happens if like you then segment

25 million people into, you know, like thousands of different small, and they can't really, you know, coordinate. Right. What happens? Shipwrecks. Exactly. There's a guy that studies like shipwrecks and how does society form. So it's almost like you brought humankind to some kind of really prehistoric condition and you can study that. And so the people that were involved like yourself that were helping people through this,

time period also have a very powerful perspective because they can aggregate information across a broad audience. Right. And for example, the self and self-conflict and guilt that you mentioned. One of my favorite example is an executive called Renata who works for, who is from Brazil and works for a Brazilian mining company.

I interviewed her just before this big lockdown. I think I interviewed her in 2021. Already, of course, the pandemic is raging and I asked her,

why have you stayed so far? Because I knew that her company offered her a relocation package to return to Brazil. And she said no, together with her husband who lived in Shanghai as well. So why did you say no? And how do you imagine your future in Shanghai? And she actually said, leaving China at this moment, leaving my team, leaving my business would be a little bit like betrayal. And then in a couple of months, she was gone. Yeah.

So to deal with these kind of human stories and then how people come to terms with the decisions that they made that you are absolutely, she of course gave me the permission to quote her by name on this. And then being on the record with something like this and then leaving very soon. And of course, if you listen to her again, then there is a perfectly valid reason why she left.

But these stories are extremely important because they are about this giant human experiment that we call the pandemic and that we call Shanghai. And I think like a lot of business books are only within the lens of like the corporate world and what happens, but we underestimate the impact that the world, our lives, our personal lives, like all of these things are together. But when we look at business, we only look at it from a business lens. We don't hear the personal stories. And it sounds like your book,

these things so that there are like personal things that are involved, right? Yes, because if you look at the statistics and the

This is a very well researched book. And now that I speak about it, then people very often give me this comment, oh, Gabor, you love using data and statistics, right? Actually, half of it is my love for basing my opinion on facts. The other one is fear because in the age of social media, if you say something that is not founded, then they will tear you to bits. But what the research says is that something like a third of expat assignments in the world are

fail their KPIs, their predetermined KPIs, and something like 10% to 15% end in premature termination. So basically, the expat family is sent home before time, and the bigger half of those are terminated because the family cannot adjust, rather than the expat cannot

So it's not so much about job performance, it was the family couldn't. Well, but of course, as Eric said, everything is everything. They all affect each other. Of course, if you go home to an unhappy family, God forbid, what very often happens is that one of your family members develops health issues because they are so unhappy or so badly adjusted to the local circumstances, then of course you cannot perform during your work as well. And if your child is up all night, if your spouse has panic attacks,

then you cannot get your sleep and of course it's going to... And the other way around. Yeah, and you don't even know, there's not a clear relationship of like cause and effect. It's all kind of just packed together. Yes, exactly. And Renata's situation, for example, was the other way around. They...

They arrived in Shanghai. They were very unhappy at the beginning. Her husband didn't speak English, not to mention Chinese. They struggled very, very much. Then they learned the corresponding languages. Actually, they both learned Mandarin. They started hanging out with Chinese people. They adjusted very, very well. If it happens this way, Renata's husband also found a job locally. Then you go to work.

in a completely different mindset every day, and you are going to deliver maximum performance, which was the idea in the first place. - So with this book, is the idea just to share these executive stories, or is there a general takeaway, without giving away too much of the book, a general takeaway you're hoping people get from this book? Or is it purely just a document? - No, I did hope that people take away something from it, although it does depend on who those people are.

So if the reader is a future expat anywhere, not just in China, then I am really hoping that they understand the hidden 90%. If we want to talk in terms of the iceberg model, they understand the hidden 90% of expat life.

And they prepare for it as much as they do for the very visible, obvious 10% of moving over to another country, adjusting to those cultural stereotypes like, I don't know, harmony and Confucianism in China and, you know, all those jingles that people are likely to get from a culture.

If the reader is somebody who makes decisions about sending expats all over the world, like a HR manager or a CEO, my message to them is it's time to commission, to choose, select and commission people on expat assignments in a different way. Because for a very long time, sending people abroad on an expat assignment, especially sending them to markets like China, which were dynamically developing, it was considered some kind of a reward.

your next step up in a corporate career. But a lot of people actually, they were not crazy about moving abroad. They didn't aspire to live in another. And that's why so many expats live in a bubble in the society where they arrive because they never wanted to live there. They just wanted to take that upward step in their careers and show everybody, you know, I am going to the China branch. It means I am destined for greater things. It is equally true about Europe.

expats from Chinese companies, let's say going to the US or Europe or Japan these days,

And that's why, while people said so many bad things about expats living in foreigner bubbles here in China, now Chinese expats in Europe and in Japan and whatnot, they live in Chinese bubbles there. - Doing the same thing. - So I just basically, my message to people who make these decisions is, listen, it's time to send people abroad based on their, how do you say, their ability to adjust, which is actually measurable. And this is what intercultural experts like myself do.

their willingness and give them the kind of environment that they need to maximize their performance. And if it's a bubble, give them a bubble. This is especially important for a time where now we have a much lower level of international mobility than before.

So as opposed to five or 10 years ago, if you, if you send somebody on an expat assignment now, they are going to be much more isolated from other expats, for example, because numerically there are much fewer in China right now. On Friday, I met people from, um, from, um, a European material science company. And I asked them, how many foreign employees did you have before the pandemic? And how do you have now? And they said the number of foreign employees at their, um, company that, uh,

employed thousands of people. It used to be 200 and now it's 10. - True. - Wow. - So you send foreigners to a completely different environment than before. - Yeah. - And if they were a little bit unhappy

you know, being an expat somewhere and they just clenched their teeth because they wanted a promotion, they are going to be even unhappier now. Yeah. I want to ask you a little bit. I don't know if you have the right answer right now, but ever since what happened last year here, there was an exodus, right? A lot of people left, foreigners, right? I mean, there were numbers of like 60, 70% or something like that caliber gone, right?

And you feel it when you walk around. And even in the circles and WeChat groups, you feel it. Slowly, it's opening back up again and you see an influx of new blood coming in. In terms of the people that you've been speaking with and coaching and whenever you're coming back to China, do you feel a different dialogue happening in terms of that community?

like a circle of friends and environment change. Is that like high up in terms of a conversation that you have? - Completely different. Because different kind of people return to a different kind of place.

Both China and cities like Shanghai and the foreigners have changed. So we were talking about this with my wife yesterday because we were talking about this typical Lao Wai, like foreigner places in Shanghai and how quickly they go out of business or they change entirely. And let's say when a Wagos closes down, then what springs up in its place? So the foreigners who left before and during the pandemic,

They were the very well-sponsored international workers from typically economically strong countries, right? So the typical expats from places like Japan, the United States, Germany, and so on. The new foreigners who are coming in, they are typically either students or

or people who are coming in from the so-called global south, which is a misnomer because most of them are in the northern hemisphere, but people from Thailand, people from Pakistan, people from India, people from many other countries like this. So it's a completely different dynamic in terms of what they are going to consume, for example. And this is why there is such pessimism among people who used to cater to the foreigner industry in big Chinese cities,

Because of course, oh, right, very good. The foreigners are coming back, you know, but a graduate student from Russia or somebody who took over a Japanese manager's job in an automotive company, but the same person is from Thailand or Pakistan is not going to consume the same way as the typical expats did for 20 years. And also on both sides, the, how do you say, the perception, the soft power, if you wish,

is completely different on both sides. So Chinese people's attitudes to anything foreign, including people, products, ideas, is completely different. And the attitude of those people to China is completely different as well. So,

- So everything is getting reshuffled. - Yes, everything is. And that's why there is another very interesting phenomenon of former dragon suits, so to speak, because I call these China expats the dragon suits. Dragon because of China and suits because, you know, the suit as the symbol of corporate decision makers. And that's why there is a huge disconnect. A lot of former dragon suits, people who worked in China five to 10 years ago,

and they consider themselves somebody who has the experience in China and therefore valuable to these international companies. They try to get international jobs and they try to get back to China, but a lot of companies are reluctant to hire them because they know how China worked 10 years ago and they are not convinced they will know how China works right now. And I think some companies manage this much smarter than others.

And it's true. I mean, it's a completely different proposition on both sides. Well, that's good self-awareness, even from a company standpoint, to acknowledge like, oh, it's very different now than before. We've talked about this before, and I can add in a little bit of insight in terms of advertising trends. Mm-hmm.

I mean, advertising, you're marketing to the local economy, right? What's the image you're presenting? What's the information you're saying? Right. What's the message? And 15 years ago, you have foreigners, you know, you have the quote-unquote white face or whatever, blonde hair.

And the foreigners as models and stuff like that, right? You have the Western kind of way. Now, yeah, that's out the window. No. Well, forget 15 years ago. Gabor is even saying three years ago. From three years ago, it's already completely different. Yeah. Yes, yes. I don't know if you remember everywhere you went in airports and subway stations, there used to be this commercial for mattresses.

- Oh, that old man was- - Steve Jobs guy. - He looks like you. He kind of looks like you. - No, yeah. - But with the same- - No, no, no, this was a different one. There was an old, fairly sickly looking guy. - Steve Jobs guy. - Something like- - Oh, that guy. - Yeah, very thin. - Steve Jobs and his latest- - Very frail looking guy. - Yes, exactly. And I kept wondering why did they choose this model for the mattress commercial?

And the only reason I could come up with is because that's a foreign face. You know, that was around 10 years ago when being a foreigner, it still stood for prestige and sophistication. And that time is over. It's over. It's way over now. It's way over now. So just before I kind of left, so I went on that business trip and I wasn't allowed to come back. Just before that, I saw a billboard that was, again, everywhere in Shanghai saying,

It was about a shopping center, which was this kind of discount shopping center for global brands. And it said, you don't have to go abroad to shop like a traveler.

So that was a very clear message of, yes, we still want global brands. We still want the Nike shoes and we still want to buy the Australian milk powder, but we don't necessarily want to go abroad to get it.

And it's very typical in China as well. A lot of people still aspire to the foreign education, the foreign investment products, but the trend is definitely to bring them in-house. And that's going to change everything. Because if you, let's say, you sell a foreign MBA

but increasingly in the Chinese language to Chinese people, then you don't need an international sales director. A local sales director can do the job much better. And then there is obviously a question that many people ask at the speeches that I make these days. Are foreigners even needed in China? And the obvious answer is yes, because China has international aspirations.

but companies and individual managers have to be aware of the completely different context that they step into in China right now. And not just in China, in other countries as well. - I feel like this speaks to just different mindsets as well. 'Cause we make a lot of, a big deal out of like, oh, things are changing, right? But like things are changing, the world is changing. And those who thrive on change and who can adapt, who can go into any situation,

you know, are going to do better than those who can't. And so like, I think a lot of this is tied to identity, right?

And not in a good way. It's like, okay, we need this type of person because of this, and it's just a label. But I think truly successful companies and people, they go way beyond the labels. They go deeper. Like when they go through the interview process isn't just about what you've done before. It's about how will you learn about your environment? I mean, there are plenty of examples in corporates where they sent someone who was totally not qualified, but that person had the curiosity and the ability to adapt.

and was way more successful than the person that has 20 years of experience. And I think it's always been like that. You know, of course, sometimes you do need that specific experience. Like I don't, you know, like how you run a factory in a certain place, right? There's certain processes, but I think that mindset and cultural understanding piece is depending on the role that

gonna play more or less a different, very prominent piece. And that's more about the way people think rather than what they actually know in that moment. - I think the key of what you said just now is that it has always been like that. It's except that you can imagine the world as a crowded bus where those people who have a shopping bag under one armpit and the umbrella under the other, and they are somewhere in the middle, they wish there were turnover on the bus and people got on and off because they want to sit down.

And those people who get a good seat by the window, then they wish for the turnover to stop because now things are okay. And if you look at the world right now, China was the one that was the mover and shaker, let's change everything. But now China is getting that seat by the window. And now they are saying, well, maybe we can stabilize things right now and create a new status quo. Whereas on one hand, there is India and Indonesia and a couple of others who've said, no, no, no, we want to do the same thing as China.

And on the other hand, there is the United States and Europe who are basically kicked out of their seats. And now they are trying to get back in. Get back in, exactly. Exactly. So this is why it's so interesting because at the beginning, let's say a German expat or an American or Japanese expat in China, they were basically the evangelists of building a stable, mature society and industry. And China were the rebels, right?

And now a lot of European American executives, they say, I am coming to China to learn because there is technology, there are management systems, there are even social constructions that are worth learning about.

Because a lot of Europeans and Americans, they feel now our own society is in crisis. So we are trying to learn how to take them into the future. And which way it goes, nobody knows. I mean, in five years, will the Americans be considered the rebels and China the stable society? Or both of them are going to be basically dinosaurs and then India is going to come up? This is why it's so exciting. And also, this is why it's so scary. So like...

Always having at least part of your mindset saying, I'm coming here to learn is important. And once you forget that, then you're at risk of losing your seat on the bus. Yes, exactly. And also to spot when something is happening that is worth learning, like what is happening in the electric car industry today.

in China right now. A lot of international executives I know, even if they are not in that industry, they come here because they basically want to see what a futuristic technology in a futuristic environment looks like. Does it mean that they want to copy paste it and bring it back home in the same way? Absolutely not. Sometimes they come here and they want to look at how it works because in their minds, it's a negative example.

And then they want to learn about the dangers. What not to do. Exactly. How not to use it in their home markets. But sometimes they are hoping that their own societies go that way. EV is so interesting in that aspect because of what China has been doing as compared to other countries in the world. Even just in terms of EV manufacturers, the amount of competition here is remarkable.

astounding compared to even Europe or America. And plus you have the exports now, right? Biadi and NIO going out, Xiaopeng going out as well. It's pretty interesting how a lot of eyes are on China in terms of what EV is doing. Even Tesla obviously opening its gigafactory here and continuing expansion. And you know, one of the essential philosophical ideas of Chinese society is paradox.

contradiction, right? And then basically China does this wherever they go. They give us a little bit of contradiction and they try to make us solve it. So for example, if you look at Tesla in China, right? I remember one of the last keynote speeches I made in China before everything closed down was in Hangzhou about the future of business. And then

It was just announced that Tesla would build that gigantic factory in China. So everybody was wondering, wait a minute, why a Tesla factory in China? And why are they the first ones who are not forced to?

to start a joint venture with a state-owned company in China. And then on one hand, in a couple of years, Tesla becomes the highest selling local electric vehicle brand in China. So you know, it's like a foreign brand becomes the most, the biggest domestic brand. But it also started a competition between these Chinese companies and it upgraded the entire industry.

Fast forward into the future, you look at Hungary, which is rapidly becoming one of the centers of Chinese automotive manufacturing, because that's where many of the batteries are made for the future European market.

And many of my compatriots in Hungary, they are very excited about this. And business people, they are saying, ah, the future is selling Chinese electric car brands in Hungary. So they are reaching out and they are trying to make deals with Chinese electric vehicle companies to be the representative of that brand in the European market.

But then I try to tell them, listen, wait, wait, wait, wait. I understand you're so excited about this, but the Chinese business model is to start 20 companies in a given sector and then to start making them compete with each other. See who sticks. And three or four will eventually stay in the market. This is what they did domestically several times while I was here in 20 years. And this is what they do internationally. So just be aware that your company that you are starting up...

it has like a 60 or 70% chance of becoming... You're going to be thrown into the Thunderdome to battle it out. It will be the fodder for the eventual winner. And local Chinese citizens know that as well. Yes. I mean, just because EV, I've been recently looking at a lot of different EVs.

and doing my research in terms of local social media, reading Chinese articles and seeing what Chinese people are responding to and commenting on. And you hear a lot. I see this pattern of people being like, well, I don't know about this brand. They're just going to flop anyway in the next year or two. And some people are like, no, but they're backed by so-and-so. But that's the conversation because they know.

Somebody's going down. Right. Not all of them are going to be successful. No, most of them are going down. Yeah, exactly. Most of them are going to go down. There's a handful that seem to be the front runners right now. And everyone's, you know...

putting their bets on them, right? And a couple of new upstarts who look good, they have a great packaging, and they're like, oh no, they're not going to last. Well, that's kind of like how the US VC industry works too, right? Absolutely. It's like the same model, because cars are not cars anymore, they're just technology. Right, right, right. Well, we're going down a whole new, like with this whole EV thing, we've already opened up a whole new can of worms. Gabor, thank you so much for coming on the show.

I always have the greatest time when you're here. Where can people find your book, who want to get it? Basically, look for Dragon Suit on all the major online retail stores, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble. And of course, if you have my full name in the show notes, then it's very easy to find me online if you have questions about it. So I do reply to messages. You're on LinkedIn? I'm on LinkedIn. Yes, my favorite medium. Well...

That's it for today, folks. That was Gabor. I'm Justin. I'm Howie. I'm Eric. All right, guys. Be good. Be well. Peace.