EKAITZ SAIES

This morning, I finished reading Theo of Golden. I shed my last few tears sitting on our garden bench.

It took me quite a long time to finish it, although not because I wasn’t enjoying it. Quite the opposite. I liked it so much that I found myself reading it slowly. Life also got in the way, as it tends to do. There were competitions, travelling, work, family life, and occasionally other books that I needed to read because they were relevant to something I was working through at the time. But I kept coming back to Theo.

I’m glad I did.

It is a beautiful book about doing good, bestowing kindness and striving for beauty. And without giving away its wonderful ending, it left me thinking about something I have believed in for a long time: the extraordinary power of human connection, and how sometimes something meaningful can grow organically from the smallest of actions.

Perhaps the most appropriate thing about the book is how it found its way to me in the first place.

It was recommended to me by somebody I have never actually met.

Her name is Allison.

Some months ago, I happened to see a photograph on social media of her daughter, Alena, wearing a Paddle Games top. That immediately caught my attention because the top had the name of American Olympic paddler Jonas Ecker and his favourite number on the back. But the person wearing it clearly wasn’t an athlete. She was a little girl.

So I became curious.

I read her story and discovered that Alena was approaching her tenth birthday. She had been born prematurely after an incredibly difficult and risky birth for both her and Allison, which meant that reaching ten years old represented something rather more significant for the family than simply another birthday.

I contacted Allison.

I had a very simple idea. Would she mind if I asked some of our Paddle Games athletes to record a short video wishing Alena a happy tenth birthday?

That was it.

There was no campaign. No strategy. No communications plan. Just a little girl wearing one of our tops and an opportunity to do something nice.

The athletes immediately embraced the idea. Olympians, Olympic medallists and world champions from different countries recorded little messages for somebody they had never met. We put them together and, on 6 March, published a birthday video for Alena.

I thought that might be the end of the story.

It wasn’t.

Over the following months, Alena started following many of those athletes. Whenever one of them raced internationally, I would occasionally see photographs and videos from her family on social media. Their living room might suddenly be decorated with German flags, Portuguese flags or American flags depending on who was racing that day. Athletes who a few months earlier had been complete strangers had somehow become people she cared about.

And then the connection started moving in the other direction too.

Recently, Paulina Paszek and Pauline Jagsch, Olympic medallists from Paris 2024 who had both been part of Alena’s birthday video, sent her a parcel from Germany. Inside were pieces of kit, including an official German racing top.

Neither of them has ever met Alena.

And something happened this week that made me smile. Pauline rang me to talk about the upcoming Paddle Games next week. It was an important conversation, but at one point we found ourselves talking about Alena.

I loved that.

A few months earlier, Alena was simply a little girl in a Paddle Games top who neither of us knew. Now, in the middle of a conversation about an international competition, her name came up completely naturally.

Nobody planned any of this.

Allison and I have never met either.

And yet somehow there is now a thread connecting all of us.

Paddle Games led me to notice a photograph. The photograph led me to read the story of a little girl. Her story led to a birthday video. The video led Alena to follow athletes from around the world. Those athletes began following her story too. Paulina and Pauline sent her a parcel from Germany. Alena became somebody we talked about during a phone call months later. And somewhere along the way, Allison, whom I have still never met, recommended a book to me because she thought, from the little she knew about me, that I would like it.

She was right.

And now that book has made me think about all of this.

There is something beautifully circular about that.

We talk a lot about the negative side of social media, and much of that criticism is justified. It can divide us. It can make us compare ourselves with others. It can amplify anger, judgement and negativity.

But it can also do this.

It can connect a ten-year-old girl with Olympic medallists on the other side of the world. It can allow somebody you have never met to recognise something in you and recommend a book that ends up meaning a great deal to you. It can turn a one-minute birthday message into a connection that continues months later.

The technology is neither kind nor unkind. What matters is what we choose to do with it.

Reading Theo of Golden also made me think about kindness in my own life. In leadership, there are inevitably moments when I have to make difficult decisions, sometimes decisions that affect people’s careers and livelihoods. Kindness cannot mean avoiding those decisions, but I hope it can shape how we make them and, particularly, how we treat people when we have to deliver them.

You can be clear without being cold. You can disagree without diminishing somebody. And you can make a difficult decision while still caring about the person affected by it.

Perhaps that matters because kindness, for me, isn’t really a leadership philosophy at all. It is much more personal than that.

At different moments while reading Theo of Golden, I found myself thinking about my grandfather.

He was a true gentleman. Always very well dressed, always kind, with a wonderful sense of humour and a habit of having something nice to say to people. I heard from relatives that he had built such a good relationship with the people working in one of San Sebastián’s best-known clothing shops that, before the sales officially started, they would telephone him and invite him into the shop. He could wander around, see what was going to be discounted and choose anything he wanted before the doors opened for the sale.

It wasn’t because he was important.

It was because people liked him.

And I think there is something rather lovely about that.

We spend so much of our lives thinking about outcomes. We build strategies, set targets, measure performance and try to predict what will happen next. I do it every day. But human relationships rarely work like that. The most interesting connections often aren’t planned at all.

You notice a photograph.

You ask a few people to record a birthday message.

Someone recommends a book.

Two athletes fill a parcel with kit and send it to a ten-year-old girl.

Months later, her name unexpectedly appears in a phone conversation between two people talking about a race.

One small action creates another, which creates another, and suddenly there is a chain of connection that nobody designed and nobody could have predicted.

Maybe that is one of the lessons I will take from Theo of Golden.

Do good when you have the opportunity. Be kind when you can. Look for beauty.

Make the call. Send the message. Give the compliment. Record the video.

You may never know where it leads.

But every now and then, one small action travels much further than you could ever have imagined.