It’s early on the morning of my departure day and I’m relaxing on the sofa with my tea when I take another quick look at my train ticket – and my heart almost stops: Hamburg Harburg instead of Hamburg Altona! While my train leaves Altona in a few minutes, my ticket says I’m not due to board in Harburg for another 30 minutes. A classic case of self-sabotage, which I luckily notice at the last second. As a coach, I experience such moments of ambiguity not only personally, but also with my coachees. Such moments of carelessness are often more than simple mistakes – they are an expression of a deeper ambiguity. As a person who commutes between Hamburg and this one enchanted place in the Cantal in France, I know well the feeling of belonging to different worlds at the same time. In Hamburg, I am bound by my professional commitments and above all by my two wonderful teenagers, while in Cantal in France I am in the process of building something new and at the same time looking after my ageing parents. This dual responsibility, which encompasses both personal and professional spheres, connects me with managers in a sandwich position: they also navigate between different worlds, expectations and loyalties on a daily basis.
Understanding ambiguity as a resource
As a former actress, I have learned that the greatest strength often lies precisely where we initially suspect weakness. On stage, a rich inner experience – with all its contradictions and facets – is not an obstacle, but the basic prerequisite for authentic acting. As actors, we must be able to select and use exactly what the character and the situation need from this full emotional repertoire. This requires the utmost precision: while we have a whole ocean of feelings and impulses at our disposal internally, we also consciously control which drops of them are visible on the outside. Ambiguity is helpful and even necessary in order to create new and different characters again and again.
This ability to simultaneously achieve inner fullness and external control is based primarily on two pillars: sophisticated body control and precise thought control techniques. What is an artistic necessity in the theater becomes a leadership skill in the sandwich position: here, too, it is a matter of not seeing different, sometimes contradictory demands as a burden, but as a repertoire from which we can draw depending on the situation.
Acting tools in management practice: three core competencies
1. conscious containment instead of control
In theater, we learn to hold and use different, even conflicting emotions at the same time. For managers, this means:
– Recognize your different loyalties as a sign of your connectedness
– Use your sense of different perspectives as a strategic advantage
– Develop the ability to withstand tensions without having to resolve them
2. emotional orchestration
The stage shows us how to consciously shape complex emotional states.
In a leadership context, this means:
– Understand your different emotional levels as an instrument
– Use different facets of your personality in a targeted manner
– Create authenticity through integration rather than simplification
3. creative error culture
On stage, every stumble becomes an opportunity.
This attitude also strengthens managers:
– Use supposed mistakes as an opportunity for real connection
– Develop a relaxed attitude towards imperfection
– Make ambiguity a topic instead of hiding it
Transfer to the sandwich position
The position between the team and top management requires a special set of skills. Central to this is the ability to adopt different perspectives simultaneously while skillfully balancing contradictory requirements. The big challenge is to maintain your own authenticity despite different, sometimes conflicting expectations and not become a chameleon.
Concrete support for your leadership role
My in-house training and coaching sessions use acting tools as development instruments. The focus is on confidently leading challenging conversations and the art of balancing different stakeholders. Participants develop an authentic leadership presence and learn to see complexity not as an obstacle but as a valuable resource.
Conclusion: From the stage to the leadership role
The techniques from the art of acting offer a valuable toolbox for managers in a sandwich position. They help not only to endure ambiguity, but also to use it as a source of creativity and leadership strength. With the right tools, you can transform supposed opposites into a powerful both/and.
Ambiguity is often a challenge, but it can also be a source of creativity and new opportunities. How about finding your own way of dealing with ambiguous situations together – a way that opens up new perspectives for you and your team?
And how did the story with the train ticket end?
Thanks to the timely discovery of my “Harburg moment”, I am now sitting relaxed in my kitchen-living room in Cantal. It’s dark outside after a wonderful first day, and the wide sky is dotted with stars. It’s at moments like this that I realize that the supposed disjointedness between the worlds is actually a gift. Under this sparkling starry sky of the Auvergne, the morning excitement feels almost unreal – and yet it reminds me that although we don’t have to master the art of balance perfectly, if we embrace it, it will lead us to special places and insights.
