LME000 – What you can expect from this podcast

This is the intro for my new podcast: Leadership Made Easy. Episode Number 0.

This is the podcast where you learn how to lead a highly effective team, how to make sure, things get done and how to deal with tough issues like confronting an employee performance problem, getting along with a bad boss or balancing the demands of work with your personal life.

Why should you listen?

If you’ve read any book on leadership, you already know there is a big gap beteeen how most authors think things work – and how things actually work in the real world.

If you’re done with silly theories and want practical stuff that really works this podcast is for you. There are no pie-in-the-sky theories here. No insights from professors who never actually lead a single team member.

You will also not hear any corporate B.S., or silly business jargon.
Instead I’ll show you exactly, down to earth – what works in leadership and what doesn’t.

What is it all about?

For instance:
– When do you need to trust your employees and when do you need to control them?
– How and when should you confront low performers and when doesn’t it make sense at all?
– What can you do to maintain employees motivation and what do you need to avoid?

Every episode will bring you an actionable solution to a problem you might be facing. I’ll give you proven management and leadership tips which you can apply immediately and successfully for your day to day work: Practial tips, proven strategies and exclusive interviews with experienced managers and inspiring leaders.

Do you want to become a real leader?

If you have an aspiration to become a top leader in your company this podcast will help you getting there. If leadership doesn’t interest you and you are just frustrated with managing your employees and you‘re looking for the best shortcuts to get them to perform, you’ll find some useful tips in this podcast as well – and maybe by using these tips you will change your mind regarding the importance of true leadership.

Pretty big claims, right?

I know that I made some pretty big claims. I don’t blame you, if you are a little bit skeptical about this. After all, so much of what is out there is often exaggerated.

So why do I think you should listen to me and why do I think that I have solutions for most of the problems managers have to deal with?

Let me tell you a little bit about me.

As you probably can hear from my pronunciation: I am German. I live in a small German city called Aachen. Aachen is in the Western part of Germany right next to the Belgium and the Netherland borders. I am happily married for more than over 20 years and my wife and me have two grown-up sons.

My background is engineering – that’s at least what I studied: Electrical Engineering to be precise. After university I co-founded a high-tech company. We built it up to 20 employees and sold it after 5 years to a big corporation.

In these five years I made a lot of mistakes being in my first leadership position. It took me quite long to understand that as a manager my role was not to be the best expert any longer. It was difficult for me to accept this, because I was proud to work and be the expert in my engineering field.

But my job now was to manage employees and to lead the company. I needed to help my employees to become the experts. I had to learn how to delegate, to know when to trust employees and when and what to control.

In one of the following podcast episodes I will talk about how I learned to delegate and what mistakes I made on my way. After we sold our company I was in charge of integrating our start-up into this big corporate company and to build up their worldwide service business.
This was a very exciting time. I had to travel a lot all around the world. After a couple of years I was responsible for 350 employees worldwide.

My first leadership challenges

Now in this role I had other leadership challenges, for example:

• How to build teams remotely in different countries with people from different cultures.
• How to work inside such a huge corporation dealing with all kind of company politics

and as an employed manager I had to get used to have a boss.

Especially to understand and to deal with the corporate politics was difficult for me. One of my leadership challenges was to learn how to succeed as a manager in the corporate world:

• What are you allowed to do?
• What is expected from you? and
• What shouldn’t you do?

Of course, there were official rules but in corporate world there are hidden agendas, no one tells you about – and if you don’t obey to these hidden rules you are in trouble. I had to find this out by myself – by making sometimes embarrassing mistakes and by putting my foot in it.

You don’t need to make the same leadership mistakes. I’ll share with you how to successfully deal with these situations and what rules and processes you can safely ignore.

During my time as a start-up entrepreneur as well as an employed manager, I learned a great deal about people, about business strategy, about running teams, about corporate politics as well as about leadership in general.

In 2009 I realized my passion was no longer in the company I was working for. What I really wanted to do is to teach others about what I learned about leadership over the years.I wanted to help others not to make the same mistakes I made.

My passion today

My passion it to show you how to become a successful leader and how to enjoy your role as a leader. I am convinced that we need more true leaders. A true leader does not only focus on results but also develops his or her employees and by doing this positively impacts the life of them and their families.

I started as a business coach and leadership trainer in Germany mainly focusing on small and medium sized companies. I found that there is a big demand for leadership trainings down to earth – without unnecessary theory: Just actionable tips which work in the real world.

My German Podcast

My German Podcast

In 2013 I started my German podcast called “Führung auf den Punkt gebracht”. In English it means “leadership to the point”. The podcast was a big success from the beginning. After only 3 months I had 100.000 downloads and lots of 5 star reviews.

Today my German podcast is downloaded more than 100.000 times per months. I have produced more than 200 episodes. In iTunes it is routinely ranked under the top 10 in iTunes business category in Germany. I was featured by iTunes and my podcast was nominated for the best German business podcast award two years in a row.

So 2018 is the year for me to go international.

That is why I started this podcast you are listening to right now: Leadership made easy.
So if you are ready to discover a much better way how to manage and if you want to know what really works in management and leadership head over to my first real episode – that is episode No 1 – where I will reveal what I consider the most important point of leadership. You can listen to it right now. Go ahead. I see you there.

The inspiring quote

“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.”

John C. Maxwell