The Catastrophe Café

In this episode we welcome Prof. Dr. Antoinette Weibel, Full Professor of Human Resource Management at the University of St.Gallen and twice named one of the 40 leading HR minds in the German-speaking world.

She has spent 25 years researching trust and has some uncomfortable things to say about the perks and performance systems most organizations lean on instead. 

We talk about what it would actually take to build a good organization, not just a well-perked one. 

We explore: 

• Calculative trust vs. identity-based trust — and why Antoinette has moved beyond both 

• Why performance management, forced ranking, and high-powered incentives backfire 

• What "good work" really requires from leaders and organizations 

About The Catastrophe Café 
Honest conversations about the beautiful mess of work, life & everything in between, hosted by Fabio Duma and Anita Aerni. 

🎵 Music by George Hurd 

🌐 www.anitaaerni.org | fabioduma.ch

Season 2 
✅ Ep 9: Getting Serious about Joy 
✅ Ep 10: Living More with Less 
✅ Ep 11: On Speaking up and Getting Heard 
✅ Ep 12 & 13: Care, Dare, Share - Secure Based Leadership 
✅ Ep 14: Leading Yourself First - Self Leadership, Reflection and the Good Life 
▶️ Ep 15: Beyond the Fruit Bowl & Other Perks — Rethinking Good Work with Prof. Antoinette Weibel 
Ep 16: Non-doing – Why We Should Do Less and Leave More Undone 
Ep 17: Too Afraid to Simplify? 

What if the most important question in your career is one nobody ever asked you? 

This week, Anita turns the tables on Fabio. He teaches self-leadership & reflection to students, where he brings Aristotle, Frankl and three minutes of silence into the classroom.

His approach is not about morning routines or optimising yourself. Instead, it's about noticing where you actually are, asking what kind of life you're building, and why real rest might be the most countercultural thing you can do.

In this episode, we explore: 
• Self-management vs. self-leadership 
• Telos as a compass, not a five-year plan 
• Doing nothing as a radical act 
• Meaning over performance 

About The Catastrophe Café 

Dr. Fabio Duma and Anita Aerni pour meaning into the beautiful mess of work, life & everything in between. Honest conversations, no polished soundbites. 

Music & editing: George Hurd 

🌐 www.anitaaerni.org | www.fabioduma.ch

Season 2 episodes: 
✅ Episode 9: Getting Serious about Joy 
✅ Episode 10: Living More with Less 
✅ Episode 11: On Speaking up and Getting Heard 
✅ Episodes 12 & 13: Care, Dare, Share: Secure Based Leadership 
✅ Episode 14: Leading Yourself First: Self-Leadership, Reflection and The Good Life 
Episode 15: Beyond the Fruit Bowl & Other Perks: Rethinking Good Work with Prof. Antoinette Weibel 
Episode 16: Non-doing: Why We Should Do Less and Leave More Undone 
Episode 17: Too afraid to simplify? 

The deepest illusion of our time is believing we are separate. 

That’s the line that opens Part 2 of our conversation with Susan Goldsworthy — and it’s where Care and Dare give way to something Susan added deliberately: Share.

Not sharing as in information or updates, but as in vulnerability, interdependence, and the courage to let others hold you too. 

This is also where the conversation zooms out — from individual leaders to organisations, from leadership frameworks to the world we’re actually living in. 

In this conversation, we explore: 

• Why Care and Dare alone weren’t enough — and what Share adds to the foundation 

• The shift from ‘power over’ to ‘power with,’ and why our current systems were arguably never fit for purpose 

• How to befriend your autonomic nervous system — Susan’s FIT framework (Flow, Intent, Trust) and why presence is a leadership skill 

• What Susan herself still finds hardest, after decades of this work — and a final tribute to the original secure base in her life 

If you haven’t listened to Part 1 yet, start there. 

About The Catastrophe Café: 

Join Anita Aerni and Fabio Duma for honest conversations about the beautiful mess of work, life & everything in between. No polished soundbites — just real dialogue about the challenges we all face and how we make sense of them. 

Music & Editing by George Hurd

Connect with us: 

🌐 www.anitaaerni.org 

🌐 www.fabioduma.com 

About Susan Goldsworthy & Secure Base Leadership: 

https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/books/care-dare-share-the-secure-base-coach/ 

https://www.imd.org/iecc/imd-executive-coaching-certificate/ 

Season 2 Episodes: 

9. Getting Serious About Joy (published)

10. Living More with Less (published)

11. Who Gets Heard (published)

12. Care, Dare, Share — Part 1 (published)

13. Care, Dare, Share — Part 2 (published)

14. Self-Leadership and Reflection 

15. Beyond the Fruit Basket: Re-thinking good work with Prof. Antoinette Weibel 

16. Non-Doing: why we should do less and leave more undone 

Care doesn’t mean being nice. Dare isn’t just about pushing harder. And you can’t really have one without the other. 

That’s where Susan Goldsworthy begins — and it immediately reframes something most of us thought we already understood. Susan is an Olympic finalist, affiliate professor at IMD, and co-creator of the Secure Base Leadership framework.

She was also one of our professors during our executive coaching education, which makes this conversation feel like coming full circle. 

In Part 1, we explore Care and Dare — what they really mean, where they come from, and why most leaders get stuck between them. 

In this conversation, we cover: 

• Why a grandfather’s words shaped an Olympic swimmer’s belief in herself — and what that tells us about secure bases 

• The four quadrants of leadership energy — and why ‘Play to Dominate’ is where so many of us quietly land when we’re anxious 

• The nine characteristics of a Secure Base Leader — and which one leaders most consistently underestimate 

• What it means to be a secure base for others — and when Susan herself finds it hardest 

Part 2 — where Share enters the picture — drops soon. 

About The Catastrophe Café: 

Join Anita Aerni and Fabio Duma for honest conversations about the beautiful mess of work, life & everything in between. No polished soundbites — just real dialogue about the challenges we all face and how we make sense of them. 

Music & Editing by George Hurd 

Connect with us: 

🌐 www.anitaaerni.org 

🌐 www.fabioduma.com 

About Susan Goldsworthy & Secure Base Leadership: 

https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/books/care-dare-share-the-secure-base-coach/ 

https://www.imd.org/iecc/imd-executive-coaching-certificate/ 

Psychological safety isn't the absence of discomfort — it's whether speaking up feels worth the risk.

For our first guest episode, we sat down with Nina Rossiana, who previously worked in Anita's team in Indonesia as part of a wider global team. Today, she is the regional representative for Asia at the Swiss Sustainable Coffee Platform.  Her postgraduate research looked at voice and silence in global teams, and it reframes psychological safety in a way we haven't stopped thinking about.

We talk about what Nina calls "structural affordability," why silence is often a rational response rather than a personality trait, and how labels, language and distance from HQ quietly decide whose voice gets heard. 

In this conversation, we explore: 

• Why psychological safety is about risk, not comfort 

• How labels become self-fulfilling — and quietly silence people 

• When openness becomes theater, and what the real test is 

• Why fluency gets mistaken for competence in global teams 

• How distance from HQ shapes who gets included 

About The Catastrophe Café 

Join Dr. Fabio Duma and Anita Aerni for honest conversations about the beautiful mess of work, life & everything in between. No polished soundbites — just real dialogue about the challenges we all face and how we make sense of them. 

Music by George Hurd 

Connect with us: 

🌐 www.anitaaerni.org 

🌐 www.fabioduma.ch

Season 2 Episodes: 

✅ 9. Getting Serious about Joy! (Anita & Fabio) 

✅ 10. Living More with Less (about freedom with(out) money) 

11. On Speaking Up and Getting Heard (Nina Rossiana) 

12. Care, Dare, Share - Secure Base Leadership (Prof. Susan Goldsworthy) - Part 1 

13. Care, Dare, Share - Secure Base Leadership (Prof. Susan Goldsworthy) - Part 2 

14. Self-Leadership & Reflection (Anita & Fabio) 

15. Responsible Leadership (Prof. Antoinette Weibel, HSG) 

16. Non-Doing: Why We Should Do Less and Leave More Undone (Fabio's book) 

Money doesn’t hug you when you come home. 

That’s the line that opened this conversation — and it stayed with us long after we stopped recording. Because somewhere between optimising for salary, security, and status, many of us quietly lost the thread of what we were actually working toward. 

In this episode, Anita and Fabio get personal about their own relationships with money — and honest about what they’ve each chosen instead. In this conversation, we explore: 

• What the research actually tells us about money and happiness — and where the goalposts keep moving 

• Why impact and meaningful relationships can be a more honest measure of success than income 

• The hidden cost of financial growth — for people, for ecosystems, and for the work we choose to do 

• The courage it takes to step outside the system — and what we make space for when we choose less 

• What “enough” looks like in practice, and how to make it a living question rather than a fixed number 

This one felt personal. We hope it resonates. 

About The Catastrophe Café: 

Join Anita Aerni and Dr. Fabio Duma for honest conversations about the beautiful mess of work, life & everything in between. No polished soundbites — just real dialogue about the challenges we all face and how we make sense of them. 

Music by George Hurd 

Connect with us: 

🌐 www.fabioduma.ch

🌐 www.anitaaerni.org 

Season 2 Episodes: 

✓ Getting Serious About Joy 

✓ Living More with Less (about freedom with(out) money) 

On Speaking Up and Getting Heard 

Care, Dare, Share — Secure Base Leadership 

(...)

Welcome to Season 2 of The Catastrophe Café — same spirit, new guests, more perspectives. And we’re kicking it off with a paradox. 

Getting serious about joy. Yes, that’s exactly what we did. 

Because somewhere between growing up and getting productive, most of us quietly stopped giving joy permission to show up. Not dramatically. Just gradually — buried under priorities, deadlines, and the vague sense that fun is something you earn. 

In this episode, we explore: 

• Why performance lives precisely where challenge meets skill in a genuinely enjoyable way — and what science says about joy as a driver of success, not just a reward for it 

• The difference between pleasure and joy — and why sparking the flame of joy takes more intention than we think 

• What burnout really is — and why it’s not just exhausted batteries that need recharging, but the slow suffocation that happens when joy and meaning are systematically absent 

• The canary moment — and how to recognise when the mine itself needs to change 

What was the last time you felt true joy? Take a moment with that. 

About The Catastrophe Café:  Join Dr. Fabio Duma and Anita Aerni for honest conversations about the beautiful mess of work, life & everything in between. No polished soundbites — just real dialogue about the challenges we all face and how we make sense of them. 

Connect with us: 

🌐 www.fabioduma.com 

🌐 www.anitaaerni.org 

Season 2 Episodes: 

• Getting Serious About Joy 
• Living More with Less (about freedom with(out) money) 
• On Speaking Up and Getting Heard 
• Care, Dare, Share — Secure Base Leadership (I)
• Care, Dare, Share — Secure Base Leadership (I)
• and more...

Philosopher Laurie Ann Paul writes that when facing a truly transformative decision — one that will change not just your life but who you are — you can't evaluate it rationally. You can't pre-feel it. So she offers a different question: which path am I most interested in discovering? 

That idea stayed with us long after we stopped recording. 

In this episode, Fabio and Anita explore why curiosity and courage are two halves of the same thing — and what it looks like to live them both, in leadership, in relationships, and in the small choices of everyday life. 

In this conversation, we explore: 

✓ Why curiosity is not just about big discoveries — it's about being willing not to know, and the whole new world that can open up from there 

✓ How courage turns curiosity into action — and why one without the other leaves something essential incomplete 

✓ What Laurie Ann Paul's concept of transformative experience means for the decisions we can't rationally evaluate — like having a child, or making a leap we can't yet imagine ourselves on the other side of 

✓ The idea of microcourage — everyday acts of bravery like speaking up, staying curious a little longer in a conversation, or trying something unfamiliar 

About The Catastrophe Café: 

Join Anita Aerni and Fabio Duma for honest conversations about the beautiful mess of work, life & everything in between. No polished soundbites - just real dialogue about the challenges we all face and how we make sense of them. 

Music & Editing by George Hurd 

Connect with us: 

🌐 www.anitaaerni.org 

🌐 www.fabioduma.com

Season 1 Episodes: 

✓ Balance 

✓ The Art of Slow Living 

✓ Navigating Change 

✓ Trust Issues & Tissues 

✓ Choosing your Reality 

✓ Habits: Stability or Stagnation? 

✓ Navigating Relationships 

✓ In Praise of Curiosity & Courage 

The world’s longest study on happiness — running since 1938 — found that close relationships matter more for health and longevity than money, fame, genetics or IQ. 

Yet most of us treat relationships as something that just happens, rather than something we actively and consciously build. 

In this episode, Fabio and Anita explore how to build, sustain and repair the relationships that shape our lives — in teams, families and friendships. 

In this conversation, we explore: 

✓ Why relationships are more like fitness than a feeling — they need consistent training, not grand gestures 

✓ The German word Nachtragend — resentful — which literally means “carrying after” someone. It’s you who carries the load, not them. 

✓ How to do a relationship audit: mapping your ecosystem to see where to invest and what to let go of 

✓ Why kindness is a strategy — because we never know what someone else is carrying 

And on that last point: philosopher Alain de Botton reminds us that we’re all shaped by experiences and wounds we didn’t choose. The more weunderstand that about others, the less we take things personally — and the more space opens up for genuine connection. 

About The Catastrophe Café: 

Join Anita Aerni and Fabio Duma for honest conversations about the beautiful mess of work, life & everything in between. No polishedsoundbites - just real dialogue about the challenges we all face and how we make sense of them. 

Music & Editing by George Hurd 

Connect with us: 

🌐 www.fabioduma.com 🌐 www.anitaaerni.org 

Season 1 Episodes: 

✓ Balance 

✓ The Art of Slow Living 

✓ Navigating Change 

✓ Trust Issues & Tissues 

✓ Choosing your Reality 

✓ Habits: Stability or Stagnation? 

✓ Navigating Relationships 

In Praise of Curiosity & Courage 

Habits run 70% of our decisions on autopilot. That's both a superpower and a trap. 

We all have routines that ground us and free up mental energy for what matters. But some habits quietly keep us stuck — repeating patterns formed long ago, in contexts that no longer exist. 

"Each time you act consistently, your brain interprets this as evidence of your identity."

This is what makes habits so powerful — and so worth examining. 

In this conversation, we explore: 

• The feedback loop between identity and habits — and why "I am a runner" outlasts "I want to run 5km"
• Why autopilot is useful until it isn't — and how childhood patterns follow us into our professional lives
• Practical strategies to build, replace, and evolve habits without being too hard on yourself
• The role of self-awareness and courage when habits become comfort zones that hold us back. 

We also get personal — Fabio's home gym born from lockdown, Anita's work on taming the advice monster, and why breaking a habit is sometimes less a behavioral challenge and more an act of courage. 

About The Catastrophe Café: 

Join Anita Aerni and Fabio Duma for honest conversations about the beautiful mess of work, life & everything in between. No polished soundbites - just real dialogue about the challenges we all face and how we make sense of them. 

Music & Editing by George Hurd 

Connect with us: 

🌐 www.fabioduma.ch 

🌐 www.anitaaerni.org 

Season 1 Episodes: 

1. Balance ✓ 

2. The Art of Slow Living ✓ 

3. Navigating Change ✓ 

4. Trust Issues & Tissues ✓ 

5. Choosing your Reality ✓ 

6. Habits: Stability or Stagnation? ✓ 

7. Navigating Relationships 

8. In Praise of Curiosity & Courage