Jörn Potthoff, a trained toolmaker and EK toolmaking coordinator, is an absolute team player – and is delighted when he gets to help set young people on a successful path. He demonstrates this in his daily work at home with his two boys in their prime teenage years and at EK as a trainer of apprentices.
Anyone who wants to teach others about their future job should have a good dose of self-confidence as well as mediation skills. Like Jörn Potthoff, for example, who has been with EK for around 15 years and considers his job as a tool mechanic to be “the supreme discipline of metalworking professions! Because the training is so comprehensive, he explains, “From turning, drilling, and sawing to CNC milling, we teach you everything to do with metals and how to machine them. With that, you can actually never be unemployed.”
Seeing the success of trainees when they pass their exams, how they then develop, not only professionally but also personally, in short, helping to shape their development, gives him great pleasure. The nice thing about EK, explains Jörn Potthoff, is that the apprentices work directly in the tool shop and get to know our tools. Later, they can continue working here directly thanks to the guaranteed takeover. With two other colleagues, he also coordinates more than 25 professional toolmakers. “Teamwork is particularly important to me, because nothing works in toolmaking without it. A functioning team in which people get along with each other and resolve problems amicably.”
Acting as part of a team is important to Jörn Potthoff. Maybe that’s why he’s toying with the idea of joining the EK Runners this year. Because he himself regularly runs 10-kilometer laps, he is looking forward to possibly being there. After work, it’s usually back to Solingen, where Jörn Potthoff has lived since his earliest youth. There he tends to the home garden, where he grows vegetables in a raised bed and soon his homegrown kohlrabi will be on the dining table. Together with his two sons, he is planning a short trip to Berlin for the summer, because there is always a lot going on there. In quiet hours, he practices for his next sailing license. Although he recently completed his sport boat license for inland motor and sail, Jörn Potthoff has a lot more planned: “I’m currently taking the sport boat license for sea as a prerequisite for the sport boat license, which will follow. And then it’s ‘mast and sheet break’ as often as possible!”