Toto Wolff, the team principal and chief executive of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One team, recently joined us as a guest on my High Performance podcast. After the recording was done, he hung around for a while and the two of us went for a walk around the Mercedes F1 factory in Brackley.

Now, this was a bit of a surprise because we were told by his people, the marketing and communications guys, that he had strictly just one hour to devote to being a guest and after that was up, he would be disappearing very quickly. When I asked him whether we could have a quick look around the factory I was not expecting a positive response. That he gave me a wholesome and positive “yes” was a really pleasant surprise.

The two of us just went for a walk and the first thing that I picked up on was how, as we strode around the Mercedes factory, he shook hands with everyone. Everyone felt free to come up and speak to him. He knew the names of everyone walking in and out of the offices. We are talking here about a leader involved in a business of more than 1,000 people. I’m not claiming that he knows the names of every single person, because that would be impossible, but certainly many of the people that he deals with on a regular basis felt hugely comfortable in his presence.

As we toured the building, it quickly became apparent that its offices are looking a little bit dated. The Mercedes factory has been a Formula One team factory under different guises and different teams for decades.

Then, as we walked up to a window, he stood there proudly and said: “Take a look out there.” Outside were workmen everywhere, diggers driving around and dump trucks moving soil. He told me that was the start of a long-term plan he has for totally transforming the Mercedes Formula One headquarters. This led me to ask him about the concept of legacy.

He looked at me dead in the eyes and said in his Austrian lilt: “Totally irrelevant.” How interesting that Wolff, who deals in aspects such as Formula One world titles, building high-performing teams and creating a company such as Mercedes Formula One to be fit for the future, sees legacy as totally irrelevant.

I probed him further, and he said: “The only thing that really matters is what I do today. The only thing I can control is the next decision that I make, the next person I hire and the next meeting that I have. The legacy of that is nothing that I can ever comprehend. I just have to try and do the right thing every minute of every day.”

Then I asked him: “What’s the biggest challenge that you’ve got?” He said: “Without question, time.”  Actually, that was laid bare by the things that happened on the day and since then.

He finally said: “Come into my office, let’s have a chat.” We entered his beautiful glass office decorated with Formula One trophies, helmets and other racing paraphernalia around. On the table were three Tupperware pots sitting there with a napkin, knife and fork. Wolff eats the same food for breakfast, lunch and dinner when he’s at work because it saves time having to think about what to eat and it saves his body from having to learn to digest different foods.

This is someone who is looking for optimisation in every area of his life. Since our conversation, I sent him an email thanking him for his time and for the episode, telling him how well it has done. His reply was: “Please send me your mobile phone number because it’s more efficient for me to send you a voice note than reply to an email.”

I think if we’re going to laud people like Wolff, we can’t laud them without understanding the levels and the depths they encounter to find their own version of high performance. He has a really great understanding of how he can get to that level. People may disagree with this, because we live in a world where many have a very strong opinion about those in the public eye, such as Wolff. But his approach to finding high performance is to do it without ego. That is why they have a no-blame culture at Mercedes. If something goes wrong, it’s not about blaming the person, it’s about looking at the processes.

At another moment during our encounter, he asked me if I was on Instagram. “I am,” I said. “I need Instagram for work.” He turned his nose up and replied: “I see no benefit to my life being on Instagram.” He then spoke about a few of the other people involved in Formula One, such as team principals in the sport, constantly posting pictures and sharing their updates.

“What those people have failed to understand is that we are just managers. We’re not celebrities. We’re not megastars. We are just managers. We’re just managing people.” I think this ego-free approach to management is really important.

Before I left, he said: “Come with me. Let me show you something.” We went out of the office and in three or four places across a sprawling area of a wall were the logos of the teams to have won the World Championship for Constructors for the past 40 years. “What do you see?” he asked.

“Oh no,” I thought. “I’m being tested here by Toto Wolff and I have a strong suspicion I’m going to fail the test.” I looked at all of the badges on the wall and replied: “Mmm, well, Ferrari has won it a lot.” “Yes, something else,” he replied. “What do you see?” I carried on looking and eventually I admitted: “Look, I don’t know.”

“Look at the fact that Mercedes have won it for a short period of time in the last few years,” he said. “Now look at how Ferrari and McLaren have regularly won across a long period of time. That’s the aim in this place.”

He said the point is not to win every world title because that is unrealistic. But the aim is always to be in with a shout every season of being one of the teams that can win the world title.

“There’s something else you’ve missed,” he added. “What have I missed?” I said.

“Look at the bottom.” And only then did I realise that at the bottom of the picture, there were 20 blank spaces where the 20 winning constructors’ logos could go for the next 20 years.

“That’s deliberately put on there to remind everyone that works in this factory that we’re in the middle of the process,” he said. “We haven’t reached the end. We’re not even at the start of it. This is an ongoing battle. I say to people: ‘In 20 years’ time, how many world titles will be on here?’ I don’t care what the number is, but I want them to be regular. I want them to appear at regular intervals every few years. I’m not asking for constant victory, but I am asking for this team to be constantly competitive.”

It’s important to ask ourselves how we can find this same mindset to be competitive all the time. I think many of us can find our own version of high performance for a short space of time, but the real challenge is to be constantly finding high performance.

I think the answer to that lies in Wolff’s own journey. He lost his father to a brain tumour when he was a young child. He tells a pretty harrowing story of being thrown out of the school he was going to because it was a fee-paying school and it was no longer affordable.

He opens up about the humiliation that he felt and that was the moment that he decided that no one else would ever be responsible for his safety, security and financial situation. That is when he decided that he was the person who was going to take on the mantle and be a true leader.

I talked to him about the pressure of Lewis Hamilton walking away from Mercedes, the pressure of the 2021 Formula One season, which had a very traumatic finish, the pressure of running a team of 1,000 people, or the pressure of trying to be a parent and a husband in the mad world of Formula One. None of those is anything like the kind of pressure that he would have felt as a young child growing up in a house where he was losing his father and deciding that was going to be the determining moment in his life.

I think it’s a great reminder that the Wolff we see on the television, the Wolff that we see sitting in the Formula One garage at a Grand Prix weekend and the Wolff doing the media duties is one very small side of a man who is clearly multifaceted.

Through his upbringing and the challenges that he has had to contend with and overcome in his past, he has still managed to find a way truly to lead. It was one of the most fascinating 30 minutes of my life chatting to him after the podcast recording ended.

Jake Humphrey is the host of the High Performance podcast and co-founder of Whisper Group.