Author: Ricardo Mock

Africa 24/7 Marine Manager at Maersk Line, Cape Town. Psychologist, Certified Crossfit Trainer, Health Coach and Motivator. Experience working in Project Management (Operations, Human Resources and Sales), innovation driving change. Specialties: Project Management, Sales, General Operations, Lean Six Sigma (LSS GB Certified), ERP´s implementation and Change Management. MBTI Profile: ENFP-T

“Enjoy the Silence” – What I have learned from the quiet ones.

Quiet people have the loudest minds. What can you learn from quiet people?

We live in a society where being introvert – or ‘quiet’ – is often labelled as a limitation. After many years of working with teams, I have reached to the conclusion that this statement is so far from being true. What most people fail to acknowledge is that every team need their fair share of ‘quiet’ players. These are the ones that think and follow an introspection process before reacting. This virtue is so crucial in the planning part prior to executing. Quiet teachers that allow students to express and pay attention to their needs instead of following a standard ‘one size fits all’ script. These are the true ambassadors of the ‘do more and talk less’ principle so commonly found in over achievers. In most recent times, I have had the opportunity to learn from a few outstanding ‘quiet ones’.

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Trust: The Underrated Enabler

My mother was a tough lady and in order to be trusted and supported, I needed to earn it. Every time I look for a new position I do research about how trust is managed within that specific team and if I will be in a key position to influence trust.

my-brothers

I was traveling from Cape Town to Panama to attend my mother’s funeral and my brothers agreed that I would speak at the ceremony. I was sitting on the plane trying to think what to write since she has been a huge influencer in my personal and professional life. It was an impossible task to fit it all in one speech. Then I decided to just focus in one word that will define her greatest legacy in my life. After hours of thinking that the perfect word was ‘trust’. She trusted me to do well, always. It didn’t matter how much I failed in something, she will always be there to cheer for me.

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What I Have Learned From the Love for Sports

How I transferred my love for sport to my love for what I do today on a professional level.

I was 13 years old and I was laying on the couch watching TV, as usual, and my mother looked at me and took the decision to make me join a swimming team with my brothers. When I say that she made me join is that I did not like the idea, but I have received a direct order and believe me when I say that it was on my best interest to obey. 

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Feedback: The Storm Within Us

Receiving feedback is a great opportunity to understand the origins of the emotional storms it causes within us.

In my recent professional years, I have concentrated on receiving feedback to continue improving. My personal theory is centered on the fact that when a specific situation of my life put me in an uncomfortable place, at the end, the whole situation resulted in personal improvement.  There was during an improvised coaching session with a friend when I started referring to these uncomfortable situations as “personal storms”.  And it is during this so-called storms that I experienced all kinds of emotions inside of me.  This is a unique opportunity that life give us to embrace these emotions and start asking us the “why’s” and understand more about us and the origin of the storm.

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Meraki = Passion + Love

Meraki means putting love and passion into everything you do.

Everywhere I read I see articles about success and how to be successful. The truth is that we all are capable of being successful, however that will not be meaningful until we put love and passion into everything we do.  Then, and only then, we will “feel” successful.  That is when you reach the “Meraki” stage.  Meraki is a Greek word that can be translated to the action of putting love and passion into everything you do.

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Procrastination and Creativity

It is not OK to miss deadlines. It is also not OK to meet a deadline by impacting negatively on quality. How I learnt to balance impatience to produce results with a need to focus on the quality of the outcome.


During the early start of my professional career, I gave a lot of value to get things done fast.  I was an impatient operator whose only focus was execution with acceptable results.  Now, ‘acceptable’ is very subjective word that can have a lot of different meanings depending of the one who use it.  Later I found out that acceptable results often lead to rework. Continue reading “Procrastination and Creativity”

Change Leadership: The Eternal Search for Emotional Balance

How does the leader help their team see positive opportunities and embrace organisational change? Here is a simple model to help team members better understand their emotions, evaluate options, achieve emotional balance and make choices on the way forward.


I was sleeping last night when I suddenly woke up at 2 am and started thinking about the first team meeting that I planned to do next morning with my newly appointed unit of operational execution.  I was debating with myself of the best way of making them embrace change and achieve emotional balance. How could they achieve improvement and take ownership as leaders of the change we, as a team, wanted for our professional career and life enjoyment.  How could I explain to them that is good to have problems because this would become our driver that will make us feel so uncomfortable that we would be 100% convinced of the need of change for us?

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