Recommendations to young leaders from our CEO/Founder – Mehrdad Bonakdar

Looking back at my early years as a leader, I realised that in some situations I decided more out of pride and less with intelligence. I believe that big ego, vanity, arrogance, conceit, narcissism and pride, especially, false pride, are very close to each other. My recommendation to young leaders and those who want to become leaders: Reduce your ego to a minimum and ask yourself the question of WHY in your decisions. The prouder, the more vulnerable. Vulnerability leads to anger and resentment. And making decisions out of anger can only cause harm. Therefore, don’t make decisions when you are angry and don’t make promises when you are euphoric. Great ego is often confused with great self-confidence. A mistake, in my opinion. Rather, false pride comes from overconfidence, insecurity or lack of self-esteem.

The following warning signals serve this purpose: excessive desire for attention / self-centredness (wanting to be the centre of attention all the time, making others feel small), clear overestimation of oneself (knowing everything better, being able to do everything better), increased competitive thinking (perceiving others as a danger, claiming successes for oneself, ambition not from within but rather from competitive thinking), no ability to take criticism (giving out criticism but not being able to take it, attacks on a personal level), fundamental mistrust (having to control everything, basically only trusting very few people). In the last few years I have met some great trainers and coaches who have specialised in exactly these topics. If you are interested, please send an email or PM on our social media.