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Karsten is passionate about getting to the core of things in leadership coaching. His clients often describe him as an intuitive, empathic and at times challenging sparring partner who asks the right questions.
He helps his clients to look at issues from a different angle to reach their goals.
Karsten has an extensive international business and leadership background gained over 16 years.
He held leading positions at Accenture, Bombardier Transportation and Dell. In his last position as Managing Director for DELL's consulting business, he built up the field of business consulting in Europe.
Karsten is a Leadership Coach since 2006. He is accredited by the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC)and the World Economic Forum. He published several articles and books on the topics leadership, coaching and resilience. Furthermore, he is a certified psychotherapist (naturopath) and works as faculty at the Center for Responsible Leadership at WHU business school in Koblenz.
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.
Nothing seems to be easier to answer than the question if you are successful. But the moment you start thinking about it, questions come up like “am I really successful?”, “what does successful mean?” or “successful in relationship to what?”. In a recent study with over 200 managers from all over the world I asked the question “What does long-lasting professional success mean for you?” I wanted to find out which ingredients are widely accepted in the recipe for success.
Ensure a positive team atmosphere!
Modern working life can often be stressful and challenging. People experience external challenges as a burden when they feel they have no control over them and do not believe they have sufficient resources to cope with the stress of everyday life. But there are ways in which you can make your working day stress-free.
Since the 1950s, McKinsey [&] Company, one of the world’s leading strategy consulting companies, has been known to employ the best graduates from the best universities, and to use performance incentives and a very formative high performance culture to shape these young, hungry ‘high potentials’ according to their requirements. After these young consultants were pushed to the maximum by their international projects, most of them voluntarily leave the company on good terms after three years at the latest in order to take up leading positions in the industry and then to become potential customers of their former employer. Over the past few decades, this HR strategy and its accompanying high performance culture was adopted in the field of professional services by the majority of international companies and is now also entering many more traditional industrial and service-based companies.
Since 2017, Karsten Drath has been cycling around the world to collect donations for the Cosmikk Foundation under the motto "Coaching for a better world". This year, his 7th stage will take the entrepreneur, coach and podcast host through North America. Starting at the end of July, he wants to cover 3,500 kilometers in 35 days: from Saskatoon to Chicago, Toronto and Montreal. Local fundraising events will also be held in each of these cities. Drath is one of the founders of the digital coaching platform Cosmikk and co-founder of the non-profit Cosmikk Foundation. This foundation helps the leadership teams of nonprofit organizations gain access to high-quality, quality-assured coaching at no cost. For example, Drath and many of his colleagues have been active in the Ahr Valley for 1.5 years, where they support members of a local aid organization by providing free coaching and team development. The Cosmikk Foundation collects donations, selects the NGOs and finances the coaches, who in the future will receive a small allowance for their years of work. To make this possible, the foundation needs donations. Drath's fundraising tour by bicycle around the world takes him in fifteen stages over at least 35,000 km. He always travels alone, using only muscle power and without external support. He spends the night in a tent. So far, Drath has already covered 14,700 km through 13 countries and raised around 96,000 euros in donations. His route has taken him from Gibraltar to the North Cape and from Lisbon to Poland. He is currently crossing North America from West to East. Last year, his tour took him through the Canadian Rocky Mountains, which he is now following up on. Drath is already looking forward to this year's tour: "I'm very excited about the change between solitude and the bustling big city. I'm sure I'll meet exciting people again along the way. I'm already looking forward to that!" This year will hopefully see many more donations for the Cosmikk Foundation, which Karsten Drath launched in 2022 together with his co-managing director Uwe Achterholt. Regular updates from the tour can be found here: around-the-world-by-bike.blog
