The Person
Babak Rafati
Keynote - Speaking Topics - Workshop - Seminar - Event
Red Fox Award
Nominated as Speaker
of the year 2021
Bavarian Broadcasting
Red Fox Award
Bavarian Broadcasting
Successful! Celebrity status! Audience of millions on TV! Then pressure! Stress! Conflicts! Burnout! Suicide attempt! Then bestselling author & documentary film! Today successful TOP keynote speaker, mental coach & TV talk expert!
Babak Rafati is a highly sought-after guest speaker and TOP keynote speaker at corporate events, leadership congresses, including DAX companies, and major events. The core topics of his motivational and impulse lectures are occupational health management, performance pressure, burnout prevention, stress management, change management and positive psychology. He provides a deep and impressive insight into his borderline experiences from top-class sport and shows amazing parallels to everyday working life. In an entertaining and relaxed way, he presents current and complex topics in infotainment and enables participants to see themselves and others in their jobs from a different perspective. The core message he conveys is very elementary for a balanced work-life-balance. It is not the supposedly evil bosses, colleagues or the job that are the cause of our stress at work.
The companies have equality of arms. Good staff. Modern technology, etc. But the competitive advantage in the future lies in "psychological capital." Recognising connections, motives, causes and people...this creates motivation for the employees as fuel for performance. Gone is the dismissal of the employer (according to statistics 2/3 of the employees). There is a dismissal towards the inner attitude! It is rather due to our own script and not to others.
With his expertise, he is listed with numerous leading speaker agencies in Europe and is regularly recommended and referred by them.
Some agencies proclaim that he is the first "celebrity top athlete" to come out in the open on the explosive topics in everyday professional life and report up close and personal from the field. This competence and credibility makes him unique. As a result, he is in great demand in the world of work, business and management, but also in various TV appearances, and is consequently a permanent guest. The "crisis manager" is described as a pioneer and visionary.
Renowned medical experts and Bundesliga managers praise his pioneering role and media-effective stance in society: "It is immensely important and extremely commendable that Babak Rafati, with his high profile, makes the topics of performance pressure and burnout public in our society and very vividly communicates his extreme borderline experiences to all people in top-class sport as well as at work and consequently has a preventive effect. An enrichment!"
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the trend of mental illnesses, especially in everyday working life, is very much on the rise. A highly topical subject. Alarming! Rafati has thus already entered a terrain that will be trend-setting in our everyday professional life.
As a mental coach, Babak Rafati shares his practical experience and strategies. He accompanies public figures and VIPs, such as professional footballers or top managers, who suffer from stress, pressure to perform and exhaustion, in order to help them regain their balance and old performance. Dealing with the media and superiors at management level is also trained on the basis of the participants' own experiences. An interesting and exciting Transactional Analysis (TA) from a practical point of view, which sheds light on the behaviour and background of superiors in order to develop understanding for them. Knowledge creates understanding. This creates the willingness to change.
Referee Babak Rafati was a banker in a management position and worked as a referee for 25 years. He was active for 15 years in professional football on the big stage of the "show & business business" in the highest divisions of the German Football Association with over 200 games in the 1st and 2nd Bundesliga and in the DFB Cup as well as from 2008 - 2011 as a FIFA referee at international level. In total, he has refereed teams from over 50 countries. That corresponds to more than a quarter of all countries on earth worldwide. Superstars and world footballers such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, David Beckham, Mesut Özil, Lukas Podolski, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Diego Maradona, Neymar, Manuel Neuer and many others have been accompanied by him during his long professional career. Today Rafati whistles at special events such as farewell matches of professional footballers.
Suicide Attempt Following the tragic suicide of the German national goalkeeper Robert Enke in 2009, Babak Rafati attempted to take his own life on the 19 th of November 2011 in a hotel room before the beginning of the first Bundesliga match. This shook the entire footballing world. This desperate act was the result of burnout/depression, triggered by bullying, pressure and stress. In 2012, he retired and put an end to his impressive career. After his recovery, his best-selling book, I Whistle on Death, was released in March 2013. The book was a sensation, mainly because of the explosiveness of the taboo subjects in combination with top-class sport, which is something that nobody expected.
Babak Rafati and his wife and also Managing Director of this agency, Dr Rouja Rafati, who played a decisive role in the process of his crisis and his comeback to life, have been appointed Corporate Health Award Ambassadors by the Handelsblatt, Bundesverband mittelständische Wirtschaft (BVMW), EuPD Research Sustainable Management and the ias Group since 2018 for their exemplary commitment. With their expertise and level of awareness, they are to give German companies a face for the topic of occupational health management. Thus, they were chosen as predestined for future-oriented, healthy and sustainable human resources management in the world of work. Both are also invited directly by companies to present special awards and honours.
A documentary film by Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) in the series Lebenslinien entitled "Nach dem Spiel" (After the Game) was broadcast about his life story. He is considered a figurehead and ambassador for society's issues such as stress, pressure to perform and burnout at work. You can see the film in the media library of Bayerischer Rundfunk as well as ARD. He was also awarded the "My Role Model" prize in 2018, alongside numerous politicians, professional footballers and public figures.