Owner Of InterPersonal Development: Thomas Gelmi AKA The Interpersonal Boss – S3E16 (#112)

S3E16 Thomas Gelmi.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

All right, 3, 2, 1one. Welcome back to Boss Uncaged podcast. Today’s show, we have a special guest that I think is going to be very intriguing to you, the center, right. First of all, I want you guys, when you get an opportunity to take notes on this episode, and I want that feedback to be formatted in comments on our Facebook group. So at your earliest convenience, I want you to go to bossuncaged.com/fbgroup. Again, that’s bossuncaged.com/fbgroup. So today’s show, we have an individual that’s coming from Switzerland. I’ve deemed him the interpersonal boss. So without further Ado, Thomas, tell us a little bit more about who you are.

Well, first of all, let me thank you S.A for having me on your show. It’s a pleasure to be here. Yeah. Let me give you a brief introduction. I am 53 years old. I refer to it as level 53, which means I made it through all the previous levels, and here I am. And what I do is I get up in the morning and help leaders and organizations get better at what they do on an interpersonal and on a personal level, meaning be more effective with yourself and with others. I’ve been doing this for around about 20 years now. Before that, I used to fly around the world as a Metro de cabin, which means inflight manager, leading cabin crew. That was a very interesting time, very adventurous, but also learned a lot about human beings and what works and what doesn’t work. And before that, some colorful period of my career, some job hopping, and I earned my first money cutting people’s hair.

Nice. So you have a diverse plethora of different things. You’ve Dibble and dabbled. And I like the way you said it’s, 53. It’s almost like a video game. You’re on level 53, and you’re moving forward. So another thing that I thought I was really cool, like you’re watching one of your YouTube videos. You were talking about what gives you goosebumps. So do you want to talk about that for a little bit? How do you get goosebumps when you’re dealing with your particular customers?

Well, goosebumps is what I get when I’m, you know, with someone in a conversation, maybe already quite a bit into a process, like a one to one coaching process, for example. And then suddenly it clicks and somebody has a revelation and something becomes really clear from one moment to the other. And that opens doors into different behavior, into different approaches, into doing something differently that really makes a difference in somebody’s life. And very often we start from a business context with some leadership topics, communication, conflict management topics, et cetera. And then the benefit radiates way into private life. And families are affected by managers who improve their communication skills. And I’ve had wives of clients sending me emails and saying, I don’t know what you really did to my husband, but keep going. Things like that I even get goosebumps? Not what I’m talking about.

Nice. While you’re in that state of mind, you’re getting the goosebumps. Right. How would you define yourself if you could only use three to five words?

You mean describing me as a person?

Yeah, just three to five words. What would you use?

Empathetic, good listener, authentic and sensitive.

Interesting. So let’s talk about your journey a little bit. Right. Are you originally from Switzerland? Where were you born and raised?

I was born and raised here in Switzerland, but I’m the son of an Italian father and an Austrian mother. So I grew up between my father speaking Italian with me, my mother speaking German with me, and both of them in the background speaking English because they otherwise wouldn’t understand each other. So I grew up in this multi language context. That’s why I also work in four languages German, English, French, Italian. So, yeah, I always been here in Switzerland. That was always my hub from which I flew out into the world, working globally, with people, across industries, across cultures. It’s a good place to be based in. A bit expensive, but otherwise very good.

So on this journey, when did you realize obviously you talked about a couple of different career paths, that you’ve had Forks in the road? So when did you kind of realize that you were going to be in the space that you’re in currently?

Actually, I never realized this beforehand that I am going to be somewhere. It’s like Steve Jobs once said in one of his commencement speeches, you can only connect the dots in retrospect by looking back, understanding the connections and why things happened and what something was good for and beneficial for. But you have to live life forward into the unknown, into the dense fog, not seeing. So that’s also why I in retrospect, realize what the rep threat in my biography is, which looks like a little bit of zigzagging. But the rep threat is very clear. Even at the time where I cut people’s hair as a hairdresser for three years, what I was really doing was listening. I was listening to people’s stories and having deep conversations. And believe me, as a hairdresser, you get to know stories. Nobody else does. And so that was a red threat. It was always about people. It was always about having meaningful conversations with people that have an impact. So that would be my answer to your question. So it was always only in retrospect, very nice.

So with those experiences, right. I think you’ve had positive and probably negative experiences, and it seems kind of like you’re not a life coach, but you’re helping people with their lives to a certain extent. So what’s the worst experience you’ve had to deal with with a client that was probably maybe not where they wanted to be and you was helping them get to where they’re going to be.

The worst? You mean the worst? Well, there were many challenging situations I couldn’t really think of the worst one, but in many cases, it was like really being stuck in what looked like a dead end and then finding your way out of that. So I have people being close to resigning and saying, I’m done, I’m done with this, I can’t take it anymore and then ending up staying with the organization. I’m thinking of one particular case and then really thriving, but not because they changed position, they changed the company, they changed something in their environment, but because they changed something inside mindset, attitude, how you look at things, how you think about things, how you think about yourself, things like that. These are levers you can work with, you can adjust, you can regulate. So that by changing how you look at things, your reality changes. It doesn’t matter what you see. What matters is how you look at it. And that’s the personal competence part. When you go to my website, you see a circle chart that says that everywhere where people want to achieve something together, leadership, teamwork, customer relations. This interpersonal competence is, of course, a key, the ability to connect, to build rapport, relationship, trust, and also maintain them under difficult conditions. And the basis for this interpersonal competence is a well developed, solid personal competence, meaning being in a good relationship with yourself first and foremost. Wow.

So let’s say just listening to you and I can tell that you’re very passionate about this subject matter and you’re very engulfed and you’re really astute in that let’s say I came to you. Right. And what’s the first thing that you’re going to do? What’s your steps and procedures on boarding a new client like myself?

Well, first of all, I would ask you, what is it about what brings you to me? And then after I got to basic understanding of your situation and what brought me to have a conversation with me, my next question is what would you like to achieve? So what is your goal in the topic or the situation that you just described? Then I would explore with you this ideal future, this goal, what would it look like when you got there? How would you recognize that you achieved your goal? And we would explore this very vividly. And then only then we would start talking about okay, now that is clear where you want to end up. What would be the first step you could take in that direction? And much of this process is also about awareness. Creating awareness is the first step into any change. You need to know, you need to recognize, because only what we’re aware of, we can change, we can control. What we’re not aware of often controls us, influences us unknowingly, unconsciously. So that will be an initial thing to do.

I guess you’re pulling back from me, from your listening ability. So as a kid, were you always as Stute at listening as you are today?

Yeah, I would say I was more on the listening end than on the talkative end, more on the quiet, more on the reserved observing end rather than on the initiating stuff end and the Proactive extrovert end. Also, even if it might not come across as such, I’m quite an introvert person, quite a reserved person. And one definition of extraversion versus introversion is where you charge your batteries. And as a rather intrate person, I charge my batteries by having a loan time going out for long walks in the woods. That’s how I recharge. Or after a full day like today, I had a full day communication workshop with a leadership team of twelve people. Very extrovert behavior for my side, which is a part of me, but not my main tendency. But after a day like this, I need to rest. And I certainly don’t invite guests coming over for dinner or something like that. And somebody who was more on the extrovert side of the spectrum would charge their batteries by going out, by having parties, by inviting people over. So that’s one indication or criteria.

I think that’s one hell of an analogy to compare about the way you recharge your batteries is by taking that alone time. So in that space. Right. You’re saying that you have to kind of hit the switch. Right. So when you hit the switch, you’re using up the battery to exert that information and exert that to your listening audience. And then to recharge, you kind of go into a quiet place. That’s definitely interesting. So my next question is we always hear about the 20 years that it takes someone to become a success story, but the perception is usually an overnight success. How long did it take you to get to where you are currently?

Well, 53 years. All the 53 years, because everything that happened in my life, everything I did, everything I didn’t do, how I responded to what was happening, all my decisions, every single decision, end of the day, let up to where I am today. So a few things went south from that perspective. In the moment, for example, that turned out to be jumping boards that brought me forward. And we’re actually lucky strikes in retrospect, probably the most impressive example was when I used to work for Swiss Air, the former Swiss National airline. I was really happy. I found like, wow, this is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. And then in 2001, about a month after 911, the whole fleet was grounded because the company went out of money, bankrupt, no more liquidity. And it was like a punch in the face. It’s almost like when you’re so identified with your job, with what you’re doing, it’s not a job, it’s a purpose. It’s a way of living. Right. And then from one day to another, it’s over. It’s like losing a loved one. It’s like a relationship breaking up. So really tough. It was a national disaster. It was in all the newspapers, people were crying, really bad situation. But in retrospect I must say if it wasn’t for the grounding of Swiss there I don’t know if I would be where I am today. I might even be a flight attendant or a Metro. The cabin. In an industry that has massively changed ever since and not necessarily for the better, you never know what something is good for. It may look like it’s very negative and it’s a misfortune or even a failure only to find out one year later, two years, few years later maybe wow, that was exactly the right thing to happen because it got me where I am now. So a little bit of trust helps, a little bit of trust and things will turn out well. Look at us. Everybody who’s here, everybody who’s listening. Everybody’s. Life is a success story. We’ve all made it this far. We’ve all made it up to this point. We made it ups and downs of course, but we made it so there is a likelihood that we will also be able to make it in the future no matter what we will be presented with.

On the topic of retrospect, right. If you could time travel back in time, is there one thing that you would want to do differently if you could do it all over again?

Not a single thing. If I may rephrase the question slightly, what would be the advice I would give to my 20 year old? If I would be able to meet my 20 year old myself, the one advice I would give him would be relax and enjoy. It’s all going to turn out well. Relax.

I think that will definitely help with discharging the batteries, right?

Oh yeah, a lot. Because that’s where I am today. One of the major internal shifts I had in my life was the moment I decided to experiment with completely letting go of any attempt to control life, control life and direct my own life and to let go and say okay, life, let’s see what happens if I let you let you do and I go with the flow rather than going against it. This doesn’t mean I completely resign. I give up, but it means that I don’t resist. For example, things that I cannot change or control because often we’re stuck in resistance against things that if we just think about it for 1 minute we realize that it’s nothing I can change, it’s nothing I can control. It is what it is. So being in resistance against something like that, it’s raining outside for example of course a very simple example now but there’s no use. It’s a waste of time and energy in resisting or being frustrated or angry about something that is not changeable and to completely let go of that and focusing only on what you can directly influence and control. Very.

Interesting. I would think if anyone would take heed to what you’re saying. I mean, time traveling and being able to tell yourself to relax would definitely be more beneficial in the long run. By far, I think we don’t learn that until much later in our natural lives, Unfortunately, yes. Question for you. You obviously have an entrepreneurial side to you. You have entrepreneurial vision and insight. Does that come from an entrepreneurial background, like a family member or aunt or an uncle?

Not at all. Not at all. Contra, I can’t think of anyone in my family that ran their own business. Okay. My grandparents had a hotel. Yes. Okay. But I rather got the message when I was younger. When I was brought up, I rather got the message, find a safe job. Best find a job in a bank because we’re here in Switzerland. It’s a financial center. Right. So go to banking and finance, and you’re good. And I would probably never have started my own business had I not been laid off. At some point after the grounding of Swiss Air, I joined a consulting company because I wanted to do something completely different. And I started as the assistant to the CEO. And then during the following eight years, I developed into more or less what I’m doing today. Did some further education, training, et cetera, et cetera. Then after eight years, they decided that they want to end the collaboration, which again, it felt like a failure. But again, in retrospect, this was the entry door into my independence into starting my own business. So I was, like, pushed out of my comfort zone, and then I had to, which was again the best thing that could happen to me. Now I see things differently when it comes to being a business owner, running your own business. I personally think that I’m in a much safer position today of running my own company as opposed to being employed, because if you’re employed, you’re either on or off. You’re on the payroll or you’re off. I have a portfolio of clients. If one client decides to work with someone else, fine. I have many other clients. So my risk, so to speak. My entrepreneurial risk is much more diversified. It stands on various pillars. So that’s why I don’t see it as such a risky thing to be an entrepreneur. As, for example, my father would see it, who always wanted to see me in the bank. Yeah.

Now that you brought up your dad. Right. Family, to a certain extent, as entrepreneur, that’s always, like, a difficult task to juggle. So how are you currently managing your work life with your family life?

Oh, well, it takes a conscious decision to invest in enough time and take enough time and also presence, for example, with your children. Worst case that can happen is that you’re not able to be present in the moment with your full attention, but rather, like spread all over the place. Meaning, for example, you’re on the weekend with your kids, but you’re just physically present in your mind in last week’s meetings or you’re already mentally in Monday’s meeting that you, by the way, still have to prepare. So you’re not really there. And the key is to really make this conscious decision to be in your role as an entrepreneur or as a manager or whatever. Your role is to be fully in the role, but then also be fully out of the role. Jobs where you wear a uniform have an advantage in this regard. So you put on your own uniform and now you’re the policeman or now you’re the nurse or the doctor or whatever it is. This helps for this mental step into the role, but then also for the mental step out of the role. You take off your form, you put it in your locker, you close it, and then you’re a private person. This helps if you’re not wearing a uniform for work. It takes a mental step to do it. And it’s also a matter of mindfulness, mindfulness describing this ability to be present fully in the here and now and only in the here and now with what’s right in front of you. And if it’s your child in front of you, then you’re with your child and being present. I think this is crucial.

Wow. So correct me if I’m wrong, but just hearing you speak and I think you’re a really big believer of state of mind mindset, personal inner philosophies. So with that, I would think that you pretty much have a pretty astute Regiment to your daily routine. What is your morning routine? Your morning habits look like?

I love the question. Well, I get up usually somewhere between five and 06:00 A.m., so I’m an early bird and I usually make myself a cup of coffee and then drink the coffee and look out the window. And I try to really just look out the window. I have a very nice. Yeah, have your coffee. It’s a bit late for me here. I’ll probably take a beer. Have a beer after our conversation. And so I just look out the window and just get a feeling for the day, the weather. What atmosphere do we have today? And then when I’m done with my coffee, I sit, meaning I sit down, have a meditation bench. So it’s like a kneeling position, not the Lotus. I would break my bones still looking out the window. And I sit for 15 to 20 minutes. Some would say I meditate, but today I only sit. And let me explain to you why I say this. I began looking into mindfulness, meditation practice, et cetera, in my early 20. So that was 30 years ago. And over the last 30 years, I experimented with many different techniques, methods. I was always interested in this. And it was also, to some extent, an on off relationship. Sometimes I spent half a year not doing anything. And then I took it on again and got into it again. Even though I always thought I’m quite good in meditation, it works. Well, it was only just a few years ago where I experienced another shift forward in the depth and quality of my meditation. And it’s a bit similar. Like what I mentioned earlier, the shift was caused by my decision to even let go of the intention to meditate. That’s why I say I don’t even meditate. I even let go of this intention to meditate. I just sit, which deepens the meditation, the quality of being in the here and now with whatever is whatever may come up in your mind, whatever emotional movement you experience, you just sit and be right. And then I get up, take a shower and start my day. And it puts me in a state of inner calmness, no matter what the day will be, the day when I’m going to be served by the day and by my daily business and by life and whatever is going to be what is going to be. But how I respond to it is different if I take this time in the morning and start the day in a more conscious way, rather than having a cold start and maybe already being late and being stressed out already at a. M. So that’s my morning routine.

Well, with that, it just sounds like on your life journey you’ve had a lot of opportunities to either absorb from coaches or absorb from books. So my next question is a three part question. What book did you read to help you get to where you are? What books are you reading right now? And they can be audio books. And have you had an opportunity to write any books as of yet?

Okay, good. So first question, books that help me great deal along the way. Number one, probably “The Power of now” by Eckhart Tolle. Do you know him?

I know of him, yes.

So he’s a German author that now lives in Vancouver, Canada, and The Power of now is the world best seller. In this book, he basically talks about what I just described, disability to be mindfully present. He calls it presence. Great book. Highly recommend it if you want to dig into mindfulness, that’s certainly one. And another key book for me was by Jack Kornfield. And the title of the book is “The Wise Heart”, which to some extent is about the same thing about living a mindful life. He just takes it from a slightly different perspective. Cornfield is American. He’s a psychologist, and he spent ten years in a Thailand forest Buddhist forest monastery and was one of the people, one of the Westerners who brought Buddhist philosophy into the Western world. And he’s running the Spirit Rock Center in California. So I would say these two books are really two heavyweights. That helped me a great deal. And then I have also read multiple times. Currently, I’m not reading that much currently because I am currently, especially since the pandemic hit us in a very, very strong delivery mode and more in the output mode than the input mode. Right. And I have written a book and coauthored another one. So the book I wrote has the title “Breakthrough What You Can Learn about Teamwork, Leadership and Customer Interaction from Cabin Crew.”

Wow.

And I used the analogy or the metaphor of cabin crew working in a plane as a red threat throughout the book to convey some of the key methods, mindsets, approaches that I have learned to be effective in leadership, in teamwork, in customer relationships came out in 2017 in German, and then in 2019, the English version came out and it’s available on Amazon and all the common book stores.

Yeah. I look forward to adding those to our Boss Uncaged Book club. And that’s the reason why I always ask that question, because everyone’s background are so uniquely different. For you to kind of go for mindfulness, I would think that it goes to show kind of like where you’re astute and what you’re utilizing in your business today. So I think those books are definitely fruitful books to add to that book club. So I think you brought up something about Buddhism and one of those books, philosophy. So time framing. Right. Thinking about today versus 20 years from now, where do you see yourself in the next 20 years?

That’s a great question. I don’t necessarily see myself in terms of a concrete goal that I want to achieve. Never been like that. I was never someone who set a goal and said, okay, this is my goal. Now I’m here. This is the straight line that will get me there never worked for me. I was rather always the one step after the other, and then we’ll see where we end up person. Right. More of a trial and error approach. And I’m still in this mode. Even though I can say I’m very successful in what I do, I’m enjoying it a lot. I make a good living with what I do, but I never planned to get here. I got here by always making the next step and then take it from there. And this is also how I will continue. I am not going about neither my life nor my professional journey in a very strategic or target oriented way. What I do is I try to be the best possible version of myself any given day and do the next step and see how things shift and change and evolve, and then take the next step from there and then take the next step from there. Because I think that’s the only thing you can do anyway. Right. I’m not really a religious person, but there’s a great joke, I think, that says, how do you make God laugh? Tell them about your plans. Him or her. Yeah. Tell them about your plans. Because make plans if you like sure. Go ahead and make plans. It’s okay. It’s not wrong. But be prepared that things may turn out differently. So that’s what I meant earlier when I said, yeah, I go with the flow. I tried to go with the flow. It’s a bit like the quality of water, if you like. Water flows very consistently, always towards the same outcome. Right. It ends up in some ocean at some point. Right. But how to get there today, we would say very agile. It’s very agile. Okay. There’s a tree in the middle. No worries. I flow around it. I don’t say get out of my way. So that’s the kind of nature of my approach and how I go about that’s. Why to come back to your answer, where do I see myself in 20 years from now? I hope I will be in an even more relaxed and calm state, enjoying every day of my life as long as I can and ideally contributing to other people’s lives. That’s, of course, if we can use the term goal, that’s my goal. To express who I am with my essence, be as authentic as I can, and by doing so, contribute to something bigger.

I think you brought up a very key term, and then you use agile. Right. So being in the agile state of mind or being lean, you must have systems in place and part of those systems. My next question is what software are you using to manage or to remain lean and to stay agile within your workflow?

You literally mean software.

Yeah, literally means software.

Apps. okay, well, I just use the regular email clients. I’m not going to mention any brands here. I’m using a Web based accounting platform for all my bookkeeping and numbers and invoices, etc. It’s like almost fully outsourced and automatic, which helps me to really focus on my core business. I have outsourced even the appointments making with my clients to my clients. So they all have a link where they can access my calendar and they can book slots directly in my calendar. So this is also something where I use technology to make life easier for me. Yeah, that’s about it. That’s about it.

So going into final words of wisdom, and I think obviously you dropped a lot of different insightful information in this particular conversation. But going back to your time travel reference of going back to your 20 year old self and giving that individual person words of advice. So let’s say I’m a 20 year old person, I’m listening to this podcast and you’re talking to me. What words of wisdom would you give to me for me to continue on my entrepreneurial journey?

I would say get to know yourself really well. Get to know yourself in terms of find out what’s really important for you, what are your core values? What do you think the world is lacking? That’s a pointer that can be a very important pointer towards your core values. And also your talents. Right. Because our wishes and our intentions and visions are forerunners or pointers towards our talents. What we’re good at that’s, by the way, a quote by Good poet. Good. So get to know yourself. Get to know what makes you unique. When it comes to personality traits, there’s various personality profiles you can take online, take a few different ones. What does that tell me? Do I recognize myself in what I read here? Okay. Now, if I have this personality trait or characteristics, what does that mean for me in dealing with others? What are my talents, what I’m really good at and better than others, maybe. And what am I really passionate about? And then what might be good ways of living these talents and contributing to something with these talents? Many. They just look for job opportunities out there so they’re outward focused. Where can I find a job? Where do they have an opening, an open position? And then, okay, there is one I’m going to apply. I hope they will take me and then you end up in a position. And maybe it’s not really the real thing, but okay, now I got here and now this is what I do. And I often get people in their mid 30s, 40s coming to me saying, hey, I need to talk. I don’t know if what I’m doing is really the right thing. So to avoid this, go inwards first. Don’t necessarily go looking what is possible, but what do I need? What do I want? And how do I see myself in 20 years? But not in terms of precise position or function or activity, but rather who do I want to be as a person? What quality do I want in my life? Wow.

So being that I’ve deemed you the interpersonal boss, how can someone find you? What is your social media profiles, your website address? How can they get in contact with you?

Yeah, well, first of all, use my name Thomas Gelmi, by the way. It’s Gelmy. Like gelato because it’s Italian, as I mentioned, right? Yeah. You find me on LinkedIn. I’m very active on LinkedIn. You’ll find a very recurrently, regularly updated LinkedIn feed with a lot of leadership topics from various third party sources. Visit my website. It’s thomasgelmi.com one word. You’ll find more information there. I’m on Instagram, I’m on Facebook. Yeah. If you want to find me, you’ll find me and just reach out.

I got a couple of bonus questions for you. What is your most significant achievement to date outside of your family?

Well, that I was able to build this business and find a way to contribute to other people’s lives and professional lives and organizations. That was certainly my biggest achievements outside the family.

Another one for you. This is like one of my favorite questions that I like to ask. And I know that the answer from everyone that I ask is going to be uniquely different because your stories are uniquely different. If you could spend 24 hours with anyone, dead or alive, uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be and why?

It would probably be? I have three people in mind. Can I also say three?

No, just start with the primary and then we’ll go to the second.

, with Jack Kornfield and Barack Obama.

And what’s your why?

Well, the why for the first two, you know, mentioned the books and how they had an influence and impact in my life. And Barack Obama, because I just think he’s a very impressive personality. I love listening to him and I would really love to get to know him. On a more personal note, I think he did a lot of great things. He changed a lot, had a lot of influence. Of course, he’s a controversial person, like any person in this position. Of course you like him or you don’t like him, but that would definitely be someone I would love to spend 24 hours with.

Going into closing of the podcast, obviously, we had a lot of different topics. We had conversations that went into different areas. And on the journey, maybe you’ve had some questions you want to ask me. So I always give whoever I’m interviewing the opportunity to grab the microphone and to ask the host any questions that may have arrived.

My question to you would be what is your best hope for the coming years for you personally, but maybe also in general.

So for me, my journey obviously started back in early 2000, kind of becoming who I am right now, but I really didn’t come to the dawn of who I am today until I had a stroke in 2018. And that kind of was my awakening moment to create the platform that you and I have in the conversation on right now. So my goal for the future is to grow this platform as large as I possibly can on an international level, which I’m very thankful that you’re all the way in Switzerland and we had an opportunity in two separate sides of the world to collaborate. Right. So part of that is me leaving breadcrumbs for entrepreneurs to find their way and also leaving breadcrumbs for my family members to have opportunity to hear my voice once I’m dead and gone.

Wonderful. Yeah. That’s really beautiful and wonderful purpose you’re following there. So good luck with that. And you’re well on your way. It’s obvious.

Well, I definitely appreciate you taking time out to busy schedule and I think overseas is like probably 8 hours ahead from where we are right now on the East Coast. Yeah. You’re definitely going into the night hours at this point. So I definitely appreciate you coming on the show. I think you gave a lot of value. I want my listeners to kind of definitely. This is an episode that you should rewind and take these pieces of these Golden Nuggets that Thomas has delivered and hold heed to them. And take actions on them.

Thank you very much for having me. It’s been a great pleasure having this inspiring conversation with you. Thanks for all the good questions.

Great S.A, Grant over and out.