ABDUL BUHARI INTERVIEW

Abdul Buhari Abdul is a Relationship Manager at Credit Suisse Private Bank and covers HNWI and UHNWIs. He has represented Great Britain at the Olympics, World Championships and European Championships and has served as a Board Member on the British Athletes Commission & the UK Athletes’ Commission.

Abdul also co-founded the Athletes’ Alumni, a collaboration between UK Athletics, the Home Country Athletics Federations and the UKA Athletes’ Comission. Athletes’ Alumni is a framework ‘by athletes, for athletes’ that provides a  space for Olympians and Paralympians from 2008 onwards to network with past and present sportspeople in athletics while navigating the challenging  transition  to a life after elite sports. 

From Athlete To Industry

In sport, if I work hard and I win, I win because I win, it's not a case of, I’ve got to look at what my other competitors did and compare it … it's a lot more black and white and coming from that environment, where everything is very clear, and then going to an environment where it's a little bit more opaque, that was really tough, really tough.

I think from an athlete’s perspective, when you're transitioning into industry, what I would say is, don't be alarmed if you go into industry and you don’t fulfil your objectives as quickly as you are used to in sport. It will come in good time.

The Hard Yards

It's like going to the gym, right.  If I went to the gym and I trained and I didn't increase the weight or my body wasn't sore, it's very difficult for my body to grow by just biology.  In order for muscles to grow, they need to tear, repair and grow. It's the same principle in in life and in sport and in an industry.  In order to grow, you're going to have to knocked back.  That knockback you can use to learn and then improve and then grow and get stronger.

DG

Okay, Abdul, thanks so much for chatting. We've chatted a few times and, apologies if I keep on getting you on, only because, I love talking about all the stuff that we've talked about privately, that we talked about on podcasts and stuff we've done before, and when I was thinking about people to chat to about my book idea; the book is called Build the Invisible which is the investment that people make in themselves, either from a knowledge perspective, a networking perspective, habits that they form, getting better at dealing with when things don't go to plan and aren't perfect, to enable you to be able to then come out the other side and be like, these are all the things that people didn't see that I was constantly doing, which have helped me in my career and the type of things that I’ve necessarily done, so what would be really handy as a starting point, because I’m not actually speaking to too many elite athletes is the truth, and that's why I think your insights would be fascinating, which is, in a way, what elite athletes are doing, and had done every day, was building that invisible, building those routines, and the practice, the stuff that nobody else sees apart from the outcome, which is getting to Olympic games, winning titles, and excelling at the world stage.

Has that stuff been quite natural for you to transition into the work environment, bearing in mind all of the years of doing the stuff that really no one sees, and you have to motivate yourself to do?

AB

Really good question, Dan. Some of it has and some of it hasn't, so I’ll give you the one that has and hasn't as tangible examples.

As an athlete you have complete autonomy about what you do, how you train, how hard you apply yourself, and hopefully, particularly in athletics, you get to the summer months and your hard work, you see the rewards of it and then if things don't go to plan, you can learn and develop.

In industry, what tends to happen is, you don't have as much control as you'd like. You do have control in terms of your career however you have to be seen and you've always got to shout about how good you are. In sport, you don't need to shout about how good you are, you just perform, and everybody sees it and then you get rewarded. I definitely struggled shouting about how good l was in my industry.

That's the biggest take I think I’ve found since transitioning back into industry.

Also if I hit all my targets at the end of the year in industry, there's no guarantees that I’ll be rewarded because it's subjective.  In sport, if I work hard and I win, I win because I win, it's not a case of, I’ve got to look at what my other competitors did and compare it, no, it's just that, it's a lot more black and white and coming from that environment, where everything is very clear and then going to an environment where it's a little bit more opaque, that was really tough, really tough. You end up having conversations that you aren't necessarily comfortable with but then you ask, why is this complicated? I did what you wanted me to do, I accomplished the target, you need to reward me as per conversation etc., but that said, you then start to realize the wider environment, so you take that into consideration.

Sometimes you need to look at the company as a whole, where they are in their vision and then you might  begin to realise the reward was the best they could do at the time.  The relationship to sport here would be for example, working hard over the winter months and  then in my first competition and I throw a massive personal best, but then get injured, that doesn't mean the world comes to an end and the winter doesn't count, it just shows that I still have some inherent things I need to work on or fix.

The one thing I would say about industry though, that is different to sport, is that the relationships you build in industry, particularly the good ones, will go on for a very long time and some of those individuals, not just clients or intermediaries, become really good friends.

In sport, sometimes the people you compete against, although you're friends and you respect them, if they've constantly beaten you or vice versa all year round then the relationship may have or aspire to have may not be as sincere as you may like.

Equally, it might be a situation where, for example, somebody who you've been close with in sport, has taken performing enhancement drugs and as a consequence, has medalled.

In industry you never get stuff like that.  I think from an athlete’s perspective, when you're transitioning into industry, what I would say is, don't be alarmed if you go into industry and you don’t fulfil your objectives as quickly as you are used to in sport. It will come in good time.

It took me a while to kind of adjust to that level of thinking but what I would say is, if you're in there for a long game, your time will come and I think if you think about sport being a long game, irrespective of what sport you do, your time will come in industry, where you will get the accolades you deserve, the rewards you deserve, but sometimes you just need to be a little more patient.

The other thing is, when you’re in industry, particularly when you're transitioning, what you find is, you're having to work your way back up again; whereas when you've come from a sport where you're already at the top. In industry you're not going to be at the top because you just don't know enough yet, you haven't had the experience, you haven't had to deal with the pitfalls, the disappointments and so you have to earn your stripes.

DG

So just on that last point, which I think is quite an interesting one to consider, is that you go from being an elite athlete with a very high level of skill, to then, that being part of your identity of yourself, of the thing that you've probably worked more than anything else in your life to achieve, and then you get to those achievements, whatever they may be, and then you transition with possibly some very good life skills and very good character traits of whatever they may be, we'll talk about that in a bit, but effectively you're going then into a new industry, where you might not be learning from scratch, but you're learning almost a completely new set of skills to enable you to move on to the next phase of your life. How did you deal with or, and how did you, based on your experience, do athletes deal with being one of the best at something, to then not being, and that mind-set of, like okay, I’ve got to learn a new thing, and I’m going to embrace the learning rather than, almost, I guess, what, just in terms of my thinking, would be a bit like, do I want to have to reinvent myself as something different? I’ve spent all of this time, not wasted time, but wasted time, because it's not now what I’m going to do as a result.

AB

Yeah, you've hit the nail there on the head with the question. It's actually a very scary place to be. It's quite daunting. I’ve known athletes to have anxiety. I’ve known athletes to just be afraid of actually taking that next jump of transitioning because as you rightly pointed out, you've gone from being a lead, being the best, being well-known, having established a very clear identity, everybody knows you as X the athlete who has accomplished XYZ, you then go into the unknown… If you're in a company that doesn't really care about sport, you're just another guy who's just come in and it's actually when athletes feel most vulnerable.

That's why you read about athletes just going into depression,  drugs or alcohol because they struggle to make that change, and I think with sport, it's not just your identity, it's also your way of life that you've been living for X amount of years and then it looks like you close the door on it, you open a brand new door, and you've got to live a brand new way of life now. How do you do that at the age of like 35, 40, or however long you've been doing the sport? It's really difficult.

How did I personally find it? I found it hard, I’ll be honest with you. The thing is, when I told people this, they were surprised, because I was already working in banking, so why should it be a surprise?  But you've got to understand, I’ve just literally competed in one of the biggest sporting events in the world at home in that summer and then I’m back to work (office) in September like nothing's even happened. Then I get some colleagues will ask me, oh, how was the games? Other colleagues would say, where have you been, I haven't seen you in ages? So you're constantly, trying to manage your own anxieties, answer questions honestly and openly.  To some degree, if I’m honest, I was also frustrated that a small minority of people didn’t know where l had been, not in an arrogant way, I thought, where have you been hiding? Have you been under a rock?

However, what I would say is, what I found was by just taking it day by day was the best approach for me.  You’re going to have good days, like in sport and bad days and you just tackle each day as it comes.  I did feel vulnerable because you've got colleagues who have obviously done well during that period or have learned new skills or got professional qualifications, so I felt a bit behind.

Now if you're an athlete who was in my position, for example, and just done only sport until the age of say, 30, 31, and just had that on their CV and gone into industry, I can't begin to imagine how scary that must be, because now you're in an environment with individuals, some of which may be 10 years younger than you, doing the same job as you, or even a little bit more senior than you, and you're trying to find your feet and learn brand new skills, build brand new relationships and try and develop further but, as I say, making that change, it will feel like you're losing a part of yourself and I think that is one of the hardest things out there which I don’t think is being talked about enough.

I think athletes, particularly when they transition, feel as though they can't talk about their sport because they're trying to do something different, and what I found helped me was just being honest and open about the fact that, okay, I did sport, however, I’m trying to do this now and it's because of sport that I am who I am today and I’m going to use that to help me get to where I’d like to get to, and I think that approach certainly helped me go from, if you like, from investment banking to private banking which lends a lot more to my strengths.

I enjoy talking to people, building relationships and helping athletes make better decisions and that's probably why I set up the Athletes Alumni, which is designed for athletes do exactly that, which is transition out of sport into industry but create them a pathway that allows them to do it while they're still in sport and then they can do it once they’re outside of sport.

The scariest thing, I think, about transition is not transitioning but the limbo, not knowing what to do completely is worse than knowing where to go  and how to go about doing things;  I think if you have that vacuum, it's actually a lot more scary than being in a place where you know where you want to go  but you're just scared about making the steps or don't know how to make the steps  and I think that's where a lot of athletes fall foul.

It's not that they don't prepare; it's just that when they finish, they don't where to look, they just sit there in that space thinking opportunities will come to them and sadly, it just doesn't. Initially athletes will struggle to make it but eventually they will. The ones that commit and say, okay, I’m going to go into transition, I’m going to attempt to become an accountant, solicitor, teacher, even though they know for the first X amount of years, it's going to be tough but they persevere and push through it. You’ve you got to keep talking to people and whether it be a significant other, a friend, a mentor. I think I found talking and just being open about my frustrations and my concerns or my stuff I was anxious about, definitely helped.

DG

I’m going to talk about that then; one of the last things you just said in that particular section, which I really found interesting, is how you go about building relationships. I know it's quite an open-ended question, but obviously in the book that I’m trying to write at the moment, it forms quite an important part, which is a lot of people say, you're only as valuable as your network, and I mean that in a positive way, like whenever we've talked face-to-face, unfortunately we haven't managed to see each other as regularly recently, but you've got an incredible way of being able to be very open.  People can be very comfortable in your presence; you have a very good ability to be able to listen quite intently and a very good way of following on to be able to ask particular questions, because obviously you've given thought to the individual and almost, sort of, marked it down subconsciously, purposely, however you want to call it, so that the other person feels like, not only they've been listened to, but you've really taken an interest in them.

Now hopefully I haven't given away the answer too much, but I’d be fascinated into your mind-set as how you consciously subconsciously, by way of practice or otherwise, have built that ability to be able to connect more than just superficially.

AB

I’ve got a really good example of that actually, but to answer your question, in the first instance, building relationships for me is just about being honest, sincere, genuine, listening intently, and what I mean by that is, don't just listen for the sake of listening.  Listen and actually pay attention, so for example, if we had spoken, say two weeks ago, and you said, it was my daughter's birthday or my wife's birthday, when we go on a call, the first thing I should be thinking about is, oh, how was the birthday?  How did it go down?  So paying attention to those specific details demonstrates that you want to have a relationship with that individual, but more specifically, I think building relationships, it's not actually as hard as people think it is. I think people do it automatically but don't actually maintain it as well as they could, and what I mean by that is, so the tangible example I’d give you is Robert Harting, you may not know who he is, so he was the Olympic champion in my event, the discus, at the London 2012 games. He was also a champion in 2008 Beijing. He's the guy that ripped off his top and ran over the hurdles.

In sport, most people in athletics know that I’m big on transition and big on education and developing yourself beyond athletics. After the Olympics and I’d retired, he dropped me a note saying, look, I heard you broke your foot, sorry to hear that, I was hoping to see you back in the season, but let's keep in touch. Rob and I had exchanged dialogue a few times about the fact that I worked in banking so we kept in touch on social media, and then I think about six months before he was going to retire, he dropped me a note saying, look, I’m thinking of retiring and I needed your advice and help and I thought, this is weird, what could I possibly offer one of the best guys in history in my discus event, because there's no way I could teach him how to throw a discus further.

He quizzed me about transition oddly enough.  He told me about his anxiety because he just recently got married, he is expecting twins and he was worried about life after sports and simple things like being able to afford to live, being able to have sustainable income or just any income beyond sport, and he was thinking about pursuing a career in business and in banking, and I’ll be honest, this is something that him and I have never ever discussed in the, I don't know, eight, nine years of competing against each other, but he knew my background.

I knew nothing about his background outside of sport but we developed a relationship. I like to think that he felt he could still reach out, irrespective of the fact that he beat me every single time, and we could still have an open, honest conversation about how he can go on to develop further beyond sport.

We still keep in touch to this day, which is very odd, because I imagine he probably doesn't talk to many athletes, certainly not to be as open about how vulnerable he felt about the fact that he was thinking about transition quite late on in his career as opposed to a little bit early on, so to me that demonstrates how important it is just to be honest and be yourself in relationships.

You realize that people will take an interest if you're passionate. People will magically be drawn to you. Genuine relationships are driven by just general care for that individual, wanting the best for that specific individual, and that person demonstrating a passion.

Generally I think relationships are probably easier to make and harder to maintain and what I mean by that is, particularly in lockdown, we haven't got the chance to see people face to face as much as we'd like.

[Audio Breaks]

Having regular phone calls and emails,  checking in call to see if people are  okay, how the family is, demonstrates you are  building a relationship. To maintaining a relationship for me means you remember the small details, little things that I think athletes already do, or people just do automatically.  By continuing doing those good habits, you'll be able to maintain those relationships.

 DG

I think it’s really fascinating.

One of the things that you brought up then, maybe with another idea in mind, was thinking about the other, which I think is a really important thing.  I think a lot of the time, it's not that people do it intentionally or otherwise, it’s that people reach out to people at the time where they need something from that person, and I think that can sometimes be a bit tricky, is the truth, not tricky in the sense that people won't help for the sake of helping, but usually a relationship has to be a two-way process, and more importantly than that, is that, when you reach out to somebody not looking for something in return, that immediately engenders a greater sense of trust or loyalty or otherwise.  When someone's not doing great, all the things that are going on and the other person can go, there is no other reason for this person to reach out to me to see how I’m doing, maybe things aren't great, than them being kind enough to be thinking about you, and to be saying, what can I do to help?  

I think in the same way, one of the ideas in the book that I have, is that for people wanting to get into a particular industry, whatever it might be, when people are then reaching out to people to say, please can we have a job, please can we have a coffee, please can I get work experience, please can I do this, I think sometimes the easier way that I’ve seen it being done very well, is for people to think about the recipient more than themselves and think about the things that might help the recipient that might be of value to them, that then might lead to a longer term play and that usually in my experience is the way to develop that longer term relationship.  Let me help solve a problem for you, which in turn will hopefully demonstrate that I’m actually very good and have really good skills that might be of benefit to me and to you in the longer term.

AB

I couldn’t agree more.

I always think that if you can help somebody, nine times out of ten, that person will accept that help and will be more inclined to help you in the future.  But generally if you go out just thinking how you can help, that generally a great way to start.

Even before then, as you rightly pointed out, just calling and checking in to see how they are and checking if is everything's okay is ideal. Because when you do go in and say, actually can you help with x, it doesn't feel as though you're getting in contact because you want help with x, it means that, okay there is something that's actually come up, but sending an occasional text, WhatsApp, email, just touching base, it will probably take less than a minute. Most people spend more time on social media than they do checking in on family and friends, and the conversation will be a lot shorter than the time they spend on social media, so it's just thinking about using your time more productively and if you want to have those type of relationships. A good relationship is one where you make and effort with those individuals you want to have a good relationship with.

DG

Can I ask there, because obviously you've got a lot of strong, and, what I mean is, the mistake people sometimes make is, you don't need to be best friends with everybody in order to have good relationships with people, for them to trust you, for them to trust your personal judgment, for you to get along with people, for you to maintain them in the right way, and when I mean strong relationships, what I actually mean is that someone could ring or message or email you and say, Dan, I need help with something, can you help, and it's that pull of the relationship being strong enough to go out of your way to be able to do something which may cause you hassle or may be not a problem, but means you're going to have to expend energy on doing something, and the reason you don't mind doing it is because you're both invested in in the relationship between you as a result.

Do you have a particular system to keep those relationships strong? Do you have a spreadsheet? Do you have particular software? Do you have a list? Do you track stuff or is it sometimes you might be like, oh I haven't spoken to this person for a while, I haven't done this or otherwise, because you get to a certain critical mass I guess at some point, where your brain isn't going to be able to track everything, to remember everything and to be able to maintain everything.

AB 

I’d love to say I have a system, I don't. From a personal perspective, family and friends, I make sure I try and touch base with and then key people in my life.  I checked in with a number of my friends over the summer. I’d drop a text, WhatsApp, asking basically if you're okay, and that typically leads on to a further conversation, actually we just had a baby or I just got engaged or whatever it is, and that's how you maintain it.

System wise, I think I’m lucky and blessed in the fact that I have a big network that I don't generally have a system. I have my sports guys that I’ll connect with reasonably regularly. I’ve got friends in the law world I would connect with, and not least because I will have read something that's changing sports law or I would have read something that would change in just legislation and I sometimes lead with, I’ve read this, what are your thoughts? Then typically it's like, oh actually, it impacts this and this, and then you get a conversation going, so I think the fact that I take in a lot of data helps me with those conversations.

The other thing I think that helps is sometimes just being honest and saying, you know what, I just felt a bit down and I just needed someone to talk to. Showing vulnerability isn't something you should be ashamed of either. I think if you have a relationship with somebody that you trust or you like, you have the ear of, or you feel you can talk openly to, don't be ashamed to pick up the phone to that individual and just say, you know what, I felt a bit lonely or something happened today, I needed someone to talk to, and I think we don't do that enough. I think by doing that too, you strengthen a lot of those relationships.

DG

It's an interesting counter-intuitive point; showing vulnerability and weakness or human frailty in the right context substantively builds relationships, rather than weakens, by way of sort of communication done the right way which I completely agree with.

Two more questions for you before I let you actually go. Based on previous chats we've had and on podcasts we've done recently as well, I’m a big fan of books like Grit and Mind-Set and that I know I’ve mentioned to you previously as well, by ladies like Angela Duckworth and Dr Carol Dweck, and a lot of the things that are taught there are things like perseverance and resilience and being able to dust yourself off and start again.  Based on our conversations of where you've had setbacks and when things haven't worked out well and also when things have worked out well as a result of having life challenges in different ways, do you feel that those obstacles that you've overcome at an earlier stage in your career, possibly more so than other people, in different ways, has held you in good stead, because, I don’t want to generalize, you’re more grounded, more had to front it up to those disappointments and issues that have arisen which then, as you say, maybe gives you more ability to be able to express your vulnerability because actually you're comfortable in your vulnerability because of the stuff that's happened as a result. Does that resonate at all, in terms of then, how you are as a person as a result?

AB

Yeah absolutely.  There was an injury, I think I mentioned in our podcast, where I tore both abductors, probably the scariest period of my life. I was just in bits. I literally couldn’t walk. I remember being sat on the bed in hospital in London and they just said, look, you're never going to throw again, because once this is fixed, you just can't withstand the amount of forces that your body needs to apply to throwing discus a long way, and that was very early on in my career. 

I moved to Loughborough in 2009 and having that massive injury off my first throw at an international was devastating. At this international, I qualified for the commonwealth games in India and that same competition. I was not in a good place but having been told what I was told, the initial disappointment was huge but I spun it.  I spun it straight away in my head. I just said, all right, fine, they have a medical view about what I can and can't do, which is fine, and I totally respect it, but equally I also know my body, and the only way I’m going to be able to turn their views around is by trying, so I did just that in very small stages.

For me, it was just about, first of all, getting my body healthy, however long it takes, and then working on small wins. I literally would be like, okay, one day, I’d be able to hold a plank for 30 seconds or 20 seconds and that would be it.  It would be nothing for most people but for me it was a massive accomplishment and then you continue to build, build and build. This was akin to when l was trying to move from investment bank to private banking. It was so hard because I didn't have any experience in private banking. I didn't have a network in private banking. I didn't go to a red brick university. So again I was already up against it. The only thing I had was the fact that I’m a sportsman who wanted to cover individuals from that space and I applied to at least ten different organizations and the answer was no, including mine actually, and in fact my organization I applied three times, and I was rejected every single time, until the fourth time eventually, it was yes. I got used to the disappointments and it may sound weird, but the rejections didn’t come as a massive surprise.  If anything, what it did do was reinforce my desire to try and find ways of improving, so every time I got a no, what I would try and do is find out the reason why it was a no, so maybe there's something vacant in my profile that I needed to go and improve on for example,  if it was a professional qualification or I didn't have experience in leadership or I didn't have enough experience in specific products, whatever it was, I would try and fill those gaps.

It's not to dissimilar, to say for example, in sport, where if you're trying to develop and then you come to the end of the year and you say, okay, what do I need to do to run faster, jump further or throw further? What are my weaknesses? It's those vacant things you try and plug the gaps in, and for me, that was what l was trying to remediate in my banking career. Even now, there are still disappointments on a daily basis in in the job I do now, but I think what you've also got to recognize, particularly as you get older, is being comfortable being uncomfortable. Disappointments are just perfectly normal, and to some degree, I would argue that the only way to learn and develop and grow is to have disappointments.

It's like going to the gym, right.  If I went to the gym and I trained and I didn't increase the weight or my body wasn't sore, it's very difficult for my body to grow by just biology.  In order for muscles to grow, they need to tear, repair and grow. It's the same principle in in life and in sport and in an industry.  In order to grow, you're going to have to knocked back.  That knockback you can use to learn and then improve and then grow and get stronger.

DG

It feels like you've been listening to growth mind-set ideas which you've articulated in a much better way than I could possibly do.  I really like that muscle metaphor which is cool.

Right last question for you, not to necessarily put you on the spot, but I did try and give you advance warning on some of the questions. There's a book by a guy called Tim Ferris that I really enjoyed listening to his podcasts, for example.  Tim Ferris did a brilliant interview with Hugh Jackman and I’ve always been really impressed with Hugh Jackman's work, Greatest Showman, Wolverine and others, but this interview, this podcast, is mind-blowing, it's amazing, really interesting, I recommend that, anyway I go off on one.  I’ll try and send it to you afterwards as well if I remember.  So he asks industry leaders a set of 13 questions and one of the last questions he asks is, if you had a massive billboard where you could say anything to inspire others, what would it say?  Now I’m putting you on the spot here as well and you don't need to necessarily give me the answer now, but there's been lots of quite interesting ideas, some have been quite selfless ideas, some are quite motivational ideas, almost like, just do it, or why not, or other people have been, recommend good books, which I really enjoyed as a sort of motto; is there anything that springs to mind?  It can be short, it can be long as well.

AB

I think from my experience, I would say, work hard, stay patient and persevere and push through all the challenges; that'll probably be my three things.

DG

Love it, which I guess, in part, that's the manifestation of your own set of values, which holds you in good stead.

AB

It's just directly from, I guess, what I’ve experienced, and it's been true to form for me.  It's been true to form for many athletes.  It's been certainly true to form for a number of people in industry too.  I speak to a couple of CEOs and I often ask them, how did you get to lead a global organization, and a lot of it is perseverance, a lot of it is patience, and also a lot of it is just doing the stuff that nobody else wants to do, getting their hands dirty, and getting stuck in.