In our first episode for 2025, we delve into the essential aspects of maintaining mental and physical strength as a leader. Join Watermark’s Chris Grant, Partner in our Health and Human Services practices and guest speaker, Peter Dijkema. Peter is a separation coach and a seasoned leadership and executive coach with decades of experience across diverse settings, cultures and countries. As an ICF-certified coach and a Thrive-accredited practitioner, Peter brings a unique perspective to the intersection of personal and professional growth.
The episode starts with Peter’s top three takeaways to stay mentally strong and then we explore the significant link between job satisfaction and overall health, discussing how both enjoying your work and engaging in meaningful work can positively impact both your physical and mental wellbeing. Our guest also opens up about his personal fitness routine and the best advice he’s received for staying fit and healthy.
The conversation then moves to the role of mateship and relationships in wellbeing and how this contributes to you being a leader as well as key advice for executives on what to focus on for sustained wellbeing and longevity.
To wrap up, Peter shares his motivational mottos and discusses the importance of mental and physical wellbeing, meaningful work, strong relationships, and continuous personal growth for leadership agility. Peter also suggests some great podcasts and books to further your thinking and action on this topic.
If you are a leader looking to build resilience and foster a healthy relationship with yourself and those around you, you will take a lot away from this episode!
Listen to gain insights and advice for current and future leaders.
You can also find the podcast on several different apps, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Breaker, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, and RadioPublic. Click here to listen & subscribe on your favourite app or read the transcript below.
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Successful and Healthy Leaders: The Intersection of Wellbeing and Agility
Agile Leadership Lessons, Episode 10, transcript:
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
Welcome to the Watermark Search International Agile Leadership Lessons podcast. My name is Chris Grant and I'll be your host today. I'm a Partner in our Health and Human Services practice and if this is your first time, thank you for joining us. The Watermark team is made up of dedicated Partners who have a long expertise in Board, Executive and Interim Executive appointments.
Our podcast invites highly regarded leaders in to share their knowledge and expertise of agile leadership spanning public, private and not for profit settings. We ask them how they navigate different leadership challenges and their key lessons. So today, with us is Peter Dijkema, dialling in from Melbourne, Australia, not long back from Europe and about to head off to Sydney.
Peter is not only known as the separation coach, helping men navigate the often challenging journey of separation, but he's also a seasoned leadership and executive coach with decades of experience across diverse settings, cultures, and countries. As an ICF certified coach and a Thrive accredited practitioner, Peter brings a unique perspective to the intersection of personal and professional growth and today we'll be diving into a critical aspect of his expertise, which is the mental health of male leaders.
Peter understands the pressures leaders face in balancing demanding professional roles with personal challenges and he's here to share some valuable lessons on how leaders, particularly men, can maintain their mental wellbeing, lead with authenticity and find strength through vulnerability. So if you're a leader looking to build resilience and foster a healthy relationship with yourself and those around you, you're going to take away so much from today's conversation.
Peter, again, welcome to the podcast. It's such a pleasure to have you here.
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
Thanks, Chris. It's a pleasure to be on the podcast and thank you for having me here.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
Now, I think this is a podcast we were initially aiming to do in Movember as part of a men's health series, but due to time constraints, it couldn't happen. However, I think the timing is just as good. People still possibly contemplating or struggling with New Year's resolutions and how to get themselves in better physical and mental shape for the year ahead. With that in mind, I might kick off.
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
Yeah, great.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
As a leadership coach, what would you say are the three key takeaways for men to stay mentally strong?
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
It's a good question. A lot of leaders, they don't even think about mental health and physical health as a part of their performance in their leadership role. But I think it's imperative to have a good look at your mental health and your physical health. When you own a car, you get it serviced every so often. If something is wrong, you get it looked at. But often men don't do that with their own mental health and their physical health either. Physical health a little bit more than mental health. There's still a stigma on mental health issues which I think over the last probably 10 years has changed quite a bit and that's good, obviously. But there's still a long way to go.
But I think it's very important for leaders to embrace vulnerability and make sure that if they lead from a place of vulnerability, then their staff sees that as well. And they probably are more likely to come to them if they struggle with something instead of trying to work it out themselves and being afraid to show that they might not know something. So I think that's imperative from a place of agile leadership. And then also make sure that you focus on the things that you can control and not the things that you might struggle with but can't control. Just focus on things you can control. And then another thing is obviously emotional resilience. Throughout COVID a lot of people, resilience was really a buzzword in a sense, but I think it's really important for leaders to be emotionally resilient as well. And if you can make sure that when things don't go the way you have planned it, that you can stay on course and can manage your emotions instead of getting angry at staff because they haven't done things the way you expected them. But it's also important for leaders to understand that their staff might not behave the same way and think the same way as they do. And that's one thing that I've learned over the years that if you can be a little bit more empathetic and compassionate, that will get a lot more out of yourself as well.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
Yeah, perfect. Thank you. So show vulnerability, number one. Two, focus on things that you can control and three, demonstrate emotional resilience.
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
Yep.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
I think the emotional resilience one is, as you say, particularly pertinent post COVID. I know that having struggled with that early part of COVID myself, trying to manage a team, trying to homeschool, balancing or spinning a lot of plates as it were, it was really helpful for me to also understand the motivations of my staff. And at a point in time, someone pointed me to an assessment tool, relatively cheap, called Clifton Strengths Assessment. And I did it and my staff did it. And it really helped me to understand their perspectives and where they were coming from and how to land messaging with them. So no definitely take your point around emotional resilience.
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
Yeah. And with your emotional resilience as well, if you can understand what triggers you as a leader, then when you feel that trigger coming up, you can actually be just that step ahead of your trigger and not respond or react in a way that you might not want to do. And then say, okay, now it's like when we've got kids. So when they get angry, just, count to ten. It's almost like that, but then in a millisecond, in a sense. So I think that's really important to do as well.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
And taking time out for yourself, not necessarily feeling like you have to have all of the answers right then and there, is also something that's, I think, of note. So that's a good segue, in fact, to our second question. As I'm keen to understand your thoughts on the link between job enjoyment and mental health. So what role does your job and your enjoyment of it play in reference to your physical and mental health?
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
Most people know that if you enjoy a job, then life gets a lot easier for everyone. Because the best job is a job that you don't see as a job. You just go to work and you have fun and then come home. That's not the case for everyone. Some people, they work to live. They try to make the best of the job they've got. And that's fine. Some people, they love their job that much that it's their life. Sometimes that's good. Sometimes that goes over the top as well. But I think it's really important to make sure that while you're at work, you actually enjoy it and don't see it as a chore in a sense, because it's important to have that connection with other people around you as well. I've worked in a very large IT company in the nineties, and people just rocked up there to collect a paycheck. They didn't care about what was going on around them. To the point that one guy had been there for 30 years working in a basement. And I said, oh, what do you do? He said, ah, I'm just sitting here. Was almost like, George Costanza in Seinfeld. And he said I'm retiring in two years. And I don't have anything to do, but I'm just sitting it out. I couldn't do that.
I've had a chat to a company I worked with, did some work with a while ago. And they said, oh, why don't you come and work for us? I said, oh no, I don't want to work for someone else. I just want to have the flexibility and I want to work with people one on one. The job that they offered was a lot more money, but it's not what I want to do. So I think it's really important to make sure that you love what you do. I had a business coach probably 15 years ago, and I was running an IT company and I said, I've had enough of this and he helped me actually see how I could get the most out of the job that I had, in a sense, the company that I was running. And I could reframe how I was helping people. And that was something that really resonated with me, that changed the course of my career as well, in a sense.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
Totally appreciate that. Having been in the same boat not so long ago, I remember an often quoted phrase, and I'm probably not going to get this right, was, you do a job that you love and you won't work a day in your life.
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
Yeah.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
But I think there's something to be said about doing a job that you like, but also having the ecosystem around you, the setup, the types of people that you derive energy from, right? Because if you get sucked into an organisation where there's a lot of people struggling with the enjoyment of the job, or they're not being managed right, or being micromanaged, or what have you, I think that takes away from the actual job itself. And so you're not able to focus as much energy on doing that job that you love. And it doesn't necessarily have to be, you don't always have to love what you're doing 100 percent of the time. I'm sure every one of us goes through periods where, you're struggling with some part of the job or another, and you've got to refresh yourself outside of work as well, correct?
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
Yeah that's right. And I've got kids and I love my kids a hundred percent of the time, but I don't like them a hundred percent of the time.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
Very good. Again, it could be a good segue to discuss the people that are struggling with their enjoyment of their current role. What alternatives are there to balance the physical and mental scales? And do you think purposeful work outside of your actual job can help? Whether that's through volunteering or could be helping a neighbour or getting involved in a local men's shed.
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
Yeah. Now what I've always done is I've had a lot of hobbies and they were generally linked to sports. So I've always enjoyed for example, coaching soccer. I call it football. Like you said, I just got back from Europe and if you say soccer, they have no idea what you're talking about. I've always enjoyed that and I think that can give a lot of energy to people as well. So if I was running and let's say I coached kids that were four to seven years old. There's nothing more grateful than to coach them because they suck all the knowledge that you give them up and they use it, they want to learn. And that gave me a lot of energy. And I think that helped me when in my business, things were going a little bit, were a little bit harder, that helped me create that energy outside of my job as well. Yeah, it gave me fulfillment in a sense.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
Yeah, fantastic. I think this year is the first year that I've volunteered to be team manager of my kid’s basketball team. And it's certainly been challenging to balance the scales at times, particularly at the beginning of the season, but very enjoyable. And on a different note outside of sport, a neighbour, this was during COVID, inspired me, and he still continues to do it to this day. He mows both sides of our very long street. We've got a lot of elderly neighbours and a lot of them were paying quite a bit of money for a small strip, small nature strip to be mowed. And he just took it upon himself to mow everyone's nature strip all down the street, both sides. He inspired me to then look at what else I could be doing around the neighbourhood to help out with some of those elderly people. Now I help a neighbour take his bins out. Very small, very small thing to do, but take his bins out and back. And occasionally we share a beer together and it's a very enjoyable evening. But yeah, it's just one of those things that you get enjoyment out of. And that sort of fills my cup on those days that I'm doing that very small thing, I drop his bins back at the same time I'm doing mine so it's really no inconvenience to me.
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
Yeah. With that as well, other things like being involved in sporting clubs or in the community always helps. Basically, generating energy for yourself. I think most people, when they help someone, they get energy out of that as well.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
Yeah, absolutely. Talking about energy, you're a physically fit guy. What do you do to personally stay fit and healthy? And what's the best advice, potentially you could give me, but also others about remaining physically and mentally strong?
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
I think physical health and mental health have been proven to be linked. So if you keep physically active it actually helps your mental health as well.
And especially if you're under stress, then often a great way to de-stress is to be active and it can be anything. It can be, you can just go for a walk around the river or jump on your push bike. I personally I play futsal every Monday night. When I'm really stressed, and I had an example when I was really stressed, I had a lot of things going on in my life. I parked the car at the futsal court, I got back in the car, and I thought, ah, that was great. Everything that, all the stresses were forgotten during that time, and it was almost like meditating in a sense. I didn't realise too much about what happened in between, but I knew that it basically filled my cup again in a sense and just let flow away all the stress that had been on me and it basically helped me to get ready for the week again. I do those things. I go to the gym as well. I try to go twice a week, which doesn't always work. Last, probably last month, because I've been away in Europe, it hasn't happened at all. I went to the gym yesterday and I could feel it straight away. But I think being fit and physically active is really important.
But also other things like with mental health, meditating, I think works really well and helps you de-stress and just clear your mind. And it has been proven as well that meditation helps you gather your thoughts without thinking about it. Then another thing that I do as well is a lot of people, they struggle to get out of their comfort zone. So what I do is I actually take daily cold showers. It's not something that I enjoy thoroughly, but that's because I want to get out of my comfort zone. And yeah so that really works. And sometimes I think, ah, no, I'm not going to do this. But then I think, no, I need to get out of my comfort zone. So I just put the cold water on, hot water off and stand in the cold shower for one to two minutes. That has also a health benefit and that basically your body works on the brown fat that you have in your body, and it gets rid of it very slowly. In the end, it will help your immune system as well.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
Yeah, it's a pretty pertinent point. I've only recently started turning the shower down. I wish it was one to two minutes, but it's probably a lot less than that at the moment, Peter, and I haven't always seen eye to eye with a gym. I think on one occasion I was mentioning to someone how much ferrying around of the kids I did to various different trainings. I think between my kids, I've got six different basketball teams. Most of the weekend, Fridays, Thursdays, every night of the week, virtually taken up with some sort of training. And another father that was there said why are you just sitting around? This is the opportunity for you to move your body as well. He was dropping the kids off and then going for a run just locally, and then just come, he'd come back at the end of the run, pick up his son and then leave. And I thought, okay yeah, why am I not doing that? So I've tended to take walks now during those times where I can and potentially might revisit the gym. I'm still scarred by the time I joined a gym. Paid for it up front for the year and never set foot back in the place again. But this year I'm hoping to do better. It's only the 7th of January. So let's wait and see. Talking about that and people that you're interacting with. Mateship or relationships in general. You obviously, you coach, you talk about coaching in general in futsal and soccer, but I believe you also coach people through separation. Can you talk to the role friendships and relationships in general have and how they play into wellbeing?
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
Getting back to physical activities, one of the things that I think especially for men is important is to feel that they belong to a community, a group, or, and it can be a small group of people. With activity, you can also just walk, go for a walk, and in the past, during COVID, that happened a lot, and then everybody spread their wings again.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
That's right. You and I used to go for a walk in COVID.
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
Exactly. But they are great moments to just to slow down a bit and talk about what is really going on for yourself. Yeah, see that a person can just listen. They don't have to give you advice. I think that is the really key part of it, that if you can just listen and not necessarily give advice then for most people that's more than enough. Most people, they just want to be listened to. Women are generally really good at it. They gather in groups and go to a book club. Don't read a book, but have chats for two hours or three hours. It's more natural, generally, for women. And it's a generalisation, but I think that if you look around you, you will see the same. So what I've done recently is set up monthly dinners with a group of guys just to socialise. Initially, the guys didn't know each other. I knew all the guys, but they didn't know each other. And that has really worked well, I think. And it's for some guys, it is a way to, if they don't feel great, they can talk about the things that are on their mind and other guys just listen. I think that's really important. In my coaching, that's what I do in a sense as well. I listen to people, help them see things from different perspectives and ask them sometimes questions that might be challenging and challenging their thought patterns. Yeah, reframe the way they see situations as well, because I think that's really important. If people are struggling with their mental health, for example, then everything might be doom and gloom. Yeah, if you can help them see the light as well. That's really important as well, I think.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
The monthly dinners, great way also of creating new connections, relationships, potentially some good friends as well. I was only actually talking about this through the break, how difficult it is later in life to break into new friendship groups. Because they're almost always locked down and or cultivated in early parts of school, university and those types of things. To have a group come together once a month where you can talk, if you feel like it, have your views listened to, if you like, maybe some mutual understanding there, some people that have travelled much the same journey or going through much the same types of things, that would be hugely beneficial, I would imagine to mental wellbeing.
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
Yeah. And for coach leaders who they said, ah, everything is going fine on the business side, but I need some support in my personal life. And some went from where I did leadership coaching with them to separation coaching because they were in a separation, they struggled with it or they had separated a couple of years before, but they struggled with it. And some people say, ah, is that life coaching? I said it doesn't really matter what you do, if it's leadership coaching, executive coaching. It's in a sense all personal coaching, isn't it, or life coaching? Because a leader has a life, an executive has a life and you don't, you aren't able to separate that from their role as a leader. If a leader is struggling in a personal life, they're going to struggle as a leader as well in the end, I think. So, if they can improve their personal life, they can improve their leadership as well.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
Yeah, really interesting. Obviously, as a leader, you might have answers having a huge amount of context and working experience in a particular area. But when it comes to things like separations, you don't actually understand it or, have, working knowledge of it until you're going through it. That would be hugely beneficial too, Peter, no doubt. Really interestingly, a lot of people are dealing with things either for the first time, either if it's a separation or even retirement. We talk about retirement in a world where retirement ages are extending now. We're all living longer. There was a number of articles over the past couple of months about longevity. It seems to be a fairly hot topic at the moment. But what are the key things that you would suggest are the most important for male executives to focus on as we live and work longer? I know a lot of people that I've spoken to have decided at a certain point in their life that they want to pursue portfolio careers or they don't want to give up work, but they want to drop back to four days a week or three days a week. So I'm seeing that happen more so than any other point in my career, and it's a real trend. What are some of the things that you would suggest that are important for people to focus on?
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
Now, for example, I think it's really important for people to focus on what the longevity in their current role is. Are they going to be in this particular role for the next 10 years, two years, five years whatever it is and plan for after that role as well. What I like about a portfolio career is that you can do certain things that you're really good at but might want to scale down on. And at the same time, you can build up other roles that you might really enjoy. Or if you've got a really well paying job, you might say, I'm just going to try to work in this role for three days a week and the other two days, I'm going to do something that I really love, for example. And if you have found something that you really love, you, like you said before, you're not going to work a day in your life. So then you probably don't want to retire either. So there are people that have these big plans, when I'm 65, I'm going to retire and I'm going to travel the world. I think you should do those things while you're working and you can't just generally take out six months, but if you can take out a month to travel, because you never know what happens after you retire in a sense.
Especially for men, often when they retire they have no clue what to do. They get bored, and I don't know exactly what the statistics are, but I've seen a lot of men dying within probably five to seven years after they've retired. Because they didn't have a purpose anymore. And if you can find that purpose while you're working and keep on doing things that you love. And even if it's two days a week, that will be fantastic. I think because then you keep active, you keep your brain active. If you've got a wife or a partner, then you're not going to annoy them by being bored and annoying them.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
I think I might be working for a long time yet then, especially since I've got no golf game and don't look flattering in a pair of bike shorts, I've been told by my wife. So maybe tennis and/or working is more my path. Any mottos or phrases that resonate?
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
Mottos? Yeah, I think it's really important for a leader, but I think everyone is a leader. So you lead yourself all the time. So I think for any leader, it's really important to be curious and try to have a beginner's mindset with everything. I've fallen into the trap myself, that I as a soccer coach, that I thought I knew everything and at some stage something happened during a game and I said, that's offside. And somebody said, no, that's not. And somebody came with a little booklet and showed me that it wasn’t offside. And I had been playing soccer for 45 years at that stage. And I thought, okay, I had to be humble and say, okay, I didn't know that. So that led me to think, okay, now I don't know everything about this game. I want to know more about it. So I started a referee course to work out what all the rules were. Since then, I’ve refereed a couple of years. So curiosity can be really beneficial in developing yourself as well. But I think it's also important to be curious about other people. And when something doesn't work the way you think it should work, be curious how they got to it instead of telling them how they need to do it.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
That's really interesting.
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
Yeah. So that's one thing and then I think you also should always be kind to people. With some people, that's a natural thing. Other people, they need to work on it. But I think it's important to be kind to people. You don't know what's going on in their lives. And then the last one is always try to see the best in people. Most people, when they do something, they've got a good intention. Bar psychopaths, most people, when they do something, they don't mean any harm. It might be harmful what they're doing, but they might not have that intention. And if you can see it that way, then that will help you be more compassionate, empathetic, and it will help the other person with basically being able to express themselves better. When people can express themselves and express their strengths, then you can leverage that as well.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
Yeah, I like a lot of that, actually. Being curious. I’ve recently taken to asking my young son about how he sees issues. And it's interesting hearing about how he sees things and interprets things through an 11 year old's mind. It's very different.
Just a quick add on question here. Having played, you said soccer for 45 years, thinking you knew the rules. And then having come unstuck that one time where someone showed you the rule book. Then you took it upon yourself to, obviously do the referee coaching, if you like.
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
Yeah.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
How did that change your perspective on the game and how you played and how you coached it? Was there any difference having looked into the different perspective and getting educated in the rules as to how you then came back and then coached or played the game?
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
The reason why I did that was, I remember when I was probably 15 or 16 and I was playing at a decent level in the Netherlands. I was always complaining against their referees and my coach pulled me up and said, okay, next week, next weekend, you're going to referee three games, junior games. You're going to have a look how difficult this is to do. And so I had to referee three games and I couldn't believe how difficult it is to see everything that is going around and that you don't have a hundred eyes. You just have two eyes and that changed my perspective on refereeing in the first place. And the one thing that humans, I think have a tendency to do is, that they learn something and then they forget about it slowly. And I sort of did in myself as well. Then started complaining about the referees again, and then thought, okay, now I need to do something about this myself. If I say I know it better, I need to actually, in a sense, put my money where my mouth is, and do it as well. Then you can actually see that as a leader as well. You can, if you go to a leadership course, for example, training course, you can just see things that you already knew. But you just have to basically remind it of. And with referee courses that was the case as well. There were a lot of things that I knew but weren't service level for me, and so I didn't use them. If I link it back to leadership, I think that's often the case as well that leaders just have the things that they do all the time, their habits, they lead in a certain way, but forget some of the basics that are there. And so I give leadership training as well. And I love doing that because then often leaders come in and they say, oh, I forgot all about it. It was really good to talk about it again and be reminded of it. I'm going to implement that right now even though they had known it for 20 years in a sense, that they could use a particular style or technique.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
It's funny how sometimes you forget. I know that when I've done training previously and spoken about a particular topic and it's been a refresh, it might've been a while since I've run that training, I've come back to it and gone, actually, all of these things that I'm spruiking, I used to do, but I've either not done in a long time or in part forgotten how to do. Yet I'm still teaching about it and then it reminds me actually, I'm going to now go back and do that again. So 100%, reviewing in a timely matter is also important. I always wonder about these yearly reviews that you do, you do it once a year, you front your boss. You talk about what you're going to do over the next year and then effectively you shelve the review or you put it in the top drawer and don't really revisit it. Whereas I've found that people that actually make headway on their review, pull it out every month and actually ask their leaders to review it with them or to keep them honest about it, particularly if it's important to them. It's a great way for them to see traction, to also demonstrate to the leaders that they're focused on professional development and that they want to be challenged and in effect, in a default way, brings up a career conversation every month or every quarter that you review it. Can be quite helpful for professionals who want to climb the quote unquote, corporate ladder and develop themselves professionally at the same time. Moving towards wrapping things up, in summary how important is mental and physical wellbeing, meaningful work, strong relationships and continuous personal growth for leadership agility in particular, and why?
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
Yeah, so I think all those things are really important. It's not if you focus on one thing that everything is fine. It's a combination, I think, because if you've got good mental health, physical health, you've got good connections with your community, with the people in your team. And I think that's really important that people in your team trust you. Often, the old style of leadership was telling people what to do, more directing. But I think especially the new generation coming in, if they don't trust you, you won't get the best out of them. And it might, might've worked 50 years ago, but that doesn't work anymore. Even if it works for you right now, over time you will see that it doesn't, that it isn't going to work. Although you see in a political climate that there are people around that tell people what to do and nobody trusts them, but they still get elected. And I don't know how that exactly works, but I don't think that people get the most out of people if they don't instill trust in their people, but that people don't instill trust in them either.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
You're right. As a Gen Xer, in the early part of my career, you were just told, this is what the plan is, this is what we're doing and you didn't question it and then you cracked on. I think I was always curious, like a lot of people about, okay, why am I doing this? But didn't necessarily have the courage, obviously early part of the career, to ask the why. Whereas I think nowadays it's almost inbuilt, right? Like, why am I doing this? Whether it's Millennials or the newest generation, they will actually know, what is it that I'm doing that's beneficial? And how does that then link up to the objective, right? Because they want to know that what they're doing is creating some type of meaningful impact. So really good point. Final question, potentially the most interesting or the part that a lot of people find the most interesting is the books and the podcasts, that you've listened to in the past or reading recently, you would recommend for our listeners?
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
I listen to a lot of podcasts. Being from the Netherlands originally, I listen to quite a few Dutch podcasts as well. So that's probably not as interesting to most of the listeners. There are quite a few from a coaching perspective. Coaching is a little bit ahead in Europe versus Australia in a sense. And so there's a lot of interesting podcasts coming out of the Netherlands and the UK. So I listen to quite a few of those.
I listen to podcasts like from Brene Brown as well, Tim Ferriss. I like listening to things that I might not agree with as well, to get a balanced opinion about things. From a book's perspective, one of the books that almost every training that I give, referred to as The Four Agreements and it's written by Don Miguel Ruiz. It's about The Four Agreements, an ancient Toltec culture in Mexico that has come up with it. But The Four Agreements are always be your best, be impeccable with your words, don't make any assumptions, and don't take things personally. And I think when you are in a discussion with someone, I think that's really important, don't take things personally and don't make any assumptions. So in a sense, be curious and be compassionate with the other person as well.
I think I've spoken to you about it in the past that I was in a road raging incident years ago, probably 20 years ago, almost 20 years ago. And that changed my mind on how to deal with it. Because initially I was really annoyed, upset, angry, and if something happens right now, then I always think, something must be going on in that person's life that they get angry at me for something that is minor. And then I move on and let it go. And I think in a personal relationship as well, if somebody is angry at you, it might not necessarily be because of the thing you have done. It might be something that has triggered them in, because they have had a rough day at work or whatever. Let's say you come home and you put your coat on the couch. Why do you put your coat on the couch? It's a mess. It's a minor thing, but your partner might be really stressed and that triggers her or him, in your case her, but if you can keep that in mind as well, that makes a huge difference.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
Yeah, perfect.
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
You mentioned why am I doing things, so I think Simon Sinek's Start With Why is a great book to read. It really, if you haven't seen his video about The Golden Circles, then you really should watch it. For every leader it's a great way to look at your team, your company, and your brand in a sense.
Another book that I'm reading right now is The Return of the King. That's from a Dutch writer, but it's about basically how manhood has changed over the last 30 years. That in the 70s you had the patriarchal model and then men had to be softer and that there has to become a balance in that again and hence the return of the king. And that doesn't mean that the king is an emperor and ruthless emperor, but it means that men have to go and sit into their strength again. And a lot of women like men to be sensitive, but they want them to be masculine as well. And that is, I think, important to look at as well. And especially as a leader as well, be sensitive, but be yourself as well.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
I might grab some of these recommendations off you to put in the notes at the end of the podcast, if that's okay. I think one that's been recommended to me by our Executive Chair of the Watermark Search and Ambition Group, Nick Waterworth, was a book by the name of Ikigai. I'm not sure if you've heard of that one by Hector Garcia. I have not read it as yet, but I've just quickly reviewed it. I think it's got 4.8 stars out of 5 based on the thousands of reviews, so can't be all bad, and it promises to share the Japanese secrets to a long and happy life. So he was a big rap on that book, and so I've said that I'm going to read it, and having lived in Japan for 13 years, I'm very much a fan of Japanese philosophy and I'm looking forward to actually picking that book up.
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
It's a great book. I haven't read that particular book, but there's a lot of books about Ikigai and I think it's a great philosophy.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
Look, that concludes our episode with Peter. We hope you found it motivating, inspiring for the year ahead. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast. I'd also like you to know that our most recent thought leadership pieces, which include the 2024 Interim Executive Survey and the 2024 Board Diversity Index are available at www.watermarksearch.com.au. Thanks for listening. And Peter, thank you so much for being our guest today. Enjoyable as always. I think we should rekindle our park walks very soon.
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
Thank you very much, Chris. It was a pleasure to be on the podcast and thank you very much for having me. And now I hope to have those walks and talks again very soon.
Chris Grant, Partner at Watermark Search International:
Awesome, Peter. Thank you.
Peter Dijkema, Leadership Coach at Sisu Coaching:
Thank you.