Without sales, there is no business
Mikk: This is the first official recording of our Leadership Culture Podcast. I'm Mikk Orglaan, founder of Challeng.ist. I work with founders as they face the difficult parts of building a company. Sales is one of those parts: without sales, there is no income. You may have a brilliant product, but a product alone is not yet a business. Birgit, how would you introduce yourself?
Birgit: I'm a salesperson who isn't afraid to pick up the phone. I make sales calls for companies as an external sales partner, and I run practical sales training. My work goes further than telling people to “make more calls.” I need to understand what a company actually offers, who might care, and how to start a useful conversation about it.
Falling in love with the product—and finding the courage to call
Mikk: I saw you on Timo Porval's marketing programme and wanted to approach sales from a leadership angle. I also asked you to complete a Sparkly profile so we could look at what drives you. I used to think I was a very good salesperson; experience made me less certain. Founders can fall so deeply in love with their product that they mistake the product for the whole business. They see every unfinished detail and postpone calling customers until everything is perfect. I've done that myself. Yet I've also worked with salespeople who knew far less about the product, made the calls anyway, sold it, and brought in revenue. That contrast changed how I think about customer contact.
Birgit: The first call can feel daunting. Once you make it, you often discover that people are quite willing to talk. They care less about your complete feature list than about whether you understand their problem.
Mikk: When a founder has lost sight of the bigger picture, how do you find the part of a new product or service that will matter to a buyer? And what makes you want to sell a particular offer?
Finding a value proposition customers care about
Birgit: When I see a great play or film—or taste a wonderful cake—I tell my friends about it with real enthusiasm. Some of them then buy a ticket or try that cake. The principle is similar with a business service: I first need to understand it well enough to recommend it sincerely. A cybersecurity founder once spent half an hour explaining a service to me in highly technical terms. Eventually I asked, “So you try to break into a company's website to see whether it can withstand an attack?” He said that was exactly it. One clear sentence did more for the offer than a long technical description.
Mikk: That takes an ability to separate the main point from a great deal of information.
Birgit: I've worked in sales for 21 years, but I liked doing that even at school: I could pull the essential points out of a long text. For each new offer, I now write myself a sales guide. What does someone need to understand first? What questions should I ask? A general benefit may open the conversation, but the real value emerges when I learn where the customer is stuck. I ask about their situation rather than reading them a prepared list of claims.
Mikk: Do you begin by examining the company that offers the service, or its prospective customers?
Birgit: Both. I begin with the company. People inside a business can become blind to their own product in much the way an audience becomes blind to advertising. Their familiar wording no longer sounds confusing to them. As an outsider, I can ask the questions they have stopped asking, including what should be clearer on the website or in the sales pitch. Only then can I find out whether the proposed value matters to a real customer.
Early managers and learning to swim on your own
Mikk: This is also a conversation about management culture. Before you became an entrepreneur, you worked for other people. Who helped you early on, and when did you have to find your own way?
Birgit: It felt more like being thrown into the water. We could debate the exact year, but the instruction was simple: get on with the work. When I could arrange eight meetings before lunch, it was obvious that the work suited me. There was little formal coaching. I learned by making calls and watching what happened.
Mikk: Stories like that make me wonder whether managers give new people enough support. Still, that employer did one valuable thing: they gave you work in which your natural ability could show itself quickly. Even without a sophisticated management system, a leader can create room for someone to try what they do well.
The influence of words and self-management
Mikk: Do you remember when you first realised that your words could influence another person's decision?
Birgit: You feel that quickly in a sales call. You also notice how your own mood affects the conversation. When I feel low, the words do not come as easily and meetings are harder to arrange. I see a connection between my energy and the quality of my work. That means managing myself before the call, not merely relying on a script.
Mikk: Customers cannot see the sparkle in your eyes over the phone. They hear your tone, your choice of words and your pauses; you hear theirs. Both sides are also trying to understand what is left unsaid. We've spoken about the name Sparkly in that context: people want to be around someone who brings energy to their work. On a call, that energy has to come through in the voice.
Birgit: Exactly. Practice helps, but people also start with different natural aptitudes. I could study painting for years and improve greatly without becoming Picasso. Some would call that a limiting belief. To me, it means being honest about both my strengths and the areas where I need to grow.
Do managers notice people's talents?
Mikk: Has a manager ever spotted a talent in you before you recognised it yourself?
Birgit: My experience is closer to the opposite. I discovered a great deal on my own. Nobody regularly sat beside me to coach each call or show me how to use my strengths. That gave me independence, which serves me well as an entrepreneur. But people should not all have to discover their abilities alone. Managers can help.
Mikk: A manager may treat your readiness to make calls as ordinary work. When many others in the same role keep postponing those calls, it is a distinctive strength. Noticing talent starts with looking at what the job actually needs and what each person actually does.
Waiting for leads or actually calling customers
Mikk: You've seen salespeople spend days preparing for a first call, then make only a few calls a day. There is a pointed description of the “actively waiting” salesperson: happy to respond when someone makes contact, reluctant to start the conversation. Research has its place, but it cannot replace talking to customers.
Birgit: I cannot decide from my desk what a company needs. At that stage I have assumptions, not answers. I can spend two days refining those assumptions on paper, or call and ask. A conversation usually gives me the information faster. If the person I am looking for has left the company, even a short call tells me that. Some businesses spend heavily on generating inbound enquiries while hardly ever contacting potential customers themselves.
Mikk: Careful preparation can still be useful, especially when a colleague is strong at analysing an account. The point is to give each activity its proper place. I've seen a whole year pass with almost no calls being made. We will never know how much revenue or customer knowledge was lost. A comment at an Estonian public debate about “solving” a pay gap by reducing men's salaries reminded me how easily people propose an answer without examining the real problem. Sales is no different: an impressive amount of activity can still avoid the action that matters.
How the wrong work can make a strong employee look weak
Mikk: In the data I work with, I see dissatisfaction on both sides of the employment relationship. During our conversation I mentioned figures suggesting that 87% of employees would change jobs for a better offer and 74% of managers are unhappy with their staff. Those particular numbers need a separate source check. The underlying question remains: why do both sides stay unhappy for so long?
Birgit: Someone is hired for one job, then gradually given very different duties—perhaps when a colleague goes on parental leave. A strong performer can suddenly look mediocre because the new work no longer uses their strengths. That does not mean the person became a poor employee.
Mikk: If a new manager looks only at today's output and never asks what this person previously did well, they may make the wrong decision. They don't know when the person is most productive or which abilities they have stopped using. Both the employee and the business lose. Your experience in advertising sales shows how easily a valuable salesperson can leave when the role changes around them.
How to recognise a real salesperson
Mikk: A manager can have hundreds of CVs from sales candidates. A candidate may present themselves beautifully in an interview, yet that tells you little about whether they will make sales. How would you choose?
Birgit: I would give them a list of contacts and a clear, practical assignment. I might provide a sales guide or ask them to prepare one for that particular product. Then I can see whether they understand the offer's value and whether they actually pick up the phone. I once made an unfair, nationality-based remark when describing people who talked convincingly but did very little. That came from one experience and was a poor generalisation; nationality tells you nothing about a person's sales ability. A real work sample tells you far more than a polished introduction.
The sales process needs different strengths
Mikk: You can learn a new offer, prepare the conversation and start calling. But the full sales process contains many distinct jobs: finding contacts, writing a guide, handling objections, making calls, holding meetings, following up and preparing agreements. Few people are equally strong in every part.
Birgit: I once worked with a colleague who disliked cold calls but loved meetings. I was the reverse. Although our job descriptions said we should each do the entire process, we made an arrangement: I booked the meetings and she went to them. Together we brought in more revenue. If our manager had insisted that we work in precisely the same way, neither of us would have been using our strongest skill.
Mikk: For years I looked for a salesperson who could excel at a huge range of tasks. Looking back, I was asking one person to have something like 13 different personality profiles at once. We also had excellent sellers who were terrible at updating the CRM. That caused friction, but the sales results were real. A manager can give documentation, contracts or other support work to an assistant—or use suitable software, including AI—so the revenue-generating salesperson has time to sell. The leadership question is whether we organise the work around results and strengths or around our own habits.
A manager's blind spots and another person's potential
Mikk: I recently used two slices of Swiss cheese as an image for management. They may come from the same kind of cheese, but the holes do not line up. People are like that too. Your view of the world may feel complete to you, and mine may feel complete to me, while each of us misses different things. If I insist that an employee work only in my preferred way, I may never see what they could do better than I can. I cannot experience another person's strength on their behalf. Before dictating the process, I need to ask how they achieve a good result.
Birgit: A good manager does not need to turn everyone into a copy of themselves. If someone delivers, find out which conditions make that possible. Changing those conditions purely for the sake of having one uniform process may drive a strong performer away.
More work for top performers—and a ceiling on their pay
Birgit: In a sales team, some people meet their targets and others do not. If one good salesperson helps pull the company through a difficult period, managers sometimes give that person the weaker colleagues' work as well. A spreadsheet shows someone who can handle a lot. It does not show that the extra duties are stealing time from the activity that creates value. Eventually that person burns out. Before adding to their workload, a manager should ask which part of their work actually produced the sales.
Mikk: Another mistake is to put a ceiling on success or earnings.
Birgit: In one mentoring conversation, a salesperson told me that their agreed base pay and commission should have added up to about €10,000. Once they earned it, management imposed a €5,000 cap. The explanation was that a salesperson in this large corporation could not be paid more than that—even if they brought in, say, €300,000 in sales. Why keep selling more under those terms? The cap limits the person's motivation and the company's revenue at the same time. I advised them to discuss the agreement with the sales director. This is a management decision, not a flaw in the salesperson.
Mikk: Leaders need to ask whether their system rewards the value a person creates. Changing an agreement after someone delivers destroys trust.
Why someone else may not understand your solution
Mikk: The Swiss-cheese image also helped me understand a difficulty in a personal relationship. I could see the details of a solution; the other person did not see them in the same way. If they cannot picture what I can, explaining my technical solution in ever more detail will not help. Sales presents the same challenge: does the customer understand the problem, and can they connect your answer to their own situation?
Birgit: That is why I keep the explanation clear and use questions to test whether I have understood the customer correctly. Technical brilliance is valuable, but it does not automatically become a sale. People see things differently. The better I understand my own perspective, the easier it is to notice theirs.
Mikk: The same difference can lead to poor management decisions. Someone may treat one salary level or working method as the only reasonable one because it is what they have always known. A more open mind would reveal what those assumptions hide.
Natural aptitude and learned skill
Mikk: Your Sparkly profile showed a strong openness to new experiences. People can learn skills, but learning becomes especially powerful when it builds on a natural inclination. Everyone can develop; the same training will not necessarily take everyone to the same place. That is one reason I hesitate to judge people solely by a job title or a CV.
Birgit: I see that openness in my desire to travel and in my need for variety at work. A new client or product gives me something fresh to understand. It does not follow that everyone should work like me. Some people thrive with a steady routine and achieve excellent results in that setting.
Freedom and results at Telia
Birgit: I spent 15 years at Telia. I met my targets, and my manager gave me considerable freedom over how I arranged my work. I could work from home in the summer, travel and choose when and where to make my calls. The manager looked at my results, not the number of hours I sat in an office. That trust suited me. I did not need someone continually reminding me to do the work.
Mikk: There was a clear responsibility behind that freedom. You knew the outcome expected of you, and your manager knew you would deliver. The flexibility was not a reward for doing less; it helped a strong performer stay effective.
Working hours, remote work and trust
Birgit: After Telia, I tried two very different workplaces. At one, I had been making calls all morning and had already arranged meetings. By three o'clock I felt that my energy was gone for the day, so I honestly asked to go home. My manager told me the working day ended at six and I had to stay at my computer until then. The results did not count. I lasted about two months. I could not see why occupying a chair was more important than doing good work.
Mikk: You were not asking to be excused from the results. You wanted to recover after a productive day so you could work well again the next day. Hours of visible attendance are not the same thing as sales.
Birgit: The next job offered fully remote work. I was finding sponsors and investors for an NGO and continued making calls while I was in Turkey. The work was getting done, but during a meeting I discovered that “100% remote” meant “remote, as long as you stay in Estonia.” It had never occurred to me to hide where I was, because my work was not suffering. I realised how differently an employee and a manager can understand the same arrangement. After those experiences, I started my own business. I wanted to decide when I could work well and when I needed to rest. If I am genuinely exhausted or in a bad mood, sitting at a computer does not help the customer or the company.
Mikk: Managers may mean well, but a working arrangement without trust wears down both sides. In the end, neither the employee nor the manager is happy.
Look for solutions, not excuses
Birgit: I understand that leaving a job is not equally easy for everyone. Still, my question has always been: if this situation does not suit me, what is the next step I can take? If a job is wrong for me, I look for another possibility. I use the same approach outside work. When a renovation goes wrong or my dog needs dental care, collecting excuses does nothing. I ask what would solve the problem and who could help.
Mikk: That takes courage, especially when you cannot yet see the entire path.
Birgit: Yes. I am not claiming every problem has a quick fix. But it is easier to deal with a problem once you look for the next feasible step. An excuse may bring a moment's relief; a solution changes the situation. I would like to see more of that approach at work and at home.
Independence and how it develops
Mikk: You describe a way of thinking that people often associate with leadership. Where did it come from for you?
Birgit: Perhaps from practice. During my years as an employee, I had to decide and solve a great deal for myself. My mother also raised me to be independent. I cannot cleanly separate personality from what I learned, but experience has reinforced that attitude.
Mikk: Our attitudes do not appear from nowhere. Beliefs start forming early in life, and later experiences either strengthen or change them. The independence we need at work may rest on lessons learned much earlier.
An environment where someone can shine
Mikk: Your story is not only one of learning to swim alone. At your first workplace you were allowed to get straight into talking to people; at Telia you were trusted with freedom because you delivered. In both places, a manager avoided blocking something you did well. A good leader asks what sort of environment a person needs to work at their best with customers.
Birgit: My own preferences have changed with the workplace. I enjoyed meetings at Telia because they were well organised and I felt confident in them. In some later roles, I preferred cold calls and did not want to go to meetings. So it is too simple to say someone “loves meetings” or “hates meetings” in every setting. The role, the customer and the workplace all shape the experience.
English as an area for growth
Birgit: Language was one reason some of those later meetings felt harder. I studied German when I was young but did not study English to the same depth. I understand English-language material, watch Netflix and travel, yet selling in English does not feel as natural to me as selling in Estonian. I'm happy to say that out loud as an area for growth. I did well in a German exam after secondary school, but without regular practice I do not feel fully confident selling in German either.
Mikk: Germany is a large market, and language skills can be refreshed. Subtitled podcasts with worthwhile content can be a useful way to practise English: you hear the words and read them at the same time. Recognising an area for development does not erase all the things you already do well.
What can a manager do for their people?
Mikk: I had planned to take this conversation in another direction, but we have arrived at the question I care about most when working with leaders. Which strategies and processes bring out the best in people? You have repeatedly said that you contribute most when you can be yourself, do work you enjoy and take responsibility for the result. What should a manager ask their team today to learn who is thriving and who is stuck in the wrong role?
Birgit: Start by actually listening. A manager may believe they know the answer, while an employee may be afraid to say what is getting in the way. If you want to improve the way work is organised, you have to make room for an uncomfortable answer too.
Honest feedback and happy employees
Birgit: The questions can be quite direct. What do you enjoy about your work? What do you dislike? What would you like to do more of? What feels unfair? Do you feel good working here at all? I think the last question is often left unasked because the answer might require the manager to change something. But if you want better results, you cannot keep setting aside how people are doing.
Mikk: You compared it with being in love: when someone is happy and full of energy, many things seem to work more easily. Work is not a romantic relationship, of course, but joy and a sense of safety affect how people treat one another and their customers.
Birgit: Exactly. An employee who is doing well may earn more and create more value for the company. I am not saying a manager can simply order everyone to be happy. They need to find out which conditions help and which parts of the job drain people's energy.
Receiving feedback when everyone is overloaded
Mikk: Teams talk a great deal about psychological safety; I also referred in our conversation to Google's well-known study of team effectiveness. One-to-one conversations only work if a manager can hear the answer. People vary greatly in that respect. A sensitive manager might avoid difficult feedback or immediately become defensive. The same sensitivity might also help them notice early that someone is struggling or a process is failing.
Birgit: Feedback is harder to take in when everyone is overloaded. If a person is doing work that does not suit them, even ordinary tasks use more energy. They have none left to make a change. Someone may arrive at a company with bright eyes and lose that spark within three months. The manager should ask what changed before labelling them unmotivated.
Anonymous surveys and an outside mentor
Birgit: Before sales training, I often send out an anonymous survey. People can say what works, what blocks their work and what they really think. I build the training around those answers; otherwise I might spend the day solving a problem they do not have. A manager can use the same principle with their team. Sometimes anonymity is what makes an honest answer possible.
Mikk: And if the answers are difficult to hear?
Birgit: Get help. More CEOs and HR managers now work with mentors. A manager is inside the situation and may be emotionally involved. Someone from outside can spot what they are missing. I recently spoke with the owner of a large company who had just let a very good salesperson go. A decision like that deserves a broader look than the last disagreement.
Conflicts of values and management style
Mikk: Some conflicts cannot be solved with one more conversation or training session. If two people's values or management styles are fundamentally at odds, working closely together may remain difficult. You can change the division of responsibilities or reduce how often their work depends on each other. That is a management decision.
Birgit: One person's ultimatum—“they leave or I do”—is not enough information to decide. A leader needs to understand what prevents the work from getting done and what each person contributes.
Mikk: Exactly. If we rely only on gut feeling and the loudest voice, we may lose a valuable person while the real conflict remains. Data, people's experience and actual results give us a better basis for a fair decision.
Asking for help and reorganising collaboration
Birgit: When your tooth hurts, you see a dentist. When a team has a persistent problem, asking a mentor or an organisational psychologist for help should feel just as normal. It does not mean the manager has failed. An outsider can help establish whether the issue is a relationship, a role or the way work is divided.
Mikk: Working with Sparkly data, I've seen two people who are both good at sales but work poorly as one team. Their strengths may reinforce each other at one stage of a process and clash at another. We do not have to remake either person. We can change who works with whom, and on which part of the job.
Birgit: Listening matters. Some people work mainly for money; others need more from the work itself. Neither motivation relieves a manager of the need to notice what the person does well and where they need support. If someone wins customers but struggles with another step, a colleague or assistant can cover that step. The aim is to amplify strengths rather than shortcomings.
Mikk: Sometimes people discuss an interpersonal problem for months when the practical issue is already visible: employees have been given work that does not suit them, and the decision to change the roles has not been made. Expert advice only helps if a leader is willing to act on it.
When every problem lands on the CEO's desk
Mikk: Questions come to a CEO from the team below and the board above. If the CEO answers everything personally, they may enjoy feeling needed while becoming the bottleneck. Eventually there is no time left for their own work. The question is which decisions could be made closer to where the problem arises.
Birgit: When someone brings me a problem, I often ask, “What solution would you suggest?” I use the same question outside work. If I need a new staircase or my dog needs dental treatment, I start looking for someone who can help. Bringing the problem to my desk is the beginning, not the solution. I want others to feel able to propose the next step too.
Overload, self-esteem and the search for solutions
Mikk: We cannot ask everyone for solutions as though they have endless energy. Overload leads to plans falling through; that damages confidence, leaving even less energy to change anything. A person can get stuck replaying the negative situation. I take Annika Allikmäe's phrase “knowledge sets you free” to mean that recognising this pattern makes it possible to ask for help or reduce the load.
Birgit: I agree. Looking for a solution does not mean demanding more effort. Sometimes the first solution is sleep, time off, help from another person or an end to work that constantly exhausts you. When someone is completely depleted, their next step has to be small enough to take.
Recognising burnout and knowing yourself
Birgit: I try to notice the signs before I burn out. If I stop sleeping well, my appetite changes or I no longer want to exercise, I ask what is happening in my life. Dark, rainy winters are hard for me. One solution I have used is spending part of the winter working from Bali. I get more sunlight and can still make my calls. That is an answer to my circumstances, not a prescription for everyone.
Mikk: It takes a good deal of self-awareness. You know your normal rhythm and notice when it changes. Someone who has not yet learned their patterns may see sleep trouble as nothing more than an annoyance. Once they understand it could be a symptom, they can look for appropriate help.
Birgit: Knowing myself is calming too. If I know a problem can be worked on, I do not have to assume the worst. The answer might be rest, a different working arrangement or a conversation with a professional. What matters is not facing it alone.
Curiosity, action and motivation
Mikk: Your profile showed a particularly strong curiosity about new things. That helps explain why a new client, product or problem energises you. Not everyone has the same natural advantage; some people have to practise looking for solutions more deliberately. But taking one small step is still sound advice.
Birgit: Motivation often follows action. Make one call or solve one small thing, see a result, and you have a reason to keep going. If you wait for complete confidence before starting, you may wait forever.
Mikk: A founder can be so close to their product that every detail feels equally important. I've felt that myself. Each new nuance changed the picture in my head until I could no longer tell what a customer would actually care about. Someone from outside can often say at once which detail is essential and which is secondary.
Sales guides, different clients and efficiency
Birgit: I write a sales guide for every new company and think through likely objections. In a typical week I work with four or five different clients. The variety suits me: I have to understand a new offer quickly and explain it in terms a customer can use. I do not read the same script to everyone.
Mikk: I asked whether you accept only the clients whose products you believe you can sell, and how you divide the week among several companies. That work demands fast changes of context. But a phone call has a clear advantage over email. An email must be written, sent, read and answered, and only then can the next question be asked. On the phone, an important answer and the follow-up question can arrive in the same conversation.
Birgit: That is what makes calls efficient for me. If I learn that I have the wrong contact or the need is different from what I expected, I can adjust immediately. The same discovery can take days by email.
The separate parts of sales form one process
Mikk: If we divide sales into stages, your work—calling people and arranging meetings—resembles an SDR role. Another person may later hold a detailed meeting, prepare an offer, keep in touch and close the deal. The first call is often the hardest part because it opens the door. But it is not the whole process. Good contacts, a clear offer, meetings and follow-up all have to work together.
Birgit: Yes. A small first step can set the entire process in motion. When people own the stages where they are strongest, the company has a better chance of making real sales.
Finding people who will actually make the calls
Mikk: What would you tell a founder who needs sales but cannot tell which candidate will really pick up the phone? A CV and an interview may not show it.
Birgit: I once looked for someone to help with my calls. Around 30 people were interested. I sent them contacts and a sales guide that had already been tested, and asked them to start calling. Nearly everyone said they would; one person actually began. The others postponed it or discovered the work was not right for them. I do not see that as a moral failure. It is far better to learn it during a real work trial than months into a job.
Mikk: That distinguishes someone who is good at responding to enquiries from someone who can initiate contact. There may be a place for both in sales. The founder needs to know which role the business is trying to fill.
Birgit: I did not know before my first calls that sales would suit me either. I was given contacts, tried it and found my strength through doing. That is why a work trial should be a genuine opportunity rather than a demand that a candidate already know themselves perfectly.
Fear, a sales guide and help from AI
Mikk: Even a capable person can fear their first call. I made it easier for myself by writing out possible questions and objections, using AI to organise the material and reading it before I called. I did not recite the guide word for word. Simply knowing the possible directions of the conversation gave me enough confidence to speak naturally.
Birgit: A guide supports a conversation; it does not control it. I change my words in response to what the customer says. AI can help put ideas on a page quickly, but a person still needs to check whether its arguments make sense. On the phone, there is no time to search for and read a prepared answer. You have to listen and respond.
Spotting potential a CV cannot show
Mikk: This goes beyond sales. People who look ideal on paper may not fit the work, while someone you would love to hire may never respond to the advertisement. I've sometimes found a strong employee by offering a task that spoke to their interests and desire to grow. One programmer arrived with little experience and developed quickly because I kept finding new challenges for them. I was sorry to let them go when I could no longer raise their pay in line with their growth.
Birgit: That kind of potential is hard to read from a CV. A person's previous environment may have kept them in work that did not motivate them. A different assignment can reveal a very different level of ability.
Mikk: I want to use Sparkly profiles to compare someone's natural strengths with the tasks and working environment a company can offer. Where the fit is good, training may help them progress quickly. But one condition remains: the person must be willing to try. If they are certain they will never make a sales call, neither a test nor a course can pick up the phone for them.
Openness and helping someone thrive
Mikk: What might interest you five years from now? Your openness to new experiences gives you options, but the same pace of change will not suit everyone. Someone else may even experience it as pressure. A manager's task is not to force everybody open in the same way. It is to understand what will help this particular person grow.
Birgit: I feel good when I can act. When a difficulty appears, I look for a solution and move on. Another person may need more time or a different kind of support. What matters is finding out what they want and which tasks suit them. That helps someone flourish instead of demanding that they work like me.
Happy people and the right conditions for growth
Mikk: We've talked about sales calls, managers' blind spots, enjoyment at work and burnout. What final thought would you leave with a leader or founder?
Birgit: Look at whether people have work that fits their strengths and whether they can say honestly what is not working. When employees feel good in their roles and the manager gets the results the business needs, both sides benefit. A plant in the wrong soil will not grow because you tell it to. Sometimes you have to change the soil, the light or the care it receives. In a company that means better role design, trust and a willingness to solve real problems.
Mikk: That brings us back to where we began. A good product needs someone who talks to customers, and that person needs an environment where they can use their strengths. Thank you, Birgit, for an honest conversation.
Birgit: Thank you. Do not get stuck looking for excuses. When you see a problem, look for the next possible solution.