From Chemist to Executive Coach: What Leaders Can Learn from a Non-Linear Career

Many leaders reach a point in their career where something feels slightly "off" — even when, on paper, everything looks successful. In this episode, Gerrit Pelzer shares his personal professional journey: from studying chemistry and earning a PhD, through senior leadership roles in the chemical industry (including several years as an expat in Thailand), to eventually becoming an executive coach.

Rather than telling a story for its own sake, this conversation uses Gerrit's journey as a case study for leadership reflection. Together, Martin and Gerrit explore what leaders can learn from moments of dissonance, gradual realization, and the courage to take inventory when a role no longer feels aligned.

Key themes explored in this episode include:

• Why career change is rarely driven by a single "aha moment," but by many small signals that form a bigger picture over time
• The difference between being competent at a job and feeling genuinely fulfilled by it
• How comfort, habit, and external success can quietly become a prison
• The importance of listening to recurring patterns: what people come to you for, what you're naturally good at, and where your energy goes
• Why reflection — not action — is often what senior leaders need most

The episode also revisits Daniel H. Pink’s concept of motivation, focusing on autonomy, mastery, and purpose, and how these factors played out very differently in Gerrit's corporate career versus his work as a coach. (For a deeper dive, listen to our earlier episode on motivation at work.)

If you sense that something in your professional life may need adjustment — without necessarily knowing what — the episode offers practical reflection questions and structured ways to explore next steps. One of these is the GAPS Grid, a tool frequently used in coaching to examine passion, abilities, and how others perceive your strengths. (We explore the GAPS Grid in detail in a dedicated earlier episode.)

This episode is especially relevant for senior leaders who:

• Feel successful but not fully engaged
• Are questioning long-held career assumptions
• Want to reflect more deeply on alignment, purpose, and direction
• Are considering change — but are unsure how to come to a clear and well-founded decision

Rather than offering quick answers, the conversation invites you to slow down, reflect honestly, and face questions head-on — trusting that clarity often emerges through exploration over time.

About Second Crack
More information about us and our work is available on our website: secondcrackleadership.com. Contact us now to explore how we can support your leadership development in a company-wide initiative or with individual executive coaching: hello@secondcrackleadership.com.
 
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Martin Aldergård
Gerrit Pelzer

Transcript

Second Crack - The Leadership Podcast

Episode 54

From Chemist to Executive Coach: What Leaders Can Learn from a Non-Linear Career

[00:44] Gerrit: Dear listeners, a warm welcome to episode number 54 of Second Crack, The Leadership Podcast. If you're new to the show, this is where we explore complex leadership dilemmas and paradoxes, and where we invite you as our listener to self reflect. I am Gerrit Pelzer, I work as an executive coach and I bring to my coaching a combination of modern science and ancient Zen wisdom.

Joining me today, as always, is my dear friend and business partner, Martin Aldergard. Martin specializes in driving change and transformation within organizations, and what we both have in common is that we always put people at the center of our work. Hi Martin, as always, it's good to be recording with you again today.

[01:33] Martin: Hi, Gerrit, yeah it's a great day to have our monthly conversation. And today we will actually talk about you, Gerrit and use you as an example and your professional journey transitioning from a chemist, then becoming the GM of manufacturing of a chemical production site, to a career as a successful executive coach. And I'm thinking, why is this interesting? Of course, we will talk about what led you to the decision to basically change your career. We will talk about how it played out. But most importantly what can we learn as leaders from actually working and searching and exploring what is our passion, and so to say what is the right job for us? So I'm really looking forward to understand more about your journey and what I could learn from that journey.

[02:37] Gerrit: Yeah, and Martin, I certainly don't want to make this episode all about me. But what I noticed is that, first of all, we can always learn something from other people's stories, and I also noticed that almost all of my clients asked me at one point in time about how I became a coach. And they may have very different motivations, some simply want to get to know me better, others may be curious because they think that, on the surface level, the job of a chemist and head of manufacturing and that of a coach seems to be very different.

And then of course, and I think that's natural for everybody in a professional environment that at one point in time, you want to take inventory, right. You're wondering if what you're doing today is still the right thing or if you need to change something and whatever it is, you don't ne necessarily want to become a coach, but you can always take something away from other people's journeys, and draw your own conclusions.

[03:44] Martin: I think in different stages of our life, we are reflecting what are we doing, am I on the right path, et cetera. And sometime it's triggered by age or it's something at the job, or it's family. 

So first of all, if we start from the beginning, why did you choose to become a coach? How did you come to that decision? I mean there something must have been there before that decision.

[04:10] Gerrit: Yeah, there was a lot going on and I think it's perhaps valuable to add a little bit of context here, even if that means going back quite a long time. And that comes back to, how did I get into studying chemistry in the first place. And I think it's worth mentioning this because in my environment today, I see many young people who are just finishing school or about to finish school and they don't know what to do professionally. And I was the same, right? And so I fell into studying chemistry, I could say. After I finished school, I actually expected that I would have to do almost two years of mandatory military service. And then for some reasons that didn't happen, and then I almost on the spot had to decide what am I going to do. And I had no clear idea what I want to do with my professional life. And I thought I still have a lot of time to make up my mind. But then I, I hadn't, and I talked to a number of people and almost everybody said, "well, you know, you were pretty good at school, so you should definitely go and study at university." But the question was then, okay, what?

[05:29] Martin: Hmm. Mm-hmm.

[05:30] Gerrit: And then I reflected and I thought, well, you know, I was pretty good at chemistry in school. I found it interesting and at the same time I noticed many others struggled with it. And I couldn't really understand why, because for me it was quite easy. So I thought, "oh, it's probably good to study that." And also at that time, the chemical industry in Germany was doing pretty well, so it seemed there would be good job opportunities. So I ended up getting a master's degree and a doctoral degree in chemistry, respectively, the natural sciences. And you know, Martin while I still find science in general super fascinating still today, I was never, how should I say, the nerd who has a small laboratory in their parents' basement. So, I got my degrees and it was clear that I did not want to stay at university in a academic environment. And so I entered into the chemical industry and I want to be very clear, the company I joined was and still is definitely a very good company, but as sad it is to admit it, I never really felt fulfilled in my job.

And so I think this could be the first learning for our listeners, especially those who have children who are about to finish school -I don't know if these young people will listen to our podcast. Support them in finding out what they wanna do. And my take is when you ask me, "how do I find my Dream job?" I think three aspects need to come together: so first of all, you need to have passion for what you're doing. You need to have the skills, you need to be good at what you're doing. And at the end of the day, it needs to be something that adds value for other people so that you get paid, right.

So when you have passion for what you're doing, you don't need to ask yourself in the morning, "oh, how do I motivate myself to go to work?", because you will enjoy what you're doing and then success will come easy. But if you just have a job without passion, it'll always remain just a job, something that pays the bills. When you are passionate about what you're doing, but it's nothing that any anybody else will pay you for, well, then it's probably better suited as a hobby.

And if I take my case in the chemical manufacturing environment, I, I'd like to believe that I had the skills for doing the job reasonably well, but the passion and the purpose was clearly missing. So back to this first aspect: support your kids in finding out what they love doing, what is fulfilling for them and what they're good at. And while we can always change careers later, I think this first job sets a clear direction and will have a huge impact on kids' lives.

[08:42] Martin: Yeah, I think this story is quite recognizable. And I have a similar story where I studied electrical engineering, and relatively quickly, I didn't work with the technology side at all, but more on the, on the human side. And, and it's, it's the small things that lead you somewhere, and perhaps in hindsight you can backtrack the journey and understand what led to the next step. But when you are there, it's sometime, it's just a coincidence that you bump into opportunities. What I also wanted to comment on, I would say to my kids that, you know, in one way, don't worry too much. Do something that you feel right now that you want to do. Search for a while, go all in on something and then see whether that fits you, because of course, sometime without life experience, we don't really know. It might be external expectations, it might be from parents, it might be from other role models, what seems to be the right job.

[09:50] Gerrit: Yeah. And, and things change along the way, right? So we know, again, talking about neuroscience, we know that the human brain is not fully developed until our mid twenties. So if somebody enters a job at the age of what 18, 20 or studying, things change along the way. But I think it's worth putting some effort into finding out where is my passion, what are my skills and what can I potentially do with it? And then rightly so, as you said, sometimes we just need to try to see what fits and what doesn't.

[10:23] Martin: now in your story, you've been in the chemical industry, you got promoted to GM of manufacturing and you've been working there, I assume, successfully for, for several years. But as I understand too, there is something not really fitting. You're talking about the passion, the meaning of what you're doing. What led you now to start to question your career choice and how did that play out?

[10:50] Gerrit: So I had been working with the same company for quite some time, 12 years in total. And then I worked for about six years for that same company as an expat in Thailand. And this six years as an expat is for an expat already a pretty long time. So naturally the question comes up, especially from a company's perspective, "where next?" Yeah, so not only what, but also where next. But for me, as this question popped up, there were also other questions. And this were around, "am I in the right job? Am I in the right company, the right industry?" And it's not like the big aha moment. It's more like collecting pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and you collect something here and there and then over time the overall, the big picture, so to say, evolves. And one of those pieces was when a friend once said, "Gerrit, wow you really have my dream job." And the realization for me was my spontaneous reaction, "well, you know, then, then you should probably have it" because it's not my dream job.

And it's, hard to admit, but for 12 years it was a job that was not really fulfilling. And uh, I mean, I wanna be clear, it was a good company. And of course there were positive moments. There were some wonderful people I met on the job, and many good things. But this fulfillment part, the purpose part was almost completely missing. So, you know, we produced among other chemicals, we produced ingredients for cosmetics. And of course, like I assume everybody else, I like to use a quality shampoo, quality shower gel. But I did not feel that I was contributing to something bigger than that. And I recall sometimes I would walk through my factory and just try to find comfort in the fact that we were employing people, we're giving jobs to people and they would feed their families. Thailand is not a very rich country, and if you can employ people, this in itself may be purpose, but for me that wasn't, wasn't really enough.

[13:15] Martin: Well, but what was it that led you then to have this aha moment that you want to, to focus even more on people, right. Now you start to talk more about people than the chemical side, the technical side of it.

[13:29] Gerrit: Again, it was not the big aha movement. It was always almost like incremental steps. But I definitely felt I was arriving at a crossroads and it was time to seriously take inventory. And what I did, I went for an extended Weekend to a wonderful resort in Thailand, the Anantara Hua Hin, So, uh, here's a hello to my good friends from Minor Hotels and especially the Anantara Vacation Club. And it's really a wonderful resort. As soon as you enter you have a wonderful environment in nature and you can leave the stress behind and think clearly.

And I thought about "what's really important for me?" And I realized that doing business, making money, be that for myself or others was never truly a driving force. The technical aspects were also not a driving force. What I noticed was, I was really more interested in the people side of business. Questions like "what makes great leadership, what makes great teamwork?" And another part of the puzzle was that when I look at my own performance reviews, so like in most companies, we would have once a year performance review, and I got consistently highest marks or ratings in, we called these items "developing people for success" and "building effective teams". And besides that, I also asked myself always questions. Yeah. "What, what motivates us, right? What makes you and me get up in the morning and do the things we do? What makes us record the podcast?" And perhaps more importantly, "what keeps us from doing the things that we say we want to do?" We, we see it every year with the New year resolutions. we have ideas around eating healthier, exercising more, being nicer to the people around us. And then we have the same New year resolution next year. But also at work in a professional context, we are often caught in bad habits and patterns. We know what we should change to be more successful, but we don't. So, so these puzzle pieces for me were essentially a deep curiosity about human behavior, about if you like "applied psychology". And I also noticed that in my job, people would often come to my office and ask for advice. And I enjoyed the discussion with them, and if we are both were lucky, they left my office with a smile on their face. So these were all pieces that came together. And this is again, maybe we are entering already in, in the reflection questions for our listeners: "So what are your puzzle pieces? What are the little hints for what matters for you, what, what gives you passion, what you're skilled at, and, and,and."

[16:33] Martin: Hmm, it takes time, right. You, you took time off to reflect and collect. You had all these pieces of information, these jigsaw pieces coming in, but then you actually took the effort to reflect on all those pieces and see to do something about it.

[16:51] Gerrit: Yeah, and I think it can be either way. Sometimes maybe people, they will have this aha moment and they wake up one morning and have this total clarity about what they want to do. But for me it was a very gradual process. And so there was this people aspect, the leadership aspect, the aspect around human behavior or even psychology.

But at this point in time, I did not want to go back to school and study psychology. And so, executive coaching came up as a good option where I could combine, these people and if you wish psychological aspect, with my own international leadership experience in a multinational corporation. And another big part of the puzzle was that, in my career I had one of these leadership trainings and it was around this "leader as a coach" training, by the wonderful Allen Moore who planted maybe the first seed, and we are still in touch today, a wonderful gentleman. And so I learned about the GROW model in coaching and I applied this coaching approach with my team. And I Noticed, at least for some people, this worked out very well. So there was already a first hint at this. And then I signed up, at a coaching school, which our common friend Jean-Francois Cousin recommended. But at this point in time, so I did it still in parallel to my old job, and I wasn't really sure where this would take me. But then Martin, in the first week of my training, I realized "this is it. This is what I want to do full time." And that relates perhaps to what you said earlier: sometimes you don't know how it is until you actually do it.

[18:39] Martin: Mm.

[18:40] Gerrit: So things were clear that I wanted to do this full time, and as I talk about it today, 15 years or maybe even 16 years later, it may sound very easy. But Martin, it was an extremely difficult decision at that point in time. I had an what seemed to be a secure, well-paid corporate job. You know how it is in Thailand, if you're there as an expat get a company car, you get a driver. And starting from scratch was very, very scary. And, and I thought about this decision more than one night. But this is also the risk then: this comfort and habit. You have a good job or at least a job that is good enough. You do it every day, day in and day out for many years, this comfort and habit can be sort of a prison and keep us from doing something that would be better for us. 

[19:45] Martin: When listening to this, I'm comparing to my own journey, and I thinking the importance is to, to listen to yourself internally and try to put words or identify what is not really aligned. Or also, as you said, reflecting, for instance, from your performance review, you saw, what am I really good at, where is my passion actually.

[20:15] Gerrit: Yeah.

[20:16] Martin: And, and then actually take that serious and think about it. And I did it a little bit similar, but perhaps not as conscious as you did. But in hindsight, I can notice I gravitated towards projects that I got interested in, and those were more people related projects. So I, I gradually moved away from the engineering aspects of telecom, and moved into the leadership, management, the people side of telecom. And I think in hindsight it totally makes sense, but in the process, I think it was, um, semi-conscious decisions. At that time too, both you and me, we were much younger and I think we were in the that age when we are productive in the sense that we want to take risk, we are prepared to take risks, we believe we can do it. Then when you're sitting with the house and kids and family and everything, and other responsibilities, of course this decision becomes much, much harder. So I think it was really interesting that you also mentioned how hard this decision is, because obviously you had to also give up things. There, there was a lot of security that you gave up, making this decision.

[21:43] Gerrit: Yeah, exactly. And this decision-making process was also gradual. And one of the aspects that got me there is an exercise that I did and that I recommend to my clients today. And I call that "regrets on the deathbed".

[22:00] Martin: Hmm.

[22:01] Gerrit: And that may sound very dark, but if you imagine you come to the end of your life and you're looking back at it, what is it that you don't want to regret? And when I thought about that, it became quite, quickly it became clear to me that I would regret not having tried something else. I mean, I could have, I don't wanna say easily, but I could have stayed in this job until retirement, make good money and then hopefully enjoy my life after retirement. But I realized if I look back on such a life, I would regret not having tried something else. And it would be okay for me to try and fail, but not having tried would be a big regret.

And then of course, in addition, I think the support that you have around you in whatever way is extremely important. And I am extremely grateful to my wife, at that point in time when I left the corporate world we were not married then, but I think without her support it would have been very difficult because naturally such a decision impacts not only yourself, but your partner. And like you said, eventually kids, if you have them. And she later said, "you know, I see that you are now so much happier than before", and having this support is, um, yeah. I can't put a value on it, it's invaluable. 

[23:34] Martin: And, and that, that is so totally true. And I think it's so great of you to appreciate that and, and speak about that angle as well, it's, it's easily forgotten. We focus on ourselves and our own career and not on the support that we have around us. And, and now you already said that your wife said that you look so much more happier in this new aspect of your career doing the coaching. Can you reflect a little bit on what makes coaching so rewarding for you? 

[24:06] Gerrit: Yes, and I think it's clearly this people aspect. So when I see people grow, or when I see that I could help them, so that the coaching has a positive impact on that particular person, eventually, then to their whole organization and, yeah, making the world a little better step by step, that's very rewarding. And it was just last week that a new client shared with me how helpful our first coaching session was for him, and that is very rewarding. Especially when you have the first coaching session with somebody, every person is different and you don't know what's working, what isn't. And when you then get the feedback that we are on a good track, that helps a lot.

And the funny thing is, Martin, after I quit my job, I read a book that our friend Heinz Landau recommended, Daniel Pink's "The Surprising Truth About What Really Motivates Us", and actually we spoke about it earlier when we spoke about motivation at work, and we should put a link in the session notes to this episode. And a key takeaway for Daniel H Pink was that in order to be motivated at work, at least three aspects need to come together. He called it Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. Autonomy is about freedom at work, deciding how you do your job when with who, et cetera. Mastery is about the joy of getting better at something. And then purpose, I think it's pretty obvious, find meaning in your work.

And it was really interesting, as I said I read this book after I was already on my coaching path, but this was one of these aha moments because then I realized that of these three, autonomy, mastery, and purpose, I had very little in my old job. So for instance, in the autonomy, even when you are in the senior management team, you are fully accountable, you are in charge, but then there are certain decisions where you still need to ask somebody else for approval, and I think that is similar in all of the larger companies. So I felt like, yeah, you're holding me accountable, I'm in charge, but still then in many areas, my hands are tied. When it comes to mastery, I remember one situation since I had this background in chemistry and manufacturing, I wanted to understand the business better, uh, I asked if the company would support an MBA program and they didn't. And the purpose we discussed already. And then I realized, wow, I have all of this today: I decide how I work, when I went work, who I wanna work with in an ideal case. I have this mastery aspect where I always look for ways to become a better coach, and the purpose we discussed already. So I have all of this and this is highly motivating and rewarding. And while I just talk with you about this now, I feel this positive energy and I never had this energy when I was talking about my old job, sorry to admit that.

[27:24] Martin: This level of autonomy, mastery and purpose, it's not absolute. You might feel it on one level, and somebody else in your previous company might see it totally different. It's something highly individual and.

[27:39] Gerrit: Oh

[27:39] Martin: Then the conclusion then is that it takes self-awareness, it takes reflection, it takes an inner dialogue to arrive at this, what is right for me. And this also promotes your work as an executive coach, because I assume then that part of your job and the value you help to your clients is for them to become more clear about what autonomy do I need? How can I fulfill my sense of mastery, my purpose,? What is missing? How can I develop that? What are the right decisions for my career?

If we are looking at this aspect of coaching, how has autonomy, mastery, and purpose developed in your journey as a coach? Has that also changed and developed, or how have you developed that or maintained that?

[28:39] Gerrit: Yeah, I think the purpose hasn't changed. The autonomy is always changing because of certain circumstances. And I think certainly this aspect of mastery has perhaps evolved the most. I still remember quite well when I finished my coaching school, I was very proud to hold this certificate, "certified professional coach" in my hands. And then later I got accredited by the International Coaching Federation and I was very proud. But I think we also have to be honest, when we were talking about our university time, right? And studying chemistry, studying engineering, it takes a couple of years, and my coaching education was, I believe 125 hours, which I did within a year or so. So if you just compare the quantity of the learning, there's a big difference. And then you go out, you start working with clients and you realize that what you learned at coaching school is not always enough to help people turn things 180 degrees around. So I went back to my background in natural science and started to learn more about how the brain works because I believe that ultimately our brains determine almost all our behaviors. And so my thought was, when I understand the brain better, I will be better able to support my clients in their journey, support them in behavioral change. And I think this has something that has continually evolved. Then also on a personal level, my Zen practice, which is a way of life finds also its ways into coaching.

And another thing that has changed a lot, which may be a question of age, or it may be because, let me put it differently, when I came from the corporate world into coaching, coaching was also for me a lot about goal attainment, having SMART goals for the coaching. What do you want to achieve? And I even challenged my corporate clients, "how will we measure the ROI for the coaching?" And over time I've moved away from these SMART goals and I realized that especially senior leaders, they benefit more from reflection and exploration, because that is something they don't do in their day-to-day life. And if they then have a reflection or even sparring partner, once they have gained new insights through this process, they already know what they need to do. I don't need to push them towards more goals.

And maybe the third thing that has also evolved over time, a lot, and I see this, I'm also a coach supervisor and I work with many younger coaches and they, like me in the beginning are very concerned about how to do the coaching, what they're doing. But I realized over time that my presence in the coaching session, when I'm fully there for my client, less concerned with the outcome of that particular session, that this makes my coaching better than what I'm doing. And that the relationship between coach and coachee is also more important than the doing. And now I also remember, Martin, we talked about this earlier when we talked about "being before doing", the being part sets the stage for how we do things. So yeah, I think this is how the aspect of mastery has evolved over the last 15 years. Does that make any sense?

[32:25] Martin: Total sense. I I'm thinking this also means that in some sense, your favorite clients also change. As a new coach, you might have your focus on goals and attainment or using the GROW model, et cetera. And then now with the new level of mastery, I guessing that you might have other favorite clients to really apply the skills of your craft.

[32:52] Gerrit: Oh, that's, that's somehow a difficult question. What I feel reminded of is, I once wrote an article about "coaching the Uncoachable executive". So in the coaching world there exists this term of being "coachable" or not. I think that's quite weird and I think, let me maybe put it differently. I think every coach loves to work with a person who is smart, open to feedback, willing to change, and ready to do whatever it takes to make these changes. And that is a lot of fun. And again, it's very rewarding when you see these people change so quickly. But it's also a case that is very easy. I think every coach can work with this, it just needs this tiny little nudges and then the people they just take off. And I think it can also be very interesting to work with so-called "difficult" people that eventually other people label as uncoachable, these hard nuts to crack. And I think I wanna be clear, I don't I think it makes sense to work with somebody who simply doesn't want to work with a coach, it's not my job to convince them. But I think that there can be this resistance. And I find it highly interesting to find out what triggers do we need to push to overcome this resistance? And Martin, over the years, I had also many cases where I met a new client for the first time and I thought "oh i'm not so sure how this will work out." And then once we got to know each other better, some of these assignments turned out to be the best coaching assignments I ever had. So, I don't want every coaching assignment to be difficult, but I think I nowadays enter into coaching also with much more openness, leaving judgment aside and being open to whatever, uh, comes up, and then sometimes enjoy the more challenging assignments.

[35:00] Martin: I think this is so interesting because of course, this is how we can leverage our experience, we need to apply it on the more difficult cases. And I'm thinking in terms of change management. You and me have been in projects where we support change, and we have people that really resist, they are the "troublemakers". And they are opinionated, and they don't want to compromise. And if I would be younger in my career, I would shy back and say, let's not bring them on board, let's work with the, with the people that are buying in more. And instead now with more experience, those are exactly the guys that we need to go listen to because they are passionate, they are willing to express a different opinion. They are willing to resist. But that means that is where the energy is, that is where the leverage is. And I think that is also when our skills of the trade coming in. And we have seen it before, we can go in with an open mind, we can listen, and we can work where they are, and not where we, so to say wish them to be.

[36:07] Gerrit: And that's really a wonderful example because these, what you called "troublemakers", these difficult people, eventually they will be able to make very valuable contributions. And you need to look beneath the surface. You see this behavior on the surface, which you find difficult, but where is it actually coming from? And often it's coming from very good intentions.

[36:29] Martin: Yeah, and it's coming often also from very good, very detailed understanding, about what works, what doesn't, they really care about the business. They are not just trying to follow and say whatever they think we want to hear.

 If we starting to wrap up and looking back now, what, do you have any recommendations to leaders that might be in the similar situation as you, that feeling perhaps something is not a hundred percent right, or considering different options, what should I do?

[37:02] Gerrit: Yeah, I think first of all: face it head on.

[37:06] Martin: Mm-hmm.

[37:07] Gerrit: Don't just try to ignore the sense when you feel like maybe something is off in my career, maybe I need to change something. Don't just try to ignore it because there's a reason why you have these feelings around it and, uh, explore it in detail. And you might end up in fact that you say, "well, actually what I'm doing today is the right thing". And, but then you have this confirmation and this strange sensation you have around it, will disappear. And, I think the process is perhaps similar to a coaching process where you explore, maybe you can come back to the, the passion, the skills, so really finding out where your passion is and sometimes that's difficult, but you can take some time out, reflect on when were there times that you really enjoyed what you were doing? When was a time that you forgot about time, you forgot about eating, but also talk to other people, you know, sometimes it can be Friends or parents who will remember, "Martin when you were a little kid, you know, you always loved to do that thing." And these are often things that stay with us for the rest of our lives.

 You also mentioned this aspect that sometimes we don't really know, we are not aware of what we are really good at, what our skills are, where we are eventually better than others because it comes so natural to us. So this is something to explore, "what have I done in the past and what can I do really well." And if you want to give it some structure, we spoke earlier about the GAPS grid, we have a full episode on this where we explore these passion, abilities and perception by other people in a structured way. It's a tool I use a lot in my coaching. So, and, and eventually, you know, give it some time, talk to people, collect the pieces of a puzzle. And lastly, maybe as you said, well sometimes we just need to try out.

[39:17] Martin: Mm-hmm. And for me, one of the key takeaways has been this link back to Daniel Pink about autonomy, mastery, and purpose. And I would say that if I use those three as so to say, an indicator of my own success, rather than let's say promotion or the money or the salary increase, and looking how in my current role or in my next intended role in the company or in another company, or if I want to become a coach, whatever, how would my level of autonomy change? How would my level or possibility to increase my level of mastery change? How would my level of purpose and meaningfulness change? I think that is something to reflect on.

[40:13] Gerrit: Nice. Yeah. Martin, I think we both had just now a lot of reflection questions already that we typically end our episode with. Do you have any other reflection questions that you would like to add?

[40:26] Martin: No, not in the moment, no. This was really interesting to use your story, that we never have talked about so much in detail, but now also extracting then a learning point that every leader, in every stage of their career, should be aware of and continuously reflecting on.

[40:45] Gerrit: So that means next time we need to talk about your story.

[40:49] Martin: Okay!

[40:52] Gerrit: Okay, Martin, thank you so much for again, a wonderful conversation. And this concludes today's episode. If you would like our support in finding your dream job, or more broadly, support in your general development as a leader, be that through individual coaching or a company wide initiative. Please do not hesitate to contact us via hello at SecondCrackLeadership.com. Secondcrackleadership is all in one word. And if you enjoy our podcast, which is a project of passion which we continue to offer completely free of charge, please help us grow our community by telling a friend about "Second Crack". And if you could leave a positive comment or a five star rating on your preferred platform, that would mean the world to us.

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