E-mails, digital meetings, LinkedIn messages - in today's working world, it is difficult or even impossible to escape the constant digital barrage. This is particularly true for managers, as they are subject to different requirements than employees. Being available until late in the evening or even at weekends is not uncommon, and the boundary between work and private life is often permeable. In addition, there is also a certain tendency towards self-exploitation: the great will to shape things in an often highly political environment, the enjoyment of power and responsibility and the pronounced work ethic, even to the point of self-endangerment, are just a few examples of this. For these reasons, resilience - and currently digital resilience in particular - is a critical aspect of leadership. This makes it all the more important that managers also pay attention to their own leadership, namely that of their own mental and emotional inner world. This is the key to being able to act with lasting resilience in the digital world of work.

In 2013 during the press conference to announce the mobile phone branch of NOKIA to be sold to Microsoft, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop ended his speech saying “We didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost”. When he said that some claim to have seen tears in his eyes. I personally doubt that since he was also pretty relaxed about laying of half the employees of Nokia during this transaction. Maybe his package of 19M€ has helped him to overcome his pain. Anyway, one year later also he was fired from Microsoft.

Did you know that by far the largest program to enhance resilience has been launched by the US Army in 2009? With a budget of 140 million US dollars the initiative “Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness” aims to increase the mental and emotional strength of soldiers being deployed in war zones.

The following chapter is an excerpt from the book “Coaching und seine Wurzeln” (Coaching and its Roots)

Leadership Choices became the first German coaching company to join the global B Corp movement in March 2024 - what's that all about?

2024

March 2024

In March, our Managing Partner Karsten traveled to Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, to kick off the cooperation between the Cosmikk Foundation and our new project partner, Future For Ukraine Foundation (FFU).  

Last week, on March 19, 2024, I traveled to the capital of Ukraine to kick off the cooperation between the Cosmikk-Foundation and our new project partner, Future For Ukraine Foundation (FFU).  The Cosmikk-Foundation, founded by my colleague Uwe Achterholt and myself, provides NGO leaders free access to high-quality coaching.  FFU provides prosthetics to wounded soldiers, psychological counseling to women who experienced sexual violence, and social support to children with mental health issues.

Olena, president of FFU, and I had met in Warsaw back in January of 2024. Our teams had been working on finalizing the agreements to work together for some months. When we first met, Olena had invited me to join the premiere of a documentary on their work in March, and we agreed to combine it with a signing ceremony to kick off our joint project. Here are some of my impressions from this trip that changed and widened many of my perspectives, brought me new friends and simply changed my life.

How It All Began
How do people manage to develop their full potential under the most difficult circumstances? And what can managers learn from these people? We have spent over a decade researching and working with countless managers to identify the individual factors that have a positive or negative impact on their crisis resilience. And we developed a scientifically sound procedure to measure the protective and risk factors, because skills can only be strengthened if they are recognized as relevant and if can be influenced. We are now in a position to present initial research data that provides exciting insights into the connection between crisis resilience and management careers.

Nestled away in Wiesbaden, Germany, a city known for its famous mineral springs and for being the state capital of Hessia, is a professional services company with a global reach. With 150 coaches based in 27 countries (and fluent in 15 languages), Leadership Choices works with organizations around the world, coaching their leaders to be more resilient, supporting their teams to develop more psychological safety, and helping their people to build more humane company cultures.

I have long been fascinated by the fact that some people bounce back and eventually thrive when confronted with a situation of own failure while others crack or permanently suffer. While at first this was a purely abstract and intellectual interest live gave me the chance to make my own experiences with failure.