All posts tagged: Leadership

A male athlete reaches upward during a fitness competition inside a stadium, with judges and other competitors visible in the background.

He Was Done — I Still Had to Tell Him It Wasn’t Enough

Published by Trotzendorff

His legs were shaking before he even went down into the next squat. He stood in front of me at the wall ball station with that look people get when they are no longer really deciding anything. They are just trying to keep the body moving for one more rep, then one more, then somehow another. He picked up the ball, dropped down, came back up, threw, caught it. I watched the movement and called it straight away: no rep. Not because he missed the target. Because he had not gone low enough.

A blurred black-and-white image of a person’s face emerging from darkness, with motion creating a ghost-like double exposure effect.

In the Dark, Organizations See Eigengrau

Published by Trotzendorff

Try this tonight. Turn off the lights, close the curtains, and wait until the room is as dark as it gets. Then keep your eyes open and look into the darkness. You might expect to see black — complete absence, the visual equivalent of silence. But that is not what happens.

Why We Crave Strong Leaders in Crisis — And Why That Might Be a Problem

Published by Trotzendorff

1. The Pattern: Crisis Hits, and We Look Up Take a moment and think back to the last time you felt truly uncertain — maybe during a global pandemic, a major reorganization at work, or a personal crisis. Chances are, you found yourself gravitating toward someone who seemed to have all the answers. A boss. A political figure. A loud voice in a crowded room.

The «Real Men» Dilemma: Why Leaders Struggle to Say «I Don’t Know»

Published by Trotzendorff

Leadership has long been entwined with traditional masculine norms. The ideal leader is often seen as decisive, strong, in control, and emotionally stoic – traits stereotypically coded as male. In fact, classic research found people implicitly associate leadership with being male («think manager, think male»). Many organizations still operate like a «masculinity contest» culture. Some core unwritten rules of this old-school masculine code include: