Rainer Petek

About Rainer Petek

Rainer Petek is an expert in dealing with uncertainty, an author, and an internationally sought-after speaker. As an extreme mountaineer, he ascended the most difficult north faces of the Alps and climbed sport climbing routes at the 9th grade of the UIAA scale. As a professional mountain guide, he led his clients into the mountains for over 12 years and was one of the few guides who could also tackle extremely challenging climbing routes with clients, such as the 900-meter high ‘Don Quijote’ at VI+ grade on the Marmolada.

Through outdoor training, Rainer Petek came into contact with the field of management consulting in 1998. Due to his extreme experiences with clients in the mountains, he was able to support executives very well with their challenges. He began working as a trainer and consultant while simultaneously completing a postgraduate master’s degree in organizational development in Vienna.

In his lectures and keynotes, Rainer Petek confronts the thinking and action framework of executives with the thinking and actions of an extreme climber. He not only highlights analogies and parallels but also provides the audience with packed insights and impulses for their own actions through stories from the north face.

What makes Rainer Petek unique as a speaker in Europe is that he is well acquainted with both extreme situations in the mountains and the challenges faced by executives. He advises companies on change processes and leadership development programs for around 150 days a year, enabling him to draw connections from extreme mountaineering to the specific realities of management.

Petek’s credo is: ‘We overestimate the extent of predictability and underestimate our possibilities in dealing with uncertainty.’