Leadership2050 edition 27: Toto Wolff, CEO and

Team Principal of Mercedes – AMG Petronas

Formula One
Andrew White

Toto Wolff is the Team Principal & CEO of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team.
He is the managing partner of the team alongside wider responsibilities as Manager of
Mercedes-Benz Motorsport holding 33% of Mercedes Benz shares.
Wolff was born in Vienna in 1972, he began his motorsport career in 1992 in the
Austrian Formula Ford Championship, after 3 years of his racing career, Toto Wolff decided
to retire from the formula 1 world and started studying at Vienna University of Economics
and Business. In 1998 he founded his own investment company called Marchfifteen, where
he invested heavily in technology, foftware and internet when it was still recovering from the
dot com crash in the early 2000s, an opportunity that made him become multi millionaire.
One of his most important investments included F1 and F3 teams engine programme like
Mercedes Benz. Having some business experience in the banking and finance sector, Toto
made some impressive investments that turned his entire financial outlook upside down.
In 2002, became a co-owner of a racing driver management company along Mika
Hakkinen, the same year he returned to his racing career winning in the FIA GT World
Championship. In 2009 Toto Wolff merged his passion for racing and investment by
investing in the Williams F1 Team and by July 2012 he became the Executive Director of the
team, playing a key leadership role as Williams managed to win for the first time in eight
years at the Spanish Grand Prix that season.
Less than a year later, in 2013 Toto Wolff was appointed as a Managing Partner of
Mercedes F1 and gained 30% of the shares, and after a close analyse and achieving a winning
percentage of 58% in the races over the last 10 years, Toto Wolff assumed the role of CEO of
Mercedes Benz Motorsport, working mostly on motorsport programmes and strategies for
Formula 1 and Formula E.

10: leadership rules from totto wolff

1.     Put people at the centre – ‘My single most important task is to provide a

framework for the many competent and skilled people so they can function best. So,
I'm not running a race car, but I'm running people that run race cars. And I have a
real interest in the people.’

2.     Create an environment where energy and passion are maximised – ‘It is

trying to understand how to maximise the performance, not in an opportunistic
way, but maximising the performance by providing an environment that they feel
motivated about, energised, and passionate.’
3.     Mistakes are an opportunity for everyone to learn – ‘I need to empower whilst
recognising that sometimes mistakes are made, but we will learn from that. This is
one of the key things which I'm really trying to bang the drum a lot about because,
at the end, many leaders are control freaks and micromanagers.’

4.     As a leader, put yourself in situations you don’t understand and LISTEN – ‘I
love attending technical meetings where probably my background is not enough to
understand the detail, but I'm still there. I like to listen. I enjoy looking at the
dynamic in the room, what happens, and take conclusions from that. So,
micromanager and control freak doesn't interfere in any decision, but knows
everything that happens in the organisation that is important.’

5.     Focus on what is really really important – ‘We utilise a sentence from a Spice
Girl song that says, “tell me what you want, what you really, really want”. So, we
are telling them, or I am telling them, what I really, really want. But I leave it to
them to solve the problems and take the decision their way.’ 

6.     Discuss what is important and make it visible – If we are successful in finding

out what the objectives are in the organisation, from the people, then you are one
step further and you can describe those objectives, discuss them. And we do that
every single year. We spend days discussing these. We write them down, we
reshape them. And they end up on a laminated paper that everybody has in their
briefcase. Or in their backpack. And you look at them often if you look for your
laptop or your iPad. And having the objective is ultra-important. You need to
develop a blueprint for it, because if you can't see your target, you won't reach it.’

7.     Work with all parts of the organisation to clarify what they need to do to be
successful – ‘I need to understand that everybody in the organisation wants to
achieve things and wants to be motivated and tries to have the right objectives. So,
we need to find out what that is.’

8.     Acknowledge and make space for the superpower of all emotions – ‘We are in
a phase where actually many successful people come out and say, I suffer from
mental health issues. And it started in sports, and it goes over to successful business
people. Because I have found out in my life that very many of the superstar
performers suffer from depressive episodes, anxiety, insecurity, and have been in
dark places. And I think, for many people out there, that's in a way a relief. Because
you know you're not alone. You can still achieve things and be successful whilst
recognising that this sensitivity that is being given to you, that felt like a burden,
can actually be a superpower. Because you're just simply feeling your environment
much more. And that is what I'm trying to do, personally, to make my environment
known. And then I started speaking publicly about it.’

9.     There is no place for politics – ‘I absolutely dislike internal politics. I will find
out if you bullshit me. Integrity, loyalty and not dealing in lies is key for me. And if
somebody doesn't fit into that framework of values, then there is no place for them
in the organisation. And even for the genius jerk, we are not a team of superstars,
but we a star team. So, you need to fit into the organisation and play with
everybody.’
10.  Mindfulness and Flow[1] – ‘Mindfulness means being focused on a single task,
having your thoughts and emotions focused. And some people do that by
transcendental meditation. Some others do it in a different way with a mantra or
concentrating on your breaths. Active meditation means concentrating on a single
task rather than having your brain constantly jumping from one topic to the other.
I like sport activities that scare me, that oblige me to think about that only. Racing
a car or driving a race car is a function like this. You will not think about anything
else, your problems, when you're in a car.’