Civil society needs many „ change agents“ who  take on responsibility with joy and energy and are prepared to risk new ways. To get other stakeholders involved you have to  create an atmosphere of acceptance, appreciation, and encouragement. Leaders are those people who dare to venture on new projects, to evaluate their own achievements with criticism and show endurance. The English term „leadership“ quite clearly implies that those characteristics can also be learned. This needs examples, self-awareness, a system-theoretical background, and appropriate training programmes.

With its WASAN Project the Breuninger Foundation invited 20 young leaders from 10 different nations and from all sectors of society to deal with cooperation, concepts of leadership and modern training programmes. The challenge for the participants consisted in transferring their learning experience to their individual leading roles in schools, non-profit organizations and also in business.

In view of the financial crisis we are now focusing on „leadership in situations of crisis“ and will start our first pilot study this summer with female directors of medium-sized family- owned companies. In stressful situations women clearly react more emotionally but also more sophisticated and interconnected in comparison with men who counter the risk of failure greater by repressing their stress. Although women are at risk of developing symptoms of fear and depression more rapidly, they are at the same time more prepared to make use of consultancies. This is the reason why we test the efficacy of Leslie Greenberg’s approach, first of all with this target group, to create in these women the emotional stability which is necessary for taking successful decisions.