With our sponsorship of the German men's national team and two partners with floorball experience in our midst, we thought it was high time to explore the overlaps and parallels between floorball and Nordic Leadership!

Our idea: Nordic Minds partner and former Finnish floorball champion Petri S. Toivanen interviews Petri Kettunen, former national coach of Finland and the Czech Republic, who won the World Championship with Finland and bronze with the Czech Republic. We very much appreciate that he found time to discuss these topics with us.

In three consecutive short blog posts, Petri and Petri talk about everything between team sports, floorball, business, and leadership – and give us some surprising insights.

Part I

Petri Toivanen: Thank you for taking your time! As you can see from the questions I sent you, one of our topics is Nordic Leadership.

Petri Kettunen: This issue is quite big. But let’s try, I’ll do my best!

Toivanen: Let’s start with your career, talk us through it.

Kettunen: My coaching career in floorball started in 1991. I was quite young at the time. I started to coach the juniors and was also a player coach with the men’s team here in Joensuu, 500 Kilometers northeast of Helsinki.

Toivanen: That was the time when we played together!

Kettunen: Yes, that’s right! We won a few gold medals in our league. It’s been 31 years that I’ve been doing this job. There are differences between sports and business. But there are also similarities, one of which is passion. As a floorball coach, you can’t work if you don’t have passion for it. It's the same in business: as long as you have passion, you can go forward with your business or your personal development. Passion is the main thing behind everything. I started in 1991 – and I still feel incredibly interested in coaching and the people.

Toivanen: How did you become a professional coach?

Kettunen: I went to Switzerland for the first time in the season of 1996 and 1997 as a player-coach and then came back to Finland. I had studied social sciences earlier in the nineties and at the beginning of the 2000s, I went back to university to study coaching. It was at uni that I realized that team sports is about the people – not so much the tactics. Things used to be a bit different before, more about tactics and less about leadership and people. But then I really understood: coaching is relationship work. Human resources are the key to getting results.

Toivanen: Was that in the years when Josba was coming on the top four in the Finnish championships – around 2002 and 2003?

Kettunen: Yes, in 2002 and 2003 I was coaching Josba Joensuu. In 2006, I got an offer from the Finnish Floorball Federation to be the head coach in the championships. Then in 2008, I was recruited by the Finnish men’s national team as a scout and later as an assistant coach – until I became head coach in 2011 for six years. After that, I moved to the Czech Republic for five years as head coach of the men's national team. I finished my job there in February 2022.

Toivanen: Let’s talk about Nordic Leadership – trust, open communication, flat hierarchies, appreciation of diversity, equal opportunities, respectfulness, and constructive feedback – can you add something from your perspective?

Kettunen: I can try! About Nordic leadership values: trust is always key. If you can build trust between two people, then it’s easy to discuss things. It’s good that we in Scandinavia have values that are somehow universal in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and in Finland. We have this trust, it’s important to us. Flat hierarchies, in my eyes, are a part of that trust. But that’s also a question of individual responsibility – you can’t have flat hierarchies if people are not taking on their responsibilities. And that’s what many Scandinavians are good at.

Toivanen: What do you think could everybody learn about leadership from floorball or team sports in general?

Kettunen: The big thing in floorball is cooperation skills. You’re playing five against five, then there’s the goalkeeper, and you have to establish good cooperation. Sport is a great ‘university’ for learning cooperation skills. You need those skills if you want to get results. That’s something that everybody can learn from floorball. You play together, and you learn from one another. Another essential and universal thing that we can learn from floorball, and from other sports as well, is teamwork.

Toivanen: Can you elaborate on that?

Kettunen: I mean that in any team – be it Finland, Switzerland, or the Czech Republic – the best team is not emerging from simply throwing together the 20 best individuals. It’s the same in football. You can’t have a team with 20 Lionel Messis. That's not working. You have to find the best suitable person for each position. Good teamwork comes from combining different individuals, different skills, and different characters that are in sum bigger than the single parts. At least that’s my idea of teamwork.

Toivanen: What else leaders can learn from floorball and team sports?

Kettunen: A third big aspect in my eyes is loyalty. Being loyal to your teammates, to your coaches, to your managers – to everyone who is in there with you. Because you're all going in the same direction. The goal is the same. In floorball, when you win something – every single individual has the same medal. Roles can vary in the team, but loyalty doesn’t.

And a final thing that I think everybody can learn from floorball is a hard-working ethic with a smile on your face. Work hard – but enjoy what you’re doing. The biggest thing is always passion. That gives wings to your dreams – and you can fly wherever you want to go.

Part 2 of our interview with Petri Kettunen will be published on 17. January 2023.