How I see leadership
For many years I helped build companies and lead people. For a long time I was convinced that a good leader above all masters one thing: recognising problems early and solving them quickly by themselves. As my responsibility grew, it became clear where this strength leads. Whoever takes problems away from people also takes away what they grow from.
Today I start from a different place: understand first, then be understood. Before a solution bears weight, the emotions at work in a system must be acknowledged, for they are often the real key. This empathy — the honest perception of what resonates beneath the factual level — has changed my view of leadership more than anything else.
Since then, leadership for me means leaving responsibility where it works, with the person who carries it, and accompanying them on the path to their own solution. The following twelve principles have grown out of this path, from my own leadership experience and from working with leaders.
I. Stance
01Responsibility stays with the other person.
Good leadership does not solve other people's problems; it leaves them where they belong and supports the search for a solution. Pulling a problem onto your own desk strips the other person of their agency. The task is to keep with the other what only grows with the other.
More on this: Why I stopped stealing problems · I want vs. one should
02Effectiveness comes from the circle of influence, not the circle of concern.
Energy that flows into what you cannot influence is lost. The capacity to act returns the moment attention turns to the circle of influence. That holds for job uncertainty as much as for the corporate career.
More on this: When the job wobbles · Grass does not grow faster
03Authenticity beats facade.
What others see in us and we do not see in ourselves decides effectiveness more than any strategy. A facade costs more energy over time than it protects. The hardest lever of good leadership is letting the blind spots become smaller.
More on this: The Johari Window
04Leadership takes courage and inner independence.
Putting an ambitious number openly on the table is rarely a risk for the organisation. It is a risk for the person who leads, and that is precisely where its effect lies. Courage shows where you yourself put something on the line, not where others do.
More on this: Courage for the big number
II. Leadership craft
05No progress on the content level while emotions are in the way.
Hardened fronts dissolve one layer below the arguments. A reaction too large for the trigger points to something older. Leadership takes effect where it looks beneath the visible surface.
More on this: Conflict coaching: Thomas-Kilmann · Emotional reactions: echoes from the past
06The second before the reaction is the lever.
Between an event and the response lies a short moment in which it is checked whether the response really holds. In a culture of acceleration this moment disappears first. To bring it back deliberately looks like slowness and is leadership.
More on this: Three seconds in the AI age · Nonviolent communication: the triple buffer
07Not deciding can be the mature decision.
Not every situation calls for a solution. Some call for being held until they become clear. In a culture of speed, holding is often the harder and the better path.
More on this: Negative Capability: waiting as a virtue
08What is labelled time management is really priority management.
If you push everything in parallel, you block your own bottleneck. Letting ships dock one after the other takes more courage than constant simultaneity. Prioritisation is one of the actual leadership decisions.
More on this: The harbour-master principle
III. People and development
09People before strategy.
Trust is the invisible account that leadership lives on. Reliability and listening pay in; broken commitments withdraw. Whoever begins with strategy builds on an account that is still empty.
More on this: First who, then what · The emotional bank account
10Development cannot be forced, and the occasional extra lap is part of the path.
Old patterns are the motorway; new behaviour is at first only a narrow temporary exit. Under stress you drive past the new road, and that is not failure. Knowing is not yet doing, and doing requires repetition.
More on this: The temporary exit · Coaching training, twice
11Purpose is a leadership instrument, not a marketing term.
A precise Why gives orientation in a crisis, filters decisions, and holds when other things fall away. Not knowing your own purpose is therefore not a marketing problem but a leadership problem.
More on this: Purpose as an anchor in the BANI world · Start with Why
12Up is not the only direction.
The right seat beats the higher rung. A promotion into the wrong role costs financially, in the company, and at home, and rarely does anyone step back. Leadership also means valuing the fitting place above the higher one.
More on this: The Peter Principle · The R4 trap in situational leadership
How this stance came about
These twelve principles did not emerge at a desk. They grew out of more than fifteen years of leadership experience and over a thousand coaching hours. For anyone interested in the biographical backdrop of how I became a coach, the path is described here.
Where the thread begins
Many of these principles are not new. Some I already captured in short pieces back in 2020, long before they grew into a collection of their own. They are bundled in my book „Peter mag keinen Frosch zum Frühstück" (German edition): from the circle of influence through First who, then what and the harbour-master principle to the Peter Principle and Maslow's hammer.