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.

Contrary to all attempts to flatten or even abolish hierarchies, they persist as an organizing principle in companies and corporations. Obviously, they fulfill an important function, regardless of whether they are imposed from above or developed informally through self-organization. Hierarchies seem to be indispensable to accomplish goals together with others. They fulfil not only an organizational but also a human need for order and orientation as well as the allocation of responsibility.

A corporate culture that recognizes death and grief fosters a supportive and empathetic working environment, strengthening employee loyalty. When an organization cares about their well-being and offers support in difficult life situations, employees feel seen and valued.

The large number of employees also makes a code of conduct unavoidable. In many places, this also includes values that are desirable and are even used to assess employees and managers.

What happens time and again in everyday organisational life is that values are set in the hope that they will have an immediate generative effect. Values are therefore often highlighted in management workshops, propagated in training sessions or strived for by senior management. This is particularly noticeable when a change project is announced that is based on establishing new, better values: ‘We need to become more effective, more innovative, more entrepreneurial, more agile, build a culture of error, become a family, drive cultural change.’

General lack of understanding of the importance of values

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.

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.

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.

We hear and read a lot about topics such as "self-management", "mental health", "resilience" and "inner world". We are looking for help to better cope with today's demands. A recent study by Techniker Krankenkasse shows that a third of Germans sometimes feel stressed and a quarter even feel this way frequently.

Wherever people come together or work together, conflicts can arise. But the healthy handling of 
conflicts can be trained.

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