Many leaders want to achieve great things. They want to make an unmistakable difference. They want to usher their organization into a prominent position. They want to accomplish something incontestably meaningful. But they don’t quite manage to work out what this something should be. Instead, they trudge through vague visions and nitty-gritty, miniscule targets. It becomes a contrived search informed by desperation. The Nietzsche seminar focuses on identifying and clarifying this objective. Because that is Nietzsche’s mandate.
The most important concept Nietzsche defined was the will to power. Wherever I found a life, there found I Will to Power. The statement is frightening, but only because it is misunderstood. Nietzsche uses the concept of power differently. He doesn’t speak about power over others; he speaks about the power to create. In German: macht as in machen. You are meant to make something. To create something. You will have the strength to achieve this. Every great achievement requires the will to power. Great works don’t produce themselves. Great works are conceived by individuals who want to accomplish something extraordinary. The time has come for man to set himself a goal. The time has come to plant the seed to his highest hope. Modern management theory concurs with Nietzsche. Administrators react by finding their place within the organization’s customary structure. Leaders break away and create values above and beyond.
What you accomplish is inextricably connected to yourself. You cannot separate the person from the leader. Your self-understanding decides what is important. Your values define what is really meaningful. Your evaluation of your environment determines what is possible. Only in this way can you achieve integrity and authenticity as a leader. We read Nietzsche’s texts and philosophy in light of modern psychology and management theory. In the intersection here, and between heaven and earth, we find critical elements of leadership.
You must fight to bring your vision into existence. You must constantly outdo yourself. Your will is measured by how much adversity and pain you can withstand and knowing how to apply difficulties to your own advantage. I am no man, I am dynamite, Nietzsche proclaims. Don’t believe that perfection is required to emerge victorious. On the contrary, masterpieces require imperfection, a deficiency to be filled, or if not, then understood. The act of creation is everything.
The seminar is suitable for leaders and people who are searching, people interested in Nietzsche’s philosophy and challenges. We read Nietzsche’s ideas in the context of our own time and the participants’ own challenges. In this way the seminar offers both in-depth professional study and manager development. You will learn things that will be essential in your own leadership and enterprise.
