Football, Hot Tea and Trust: Meeting Without Agenda with Maarten Oldenhof – MS003

Meeting Strategist - Conversations on Leadership & Communication

My guest for this episode is Maarten Oldenhof. Maarten is the former CEO of Ajax, the iconic Amsterdam-based football club that dominated the game in the early 70s and mid 90s. In '95 they won the Champions League, the biggest prize in European club football. And in the years after, Ajax moved to a new stadium nearly triple the size of the original one and became the first and only Dutch club to go to the stock market. Maarten was CEO in this exciting time in club history.

Some six months ago, Maarten started inviting all his LinkedIn contacts for coffee. As I noticed, Maarten likes to keep these meetings very open. He doesn’t prepare for them and they serve no specific purpose.

In our conversation, we explore how these coffee meetings relate to his previous life as a CEO, his management style and the culture he tried to create as a leader. He also talks openly about the most challenging and important meetings throughout his career and what he would have done differently. This includes an emotionally charged meeting when his management team had colluded against him and the negotiation of a major player transfer at Ajax. Here are some of the episode’s highlights with timestamps:

• 2:17 – Maarten’s philosophy behind inviting all his 7,000+ LinkedIn contacts for coffee
• 8:37 – How his first job made him realize that fact-based analysis isn't enough
• 17:52 – Creating a winning culture in which people feel free to share their expertise
• 20:42 – Why you need people in your management team who you can trust
• 25:57 – How a personal touch helped Maarten land his dream job at Ajax
• 32:48 – Canalizing emotions: how Ajax won support among club members for its plans to go to the stock market

For more detailed information about this episode and relevant links to people and resources, visit the show notes on www.meetingstrategist.org/maarten-oldenhof

About this podcast

Welcome to Meeting Strategist. On this podcast, Marcel van de Hoef interviews professionals and thinkers from the worlds of investment, business and arts about their approach to business conversations. You'll hear inspiring stories about impactful meetings, while also learning about the strategies, tactics and mindsets these guests rely on to make meetings more productive and meaningful.

Marcel is an Amsterdam-based communication advisor and trainer and the curator of the Meeting Strategist blog. His mission is to help senior professionals think more strategically about meetings, ask better questions, improve their listening skills and have more meaningful conversations in business and life. Learn more and stay up to date at meetingstrategist.org