In this emotionally charged episode, Hanne Ballhausen, a dynamic entrepreneur, opens up about her journey from a challenging childhood in post-GDR Germany to becoming the founder of Outer Earthlings. Tim Sweet skillfully guides the conversation, emphasizing the transformative power of embracing emotions in the workplace. Hanne discusses her early experiences, highlighting the struggle to express emotions in an environment that viewed vulnerability as a weakness.

The pivotal moment arrives when she shifts to managing a research project, fostering an open, vulnerable work environment amid the pandemic. This experience inspired her to launch Outer Earthlings, a T-shirt brand advocating for emotional expression. Proceeds support Friendship Bench Zimbabwe, linking her personal journey to a broader mission. Tim and Hanne explore societal expectations around emotions, particularly for men, and the impact of emotional suppression on mental and physical health. The conversation concludes with insights into the positive outcomes of embracing vulnerability and the potential for creating a more compassionate and connected world.

About Hanne Ballhausen

Hanne Ballhausen is an innovative entrepreneur, skillfully blending her expertise in project management and strategic planning with a profound commitment to societal well-being. Her extensive experience in management, operations, and research forms the backbone of her endeavours, particularly her passionate pursuit to enhance the lives of individuals living with diabetes.

Beyond her significant contributions to healthcare, Hanne is the visionary founder of Outer Earthlings, a pioneering platform that champions the cause of emotional authenticity. This initiative reflects her deep-seated belief in the importance of emotional health and her ambition to empower individuals to embrace and express their feelings more freely.

Hanne's unique combination of entrepreneurial spirit, dedication to emotional wellness, and ability to empower others sets her apart in her diverse pursuits. She continuously strives to make a meaningful impact in both the healthcare sector and the broader domain of personal well-being.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Greta's Podcast Episode
• Friendship Bench Zimbabwe: friendshipbenchzimbabwe.org

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Contact Tim Sweet | Team Work Excellence: 

• Website
• LinkedIn: Tim Sweet
• Instagram
• Linkedin: Team Work Excellence

Contact Hanne Ballhausen | Outer Earthlings: 

• Website
  • Outer Earthlings
  • The OPEN Project
• Instagram
• Twitter
• Email: [email protected]
• Linkedin: Hannah Ballhausen

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Transcript:

Hanne 00:00

The relationships that I've had, ever since I've been down that path of actually sharing my full open self, have been so beautiful, nurturing, trusting and kind and compassionate. We are all carrying weight with us through our experiences that we're having. We all go through this life, which we all know that as a roller coaster, we cannot always be 100% performing strict executives that are always rational and logical because we are feeling beings and we cannot deny this to ourselves.

Tim 00:42

I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action? Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you my friend are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. Welcome to the Sweet on Leadership Podcast, episode 23.

Tim 01:13

Hey, everybody, welcome back to Sweet on Leadership, we're already having a bunch of giggles over here. I'd like to welcome my special guest, Hanne Ballhausen.

Hanne 01:22

Hi. So happy to be here.

Tim 01:25

Oh, great. And I'm still working on the pronunciation. I'm just gonna go ahead and own that fact, but I'm doing my best. Dear listener, we are in for a treat. Because not only do we have an amazing person in front of us, but we get to say that this is her very first time being on a podcast. And I am so honoured that you chose to let me introduce you to the world in this way. 

Hanne 01:49

Awe, thank you so much, Tim. I'm super excited, a little bit nervous. But I'm super stoked to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me.

Tim 01:57

Well, you have so much to offer. And you have such a delightful way of doing it. And that's one of the things that we're going to get into here. So, maybe we could start though by just, give everybody a bit of a snapshot of who you are right now in the world. 

Hanne 02:12

Well, right now I'm sitting where actually everything began. So, I'm back at my parent's place for a couple of days before I'm travelling on. So, I recently moved to the Cayman Islands. So, I'm always going, yeah, in between here and there, up and down, across the world. I’m a global citizen now. But I grew up what used to be the GDR, the German Democratic Republic, or basically like I always say, I grew up in a forest and I mean that quite literally. It's quiet here, very quiet. It's snowing a lot outside right now. But this is where my journey began. And once I was 18, I obviously packed all my things that ran away. Since then I have gotten a background in management, and corporate sustainability, worked in different leadership roles, and specialized myself in diabetes over the recent years, got my own company now, which I'm very, very proud of, and get to work with lots of amazing people all across the world and the diabetes space. And you usually will find me either exercising or somewhere in a deep meaningful conversation, or in my kitchen near my fermentation station. And yeah, that's me in a nutshell, I would say.

Tim 03:29

Well, you certainly have an effervescent personality. So, you in fermentation go side by side. Anyway, with that in mind, as we were sort of getting set up for this conversation, and I should mention, for those of you that are paying attention, you'll realize that we previously had Greta on and she is also involved in the diabetes space. And your introduction to me actually came through her. So, thank you very much. And we'll put a link to her episode down if you haven't listened to it because it's also a lot of fun. But focusing in on you, as we were getting set up for this conversation and getting to know one another and talking about our different viewpoints on the world and whatnot. We lit upon this part of your identity, that is really fascinating. And I'll let you speak more of it. But I'm really referring to the idea that you feel you're a person that is highly empathic, you're a person that can empathize with others, that has deep feelings of their own. And when you first brought that up to me, in some small way, there was some indication that in the past that's been seen as a weakness. 

Hanne 04:46

Yeah, absolutely. 

Tim 04:48

So, maybe you can take us back and talk a little bit about how do you conceptualize largely the importance of emotion, empathy, authenticity in your professional or personal life? What's your relationship with it?

Hanne 05:05

That's a lot of points that you just mentioned there.

Tim 05:10

Let's narrow it down to one. So, if I were to ask, what's your relationship with being a highly emotive, or being an empathic person?

Hanne 05:19

I would say, it's mostly a loving relationship, but sometimes can go a little bit down the love-hate relationship as well. Because it is also exhausting to feel a lot and to feel so much. But I wouldn't want to change it for the world. Because I feel that it makes me connect on a deeper, more authentic, trusting level with the people that are around me. I also made it my personal purpose to spread joy in the world and spread the message of feelings are your superpowers in the world. Because I think that's what it is for me. And I can be a better, healthier human being, allowing myself to feel the things that I feel, and to explore them, even though they're not always good things. But they all have a purpose. They all belong.

Tim 06:25

When we think about certain workplaces, and I have lots of clients that are in what I would consider linear vocations. They're in vocations that are highly logical, they're straight ahead, they can be very quiet workplaces, they can be very serious, they can be very academic in nature. And in all workplaces, accessing our feelings and whatnot, it's not always safe, or it doesn't feel like the norm. For those that are listening, and may not yet fully understand how we're defining this. How would you like to paint a picture of a person that is on this emotional spectrum? How are they presenting themselves in the workplace? What would you actually observe? In your mind?

Hanne 07:13

So, for me, I've obviously connected with other highly emotional people in my work life as well. But I, of course, can share mostly my own experience of how I think I'm presenting myself. And the relationships that I've had at work, in my recent career, ever since I've been down that path of actually sharing my full open self with the world have been so beautiful, nurturing, trusting, and kind, and compassionate. We are all humans, we are all carrying weight with us, through our experiences that we're having, we all go through this life, which we all know that as a roller coaster, we cannot always be 100% performing strict executives that are always rational and logical, because we are feeling beings, and we cannot deny this to ourselves. So, I'm incredibly blessed. And so excited to even hear when I'm now connecting with people that I've worked with. And I've told them oh my god, I'm having this amazing opportunity of speaking about having a kind and compassionate leadership and leading with the heart to someone on a podcast. To the amazing Tim Sweet on the podcast, they've all come back to me. And they all said, like, Oh, this is why I loved working with you so much. Because I could, I felt like I could be myself around you. And I feel this is like, for me the nicest compliment that my efforts of trying to create a safe work environment, a trusting work environment, are actually successful. And people they connect with me. And I hope that this will be much more the case in also other environments. And this was by the way was a research environment and I was incredibly blessed to have such a fantastic team around me that were all very open as well and shared there every day. And you know, it's totally okay to stand up in the morning and be like, Hey, guys, I really do not have a good day to day, didn't that happen yesterday? And I mean, you don't always have to share specifically what happened. But sometimes it also connects you when you actually say like, my dog died, and I'm not feeling well, and I might have to take out a couple of days today. And usually, the answer is not like oh, how dare you? It's like, oh my god, are you okay? Why are you even at work? Take Your time, it's okay. That happened to me a year ago, I know how you feel, let's have a tea and talk about it.

Tim 10:08

I mean, there is this pressure for many people at work that they feel that they have to leave it at the door. And that's a belief that's really has survived for generations now in the workplace, is that you're not meant to bring your home life or your personal experience into the job, you're there to do something, you know, buckle down, we're not here to deal with those issues. That's the pressure. And so as a result, we have people of all different emotional ranges, that find that they can't bring these feelings up. And the one thing that I would like to say to anybody who's out there who's listening, is that I've worked with a lot of people, 1000s of people on teams and leaders and whatnot. And the ones that think they've got this locked up the most, or are trying the hardest, to never let it out, are the ones that show it the most, they don't necessarily show it in terms of emotion, they can bottle something up. And then eventually, that's where we'll have a blowout, it's like too much water behind the dam. And then finally, when it does come out, it's dramatic, it can be very off-putting it can be violent even, it can be verbal and very messy. So, we can have these blowouts. The other thing is maybe a person is very good at controlling it. But it comes out in other ways. It can come out in sternness, impatience. It can come out in labelling people, it can come out in all of these ways that really have nothing to do with the external, they are largely intrinsic in nature. And it's that person's own struggles with their situation, their identity, their beliefs, and all of these things that are bubbling up to the surface in ways that they didn't intend. So, I think one message that I say to most of the leaders I work with is, you're not as good at holding all this back as you think you are. It is very possible that it's going to come out at some place because you are under tension. And that tension with whatever you're feeling has to be resolved in some way, shape, or form. So, we can either deal with that on the surface, or we can hold it back, which is why I think it's so encouraging when you say that when you finally tell somebody that your dog is sick or something has happened, they will rally around you. And human beings are meant to do this. We are programmed to be communal, we are programmed to support our compatriots up, right? Has that been your experience?

Hanne 12:43

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, with those people that you just described that bottle up, there's the saying hurt people hurt people. And it's so accurate. And there's also been studies now that are showing that if you're not sharing your emotions and your feelings, and you're not great at emotional regulations, all of that can actually lead to not just, you know, mental health problems and depressions–

Tim 13:13

Physiological problems. 

Hanne 13:14

–It can actually, exactly. It also presents physiologically, and it's not worth it, it's really not worth it. And like you said, people rally around you because at the end of the day, no matter how stern or how executive cool, powerful, we want to present–

Tim 13:34

Stoic. 

Hanne 13:35

Yeah, like all humans at the end of the day, and evolution has put these emotions inside of us. They serve a purpose, they are meant to be there and they are meant to be felt. And they help us in so many ways, decision making, like the very famous gut feeling. There's so much about that that is so true and so powerful. So, I think we should all tap into use it more.

Tim 14:03

I said, stalwart and I also said stoic in the same sentence. What's really interesting about the idea of stoicism, we hear this lot, there's a resurgence in stoicism, which is excellent. However, that word in particular is misused. It's used typically in terms of unshakable or strong in this kind of thing. Whereas really, when we think about the pursuit of stoicism, I don't want to go down this path too much. But it's a great example of how the word has been co-opted. There's one thing to say about rational control, but that doesn't mean that we impede useful emotions. It doesn't mean that we stifle someone's virtuous expressions, you know, and we have to be accepting of these things. And understanding that there is no sense in covering up reality. And when we look at emotional constraint, if it is an effort to mask reality, then not only are we not being logical, but we're also not being authentic that this is something that we're dealing with. And so the new manager in my mind, the new leader, and the new expectation on leaders, and where some people, frankly, are being left in the dark, and in the dirt. They are being left behind, is that there is power in emotions. And you and I have talked about this. So, I'd love your thoughts on that. What's the power, what's the benefit that people unleash, when they come to terms with and are the owner of their emotions?

Hanne 15:43

So, the power is, for me, obviously, I have so much more joy in life, a lot of energy. And I look at the world always in wonder like a little child that sees for the first time, the sky turning red at sunset, or sunrise. Feeling a lot can be exhausting, like I said earlier, but I wouldn't change it for the world. It's also in terms of relationships with friends, and also my husband. I think that I have quite meaningful, deep relationships with the people around me because I always openly share how I'm feeling about certain things, even if it's sometimes a bit more difficult. But this is where trust comes in. And I believe when you have an open, authentic emotional expression, with your loved ones, it will only just grow trust more and lets you have a more genuine human connection. It combats loneliness because you are connecting to people so much. And loneliness, by the way, we all know since the pandemic is on the rise, and it's really getting a big problem out there as well. It combats, I think depression and anxiety somewhat as well, because you're openly sharing how you feeling even in your darkest hour. And I think in the workplace as well, it's beneficial because, from my experience, I think I created a safe team environment, where people hopefully love what they were doing and working towards a common goal together as a team. So, I think it also creates a deeper bond in the workplace with your team that you are leading and that you're having around you. And they are much more likely to actually hop onto a task, and you get them to buy into the goal that you're setting, the strategy you're setting. So, I think tapping into your feelings and tapping into that potential of that power. It only expands you as a human being and it expands you in your space. And things come to you as well when you're just open and vulnerable, like opportunities like getting to speak on a podcast about it.

Tim 18:17

And there's lots of other good things which we'll talk about in a minute that have come to you through this exploration. So, we've established, at least in part, that openness and the expression of our feelings and being at peace with our feelings can lead to inclusion, it can help us in terms of health, both physical and mental. And loneliness is not a small subject. I mean, the feeling of loneliness is not that far away from nihilism. And if we're alone, and we're not sure why we are in the world, it can lead to some pretty dark feelings of what is it all for. And that the interesting thing there is a life without feeling, a job without feeling is a series of connected tasks. We can go and we can do and we can execute on something. But that's just the doing of something, right? Whereas the living, living a life, is feeling a life. It's the feelings we get through all of these different situations. There was an excellent thing that I just read and it talked about the idea of and what we're seeing in Alzheimer's and what we're seeing in memory generally, and the loss of memory that we've had in childhood and things like this. We may lose the facts, but we rarely lose the feelings. We may lose the pure context of what happened, but we don't lose the feelings. Right? And that our life is an expression of one feeling after another, one event that yields an emotion that leads us to another event that yields an emotion. But oh man if we were to live life without feeling, it would be like turning down all the colors and just living in a gray world.

Hanne 20:06

Yeah, absolutely. And it's so nice to hear this from you, because you're a man at the end of the day, right? And especially in–

Tim 20:13

Jury's out. No, I’m just kidding.

Hanne 20:16

–And especially, you know, for men to express their feelings, I think there's a whole nother ballgame then for us women to stand there. And there's been studies where showing emotions is, you know, that word unmanly. And where we now see also, the results of that there are actually higher, way higher suicide rates in men than they are in women. And the highest suicide rates of those are in Africa, specifically Sub-Saharan Africa. And I know that mental health care is not really accessible there. And also not very much talked about, but also Europe is, I think, second in the ranking. I think the statistic was that 18 in 100,000 men commit suicide. And if only men were allowed to feel, and if we could encourage them, little boys from you know, small onwards, when they're babies, when they're toddlers, to talk about their feelings, to feel their feelings, wouldn't also the world be a safer place?

Tim 21:33

I think so. I mean, the issue right now is we still have a culture where feelings can be weaponized, and they can be weaponized against people and they can be weaponized towards people. And there is some, I would say evolutionary reasons why men and women, and I'm talking about 500,000 years ago, where it was an evolutionary advantage for the hunter of the tribe, or the warrior of the tribe, or whatever you want to say, to not feel an emotion in the moment and be able to go forward and do something. Now, this doesn't always have a place in today's society. But we have to remember that I mean, we are still, physiologically, we are still very much the same being that we were 100,000 years ago, right? Like we are, we haven't, we haven't evolved. We're very, I say this over and over again, we're very dumb monkeys like we're very dumb apes, we sort of have, we are apes with choice, which we probably aren't really prepared for. But your point is not lost. Men do deal with this, are dealing with this on a cultural level. And I think that when we talk about wokeism, or awakening, and how important that is, it's not just an outward expression of understanding how other people are feeling and living their lives. It's actually an embracing of how we present in the world and how we're in our in between our ears, even that, just saying that I know is going to turn off a whole bunch of people that are listening to this. Because that is a scary prospect, to fully embrace what we're feeling and why we're feeling it. What the histories behind those feelings are and how much we may have been programmed or have given in to certain things and to come to terms with that, at this juncture in human evolution, over COVID through the Me Too campaign around the George Floyd issues, here in Canada, around the residential school issues, we've had to come to terms with how we feel about all of these things, environmental issues. I mean, the list goes on and on. The Middle East, Ukraine, all of these things come to the forefront. And if we don't talk about it on those levels, how do we ever get down to the truth of really getting down to why we think the way we think and why we feel the way we feel? So anyway, I mean, thank you, I think? But at the same time, we're rounding around a couple of things here that I'd like to steer us back towards. And that is, we've outlined why this is interesting in the present and why it's helping you in the present. But would you be willing to go a little into your own personal journey with what it meant for yourself? How you framed being emotional as you grew up? And then what were your first experiences, career-wise, school-wise, that have led us to today? Because I think for some of the people that are out there, it would be very helpful for them to hear a journey someone else's taken. Take us back to as early as you'd like to go.

Hanne 24:45

Sure. So, like I said, I grew up in what used to be the GDR, so I'm a post wall came down, baby. So, born in the 90s and my parents, specifically my dad, I think we have to go even a bit further back. He must have had also a terrible childhood. And they do say either you reproduce what happened to you as a child, your traumas, or you go a complete different way. Unfortunately, I got the reproduction site. And my childhood and teenage years were not easy. They're a dark place that I don't often journey back to. But I do remember when I was a little child, I was never allowed to cry, because apparently I was acting. And it was tough when you constantly get criticized and shouted at, not to cry. So, I always tried to suppress it. So, much so that I ended up hyperventilating, which usually made things worse because I was acting even more.

Tim 26:03

Yeah, you're being even more dramatic. 

Hanne 26:06

Exactly. So, I learned from very early on that my, let's call them bad emotions, my negative emotions, me crying was bad. On the other side, from my mom's side, I'm gifted with an infinite pool of tears. So, it comes from my granddad that has come from my mum. And now I'm gifted with this too. I cry at everything, be it happy, be it something, a moving conversation, be it little puppies on Instagram, being my best friends getting married. People being happy, I cry at those, I cry at everything. My husband always said that that's one of my superpowers. So, we have like those two very polarizing effects that I grew up with in my childhood. And in my teenage years, I was so awkward, I was so weird. And I fully like ended up in depression. So, I never really fully fit in this tiny place here that I grew up. And I was a yeah, in a very, very dark place. As a teenager,

Tim 27:22

You were in a dark forest. Literally.

Hanne 27:27

Literally. It's easy today to talk about it because it's a story. That is part of me, but it just doesn't define me of who I am today anymore. So, the more I talked about actually suffering through depression in my teenage years, and sharing those feelings with other people. It made it easier for me to share the story. And when I was 17, this was when anxiety enters the room. You're about to, you know, finish school, head into this big, bad world out there.

Tim 28:01

You managed to survive your childhood and your teenage years. And am I going to be enough when I enter society at large? What is that going to look like?

Hanne 28:10

Right? So, I left the big dark forest and took my–

Tim 28:18

Literally and figuratively.

Hanne 28:20

–Yes and I took my anxiety with me, I kind of managed to overcome the depression. And I ventured out into the world. And I was in London. This was when I first kind of experienced fully fleshed capitalism and Liverpool Street with all its big buildings, and everything that was there. And I ended up actually studying international business for my bachelor's. And, again, I've felt weird because it's business. So, everything is business and you get taught to be in a certain way, and that your vibrant self doesn't have a place there. Your anxiety doesn't have a place there because you're obviously gonna be a high performer. You're gonna finish your Bachelor's with the best marks. 

Tim 29:12

And oh, by the way, emotions do not factor in that. Yeah, right. The high performance and emotions, it's not in the same category.

Hanne 29:23

Yeah, it totally, don't go together. I mean.

Tim 29:26

Well, they do. I mean, this is the thing we're learning. They do. But at that time, in your experience, you slipped into the cultural definitions of what high-performance meant. 

Hanne 29:36

Exactly. And then for my master's, I got the chance to study at a quite prestigious university. It's a solely postgraduate University and intensely grateful for this experience because I didn't come out with a degree but also with a husband and friends for life. So, that was an amazing experience. But again, I encountered these people that made you believe that when you study management and your only way is to enter one of the top five consultancies, that's your like, goal, that's what you want to achieve. That's where you want to be at. And for that you obviously, again, you're going to be a businesswoman, you're not gonna share your feelings, you're going to be tough, you're going to be hard. And you're just going to, you know, work 80 hours a week and sleep two hours a night, and then you're successful. And people actually sometimes told me, what do you want in a consultancy, because I again, was a bit weird for being a management student. And so here it comes, I enter the work world, I work in a big corporate an American corporation. And again, I don't feel like I'm fitting in and I'm trying to be different than who I am, toning myself down, toning down my muchness as I call it, trying to fit into the mould that they needed me to be a bit more greyed than colourful. Keep my private life outside, just be a corporate Hanne, with clothes that I didn't like wearing, and just to fit into that mould. And three months down the line, I had locked jaw, I had tinnitus. And I muscled through two years, because that's what they say, right? Your first job, you should keep it for two years, if you want to make it in your career and I muscled through and poo, it was not good, it really wasn't. 

Tim 31:39

So you, the picture I have is, you had a very conservative, you're in a small town, forest town, mountain town, things were pretty in a box, how things happened, that came with consequences. And then you left the dark forest, you found this new, divergent space where you could be yourself, meet all these different people, have all these different ideas, start to learn about your talents. And then as we start to say, Well, where are these talents applied? We're looking at one of the big firms, we're looking at traditional corporate, Western-style corporate environments, you're back into a gray, risk-ridden existence, where there's a whole bunch of shoulds of how you should be behaving yourself and what it means to be a professional at your level. You're back into a dark forest at that point. So, you came out into the light for a bit, and then you were back into it. And that's when this physiological issues started to manifest, right? What was the moment when you said no deal? Where you said, this is not the way I'm gonna keep going forward.

Hanne 32:53

So, that was actually unintended. It was just me throwing myself in cold water and just doing 180, a friend of mine, who's a pediatrician, amazing researcher also lives with type one diabetes. She's one of my closest friends, and we had to catch up, and haven't seen each other for a long time. And I knew that they had gotten a big grant for a research project. And I was asking her about it. She was telling me how they were looking for a project manager, couldn't find one. And she said, Hanne. And this was the moment where I was like, Okay, this is it. I'm going finally, like, this is it, where I leave corporate, for now behind. And I just punched myself into cold water being an internal research world, with different universities and institutions spread over five countries. That was at the end of 2019. So, of course, you know, what's coming next, the pandemic hits. I’m managing about 30 people across five countries, throughout the pandemic, in this big 1 million euro research project that's been funded from the EU. And because my friend is in it, I'm more myself because I know her and

Tim 34:14

The roots were in friendship, not in professional optics and what you're supposed to be, right? It wasn't about your professional brand and degree it was about friendship and trust.

Hanne 34:24

Exactly. So, I've applied this kind of trust and openness to the whole team. And of course, when you talk to people only online, you've never seen them in person. And we're all suffering through this dark veil of the pandemic and are so insecure about what's going to happen and scared. And we're just, you know, in our meetings, talk about how we're feeling, who had a friend, the friends who had COVID, how did they do, oh my god, how we're feeling and through all of this vulnerability and openness, all of a sudden I started tapping into this potential of a safe, non-toxic work environment, where people are talking about how they're feeling. Where people are talking about like, Oh, my dad is sick, I'm worried. I don't know if I should work today or not. And I'm like, please just turn off your laptop, go and see your dad, it's way more than important.

Tim 35:26

And I take it, they're still highly productive, and they're still high-performance. And they're still getting the job obsolete. In fact, maybe more so. And so emerging from that dark forest, all of these rules that you were given about how to show up, and what you needed to be, what it meant to be strong, what it meant to be professional, they're falling away, is the picture I have. These are not actually the answer. In fact, they're holding us back from what is truly possible. If we just incorporate feelings into the professional experience. Am I close there? 

Hanne 36:08

Yeah, 100%, we've delivered this very big research project, very successfully. I think there were like 18 publications that we got out of it, with very high-profile journals out there. And some of us still talk to each other, work together. We're always plotting on how we can get back together because we had such a blast. But you know, as it is, with projects that are not meant to last, so–

Tim 36:32

Transient, yeah. 

Hanne 36:34

–It eventually finished. But I think despite COVID and everything sort of shutting down, we were so successful in what we did.

Tim 36:47

Hanne, I have a question. So, as projects are, you just said they're transient? And away you go. Right? We’re on to other things. How many of those teammates do you still keep in contact with? 

Hanne 37:03

Very closely? Well, definitely my friends. And another two, three people, four people.

Tim 37:11

But you keep tabs on them, you have a personal relationship? On top of the professional relations. 

Hanne 37:13

Yes. 

Tim 37:14

And if this had been a traditional Big Four consultancy House Project, we would have been around these other people all with our shields up, right? The project would end and what would happen? They would sink back into the background, we would never talk to them again. And big deal. Right, they were just walk-on extras in our lives for a while and away they go. You're opening something for me, because one of the things that's always been kind of natural to me, I guess, is I maintain relationships with people from my very first jobs. And I reach out to them, and we're quite close in the rest of it. And maybe it was because I'll just share a little bit about myself. I went through a period where, you know, I was a heavy kid, I wasn't obese by today's standards, but I just was broad and endomorphic. And, you know, it always played sports and whatever, but I was always the big one. So, I would either get challenged to fights because I was the one to knock down or try to, or I was the one that was a little bit different. And so, you know, easy to pick on. And I countered that with being the class clown for years and doing things like that, that was my compensation. And maybe I still do that. I don't know. But um, you know, I was quite at peace with that. I remember, at a fairly young age, this moment, where I was kind of fatigued about trying to be somebody for somebody else. And I just said, you know what, I'm just going to be myself, and they can take me or leave me. And that kind of always carried in. And so maybe it was some sort of rebellion, or maybe it was some sort of, I don't know, selective learning? But I never put a lot of stake in social orders. Right? It's probably something that's helped me now because I go up and I deal with senior executives and I don't have a heck of a lot of fear. You know, I go up and I just, I like, these are people, they put their pants on one leg at a time. Everybody poops, everybody pees, we're all human beings, like don't act like you don't. So, at some point, we just go and I meet with them on that level. I start with them on that level. But I've had relationships last for decades, long after we close out the work. And we talk about all the struggles that certain people have maintaining client bases and being you know, validated in the eyes of others and the rest of it. At the same time, if we're– and I'm saying there's a very real nugget for people who are listening to incorporate into their own personal brands or their own ideas of growth. Think what becomes possible if we connect with people on an emotional level where they actually see us as human beings and care about us, we care about them. It makes a lot of the professional stuff just so much easier. I don't think we can really tack a lot of, we could probably not identify a lot of professional sports teams that don't have some degree of care for one another. Right? So, anyway, that's one of the things that you're ringing for me is that you stumbled on a way to create deep and lasting relations with people that can't be based on transactional means. Because then it's only good, well, you're good for me. Rather than what about what I'm good for you? Anyway, sorry. Taken over a little bit there. Apologies. But how does that sound? Am I on your wavelength? 

Hanne 41:05

Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with you. And I mean, this journey I've been on is fairly recent. So, it's been kind of since 2019, since I'm on this journey, and maybe since last year, when I'm fully consciously leaning into it. And seeing that it's a strength as a leader, or as a person that wants to be a leader, to tap into this potential and be your true self and be open and vulnerable. To be soft, it's not a weakness, this is something that I've been told my whole life by, also, my dad is, oh god, you’re so soft, how you're gonna make it, but actually being soft, you are so courageous, and you're so brave to be soft, in a hard world that is out there. And with all of the softness, and that light you're sharing, you're gonna touch so many more people out there, and they are going to remember you. They're going to look out for you when you need needed the most, they will be there for you. And be it the people that are your friends and your family and your chosen family. I'm all about the chosen family, but also people at work, they will have your back when you cannot be your 110% super power energetic woman or person to perform. They will have your back and they will pick up your slack and they will be there for you. So, I feel you can only win by putting yourself out there.

Tim 42:47

This has been proved again and again and again. And I mean, I remember back in the mid-2010s, working with several groups that are doing mega projects, where they're several different contractors, some of them competitors coming together to deliver large, very large projects. And that historical tendency is that these mega projects when we're talking about in excess of two $3 billion. They are prone to providers under bussing one and each other, hamstringing one another because if I can make my competitor look bad, then I'll get more of the work kind of thing. Right? And they also are the ones that tend to be overspent. They've blown their schedules. And they tend to result in a lot of litigations and changes and things like this. And it goes way back, you know, we see a whole bunch of behaviours that come out of that they underbid and then disappoint the client later and all sorts of things. Well, we sought out to change this. And so we started to really get into not just collaborative contracting, but collaboration and teamwork from the start. And so in two-year projects, we would see competitors, instead of looking for opportunities to underbus, their project colleague, to actually get to have opportunities to stand them up. Even when it might have slowed themselves down. They were more communal and said, so we can get the entire project done. It doesn't make any sense for us to move faster, because we're not on the critical path, you are. So, what can we do to help? They would lend resources, they would lend people, they may have received materials first, they would give those materials over trusting that they would be replaced with the competitor's order when it finally came in if it was delayed. What happened? We had a team that came to the end and we had very seasoned workers that had been doing this work for three decades. That said, I've never worked on a project like this. And I've never felt that the entire team has my back. And we had young workers with new families saying, I feel like they're telling me to be safe and they mean it and they really care whether or not I get back to my family safe. And I remember this one young woman, she was probably 27, right at the beginning of her career. And she came from a difficult personal life. And she was out in this remote location working with these groups of strangers. And she said, You know, I come back to this place, and it feels like a family. I miss this place when I go. I mean, she was there for two, three years. And she meant it, she meant every single word of it, because not only was it stable, from a cultural perspective, but emotionally, it was so supportive. And she really felt like people had their back. And I remember this other young professional woman said, at the very end, she had the very last word, and she said, It's not goodbye, it’s see you later. And she really meant that. And she, I've talked to her since and she's carried so many good relationships forward with her. So, it's just so inspiring to see those types of people have those experiences. And that's what we're at the root of here, in a sense, and you're helping to illustrate, is just that there is so much personal potential, if we let the tears flow when they need to flow. And we deal with them when they're happening. 

Hanne 46:10

Yeah, well said.

Tim 46:12

Tell us a little, sorry, you're just bringing up so much for me that it's like it's really quite great. Can you tell me, please, what are the things that you're working on right now? Because you've got also some new chapters in your story that had been opened because of these realizations, I would love for you to share that, because I'm so excited for it.

Hanne 46:36

Thank you so much. Yes. So, with leaning into all of the potential of feelings and the power of it, I wanted to make T-shirts for myself with emotional messengering on it and just, you know, proudly, boldly walk around there in the world, on the beach in Cayman Island, or in the streets of Berlin, where I used to live, just to kind of plaster it into people's faces, like, hey, you know, feel your feelings. And then my husband was like, Nah, you can't do that, you really need to make a webshop and put it out there for people to buy them and for people to also wear them if they want to. And I'm like, okay, so I actually sat down, and I've never done anything like that before. And I built my little Shopify, online shop and designed a t-shirt with a beautiful friend of mine from London, who's a designer as well, big shout out to Sam. And we came up with this t-shirt that we actually managed to launch on the 10th of October, which is World Mental Health Day. And it reads very, very big on the back, how're you feeling? Because oftentimes, you know, number one, we don't take the time to check in with ourselves. And oftentimes we get the How are you feeling, good you? Yeah, well, good, bye. Okay, ciao. But no, we want to give you a moment to take a moment, take a breath. And just really think about how are you feeling right in this moment. So, hopefully, in the future, there's going to be more T-shirts, definitely with big bold messaging around feelings. And maybe people are interested to also boldly wear their feelings on their sleeves, and just join that movement of giving feelings and emotions that stage that they deserve, the attention that data serve, and tap into that superpower that our feelings are.

Tim 48:44

So, to step back through your story, from the little girl in the dark forest, that was bottled up, through the university student that found a new voice, through the professional consultant that was back in the dark forest and a little bit bottled up, through the person that took advantage of a friend's kindness and found a new voice. We now see this emergence, Hanne, who is going to grab the world with this vision of having people literally wear their hearts, maybe not on their sleeves, but on their backs, and create and really fight for a new standard of what it means when we ask a person Hey, how are you doing? Or what are you feeling? Or how's it going today? To have the space to actually deal with that for real, rather than just steamroll past it into what I'm really asking, which is did you get that TPS report completed or something right? So, there's some room for emotion here and sharing your belief that so much good stuff is opened when we make this part of us not just when we wear it, we wear it. We literally wear it. 

Hanne 50:02

Yeah, 100%. And it's not just about having done this and hopefully encouraging people to also sign up to this mission of making the world a more feeling place. But also, the proceeds are going to a good cause. So, I've chosen a charity that's very close to my heart. In Zimbabwe, it's called Friendship Bench Zimbabwe, and there is no access to mental health services. So, what it does, is they’re training community workers to give evidence-based counselling to people who really need it, by just using WhatsApp and booking an appointment with a community worker who you then meet on the bench, and you can talk about your depression, your anxiety, any struggles, you're going through, suicidal thoughts, even. And I think it's so impactful. And so important that in places without access, something like this exists. So, very passionate about this as well. And it just kind of aligns very beautifully as well with the mission that Outer Earthlings. So, this is my little T-shirt company.

Tim 51:10

I was about to prompt you to make sure you give us that name. 

Hanne 51:14

Yes, it’s called Outer Earthlings, which is actually a German word for not sure how to spell this German word. Außerirdischer (not sure if this is correct), so, an alien, but it's a literal translation of it, an Outer Earthling. So, it's about you coming out of your shell, and sharing your feelings. So, very much Friendship Bench Zimbabwe, and lines a lot with our mission at Outer Earthlings and getting to people to feel more openly and honestly and vulnerably. So, yeah, I'm very excited about that.

Tim 51:42

Anybody who knows me knows, I'm a huge fan of putting stuff on T-shirts. So, I am so excited for your journey, this will not be the first and the last time you're with me if I can do anything about it. Because we're going to follow up and see how things are going. And I just really want to say thank you for spending the time with me today and sharing your story so that other people can use this as a ladder to consider their own lives and where they're climbing to. I've prepared you for this. But let's go through it once again. You've already told us about Outer Earthlings, we're going to put the link in the show notes. If people want to get in touch with you what's the best way?

Hanne 52:25

That’s probably via LinkedIn. So, just by finding my name, and there are two Hanne Ballhausen’s out there, both of us are German, but one of them

Tim 52:34

Both of you are in pharmacy and/or have had experience in med tech.

Hanne 52:39

Quite similar, actually, it's quite funny but message the one that's based in the Cayman Islands, and you'll get to me. Otherwise, you can reach out on the website of Outer Earthlings as well. As well, as our Instagram page, Outer Earthlings. And you're very welcome to also drop me an email anytime if you want to. 

Tim 53:02

And we will of course put all of that contact information in the notes. So, that is awesome. Last question is where we wrap up. Amazing journey. Thank you for sharing with us. If you could hope for something if you could make a wish for someone who is listening here today. What would your wish be for people that are listening here today? How would their lives be improved?

Hanne 53:29

So, if I can make a wish for the people listening today, I hope you're kind to yourself. I hope you treat yourself with compassion. But also put that kindness and compassion out there in the world. Trust your gut feeling. It's there for a reason. Tap into your superpower that are your feelings. And just join me and to give into all of your muchness of who you are. You're beautiful.

Tim 54:04

Yeah. Be Your muchness and then you can find your enoughness.

Hanne 54:05

Now, I’m crying. Great, you've done it. I've done so well for the past hour.

Tim 54:15

Oh, no tears are always welcome with me. So, thank you so much.

Hanne 54:17

Thank you, Tim. This was beautiful.

Tim 54:19

Can't wait till we can do it again.

Hanne 54:21

 Me neither.

Tim 54:30

Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. If like us, you think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership. Please give us positive rating and review on Apple podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders. And you can spread the word too, by sharing this with your friends, teams and colleagues. Thanks again for listening and be sure to tune in, in two weeks' time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host, Tim Sweet, encouraging you to keep on leading.