#1017 Acting and Self-Development

Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: We welcome Michael Mayer with “Acting & Self-Development” as a guest for our expert talk, discussing the connection between acting and self-development, and the influence self-development has on how we act, in Room #1017 of the Deep Talk Club under our overarching theme of “Action.” Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…

Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and her guest is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.

A very good morning, once again very officially, to everyone. Today we welcome Michael Mayer with “Acting and Self-Development” as our guest for this expert talk. Michael Mayer is a business etiquette trainer, sales coach, and board member of the advisory council of the German Knigge Society. After completing his part-time degree in business informatics, Michael continued his sales career as a national key account manager. In sales and management, he was responsible for business units and overall sales at well-known companies. Today, through his training agency Sales Benefit, Michael Mayer advises companies on sales questions and trains professional conduct. Under the brands Knigge Benefit and KniggeKolleg.de, business etiquette courses are offered both online and offline. On top of that, the Human Development College is its own leadership college. And against the backdrop of all this rich, varied experience he brings from the business world, we simply want to talk together and learn more about how self-development and acting are connected, and, at the same time, what influence self-development has on acting. That’s our topic today, and with that, dear Michael, I’m delighted to welcome you very warmly to my side, once again very officially.

Thank you. I’m glad to be here, and I’m really looking forward to our exchange.

So am I, and I think it’ll be genuinely fascinating too, because we always have different overarching themes we discuss. Right now we’re on the theme of Action, and we’ve opened up various specific rooms under it — looking at all kinds of aspects, starting from what we actually mean by acting, all the way to self-management competencies and things like the importance of setting goals. Yesterday we talked about routines, among other things, and today we’re looking a bit further at this aspect of self-development. So what role does that actually play in the context of acting, and there are so many angles you could take here. I’ll leave it fairly open at first, to see which focus you’d like to set first, what has the greatest relevance for you in this context. If I simply ask, how are self-development and acting connected for you, what are the first things that come to mind, Michael?

For me it’s quite clear, you start from the broad and move to the specific, and put bluntly: someone who’s engaged little, or only recently, with themselves will naturally act very differently from someone who’s gone through many stages of self-reflection and has their own plan for moving forward. Someone who’s been on that path for years will have already adjusted how they act multiple times, or thinks carefully about how their actions land on the outside world. That’s the top level, and then it goes deeper.

Wonderful, thank you so much. And then, fundamentally, there’s this aspect of lifelong learning — what’s becoming increasingly clear is that, regardless of when we personally started engaging with this topic, sooner or later we all reach the point where, given the changes happening externally too, it’s important to keep developing ourselves, keep educating ourselves, learning new knowledge, and turning that into competence. So, under this heading of lifelong learning — what does lifelong learning have to do with acting, from your perspective?

Again, from the basis of my own experience: when people have started on a good path and haven’t yet hit any real stumbling blocks, they’re not automatically prepared for when a completely different situation comes along. Sometimes people move into a new business and suddenly find themselves under fire, as part of the territory, and they’re bad at crisis management and suddenly act far less composed. And unless you pull them out of the field, or they fail at the situation, they naturally get better at it. Take the current case where an industry is under pressure, nationally, and now we get to see how a company’s leadership reacts under complaints and stress, and suddenly you see a whole new facet of how someone presents and comes across. Rather sad that this happens at such a high level, but you can immediately learn from it and ask, how fascinating is it, as someone who’s starting to reflect, or who’s still young, to actually work across different industries or in different roles — because that’s the only way you build your toolkit. I get asked often, there are so many questions people ask about etiquette and how to handle things, and most of them can’t be answered from any textbook — they come from life experience. Knigge himself spoke of worldly wisdom, but then you put one thing next to another, and say, if it went like this there, and that consistently works well, and we observe this in Germany, then it’s effective and appropriate.

That touches on a really fascinating aspect — this point about life experience. Maybe we can look closer at that: to what extent does something like acquiring knowledge, or further education, even still have a function, in quotation marks, or relevance, if so much revolves around this life experience?

I never see those as fully separate. Further education is a really broad term — it doesn’t just mean knowledge from books. I like to quote Jens Corssen here, a behavioural psychologist with decades of experience, whose career took the path where, after five years in practice, he realised you can’t just tell someone, “starting tomorrow, do it this way” — instead he realised you have to get people into acting. He says you have to get them to do it twice, or even catch them off guard, so that by the third time, the person can actually apply this new behaviour or this tip themselves. And I can absolutely confirm that, because further education also means practical application, practising, trying things out. Both of those belong in one roadmap, for me.

If we look a little at these external changes — would you say something has changed? And if so, what specifically has changed, also in relation to what we’re allowed to learn and how we’re allowed to learn?

Even though we can barely stand to hear about it anymore, of course technology, which for many of us starts working on us shortly after waking up, gives us a lot of options. I can learn while driving, while on a train. I can seemingly learn without even noticing, if I have the space for it. What I’m worse at because of it, though, is observing. So the external world definitely has a very different influence today. If we look at the negative side, from a business-etiquette point of view the top topic every reporter picks up on is “saving” the youth, or society, because everyone’s taking a swing at them. And yes, that really does come from certain social media channels — this pattern of lobbing criticism from behind cover, unfiltered at first. We have some very prominent dress-code videos on our YouTube channel, and every month someone, sometimes several people, shows up under a pseudonym and just throws something out there. And it doesn’t really matter to the substance. So sure, the environment has a very different effect today than ten years ago. What a person makes of it, though, the choice they have — I think that’s actually unchanged.

Wonderful. And in that context, leadership might play a particularly important role too. I found a quote on the Knigge Benefit website: “Employees primarily quit because of their managers, not because of the companies.” Maybe you’d like to say something about that.

Gladly. You did indeed find that quote right at the top of the homepage of the Human Development College, our leadership college, and the source is cited there too — it’s from the Gallup study. So every HR person, every colleague working in HR, the Gallup study tells you how employees are actually doing. And yes, I can relate to that myself. People always quit because of individuals who don’t fit, who are in leadership positions. I’ve experienced this myself once, or seen how a lot of people left because a new managing director, who came across quite oddly for certain reasons, was brought in. And we just picked that up and said, well, of course. And I’m not even talking about the fact that we currently have an employee’s market. That applies generally. You can take someone who’s been happy somewhere for 20 years, who gives 100 percent, which is almost too much, and then swap out that beloved manager, or a new colleague comes in who leads an already well-functioning team, and drives them up the wall through a style that just doesn’t fit. And unfortunately we still see that every single day. Which is why the leadership training market is enormous. Of course, that’s exactly why we invested in that two years ago as a business and launched into it. But let me add one more aspect — if you google “leadership health” on the well-known American search engine, you can see right at the top how many times it’s been searched in the last month. It’s shocking. So for us, of course it’s clear, we offer leadership health as a service. But for me it’s a fluid training area, because “how are you, are you at peace with yourself” — health is a central part of that. I don’t think of it in terms of white coats, but rather, how are you doing, can you actually act well because you’ve taken care of yourself.

Wonderful. And here, on one hand, when we talk about leadership, we naturally think classically of, say, your own manager, your supervisor, and on the other hand, the team. We’ve also often connected leadership to the context of self-leadership. And especially this aspect of acting — getting into the capacity to act, establishing the capacity to act — has a lot to do with this component too. Maybe we can look at that, and build the bridge to self-development too.

Yes, a very clear connection, or facet, of our broader topic. This morning, or last night in preparation, I was reading where you’d covered, or someone talked about, routines. And on a small or large scale, everyone has certain routines they’ve established as helpful, or shows some recurring behaviour. And that’s one of the pillars for me. Right now I’m using this very heavily myself, since I’ve had a health check chapter over the last few years — I was challenged a bit, and noticed how helpful it is to be able to fall back on routines. That way you’re good to yourself and take care of yourself really well. And I mean this from the basics — what’s your pulse like, how well can you sleep, that was a top topic. And it’s remarkable what you can do with that. And for everyone listening here who deals with negotiation in their profession — that was a huge part of my own life. As head of key accounts, or head of sales, a major part of the job is being in top-level negotiations. You’re still leading those today. And if you haven’t taken good care of yourself and arrive at the last minute, you’re in a really bad spot there. Or the reverse — this week we just experienced a case where the other side was completely overwhelmed. You could tell right away the person on the other side wasn’t in a good mood. I’m very well trained in observation, not just because of business etiquette — sure, I do size up everyone sitting across from me — but I learned that from sales too. And later it escalated at one point, but not on our side, on theirs. And that wouldn’t have happened, on that day, at that hour, if they’d been in a well-cared-for state themselves.

That’s really fascinating. And I’m sure we could open up plenty of other areas here too — you already mentioned leadership and health as a topic. Health is certainly also a topic for the individual, in self-leadership too. What other topics are there that might be coming to the forefront right now in terms of relevance? Maybe there are observations from your own experience you can share with us.

Let me react spontaneously to a top topic here. Among the three pillars you showed in your introduction, in my own work, not as an organiser of trainings, but when I’m in a business-etiquette seminar — and let me pick out the public participants here — people come voluntarily, and let’s leave aside the men who get sent by their wives to do something for themselves on a Saturday, sometimes also for their career, since it is business etiquette after all. There’s a will there, to develop, to learn something. But in that category we have to acknowledge, when you check afterward, did people actually follow up, did they not just take notes, but also log back into the college afterward? Do they practise, do they come back with follow-up questions? When you meet them again, how much has actually stuck? And I have to say, in the adult space, I see that a lot of it just doesn’t happen. The ten declared intentions are there, but afterward you see, that’s not actually the case. And if we break that down to our own individual topics — this sounds a bit harsh, but I can only really work on myself, or take care of myself, if I actually follow through on what I set out to do. And I’m not even talking about the big steps, I’m talking about the small ones. Meaning, if I decide, I’m going to be good to myself, I’m going to reintroduce a routine, I want to get to know a new area for myself, then I actually have to sit down and read the material. I picked up a technique from a very well-known entrepreneur a few years ago — he wrote in one of his books that every morning he gets up, goes into stillness, has a warm drink, and reads. I simply tried that the very next day. And the effect on me personally was phenomenal. That combination — the first action definitely isn’t reaching for the smartphone, it’s reading something with a warm drink — has two phenomenal effects. Every doctor listening will tell you that fluids in the morning is age-old advice. But if you read the literature, if you engage with something for just 20 minutes every day, at a time when your mind is very receptive, you automatically make progress. Fascinating, really.

Would you say that comes down purely to self-discipline, to actually sticking with it?

I think we all know this from a training context — we set ourselves certain intentions, and then we have a platform, especially with all these online developments now, where I have the option to work through this or that. But you mentioned earlier that we’re essentially flooded from every side, with all this information, with media and so on. And how to handle that, or how to accompany it better, looked at from the perspective of guiding others too — not just as a user, so on one hand the user’s perspective, and on the other, the perspective of the person accompanying them.

That’s a huge field you’re opening up there too. Naturally, if there’s a goal of taking care of yourself or achieving something, then yes, you need to take measures, bring in mentors, set cornerstones for yourself — that’s a really important area. Let me add one more measure that comes to mind. Often I notice the will isn’t actually that strong. It’s not always about self-discipline — we’re socialised differently there too, and I don’t want to judge that. But sometimes even the stated will, or the insight, is lacking already. You hear it sometimes, and if I think back to how often I’ve heard, and still hear today, though the pace is much higher now, that it’s mostly mid- or upper-level management, more often men, who make these kinds of statements — about the sheer volume of work, “I work through the night too, I do so much.” And then you also know, this is someone who’s strong in the external world, they play the external game, they absorb the pressure — but very, very often you observe that taking care of themselves, self-care, that they’re less good at, achieving something but taking care of yourself while you’re at it, is suboptimal.

Yes, several aspects come together here, and that might show the whole complexity, or the breadth of this topic, and how many directions you could build bridges in. What interests me further here, before we give our listeners on X Spaces the chance to join in and ask questions, or bring in their own perspectives — I’d like to come back to the business-etiquette seminars too, since we spoke a few times beforehand, and I found it interesting to check with myself, what do I actually associate with etiquette? And one of the questions I asked myself was, is this even still relevant today? Because when I think of etiquette, I think of these very clear rules, structures and so on, and we’re now seeing that a lot of that is changing too. How do those overlap? What function does etiquette actually serve in that context? I’d be curious about your perspective on that — we’ve touched on it before, but I think it’s worth looking at together again, so our listeners get an impulse or two out of it too, and maybe we can build on some of these points later. Michael, would you like to say something on that?

On this rigidity — and I was probably carrying my own unconscious bias there too — is etiquette even still relevant today? It’s smart of you to bring up this standard question, but it’s important anyway, because every radio station that revisits the topic for the first time comes to us with exactly that question, and it’s still worth answering it properly. There are really two clear misunderstandings. The historical misunderstanding — who was the person the term is named after, the first person here in Germany who, several hundred years ago, said, we need to do something, people should be treated equally — that was the actual concern, not laying down rules. In his main book, the one so often quoted, there are only 13 very concrete points, and the rest is simply about treating everyone with heart, shaping how we interact with warmth toward people. And that’s already the answer to what I do in practice, or what we do — sure, we’re happy to talk about questions like when the napkin gets placed, whatever rank they come from, but that’s not what it’s actually about. And dress code is a nice, popular topic in Germany, thanks to the films, but ultimately it’s about having an open heart, having your radar tuned so you move through situations in a way that lets everyone feel comfortable. In negotiations, I demonstrate this too — I’m not the one who escalates, I keep everyone in view, I behave in a way that, if copied, would make the world a little better. And, and I have to say this in talks too, sure, in the end, a team or a company that makes this part of their identity does better — because when in doubt, people gravitate toward those who are more respectful, more attentive. My example from before, the complaint-handling case — you’re being foolish if you don’t complain appreciatively but firmly on the substance, because you actually want to achieve something in the end. So it’s not really about the seemingly old-fashioned stuff, knives and forks, or, well, where the sabre used to be — some details do come from there, but today it’s about cultivating warmth and attentiveness in how we interact. That’s why, right below that Gallup quote you read on the leadership page, we say we act with heart and depth — because superficiality doesn’t land well either.

A wonderful cue to look at this again, especially with social media and so on, hate speech and similar things, or the many political developments happening right now, without getting into the specific content or making any judgment. How does it look, from your perspective, with this aspect of cultivating warmth and attentiveness? To what extent do we perhaps need more support or sensitisation on these aspects?

In every area, I have the chance to contribute myself, by adjusting my own behaviour. In seminars, I personally always say, two seconds, count to two, and then decide, how do I react to what just happened. And the maxim is, never go harder than what the other person put on the table, because the world is made of misunderstandings, and if I go over the top with my own intention, it gets clarified in the fourth second, and I’ve already got a problem. Let me pick out what you just said about social media and politics. I’m naturally active in both worlds right now — on social media, we run five channels, and someone puts something out there that’s seemingly still debatable. We just had this whole gender-language thing again, “what does the German Etiquette Society think of that?” And that immediately carries a problem — I can’t speak for everyone, and Knigge Benefit doesn’t want to get into crude social-media debates either, so we simply offer, this is a current topic in how we interact, feel free to reach out, we’ll discuss it one-on-one. It’s not that simple, the complexity of it. And then you see right away whether that was someone who genuinely wanted to engage, or, in the case I just mentioned, whether the next thing they wrote showed they just wanted to take a swing, and then you disengage.

I experience this in the political sphere too — as a company you’re at various networking events, we’re often guests at the Economic Council, which is itself a business association rooted in politics, and there too, you join discussions across various topic forums, mostly in person, without saying, my opinion is the threshold, this is what I do — instead I’ve found it’s relatively civil there, even though people are gathered from different industries, and you often have four parties, four different political leanings in the room, but you can still discuss things in a business context without trying to convert the other person, while still exchanging views on the substance. That works. But if I go in and say, I only want to discuss politics, and make blunt statements, I’ll end up, wherever I am, whether at a bank or, right now it’s often about the Green Deal, the EU’s climate policy being implemented into German law, blowing up such an event.

Wonderful, thank you so much. With an eye on the time, I’d like to ask you one more question — whether I’ve perhaps left out something really important that you’d like to touch on, so we can also extend the invitation now: if you have questions on X Spaces, we’re live right now, with a parallel broadcast to LinkedIn, so on X Spaces you have the option to raise your hand and join us. Our topic today is acting and self-development. We’ve now set various impulses together with Michael, to look together at which aspects have relevance here, and in which directions we can build bridges. And now it would be exciting to step into an exchange with you all too — on one hand you can formulate questions for Michael, or bring in your own thoughts, impulses, and experiences, which we can then use to open up further perspectives together. So you’re warmly invited to raise your hand if you’d like to join. And a quick reminder, the room is recorded the whole time, and the recording will be published afterward — so joining means you’re agreeing to that. So, Michael, back to you — is there a point I haven’t mentioned yet that you’d say, this is something close to my heart, I’d like to bring this up too?

Sure, there’s certainly more to say, but let me play with another cliché, with a bit of a smile, and then leave a thought to chew on. We’re currently in the season of trainee trainings again — there’s a certain time of year when companies suddenly go, “we need to organise the first training week,” and bring in an etiquette trainer, and they come to us quickly since we’re a bit specialised in that. And what’s interesting is there’s often an attitude that the trainees need this, but “we don’t.” And the truth is, on a Saturday morning, even just stepping out of the house to get bread rolls, I’m already having an effect. Theoretically, if I live in a big city, I could run into the negotiation partner, the executive at the company I’m trying to close a deal with, one I’ve worked toward for a whole year. And if I’m already behaving badly there, and it’s often the small coincidences, then I’m out of luck — but if I want to conduct myself well, I’ll show those finer facets too. So working on yourself, on how you interact with others, is a lifelong thing, it happens every single day. It comes up constantly, callers who say, we’d love to attend your seminar, can you also learn private etiquette, or personal conduct, because we’ve already got the business side down. Then I have to hold back from laughing on the phone myself, because A, you can’t separate the two — these are areas of life that flow into each other. And of course you always see this, that people think they already know everything about how to behave in business, but there are still huge gaps there. Just take this away, think laterally: our acting has a constant effect, on ourselves and on the outside world. So that belongs to self-development too.

Wonderful, thank you so much. And as long as there are no follow-up questions or comments on X Spaces right now, let me just continue. We’ve picked up on a really interesting point, one we’ve come back to several times over the last few days. On one hand, we tied back to the aspect of communication in this context — that famous quote from Watzlawick, “one cannot not communicate.” And then we built a bridge from there, in the sense of “one cannot not act” either. That’s essentially exactly what you’ve just described — both the fact that there’s always an effect present, and that if I don’t act in relation to something, I’m indirectly deciding in favour of some other kind of acting instead. Maybe we could look at that more closely, and hear your perspective on these terms, and gladly pick up that “cannot not communicate” component again too.

Quickly and pragmatically put — you’ve already named the most famous quote on this. Meaning, if I delay my response, delay my reaction, I’ve already said something. I have a case right now where someone said, “we’ll think about it, we’ll get back to you tomorrow,” and then it took two more days — has that person already said something with their response? Absolutely. And our body, if we break it down further — just two days ago I was a guest at a workshop by a guest speaker at our leadership college, someone who specialises in style but also image consulting, and she ran a workshop. I was there as a guest, to experience her myself. And she picked out that very facet, opening with the question, how many kinds of facial movements does a person have on average? And her point was simply that it runs into the hundreds of thousands, all the micro-signals I can send through moving my face. And at the latest at that point it’s clear, you’ve said nothing, you haven’t consciously moved your face, and we’re not even talking about the feet pointing left or right — and communication has already begun. And I approach it from my own side, saying, we get into depth if I’m feeling good internally too, and I want to have a good conversation — then I have my facial expressions and my reaction time far more under control, than if I’m treating myself badly, while still wanting and intending to deliver a good outcome, a good conversation. My delay and my body reveal everything, that I’m actually in a completely different state in the moment of encounter.

And you just said, if I’m feeling good internally — there we’re at this aspect of self-regulation too. Earlier you briefly mentioned counting to two, so also something like taking a breath, pausing for a moment. Then you mentioned a maxim, never going harder than what the other person put on the table. Those are, in a way, certain guardrails I can set for myself, as orientation, a frame within which I can operate. Do you have other aspects we could pick up as tips too, ones that are especially relevant for personal development and the capacity to act, or that help us steer certain things better in that direction, to actually get into that state of self-efficacy?

Well, we haven’t named the term yet, though we’ve covered the substance already — but I remember, when I was quite young, I was at the Nestlé Group after my training, and got into their talent programme, across all their companies, young people who could go somewhere, so the theory went, and I think it worked. And there, for a day, maybe even two if I recall correctly, we already had time-management training back then. And today we still have the well-known icons who keep training that. And it has nothing to do with the systems, whether it’s the old time system or today’s apps. But in the end, it’s also a decision of will — how do I steer my own life? And how do I find the time to take care of myself, coming from sales, for instance? There are those classic, but well-meant tips — if you arrive three-quarters of an hour early to the negotiation venue, you’ve built in a buffer for stumbling blocks, but your breathing can slow down if you’re feeling good. And I experienced this myself this week, which rarely happens — we were on time, and the company had moved a week earlier. Their social media info still had a photo of the old building and the old address, so that was actually misinformation at the last moment. And we managed it, it was a great laugh in the end because it happened to be close by. But if it had been on the other side of town, that would’ve been bad. And once you’re cutting it close to an appointment, everything changes. I’m not feeling well, I’m annoyed at myself, my breathing changes, my posture betrays the negative mood to the other person. The clumsy one apologises seven times, but it’s already too late, and wastes even more time on apologies. So yes, time management, if we want another component — an old one, but one that’s still very current, underlying everything else.

A really important point in this context, and especially against the backdrop of what I said earlier — we’re basically bombarded from every side, you could almost say. On one hand there’s often a huge flood of emails, on the other hand there’s news I pick up, consume somewhere, social media, that insane speed happening too. And especially with everything happening externally, looking inward too — who am I, where do I want to go, what are my goals, how do I want to prioritise all this. And maybe the question here too, regardless of whether we look at this from a corporate perspective or an individual one — I often see people having this attitude, there are so many projects to get done, and something like further education or self-development often falls by the wayside. And self-development doesn’t necessarily have to mean always attending a training or further education course. Sometimes it’s just the chance to reflect, maybe, as one of our psychologists put it, “a rendezvous with myself” — actually blocking out real time in your calendar, and there we’re back at time management too, to get to a place of inner calm, to reflect and analyse things, make new decisions, adjust, and then get back into the capacity to act.

How would you assess this component? Is there anything you can recommend from your own experience, in this whole web of, say, further education, maybe team-building on one hand, and on the other, what do I do for myself? How much time should actually be set aside to keep going through this cycle, reflecting, analysing, making decisions, and re-establishing the capacity to act, to handle it in a meaningful way?

Let me make a case for a corporate function that’s often taken for granted. HR is a really important function — purely from a professional, external point of view — a business arm that does a great job giving employees offers, or almost behavioural nudges. I once worked at a company that had a quiet room. But it was presented so clumsily that most people weren’t ready to actually sit or lie down in it. But the idea itself was well-intentioned. So a company can create a framework. But let me jump back to the individual, and use myself as a bad, or treatment-worthy, case, to say what became of it. Take the gentleman I quoted earlier, with the morning routine — I’ll gladly say his name, since it fits exactly what you’re describing: Bodo Janssen, a well-known entrepreneur who had something dramatic happen to him in his youth. Unfortunately in a hotel chain, but today he’s a prominent author, alongside Pater Anselm. And one of his books is called “The Silence.” And that’s exactly what he recommends — create these times, go into stillness with yourself often. Whether it’s in the morning, as I’ve adapted it, or in the evening too, because I used to be someone who didn’t consume social media in the evenings, but would still let the TV run in the background. And through both his advice and my own experience, you need time for yourself, to just have some quiet. If you stare at nothing for a while, in your favourite armchair, you find your way back to yourself. And the technical insight, blue light an hour before sleep torpedoes your sleep. So both of these can genuinely be led at a corporate level too, giving people the time for it. And individually, I’m still self-responsible for where I build these things in. But I do have to build them in. And that I can meet myself, I read this yesterday — time to meet myself.

I find that wonderful. And maybe an addition, against the backdrop of the Deep Talk Club — and if you’d like to use this in a group, in the sense of reflection, just join the Deep Talk Club. Michael, what do you think of the Deep Talk Club? We use these rooms daily, an hour each, even 90 minutes on Sundays, to actually pick up different concepts and go deep, into exchange, looking together, analysing, in dialogue, doing a kind of brain juggling, so to speak, to see what emerges. And it’s always fascinating which direction it develops in. On one hand, doing something for yourself, in stillness too. On the other hand, not as an either-or but complementary, when you want to do something in a group, using rooms like this too. Would you like to say something about how you’d assess that?

I think that’s absolutely wonderful. That’s one of the advantages technology has given us. Because if I just look at my screen, the manageable number of people I can see here visually, and then exchange with them, that’s much more decelerated too. It’s always valuable — I’ve never experienced, even on other media that try to create this kind of room, coming out of it feeling annoyed. On the contrary, you always end up finding further sources for yourself, or people you follow, or discuss with again. And even in the podcast medium, so hyped right now, I can, as a person, choose who I want to bring in for information during quiet or pre-quiet time, and I can always pause — I had that just yesterday, where I said, no, this isn’t reaching me right now, it was simply too late, I need actual silence now, and I switched off again. But that just didn’t exist in this form before, and I consider it genuinely, genuinely valuable.

Wonderful, thank you very much. And what becomes really clear, I think, and I’d like to underline this, is that developing yourself has a lot of different facets, different focus topics, and different forms and shapes too. Whether that’s a setting where I’m alone with myself, out in nature, again on my own, or whether I do it in a group, in a training setting or similar — there are so many varied possibilities to draw on. And each format has its own positive aspects that I can use, ultimately, in relation to acting, or building the capacity to act. So I think this is genuinely wonderful. Thank you so much, Michael. I think those were really great impulses to let resonate, and maybe, in one place or another, to actually go into self-examination too — to see where I might already be doing enough, and where it might make sense to actually dig in and do more.

And with that, given the time — our room is limited to about 60 minutes — let me ask you one more question. If someone listening thinks, this is really fascinating, I’d love to get in touch with Michael Mayer to look at some of this more closely, maybe use trainings or similar — how can they best reach you? Which channel or which pages would you recommend?

Well, given the fact, which you’ve presented nicely, that we actually have several training brands, it doesn’t matter whether you look at Knigge Benefit, where you’ll find email, phone number, or the Human Development College — you’ll find us, the phone, the email addresses, on LinkedIn and the other channels there are company pages, so nobody can say they couldn’t find the phone number or the email address. And we have a fast response policy, and we do call back — and vice versa, that’s just good manners, that even when you’re not taking on a request, you still respond and say, let’s connect. That’s simply good style, and everyone is very welcome, and what comes out of it is sometimes just cases, since we have a large network too, through the experts who work with us on leadership, so we can sometimes say, I think you might actually need to take a completely different path, one we don’t offer ourselves, but we know where you can go. Let me give a spectacular example — I had a young, new manager referred to me through family connections for coaching, a very modest, quiet person, and in that case I had a sense, and intuition is really important, we could talk about that for much longer, that it wasn’t just a voice coach she needed, but that perhaps something in her life path — we often carry things we’re not even aware of — needed looking at. And in that case it was a direct hit: the person went to a voice coach, attended a constellation workshop, and found something wonderful for herself there. And in the end we didn’t make any revenue at all, or run a coaching programme, because it wasn’t needed anymore — the person was thriving. So we’re well networked, and we’re happy to hear from anyone who calls and says, let’s talk.

Wonderful, thank you so much, and that shows just how varied the possibilities really are — on one hand, and on the other, that the network is there too, to actually look into things properly. Is there anything else you’d like to say to close, before we round off today’s expert talk, Michael?

I think, in the end, there should always be something that makes us smile a little — I don’t even know where this particular turn of phrase comes from, but I say, stay polite. That goes hand in hand with, sure, you can get annoyed plenty, but that basic stance of going out into the world positively, that’s genuinely a life philosophy of mine, and you can always still respond firmly on the substance afterward. But starting from that place of positivity — the English do this so nicely, they say, “oh, it’s interesting,” and anyone who knows the code knows they don’t actually agree, but it’s a polite first reaction, and it leaves a lot of room to actually get further together afterward.

Wonderful, thank you so much, also for your time and the many varied impulses you’ve brought in here. That was Michael Mayer with “Acting and Self-Development” as our guest for this expert talk, and I’m really looking forward to continuing with you all tomorrow at the digital campfire on X Spaces, and welcoming you again at 8am for the topic “Action 2.” We’ve now run our test week on X Spaces, and tomorrow that week is up — I’d like to use that opportunity to open up various aspects around X, X Spaces, and Elon Musk, and share my own perspective on things, and at the same time use the chance to reflect together on how the week went, since, against the backdrop of the changes on Clubhouse, we wanted to look together at what experience we’re having with X Spaces, and depending on that, I’ll be making a decision or two about how we continue, and the shape or format the rooms and the platform will take going forward. So I’m really looking forward to it, if you’d like to join tomorrow morning at 8. With that, I wish you a wonderful day, and hopefully, see you tomorrow.