Dr. Reinhard K. Sprenger

About Reinhard K. Sprenger

Dr. Reinhard K. Sprenger (born 1953) is regarded as Germany’s most distinguished leadership expert. His books Myth of Motivation, The Principle of Self-Responsibility, Radical Leadership, and Trust Leads: What Really Matters in Business have profoundly changed the leadership understanding of many managers. With his work aimed at a broad audience, The Decision is Yours!, he also reaches a large number of private readers. How can such success be explained?

Sprenger is committed in his thinking and actions to diversity, contrast, and the human being as a creature of freedom.

Since 1990, he has been working as an independent business consultant and is now one of the most sought-after experts in management development. His clients include many international corporations as well as nearly all DAX-100 companies.

Sprenger’s theses break with conventional corporate management strategies. His ideas are revolutionary because they stem from a fundamental humanism: Sprenger places the human being as a creature of freedom at the center of his leadership theory.

Motivated employees, according to Sprenger, are what make a company’s success, but these employees are individuals and not stimulus-response machines. Only self-confident individuals who challenge themselves and thus become independent of authorities are capable of excellent performance. The task of leaders is to give space to the creativity and self-responsibility of employees and to support their entrepreneurial potentials. Giving employees this freedom means trusting them – because the cost of distrust is too high.

Sprenger’s theses are uncomfortable, provocative, and immensely successful. A rare combination that is also related to his rhetorical talent: In his lectures and books, he speaks and writes clearly, vividly, and understandably for everyone. “When Reinhard Sprenger gets warmed up in his arguments, rhetorical sparks fly,” writes the Financial Times Deutschland.

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