You took the role. You showed up ready. The team, the stakeholders, the unwritten rules — they're not working the way they expected.
Senior leaders navigating international assignments in DACH often arrive with the right skills and the wrong operating system. This work closes that gap — professionally and personally.
Who this work is for
Senior leaders who are on their first international assignment in Germany, Austria, or Switzerland, and are discovering that the leadership approach that made them effective at home isn't fully translating here.
The 90-day plan looked clear in the briefing. It doesn't anymore.
Influence and credibility that came naturally at home have to be rebuilt from scratch here.
The cultural signals — how decisions get made, how feedback lands, how trust is built — are different in ways nobody explained.
The personal cost is real. The exhaustion, the distance in relationships, the performance that takes more than it used to.
You're smart enough to know that pushing through isn't the same as navigating it well.
Who this is not for
Leaders looking for cultural training, relocation support, or someone to tell them what to do. This work is for leaders who are willing to look honestly at where they are — and who want a thinking partner and trusted advisor, not a consultant with a ready-made answer.
The Engagement
What's included
Extended intake — two to four hours: Before the ongoing work begins, we spend significant time together. This isn't a standard onboarding conversation — it's a serious exploration of where you've come from, the patterns and assumptions you carry, your values, your leadership history, and the fuller context of what you're currently navigating. The depth of this conversation shapes everything that follows and makes the work considerably more precise. Duration varies depending on the complexity of your situation.
Bi-weekly sessions — 60 to 75 minutes: Twelve sessions across six months. Each one a dedicated space to think clearly about what's actually in front of you — the organizational dynamics, the cultural complexity, the leadership decisions, the personal dimensions that don't get discussed elsewhere. Practical, honest, and applied directly to your real situation.
Between-session availability: Access via email and WhatsApp for questions, real-time decisions, or significant moments that arise between conversations. When something important comes up, you're not waiting two weeks.
Curated tools and frameworks: Selected specifically for your situation following the intake — not a generic workbook. Frameworks and practices chosen because they're directly relevant to what you're navigating. These might include approaches for reading organizational culture, mapping stakeholder dynamics, managing energy and performance under pressure, or clarifying values and assumptions in an unfamiliar context.
Assessments: Where relevant, the engagement can include certified assessment debriefs — Hogan, Leadership Circle, 360-degree feedback, or HBDI — integrated directly into the coaching work rather than delivered as standalone reports.
Session notes and reflection prompts: After each session — key insights captured, questions worth sitting with, and one concrete next step. Something to return to between conversations. Something that compounds the work over time.
Mid-point review — month three: A structured pause at the halfway mark. Where were you when we started? What has shifted? What needs more attention in the second half? Deliberate accountability built into the arc of the engagement.
Closing integration session: The final session is distinct from the rest. A considered reflection on the full six months — what changed, what was learned, what you carry forward into the next chapter of your leadership. A proper ending rather than simply stopping.
Investment: €14,000 for six months
A failed international assignment costs organizations up to $1.25 million per leader. This engagement is designed to prevent that — and to help the leader actually inhabit the role they said yes to.
The first conversation is 30 minutes. No pitch, no pressure — just an honest look at what you're navigating and whether this work makes sense.
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Most leaders who come into this work aren't struggling with competence. They're navigating a context that has fundamentally shifted — and the old way of operating isn't transferring cleanly.
Common entry points include:
Landing in a new country or organization and finding the adjustment more demanding than expected
Building authority and credibility in a system that operates by unfamiliar rules
Carrying sustained pressure across multiple domains simultaneously — the role, the culture, the team, the personal life — with limited space to process any of it
A growing gap between how they're perceived externally and what's actually happening internally
Sensing that performing through the transition isn't the same as actually navigating it well
Wanting a serious, confidential space to think — not advice, not a program, but a real thinking partnership
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At its best, this work helps leaders develop a clearer, steadier relationship with themselves, their role, and the specific complexity they're inside.
That often looks like:
Sharper judgment in ambiguous or high-stakes situations
Greater composure under pressure — less reactivity, more range
A clearer read of the organizational and cultural systems they're operating in
Stronger stakeholder relationships built on credibility rather than performance
More honest self-awareness — of patterns, assumptions, and blind spots — without it becoming paralyzing
A more sustainable operating rhythm that doesn't require running on empty
Leadership that feels genuinely aligned rather than constantly managed
Not transformation for its own sake. Real movement in a specific, demanding moment.
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My work sits at the intersection of executive coaching, leadership development, and systems thinking — with a particular focus on the human dimensions that shape everything but rarely appear in job descriptions.
I'm interested in how leaders think under pressure, how they read complex systems, how they regulate themselves when the stakes are high, and how they find their footing in contexts that are genuinely unfamiliar. Much of my work is with leaders who are operating across cultures, countries, and organizational systems that don't match their previous experience — where the old playbook doesn't quite apply and a new one has to be built in real time.
The work is practical and psychologically informed. We look at both the external reality — the role, the stakeholders, the culture, the decisions — and the internal dynamics that shape how you meet that reality. Assumptions you're carrying. Patterns running underneath the surface. What's working and what's quietly working against you.
I don't arrive with answers. I create the conditions for clearer thinking — and then help you translate that clarity into action.
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This work is best suited to leaders who are willing to look honestly at where they are — not just manage the impression of it.
It is not therapy. It is not generic motivational coaching. And it is not for leaders who need someone to tell them what to do.
If you're on an international assignment and privately wondering whether you can actually pull this off — this is the work.
About Derek
I'm an executive coach and leadership facilitator based in Munich, working with senior leaders across EMEA and the United States.
For more than 20 years I've supported leaders in multinational organizations, professional services, executive education, and complex cross-cultural environments. The work has taken me from PwC in the U.S. and Germany, to The Energy Project, to UNC Executive Development, to leadership programs across Europe and beyond.
The through line across all of it: helping senior leaders find genuine clarity and steadier footing in the middle of real complexity — not a performance of it.
I've lived this from the inside. Moving to Germany, navigating an unfamiliar culture and organizational context, figuring out how to lead and build a life in a place that didn't know me yet. That experience didn't make the work easier. It made it more honest.
Which is exactly what this work requires.