From officer at 20 to executive
I became a leader at 20, as an officer in the German Armed Forces. Today I'm a Lieutenant Colonel in the reserve. The army trained me thoroughly for leadership. I had the tools.
Later I held executive roles at O2, at ProSiebenSat.1 companies (weg.de and Tropo), at Twilio and at Fastly. Today I run Boyd GmbH and mitarbeiterfuehren.com, my German-language leadership platform.
What went wrong, and what was missing
My problem was never that nobody taught me how to lead. What I learned early was that the best and the toughest wins. That works for a while. Then I hit the Peter Principle, and it stopped working.
What I was missing wasn't another technique. It was understanding how I decide and how I come across. That's also why I say leadership is a craft, not a talent. A craft can be learned, including the part where you look at yourself.
The bosses I had
One of my bosses sent me into a multi-million meeting with American Express executives. No briefing. Then he walked out and left me there.
He wasn't a bad person. He was charming, funny and educated. Not malicious. Just scatterbrained. That's the point: a boss can make your working life very hard without meaning to. If you only look for bad intent, you pick the wrong response.
Why this site
Most leadership advice sounds good in a seminar and falls apart on Monday morning. On this site you get what I wish someone had given me: clear steps and exact words for the moments that matter, from the difficult employee on your team to the difficult boss above you.
Start with the free 9-day email course on handling difficult employees.
AI since the 1990s, and how I use Claude
I've been working with AI since the mid-1990s. I wrote my diploma thesis on it. So I don't see AI as a trend. I see it as a tool that finally got good enough to use every day.
In my courses, Claude is your AI sparring partner. Not a replacement for a coach, but someone who's there after a hard day, when you want to play a situation through. You get a ready-made Claude setup that already knows the topic, so you can start with "My boss did it again..." and get concrete suggestions instead of abstract advice.