The university system of the EU has been equalised some years ago, ie. every country in the EU offers Bacherlor (BA) and Master (MBA) courses. Also Germany shortened the university courses which were supposed taking too much time and introduced the Bachelor as the first university degree. As the Germans not only shortened it but at some universities also changed the language to English German universities are getting very interesting for students from abroad. The German university have got another advantage, the costs for a semester is 500 Euro, plus university fees which are normally between 100 and 200 Euro. That makes studying in Germany quite cheap. Of course the costs of living have to be added but compared to universities in the US or other countries that is realatively cheap.

In this blog I will also talk about the subject what would you like to reach in your life and how can you find that out. I will carry on working on that with you because there is nothing worse than having no aims in life. The majority stand firmly and some feel that they would like to carry on to the next step. I have already written about questions which one can ask oneself but today I would like to draw your attention to the visualisation. A small hint before I start with the performance.
It is important that you express your aims which you will find out by following this thread and that those are known to your superiors and discuss those with them. Make sure that set aims are realistic. If you don't see any progress and you are unsatisfied, then think about leaving the company.

Today I would like to work on the question in what you are best on. As you were still young you made yourself an impression on what you would once like to achieve in your life, goals which you then set? Or are you just in the process of reaching these or have you simply resigned? What do you reget today?

A silent change which has however been registered by vigilant observers, taken place in companies already in the 80's. Many companies have made employees redundant and have employed new better trained staff later on. Often the new employees are being brought in with a temp contract so that the company can react very flexible in response to production peaks. The world of labour has changed. Many employees are being made redundant and re-employed just as they may be needed in companies or not. In the 80's watchful newspaper readers or T.V. viewers recommended about the mergers which were taking place in America. These mostly were connected with working contract for certain time limits. Today these changes are taking place here fully as well.

Since a long time I have not written anything for the English speaking community. That had different reasons. First, I was busy with projects and indeed I am still, second I was working on the translation of the homepage. Today I will write a blog about doing business with Germans. They are often described as being very serious people who do not have much humour. Therefore I thought to give you an idea what Germans are like. Understanding the Germans could be a very important part of doing business there.

Why are German companies not found at top positions in the Financial Times Global 500 ranking?

At first sight that might surprise but when you start thinking of the differences between the American management styles and the German one you will understand the differences of mentality. At the first places you read companies like Exxon Mobile (oil industry), General Electrics (conglomerate), Microsoft or AT&T (Telecommunication). The  highest-ranking company of Germany is E.ON on position 41. To get into these rankings many German companies are looking for the US role models. But there are fundamental cultural differences between German and US companies. The German mentality is far more focused on security.

Leadership has always to do with people, it has nothing to do with managing processes. That is what management is for. Therefore when you talk about leadership you have always to think about communication, decisions, actions and so on. It is about how to organise people to reach the defined goal.

While I am staying in for an English teacher I have come across some statements and I thought they would be great to think about. These statements arise from a management study but I changed them a bit for our subject as we are mainly not interested in restructuring a company to be more profitable but how to improve the performance of employees.

These statements are of help to people who are project leaders or manager who are responsible of a company site. The statements are:

Last time I wrote a blog how to describe a way to find your strengths and weaknesses related to business. Today I would like to go on thinking about that subject and to work on what blocks you mentally to reach your defined career goal.

How are you talking about things? Are you thinking positively that you will reach your goal or are you more the person that doubts his or her success? If you want to reach your career goal start making positive statements the norm. What would happen if somebody tells you not to think of a pink elephant. You will think of a pink elephant as you cannot withstand the imagination of a pink elephant. The same happened if you as a child were told not to eat from certain sweets before tea. We all know that commands are likely to challenge us just to do what has been forbidden to us. The brain works in the way that it ignores the negation and rewrites the command into the opposite way. Therefore the speaker's intention has lost its effect. Therefore it is better to say "The pay rise will come after the probationary-period, so except the little wage for just that time." than to say: "Do not take the job because it is paid badly at the beginning." I think it is important to clear one's language towards a positive way of speaking.

Are you in a position where you do not feel well and are thinking for some time what step to take? Why do you not find out your personal career goals?

Before you get too enthusiastic about the idea and dash into the next job to be tracked into the same situation think where you will have to undertake changes to get where you want to be in 5 or 10 years.

Introduction

Even today many parts of the East have not yet recovered and the economic and personal situation of people is bad. But on the other hand the situation in the West is changing a lot too. Not all is changing to the better. The situation of employees is getting more insecure. People often have contracts for a certain time and many companies are not making permanent contracts.

Self-theories are the belief system that people have about themselves and the extent to which they believe their personal characteristics are fixed, or malleable or capable of change. This concerns the question in how far people believe they are able to influence the situation they are in in life. If you have a good job and are happy with the family you might think that your personal characteristics are fixed because you do not have any need to change anything but when you are in need you might feel the force to change your situation and to start to move something to reach. When you are in the situation where you think you want to change something in your life because you think you can reach more then start to create a vision. Age is not thing that matters only your wish of change.

A leader may not be a manager, and one day you may see an opportunity to lead a project or team within your group, but when you decide the time is right and how do you go about becoming the leader?

Look at the context of the situation and decide if your leadership is required and if you can feasibly lead the team. Perhaps another group member would be better or, even worse, the group would not accept your influence. If this is the case your attempt to lead will be a failure.

is something one can learn and is learnt in situation where it is necessary. Imagine your boss asks you who never lead a project before to take over the leadership of the new project. What will be your first reaction? You feel grateful because he asked you and not another colleague but on the other hand you might think: "Blime, how am I going to work that out? What a challenge." Of course when you have greater routine it is easier and you might be bothered who is taking part in the project, am I the one to choose the team, etc. After you gathered some routine you ask different questions then you will when you start your career as you have already learnt of the complications you had earlier on.

In our life we change our attitude towards work. When we are young we think what we want to do for a profession and when we are old we think how can we support the young ones to become successful. Many researcher picked that subject up and created, based on surveys, theories. Schein (1978) offered us a nine stage theory whether other researchers found five. We will introduce the stages of Greenhaus and Callanan from 1994. When we talk about these stages, we might not forget that these will not apply to all people and might vary from employee to employee. Another thing which I find important that these studies have all be done on employee, but there is no study for entrepreneurs or freelancers. This group has of course different stages as they spend most of the time in their company and often have to work all their life, ie. until a short time before death.

As times are changing and employability is growing it is even more important to plan ones career. That means to know where do I want to be in 5 to 10 years. In our courses we often realise that people do not plan their careers but take want is just available. A study by Pringle and Gold (1989) suggests that only one quarter of employees plan their career. Many of the other participants identified luck, opportunity or being in the right place at the right time as reasons of being successful as the course of their promotion. There does not to exist a gender difference.