A sounding board for entrepreneurs, board members and people in leadership
Impact belongs
to those who know why.
I have great respect for anyone who steps into leadership today. I am here for the questions their calendars otherwise leave no room for.
Sebastian Morgner · Diessen am Ammersee, Germany
What drives me
Success does not always feel like success.
Leadership is not for the faint-hearted. You look for certainty, yet complexity remains your constant companion. You expose yourself, you are watched, others lay claim to your time. But what for? What has to happen for you to regain confidence and to feel effective and content? In everyday leadership there is rarely time to clarify your own motives, needs and challenges.
After three decades in leadership roles, I know what keeps leaders awake at night. For fifteen years I have worked with founders, board members and senior executives as a sounding board and advisor. I help them untie the knots that matter, sort out loose ends and connect the threads of their development into a coherent whole. Through decisions about personal strategy and about shaping transformations, I have learned to go deeper.
And it is a genuine joy to see how new inner clarity releases energy, professionally and privately.
Purpose and structure
Purpose and structure
How we perceive and think shapes how we feel and what we achieve. My particular strength: helping people gain clarity and inspire themselves.
Purpose means developing a motivating story about the future that connects us to something larger. It answers the question: what do I want to stand for, and where does that show in everyday work? From it come a distinctive position and clarity. Both give us strength when we meet resistance.
Structure means knowing your own levers, spending your time deliberately and deciding consciously. Out of it grows a leadership system that aligns people around shared goals and helps them reach those goals consistently. The result: fewer unproductive discussions and meetings, more initiative and results.
Life is like an expedition: precisely when things get difficult and hectic, it helps to pause, take stock and regain the overview.
The offering
Strategy coaching at Lake Ammersee
If you find yourself thinking, “Stop — I need time out to review my course and set it anew”, strategy coaching at Lake Ammersee offers you the right setting.
I value this format because it has proved itself many times over. I am often struck myself by the resolve and momentum with which people go on to create positive change.
The process begins with confidential preliminary conversations. A one-on-one workshop follows, then quarterly reviews. For some, a single round is enough. Others keep the coaching as a permanent part of their leadership system.
The first step
I look forward to meeting you and talking about the challenge that matters most to you right now. We will soon find out whether we are a good fit and whether I can help substantially. If not, it was still a conversation worth having.
His questions go straight to the root of any challenge.
How I work
A day without distraction
Who ever takes a whole day to think about their own direction and effectiveness? Yet busy minds need exactly that: uninterrupted time to process what has piled up over months, especially when they take on new responsibility or want to change something fundamental.
Lake Ammersee is easy to reach from Munich and far enough away to give you the distance you need from everyday work.
Before we meet in person, I hold confidential interviews with companions whom my clients name. I also hold a structured conversation with the client. Comparing the inside and the outside view yields important material for the next stage of a career.
I do not tell my clients what to do. I question their patterns of thinking, bring in my experience from hundreds of cases and use methods that have so far always led to new insight and greater clarity.
The changes are rarely spectacular, but they are noticeable. Some clients speak of relief. Others finally carry out plans that have occupied them for a long time. Most emphasize that they gain time for what matters and find new pleasure in their work. My aim is that they achieve more in their leadership with less stress. After about six weeks we take stock for the first time and look at what has actually changed.
When it is worth it
Eight occasions
In these situations, the journey to Lake Ammersee pays off. And if you bring your biggest challenge with you, all the more so.
- You are preparing for a new, larger role.
- You are planning a transformation that goes beyond day-to-day business.
- You want to bring structure into the daily chaos of leading.
- You want to set a new direction for your career.
- You want to lead in line with your own values.
- You are successful on paper and do not feel that way.
- Your mind never rests, because you are always thinking about work.
- You have a strategy and cannot get it into implementation.
Where you stand
Client voices
For us as a management board, Sebastian Morgner is like a highly competent, benevolent friend who accompanies us through our transformation. Working with him helps us combine our strengths as a team, set the right priorities and maximize our impact as a top management team.
Eighteen months in which I learned a great deal. We took OKR to a new level, developed the strategic roadmap, drafted the guiding principles — and had many fascinating discussions during the offsites.
A perfect mix of structure and inspiration. We identified new possibilities and now have a clear plan for embedding AI systematically and putting it to work.
About me
Briefly, who I am
I grew up in the Black Forest. As a young man I wanted to become a journalist. Joachim Fest, then publisher of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, advised me to study something sensible first. So I studied business in Mannheim and Budapest. I then spent fifteen years in the financial industry: first building Germany's first digital investment account, later as Global Head of Marketing for UniCredit in Milan.
The further my career took me, the less effective I felt. In 2011 I walked away without knowing what would come next. I spent two months as a guest in a convent, read a hundred books and completed several trainings. Out of that I developed my approach to strategy activation.
Since then I have worked as an entrepreneur, leadership advisor and coach. I have accompanied more than 150 leadership teams and hundreds of people one to one. What fulfils me most is the moment when a deep conversation produces a new insight.
I live with my wife Celia, our three daughters and our dog Fritz in Diessen am Ammersee. Our eldest daughter Mara has Down syndrome. Hardly anyone has changed the way I see life as profoundly as she has.
I volunteer to help young people find their mission and am active in our Protestant parish. In my free time I write literary prose, I like being outdoors and in motion, and I'm fond of a fire under a starry sky. Deep down I'm someone who enjoys doing nothing at all, when the inner taskmaster allows it.
Take it with you
And besides
Managing Partner
MLI Leadership Institut
If you are looking for contemporary transformation and leadership programs or
leadership coaching, you will find a partner here that treats strategy, leadership and change as one.
A good hundred experts, coaches and trainers.
leadership-munich.org ↗
Host
Tiefgang – the podcast
In this podcast I talk about successes, setbacks and what leadership takes: with CEOs,
school principals, pastors and researchers. Leadership holds many stories. Do listen in. In German.
Listen on Spotify ↗
Publisher
Tiefgang
The printed magazine on strategy and leadership. Once a year.
Issue 1/2026: Leadership in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. In German.
To the issue
Impulses
Talks and workshops
I give talks and impulses on leadership in the age of AI, on strategy activation and on
the psychology of leadership. And if you are planning a structured strategy workshop, I am glad to help.
In German or English.
Learn more
Author
Expedition Zukunft
How we can use chance to master uncertainty and complexity.
Published in 2021, in German.
View on Amazon ↗
Notes
Leadership Logbook
Notes on purpose, structure and leading yourself. New ones appear
roughly once a month — whenever a thought is finished.
To the logbook
Contact
Two ways to start a conversation.
Both lead straight to me — not into a queue. I answer emails personally within two days.
Introductory call
A first conversation about your biggest challenge — not a sales pitch. You choose the time yourself, without back-and-forth emails.
Book an introductory call ↗By email
A few sentences about what is on your mind are enough. Rather talk right away? +49 151 22397593
s.morgner@leadership-munich.org