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.

Ensure a positive team atmosphere!

The rapid technological change brought about by the digital transformation, the flood of ambiguous information, a large number of vacancies to be filled and an increasing shortage of skilled labour are just a few examples of how the demands of the modern working world are constantly increasing. This leads to mental and/or physical overload for employees and managers.

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.

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.

The term “psychological safety” is thrown around a lot these days.

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

I'm top prepared. I hope the interview goes well - but will I reach my interview partners?" The little question mark is justified. Often the "how" of communication cancels out the "what".