Last month, Borussia Dortmund won the German “Bundesliga” football championship. No doubt that being a boyhood and lifelong supporter of Borussia Dortmund I am very happy about that. I was even lucky to be in the stadium together with my father and my son on the day Borussia won the championship. Borussia Dortmund became the [...]

In April and May I attended a seminar of process oriented psychology on personal vision quest in Marrakech when a bomb exploded in a restaurant on the main square Djemaa El Fna killing 20 people. I was only 200 meters away and heard the blast without truly admitting to myself what happened until I saw [...]

In my opinion CL does not correspond to the known categorizations of management styles as for example ´authoritarian´ or ´cooperative´. No matter which of those categories a leader belongs to, he (using the masculin form for this text because of readability) might be a caring or not-so-caring leader. As an example the authoritarian manager can [...]

I recently came across a highly interesting paper titled “The Emotionally Bonded Organization: Why Emotional Infrastructure Matters And How Leaders Can Build It” by Vijay Govindarajan, Professor of International Business at The Tuck School of Busines at Dartmouth College, and Subroto Bagchi, co-founder of MindTree, an Indian IT-company.
While reading the above 35 pages paper, I was [...]

Preparing the next top employer certification of our company I was asked in my role as chief of human resources by the interviewer what made us special as employer? That we are ourselves, I replied.
First of all, after four years of development our leadership team has been trained to target employees as whole human beings [...]

When I read the March 2011 special issue on brands of “Absatzwirtschaft”,  Germany’s leading marketing journal, I was very happy when I came across an article by Achim Feige titled “Good Brands Create Triple Wins”. In that article, Feige states that it is no longer enough for a company to go only for profits. As [...]

Personal values are the reasons, why we do something or why we do not. They are the critical and unconsciously driving power within us motivating our actions and behavior. Values are our ethical framework in which we are living and moving. They are the basis for personal identity and identification. These days, shaped by the [...]

When Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies, a global IT – services firm, published last year his book “Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down”, it caused quite a stir. Nayar’s mantra seems to reverse conventional business beliefs. In many companies, customer need is placed above all others – often at the sacrifice [...]

Do you know this impression: Wow, this young guy or girl is full of power, ambition, brightness, and confidence? Did you ask yourself the question: How can I lead and develop this agglomeration of energy and intelligence? And further: What do I do as a leader in order to integrate this – may be rules [...]

Success in life depends on our ability to keep learning. That is true for students as well as for managers. Therefore, it is astonishing how few people seem to have embraced the idea of being a true learning person. I am observing again and again that employees and managers are stuck in day to day [...]

How do I care for myself in the role of a manager when the structural framework is extremely demanding for me? Most managers will skip this question and switch over to how do I respond to expectations and how do I function even more and better?
Maximizing performance and numbing failure, this is what often leads [...]

How many times a day are you talking to another person like your boss, your subordinate, a friend, a relative or another person and you notice that your conversation partner is not really present when you speak? He is physically present, but he doesn’t pay much attention to what you say. Take a minute and [...]