Please note : This transcript is automatically generated and provided for your convenience.

Hi, Tino, welcome to the show.

[00:01:15] Tino: Hi, Rob. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:16] Rob: Yeah, it's been really good to have you on. I've known you a while and I've always been a really big fan of your work.

But for listeners who don't know you, could you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about why you chose to speak about the topic of uncertainty?

[00:01:31] Tino: Sure. Yeah. First of all, my name is Tino Engel. I'm a business trainer here in the Berlin area. And my focus topics, so to speak, are interpersonal communication, collaboration and teamwork, and of course, decision making. And as you already said, I'm also a speaker. Also, a former professional poker player, and we see that those two things have a lot of things in common and are closely connected to it.

And I love experiential learning and serious games a lot. I have two kids, wonderful kids, most of the time, wonderful kids, and a husband and a long term relationship that is also like a lot of room to work on my communication skills for sure.

I'm a passionate runner and always curious. So I'm looking forward to all the questions you have prepared here today.

[00:02:20] Rob: Absolutely. And it sounds like as a fellow parent, I know that being a parent brings a lot of uncertainty, but I think the main thrust of your talk and your experience from what I've heard is your background, you're as a professional poker player. For I think five years? Is it 2010? 2015?

[00:02:41] Tino: It's about, about five years. Yeah.

[00:02:43] Rob: So let's start at the beginning, right?

What drew you into becoming a professional poker player? Because I'm pretty sure that it wasn't like your university careers council saying, Tino, you seem like the poker guy, take it away.

[00:02:58] Tino: absolutely. I, I can imagine he would. I probably have said the opposite, right? Because based on my experience, I'm rather like a very risk averse person. That's how I grew up in many ways, or I was for a very long time, kind of like a risk averse person. How I got into poker, as you already suggested, it was my plan, first of all.

I studied university sociology and psychology as a minor, and my plan was, of course, getting a job, a full time job. And in 2008, I found myself having failed with that, right? I had like side jobs, but in a way life was rather, I would say, a hustle and bustle. And it was quite frustrating being, being stuck in that uncertainty, right?

Because you have a plan, it doesn't work out, and suddenly you ask yourself all those questions. Will I ever find a job, a decent job how to solve all those financial issues? Can I pay on my bills? How is that affecting like my social life, my relationship and everything? And then by chance I stumbled into poker on, I remember it it, was a conversation with a friend actually on a party and he suddenly mentioned something and I quote, that is a lot of fun, can be done from home.

And earns you money. That was the first time I heard about it. He calls that online poker. And I felt like, Hey, this sounds like a dream job. Let's dig deeper into it. Because I know nothing about it. And it was very easy in a sense to apply for the job, right? Because you don't need a CV. All you need is a credit card.

I didn't even have a credit card, right? Because back in the days, not everybody was getting a credit card. And it was kind of like tricky. So I asked my mom. And she said, okay, I give you my credit card, be careful, but we have a good, trustful relationship. I repeated the same process a week after, and then I suddenly found myself and the poker game starting very, very low.

And it was, it was a very fun experience. It was very intriguing. It was also in a way promising because I felt like, hey, what if it works out? What if I really will be able, at one point, if I put in the work and, and, and the time and the effort, maybe I can turn it into a living besides all the side jobs.

And, yeah, then the whole thing kicked off, step by step, month after month. And at one point, I said, okay, I'm not going to apply for another job. This will be my, my focus from now on. Let's give it a try for a whole year and talk about this with my wife. She said, okay, trust you. And then it turned out to be five years.

[00:05:19] Rob: You have a very supportive family, I must say.

[00:05:23] Tino: I do. I do. And we had those, we, you know, we had those conversations with when, when some, some kind of like friends slash network contacts came by and, and even public in front of all the people I told, spoke to my wife. And I remember there's one lady, she, she told Kellan, my wife, I don't know how you do it being together with a guy like this, who's gambling for a living. She couldn't get it. And all my wife said was, I trust him. I Long story short.

[00:05:52] Rob: That is fantastic. But I am also interested in your own mindset shift because you say I was risk averse And then you do begin gambling with every opportunity. There is risk as well And it's doubly poignant because you're taking a the credit card of your mom You have a marriage as well, and I'm just wondering what made you Think okay.

That is something I could do For a living or is this more something you just tried out for a bit of fun and then after some success You You started thinking in bigger terms.

[00:06:28] Tino: Yeah. I mean, first of all, it was just like a hobby slash passion. And I realized that thinking about things and approaching them strategically is a way, of course, a to minimize risk. At the same time, I was starting very low, but it's not that I, I don't know, borrowed like a thousand. I remember specifically I bought like 50, 50 from my mom's credit card.

And I did it a second time because I went broke very quickly. And then of course I paid back the money, I never ever borrowed any money from them afterwards anymore. But it was always about bankroll management and just, just betting, even if it's a tiny amount of money, just having a tiny bit of skin in the game made a difference and step by step I got used to it, to a certain extent.

And I think that's, that's the key with everything, right? Maybe speaking in public, you don't start with a speech in front of a thousand people, right? You start slow, find some people, give a short speech, a minute or whatever, or seven minutes at one point, et cetera. And that's how I got into it. And then you have a network.

Of people who do the same, because that, that was really crucial, to a certain extent, to have people that you can talk to and exchange ideas, and I felt like, there was always a saying, the sky is the limit, because there was no one telling you, okay, you have to do this or that, it depended on you and your effort.

And somehow I found that fascinating. It was,

[00:07:51] Rob: It's certainly really exciting. I'm interested, you said, I lost my money pretty quickly in the first round. What do you think you were doing wrong with the gift of hindsight?

[00:08:01] Tino: it was the first couple of dollars. I was just, I had no clue what I was doing essentially. Right. I mean, I learned the rules a little bit and then, then it's, it's very easy to specifically online, I think online is very special because you have the opportunity to really what we called multi tabling.

You can play it like, like, like some people do in chess, even in person where you play multiple games at the same time. And that is very intriguing because you get like a bigger sample size, you have a lot of action, but you don't really focus on the quality of the choices. And that can give you a very quick disadvantage.

And on top of that, if you play very, very low, you always lose a good chunk of the money to the bank, so to speak, right? Because you always pay something called rake. If you ever go into casino, it's the same. They always take something out of the pot and the proportion. It's way bigger on, on those very low stakes.

That was a reason, but it was fine because I knew that 50 bucks is what I can compensate. So put it as a learning experience.

[00:09:00] Rob: and then tell me about the process of learning. So you've, you've done a couple of things. You've probably just in the process of experience, learned some stuff about betting and how to do it more skillfully, but is this the kind of thing that you just practice and that's how you learn it? Or D, were there any resources that you dove into?

What do you think was the key thing to become better at decision making?

[00:09:25] Tino: mean, first of all, it's like having the drive of learning something. I think you need to be very curious because there will be a lot of setbacks. And there's a lot of things, of course, if you dive into something like poker, although the rules are very easy to understand, it still has a very high, I would say, a high level of complexity if you dive deeper into the math.

And the more questions you ask, the more questions you will find that follow suddenly. Like, let's say, like in life. And I was just curious about it. And I had so many opportunities. I mean, first of all, I started thinking about it, right? I had a look, what are other players doing to get some inspiration.

Then I started reading about it. I bought books, I bought video courses. I. Also was very active in the forum where people could post hands and I would try to understand, okay, how are better players making the decisions? What is a perception? What is a thought process? how how do they handle all the the financial aspects even if they were very small in the beginning Just a feeling of losing right doesn't care if you lost a dollar or ten or a hundred or thousand in the beginning the question is does it mean something to you losing in general and how do you deal with that?

And at one point I got, I got coaching where I paid someone, to coach me on those topics. I had video recordings that I went over and analyzed what I really did opposed to what I thought I did. I went over hand history. So you have a lot of opportunities to do that and you will be confronted with a lot of surprises.

[00:10:50] Rob: for sure. Now, if only everyone looked at their decisions in such a scientific manner, can you imagine how much better we'd become at decision making? At a point that Carlos Carro, our mutual friend, made another big poker play.

He said that one thing about poker is you just have so many more goes at making decisions than you would in a business.

In a business, you know, there's a few every year, but with the poker table, it's hand after hand after hand after hand. And from what I see with you, it's about finding your process. So you don't need to dive too deep into painful memories here. But I would love to hear about one moment, you did the right thing.

And one moment, you did the wrong thing. The wrong thing.

[00:11:38] Tino: And specifically in poker, I mean, I did a lot of things wrong for sure. The good news were other poker players did the same. Right? Because we're all in the same boat. We're all fighting with like this, this kind of like old brain that is still stuck in a hundred thousand years and in the past with all those biases.

let's say a very, very simple bad decision that I made more than once was, And that's very important, very unique to online poker. Online poker really shows you the importance of controlling your impulses and dealing with your impulses and developing strategies. Because it's just one click on the button of the mouse, right?

It's minimal. And I had, I remember many situations where I had the plan, all cards have been dealt, the pot got a little bit bigger. And my plan was, okay, I'm going to bet based on those assumptions.

And if my opponent raises, I just throw away my cards. I'm out of the game. I let the pot go. Right. That was a plan.

Then I bet I get raised and I mean, I can literally hear right. My, my inner voice screaming, don't do it. Don't do it. And then like, like really in slow mo, I see my finger clicking the button, paying him off. losing most of the time, which was a good indicator for the quality of my assumptions. And then, of course, in that moment, automatically blaming myself for being such an idiot.

I had the plan, I didn't execute it, and now I get punished for, and I lose. Right? That was something something, very simple. The difference between your plan of executing something in a moment, and then when the moment when the emotions heat up, realizing that your subconsciousness is not ready to let it go, or your ego, right?

That was something

That.

I think a lot of poker players struggle with.

[00:13:27] Rob: I can, I can see myself doing that, to be honest. But let's, let's go on to the the, right thing though. And because I know you share, I think, three strategies in your TEDx. What is maybe one of the strategies, which is, probably more surprising for people about how they should approach decision making.

And how did it help you on the poker table?

[00:13:51] Tino: I can boil it down to the questions I've received as a poker player. And one of them, most asked question was, how much did I win? Then you have the pessimists, all the people that like to see you suffer how much did you lose? Right? There's one question I almost never heard, like, like, is a ha, what is a good decision?

How do you make decisions? Right? What I'm coming to is it's so much about results and poker is so much associated for a lot of reasons from movie reasons and, and the news and all the cliches that it's all about winning and losing. I would say neither poker. And our life is about winning and losing. It's about making good choices. And you can see that in, in, I remember like when we talked about poker hands back in the days, there was a rule at one point we didn't show if we won or lost the hand, we didn't even mention it because it was irrelevant. Right. We just say, okay, I have this hand. I'm not sure if I should have bet here or if I should have checked if I bet what should be the bet size and based on what assumptions, et cetera.

And. Nobody asked, did you win the hand or did you lose a

hand? Because it was irrelevant. It's completely misleading in many, many circumstances unless you have a very big sample size,

which doesn't happen very often in the same context with the same person under the same conditions.

[00:15:08] Rob: Yeah. That's such a powerful way of looking at it. I believe Robert Greene read a book called Mastery. And he doesn't talk about poker, but he talks about other fields of excellence where people have become really good at something. And the way they take apart their processes, I believe the example he gives is the Top Gun school where people are learning about flying fighter jets and so on.

And they do a half hour training session. And they'll spend hours, five, six hours breaking down every single nuance of that thing to make sure everything was followed. Why was it done? Because that's what you ultimately, you can't control the uncertainties, but you can control how you're going to act when confronted with certain decisions.

Mm I always say, like, the result is always the logical consequence of the quality of your decision plus chance. We don't usually call it chance, we call it luck, but I think technically it's chance. And you can't control chance, you can't control if you get lucky or not, if you get the right card at the right moment in the right context.

[00:16:15] Tino: But you can, you can control the process. And why would you ever spend All the time focusing on the results when you know they are always like influenced in many different ways, and you don't even know which ways by that thing called chance. And if you look around, like in the newspapers and politics and sports business for sure, it's so much about results.

People are craving to get a number, to get certain results, even if you explain to them, it's, sometimes it's even made up, but they're still happy because they have a number. It's I think we're shifting the focus into the wrong direction. And I have like, I wrote down a quote because someone that I know recently died and we got an invitation to the funeral.

And there was a saying that I think really boils it down, and I think that's why we touched me. I have it here. In English, it would mean something like this. Don't cry because it's over. That's the result. Smile because it was great.

It's about the journey. It's about the process. It's about life and not about the, the end result.

And think about it. Why would you think about results all the time when you're going to die at the end in life? You rather focus on the journey slash the process.

[00:17:25] Rob: I quite agree. And I also think there's a lot of humility we can take from not looking at the results only. There's a book by Michael Lewis, coincidentally called Liar's Poker, about the 1980s, at Salomon Brothers, when a load of, bond brokers, were people working in a particular industry that there wasn't much money at the very beginning, but then something in the regulations changed, and suddenly they were making loads and loads and loads.

And the point he makes in the book is any normal person who didn't define themselves by what they were earning would say, Oh, I'm lucky. I'm, earning all this money right now for doing exactly the same thing as I was before. But the way that results impact our view of ourselves means suddenly these people felt entitled to it, like they were worth every single penny of what they were getting.

And of course, in the end, the chance turns against them and they're not making the same money again.

[00:18:23] Tino: Payback time.

[00:18:23] Rob: You mentioned earlier, like, should I tell you, give you a poker example or a personal, like a real life example, an outside, an outside world example. Have you got another example maybe in your life where you had a big decision to make and how you approached it with this more kind of process driven mindset rather than just worrying about the results?

[00:18:46] Tino: Whenever I got into like a business relationship and, and we might come back to this later on when I got like into the, the process of the transition from poker into business, I met a company and we were working together. And the idea was to, because they were using poker as a tool, as a playing field in business to train decision making with managers. And I got involved in it. I thought it was quite lucky finding people who actually came from the other end, being passionate hobby poker players and having a background in business and me coming from the other side and coming together. But there was a time where I felt like, okay, it became like a burden because I felt like certain assumptions.

And I like to think about like, when I think about the future and certain assumptions, it turned out to probably false and you already have invested a lot of things. A lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of resources and that friendship, you might even be friends with the people, so the relationship level plays a role.

And then at one point, it got like more and more pressure on my side, and I was wondering, okay, what is the decision that I'm going to make? Do I let it run as it is right now, or do I, A, confront myself with reality and confront them, of course, in the best way possible? And And, and discuss that and say the way it is going right now from my end, it's not going to work out based on ABC.

And then I made the decision at one point, very clear and said, well I don't think the corporation as it is. And as we try, it's going to work out. And that took me a decent amount of courage for sure, because you don't want to build a, burn any bridges. You don't want to damage relationship. And at the same time, it's looking back, I think it still was the right choice.

Because you got to protect your own resources at one point. The bad news was that they took it differently than I did. And then from there it broke, which I still think is a pity.

[00:20:41] Rob: this is, I think, a really opportune moment to jump into a conversation I really wanted to have with you just to put this whole process into terms that are relatable to lots of people, which is they want to change direction in life. Let's say you want to change job. It's similar to you. You know, you've got something, you went into it, you had a particular idea of what it'd be like.

Maybe it's not as you expected, or maybe something else came along and that seems to be a bit better, but it's a big decision. Lots of uncertainty. It's going to impact you either way, whatever you do, it's going to impact other people. Walk us through that process. give advice to that person, I would say.

What's the first thing they do?

[00:21:25] Tino: Yeah. I mean, I would say it always, and that is the longer journey. I would say, I mean, in poker, we are drilled down to a condition to have like a, a technical process that is as sharp as possible. And at the same time, the basis for executing any kind of process is always like the mental game or the mindset, as we call it very often.

And I think that's where it starts. And I would say like the, the mental game, the mindset is really the foundation. So think about like, what is my lens of looking at things and know your own tendencies, know, know your own challenges. For example, you might now that realize I'm a person that is focusing much more on what I can lose.

Opposed to what I can win and there are different people you can experience that it's a poker table Someone just want to win the pot. I would say you find a lot of those people at least back in the days in sales. That is all about or very much about winning. And then you have people who really want to protect their resources, who are more on the risk averse side.

Know yourself. That's the first thing that I think is important. And

[00:22:27] Rob: on, let's help me know myself. I've got some assumptions maybe about the way I look at the world, but I might also not be right. So how can I or how can one. Maybe find a more objective way. Is this something, do you recommend you talk to other people and ask them? Or is this, you sit down with a bit of paper and write down like all the ideas that you have to try and come find an understanding?

At least speaking for myself, I don't know that I've done enough work into understanding me.

[00:23:01] Tino: I think that's a very interesting question, understanding yourself, I think to a certain extent requires a willingness to look deeper and accept whatever comes up because there might be certain things coming up that you are, that you like, you don't like to see them or hear them or feel them, deal with them, and at the same time I think you need other people. Right? Because we all have blind spots. We all have the, I think, the desire to avoid pain and this kind of like cognitive dissonance suddenly, Oh man, if this is right, it's really painful because it crushes my, my own identity, the way I look at myself. So we, we, we find reasons this, I just had a bad day.

This is not a typical tendency. I usually don't, I, I usually do it better than I did this one day. And you need some other people that you can really trust and would be careful because you need. A lot of honesty from those people that really tell you some behavior that you have in certain contexts. If you have the opportunity in certain, with certain skills, you can record yourself like in speaking or as I could in poker.

And then on another day you have a fresh look and say, Oh, this is me from a certain person's mind. But it's very hard to execute it in life. So I think you need a network of people who. will tell you their honest perception of you and your behavior and your perceived thinking in certain contexts.

You need that.

[00:24:18] Rob: Oh, it's so true. You're making me think of like, when I was working in music, and I think any creative industry, it's the same. When you're involved in the thing, you can't really tell whether it's good or not in the moment. And there are moments where you think, oh my god, this is rubbish. But you come back to it two weeks later, and you're like, oh, it's actually quite good.

I quite like that. Similarly, you might think this is fantastic and you play it to a room full of people and they all seem a bit bored by it. So you do need the outside perspective as well to get, you need distance, I guess. Perspective is what it's all

about. Yeah. Okay, so you've got, we've at least tried to achieve an understanding of how we look at the world, our tendencies.

We've still got this big decision. What's, what's the next phase?

[00:25:07] Tino: I always ask myself whether a set of questions, I know there are different decision making methods and everything based on my experience. When I taught them, it's very often that people don't really apply them because this, this, you can do it with people who are very analytical and love to think in numbers and clear steps.

You find those people. And you can experience that at the poker table with them very quickly when I did it in training at the poker table. But most people, nah, they don't want to invest the time or they think it's, it's, it's very hard to, to apply it in life. One question that I always love asking myself, and this is where I use the analogy and the metaphors from coming from poker is, what am I trying to win playing those cards as a metaphor? And this can be applied to everything. So it's really about A, Kicking off this awareness and asking yourself, why am I doing right now? Slash why am I playing those cards in that moment? What am I trying to win? And you can apply that everywhere. It can be business meeting. I always encourage a team leaders, for example, ask this question.

What are we trying to win with this specific meeting? And if no one comes up with a good answer, you know that you are wasting most likely your resources. If there's no good answer, call it a day and everybody has something else to do, spending their resources. If you are in a, in an argument with your partner, like in my case, me and Carolyn, for example, and I hopefully catch myself asking myself, why am I having this discussion right now?

Why am I pushing at this moment? What am I trying to win? And very often it might, in my case, might boil down, Oh, it's for ego reasons. I want to be right. I want to teach something to my kids. Why am I doing it? Why am I interrupting my son right now in school and give him some advice on public speaking?

How he could impress, maybe for good reasons, his teacher? And then why am I doing it? Is it because I want to shine? Is it because I want to help him? There's a variety of things. This might be sometimes easy to answer and sometimes very difficult, but I think it's key understanding why are you playing the cards that colleagues deal you, your boss deals you, life deals you.

That's the first thing because we need to break this autopilot. And that's why I think it's crazy when people say like, Like, just trust your intuition all the time.

Don't think about it, don't analyze it. Do it at the poker table, and under most circumstances, unless you have run through it or ran through it many, many times of a big sample size, you will go broke very quickly,

[00:27:23] Rob: hmm. Actually, I'll just take a break from the questions for a second. You, don't like gut feeling then?

[00:27:30] Tino: Oh, I like gut feeling. I think gut feeling is great under certain circumstances. I like gut feeling if the stakes are super low.

I, I'm the, I risk everything if I just selected like an average priced meal in a restaurant. I don't spend a lot of time. I never, I almost never ever spend more than, I don't know, I would say like a minute going to the menu.

I just pick the first thing that I think, oh, that's cool. Right? And you could say, oh, you're not like making diligently a wise decision. No, there is no risk in it. There is no nothing to win here, right? Everything is most likely good. Otherwise, I wouldn't be in this restaurant.

[00:28:06] Rob: That's true. Malcolm Gladwell had a podcast episode about this, about how he employs people, like even like accountants and so on. He says, I basically just, if someone seems cool, I'll just employ them. It's fine. Because I don't even know if they're going to be good or not. I guess the point is the gut feeling is great when you need to gather the data when you don't really know what to do anyway.

The stakes are not that high. Let's just , give it a

[00:28:34] Tino: I would say gut feeling, trust your gut feeling. Either if the stakes are very low. Right, then you can even call it gambling, whatever, right, don't spend too much time thinking about it and become one of those, I think Gladwell was it, who calls us the maximizers in a restaurant who spend 30 minutes before they pick up, pick a meal, and then lunch break is

over,

[00:28:52] Rob: Be a satisfier.

[00:28:53] Tino: yeah, satisfy that was the other one.

Yeah, absolutely. And you have the, the the, opportunity, of course, to trust your gut feeling if you have a large sample size. In other words, if you have been through a similar situation many, many times, I don't need to open that box and say, okay, my gut feeling tells me that this opponent under this, in this situation, based on what I know about him and all the hands I've played in similar situations, or in business or negotiations I've been to that seem to be similar.

I don't need to break down in that moment why I don't trust this person or why I think something is off with that deal. I know that I can trust my gut feeling and then, of course, afterwards, I have to dig deeper and use my rational capacity and say, something is off now. Let's find what it is because I trust my feeling.

Something is wrong here,

but you have experience.

[00:29:41] Rob: I see, I see. That's good. Back to the questions. Number one, what game am I playing? What am I trying to win?

[00:29:48] Tino: What am I trying to win? Yeah. Understand yourself. What is

driving you?

[00:29:52] Rob: What's the second question?

[00:29:53] Tino: Yeah. The second one is now. Okay. If you say, I mean, if you, if you realize there's nothing to be won, well, the decision has been made. You do something, something else. If you go into that direction, of course, the next question is what resources do I need? Okay.

And I think that's critical. In poker, it's a little bit more obvious because you have the poker chips, which symbolize money usually.

And you have time as well, but if you dig deeper, you also have like mental capacity. Right, that you're investing, an image that you invest, the same applies in life. And when I say, okay, there is something to be won, I really would like to win it, a new job, a new position, for example. But what are the resources I need to invest?

And then you could realize, oh man, suddenly I need to expend my working hours 20%. I might have much, much more stress. So in a way I have to invest some mental health.

I don't know, you might lose a couple of relationships in your work that are really doing you big favor that you really feel comfortable living in on a daily basis in your business life that you might lose and keep in mind, losing is like a part kind of like winning as well, right?

We can. Avoiding a loss in a way is a win as well.

So think about the resources. And that I think is critical because the last thing you want to avoid is that you run out of resources. And I always say in poker, you go broke

in life very often, especially when I deal with executives. You get a burnout.

You're playing too many

cards

[00:31:18] Rob: Gary Stevenson made this point in The Trading Game, talking about when he was working as a trader. There was an instance where he was right, but to be right he needed to be wrong for a certain amount of time for the investment to come true. So he didn't have the resources to take that decision that he thought was right.

Okay,

next we got, what am I trying to win? What resources do I need? What do we do next?

[00:31:42] Tino: Yeah. And then I would say the logical question that boils out of that, or grows out of that, is, is it worth it? And that's how, well also I think now your whole value system also plays a role at one point. Is it worth it? Investing my time, my energy, is it worth it spending the time, spending the nerves spending a little bit of trust, discussing with my wife about something that on a second look is not really that important or could we, because the moment if you start answering that question, you also, that's what I've noticed, you start thinking about other opportunities, what you could do with that time and energy and focus on money, is it worth it, I don't know, compared to what, compared to the other things you could do with your money, for example, or your time or your trust.

And then you realize if you don't know, who else should know if something is worth doing, especially in your life, if not you.

So you better find an answer to that.

[00:32:36] Rob: These are powerful questions. And at this point, do you feel pretty much ready to make the decision?

[00:32:42] Tino: I would say if the final answer is yeah, it's worth it. That what can happen is that you circle back to the last question. You know, that here's something that I really like to win. You have thought about the resources that you need. And now you think about, is it worth it? Yes, it's worth it. But you might realize you don't have the resources, but it's worth it so much.

That like back in the days, like I went to my mom and bought a credit card, right. Or that you say, okay I'm ready to take this extra workload of trying to Percent per week to get this job, get this promotion. And if, if, if all that works I start thinking about options. Okay. Now I know where, what I'm trying to win.

I know, have a rough idea that it costs me time, energy, money, focus, et cetera. I think it's worth it. What options do I have to achieve that? How am I playing this hand? And there are multiple options. In poker they are limited. I think in life very often you have a variety but then I start thinking about options.

[00:33:35] Rob: That's the, the actions you're going to be taking. You're putting it into a strategy

[00:33:40] Tino: Okay, how do we do it? We know we want to kick it off, we want to make this decision how do we best kick it off?

[00:33:45] Rob: That's so good. So important. I would say that most people jump straight into that without having thought about the other things first.

[00:33:52] Tino: Yeah, yeah. I thought restaurant, options. You have, I don't know, 150 options in certain restaurants on the meal. You can spend a lot of time, and if you dig deeper, and then just one step and say, is it worth it? Spending like 20 minutes instead of what else could I do with the time? I could have a wonderful conversation with my kids.

I could have wonderful conversation with the client instead of like yeah, give me five more minutes. And

[00:34:15] Rob: yeah. And it is a death sentence. If you tell a waiter to come back in two minutes, they take like 20 minutes to come back I find.

they really do.

[00:34:25] Tino: resources as well. Right.

[00:34:27] Rob: yeah.

[00:34:27] Tino: their life easy.

[00:34:29] Rob: Those are awesome questions. Love to go into a couple of rapid fire questions, if that's okay. Yeah just little answers, little tips that you think, that I feel would be interesting to get your, your opinion, opinion on.

We've kind of touched on a few of them already, but this one I always love asking people, is there a non business book? So it could be a biography, it could be a novel, it could even be a film, I don't really mind, but just not like a traditional business book, which, Unexpectedly helped you see decision making or your topic in a, in a, in a clearer way that showed they taught you some lessons.

[00:35:06] Tino: I don't know if it's a business book, but one of the books that I read more than once was Kahneman's Thinking Fast, Thinking

Slow. It's more like an academic book but I think it's very you need to spend some time thinking about the concepts, but it was really like an eye opener in general to understand more what I was experiencing all those years in poker all the biases, using like certain rules of thumb or heuristics in the wrong context.

And then I understood, Oh, this is why I did this. And now I understand a little bit the mechanism that happens in the brain. And once you know about them and you have this little bit of awareness, at least most of the time, it can improve every area. Every conversation, like with my kids, when I suddenly find myself, Oh, it's kicking in again, take a

[00:35:48] Rob: Yeah. System one is, is

[00:35:50] Tino: Yeah. And it's very fast, especially if you, I mean, if you have good intention, which we always have as parents for our kids, right? We feel like we know better and just listen and you say, no, this is not a very good strategy. Convincing them.

And one thing before I forget about it as a little prince, that's a book that I read with my children and I found it so easy to read. And I think it has so many easy life lessons. Which very often boils down to, I feel like be humble and just enjoy life and be nice to people.

[00:36:21] Rob: Bit like the the, Regenbogen fish, the

the rainbow, rainbow fish that gives up all his scales. Another good one about I think humility as well. You're a trainer as well. What do you find to be the quickest way to build up trust with your group when you're in a workshop setting?

[00:36:39] Tino: really doing, doing your best to understand them as much as possible. So I call it the, the strategy of seeking to understand others. That's just the first thing at the same time, accepting whatever they bring up, because I think every, everyone's perspective, for example, when I have them at the poker table for like a team building or like a team training, every perspective is valuable.

And I accept. And, and I feel that this is 100 percent true and I really mean it when somebody said, I don't like poker.

Right. Or when I met people in improv I don't like improvisational theater or whatever. And I said, I feel you so much. Right. Because I either have made similar experience or have made, met people who made similar experiences.

And I think people have a, usually a good sense. of understanding if you mean it or not. And if you, if you're honest with them, I think that's, that's a, I think like a really a door opener instead of trying to teach them, Oh no, no, no. You just haven't understood the

game properly. Yeah. You're not ready yet.

This is the last thing people know. Okay. So that's your perspective. Fine. Respect each other. Right. Accept it. Doesn't mean I agree with it. But I, I'm, I think I'm good at accepting other people's perception.

[00:37:50] Rob: For sure. Last one of the rapid fire. most underrated quality in a decision maker.

[00:37:57] Tino: I would say, like, being, being humble. Just,

just, Yeah,

being down to earth, being humble, and say, Hey, no matter how how I try, there will always be chance playing a role. Sometimes I win when I don't deserve it, and sometimes I lose when I should have deserved to win. Right? And just knowing it, that is true for you, and that is, it's true for everybody else.

And, and then Act based on that insight.

[00:38:22] Rob: Let's move on to the listener challenge. And in this section of the pod, we like to give listeners a ritual or an exercise that they can try out. Those questions, I think, are fantastic, but where do you reckon would be a good place for people to try applying those questions in their life?

[00:38:39] Tino: If I would pick one specific with a goal of training them, one specific situation so that they have a lot of opportunities based on science to practice this one question, do it as much as possible whenever you pick up your phone. What am I trying to win right now? Because based on science, I don't know We use the phone probably like 150 times a day. We grab it, we click on it all the time. We scroll through social media and ask yourself, what am I trying to win? Right. In situations like this, or when you find yourself in an argument, pause for a second, which is always a good idea.

Take a deep breath and say, what drives me in this conversation here? What am I trying to win for me, for the other person, for the team, for the situation,

start with that.

[00:39:18] Rob: It is all really kind of thinking fast and slow. You've got these instinctive responses, the gut feeling, the anger, all of these things that crop up kind of

automatically. And they're not usually the best way to make good decisions. It's about slowing down and applying these processes. We'll be sure to share all of those questions in the show notes so people can check those out. Last thing to say really, Tina, where can people go to find out more about you?

[00:39:43] Tino: They can either find me on LinkedIn. That is the platform I'm quite active at on a, under my name, Tino Engel, or they can check out my website, which is www. tinoengel. com. That's where they also find some video material, et cetera. And some, some more details.

[00:40:01] Rob: And also I'm hoping that it will be uploaded by the time this goes out. I will put a link to your TEDx, which I am

looking forward to

watching too.

Yeah. Tina, thank you so much for coming on the show.

[00:40:13] Tino: Thank you, Rob, for having me. It was a pleasure talking to you.

[00:40:18] Rob: That was Tino Engel. Such a great perspective on how we can bring some more intentionality to our choices. I really love that framework for knowing when to trust your intuition versus slowing down and actually analyzing.

If you found value in today's episode, please take a minute and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps a lot. in getting more people to find us. And also be sure to share this episode with someone, you know, who might be wrestling with an important decision.

Tino's frameworks could be exactly what they need. I'm Rob D. Willis, and I look forward to seeing you next week for another episode of Superpowered, the unique stories of modern leaders. Goodbye.