Image: Dan Dennis via Unsplash
After 20 years in management, through crises and turning points, through breakthroughs in my coaching – and carried by my lifelong passion for classical music – one realization burns deep: I never want to pretend to be someone else again. Not in business. Not as a leader. Not as a human being.
This realization is more than a personal breakthrough. It’s the foundation for everything I want to build from now on: my consultancy “Leadership Artist,” my planned doctoral research, my new way of understanding and living leadership.
Trusting your feelings
For years, I learned to suppress feelings in business contexts. Being “emotional” was considered unprofessional. But our feelings are highly precise sensors for what’s really happening. They register inconsistencies, tensions, unspoken conflicts long before our analytical mind grasps them.
Trusting my feelings doesn’t mean acting impulsively. It means respecting them as a valuable source of information and incorporating them into my decisions.
Facts aren’t everything
The business world loves facts, numbers, data. Rightfully so. But between the lines of spreadsheets, real life happens: trust, motivation, fear, hope. These “soft factors” often determine the success or failure of a company.
Authenticity means taking both levels seriously – the rational and the emotional. Only together do they provide the complete picture.
Bringing uncomfortable truths to the table
How often have I remained silent when something wasn’t right? How often have I harmonized where plain speaking would have been necessary? This false harmony costs companies millions – in missed opportunities, in demotivated teams, in poor decisions.
Being authentic means finding the courage for uncomfortable truths. Not hurtfully, but clearly. Not destructively, but honestly.
Not fooling yourself
The hardest form of authenticity is honesty with yourself. No self-deception about your own weaknesses. No rose-colored glasses when evaluating difficult situations.
Not fooling yourself is the foundation for everything else – for genuine development, for sustainable decisions, for credible leadership.
Intuition is centrally important
In a data-driven world, we often forget: the best decisions emerge from dialogue between analysis and intuition. Intuition isn’t esotericism – it’s the result of experience, pattern recognition, and unconscious processing of complex information.
Authentic leadership means having the courage to follow your own intuition – even when it can’t be proven in an Excel sheet.
Sensitivity makes the difference in leadership
Sensitivity was long interpreted as weakness. Today I know: it’s my greatest strength. Sensitive leaders sense earlier when teams are overwhelmed. They register moods before they become problems. They understand the nuances of human communication.
In a time when emotional intelligence determines team success, sensitivity isn’t weakness – it’s a competitive advantage. Like a conductor who perceives the finest nuances in an orchestra, a sensitive leader feels the harmonies and dissonances in the team. This artistic sensitivity, which I’ve developed through my passion for classical music, has become my most valuable leadership instrument.
Giving feelings space
This doesn’t mean every meeting becomes a therapy circle. It means acknowledging that people have feelings – and that these feelings impact performance, creativity, and collaboration.
Giving feelings space means really listening after asking “How are you?” It means treating frustration and enthusiasm equally as important data.
The way forward
Authenticity in business isn’t an end in itself. It’s the key to genuine connection, to sustainable decisions, to teams that unfold their full potential.
This conviction is currently based primarily on my intuition and personal experience. That’s why I want to underpin it with scientific facts through doctoral research – and carry these insights into the world. What I’ve experienced as a leader and understood through my coaching shouldn’t remain just my personal truth, but become evidence-based knowledge that helps other leaders.
It’s a path that requires courage. Courage for vulnerability. Courage for honesty. Courage to lead differently than the generation before us.
But it’s also a path that liberates. From the effort of being someone else. From the exhaustion of false roles. From the loneliness behind masks.
I’ve made a vow: Never hide again. Never pretend anymore. Authenticity is my new superpower – and it will change my way of leading forever.