My journey into intercultural leadership began in Oberndorf am Neckar. The place where I was born, wrote my first articles for the Schwarzwälder Bote, and learned on the local football pitches how teams really work.
As a teenager, I sat at my desk typing my first journalistic lines. Local sports, SC Lindenhof. I was a freelance contributor, proud as can be whenever my initials appeared under a match report. Back then, I had no idea that these early texts were the beginning of a journey that would later take me into international leadership teams, into other cultures, and eventually into the role of an author.
Today I live in Frankfurt am Main. And yet my new book, Prepare for Landing: Leitlinien für interkulturelle Führung, begins exactly where everything started: with the opening chapter, “Starting Point: Oberndorf am Neckar.”
Why? Because I am convinced that intercultural competence does not begin in Amsterdam, Dallas, or Shanghai. It begins much earlier, in one’s own origins. In the values we carry with us and in the encounters that shape us.
Part of that shaping came from football, including from my emotional compass club: VfB Stuttgart. Anyone who loves the VfB learns early on that passion and pain often sit surprisingly close together. And that identity is not something you shed just because you move to another city.
Seeing my book displayed today in the “Papier-Ecke” on the Lindenhof feels like a circle closing. There is no longer a bookstore in Oberndorf, but there are people who keep literature and local stories alive. And that is exactly where my book now lies. A book whose roots are firmly planted in this town.
Leadership today needs a sense of origin more than ever. Because intercultural competence does not emerge on an airplane; it grows along one’s own life path. And because I believe that small towns can produce big stories.
Oberndorf am Neckar is mine. And it is, in its own way, an example of how curiosity, respect, and open eyes can guide us through the world.
Now I’m curious: Which stories from your youth do you still carry with you today as you move through the world?
———————-
I’m Bernd Scharbert, and I support leaders in bringing intercultural principles into their everyday practice. It’s about seeing cultural differences not as obstacles but as strengths and about creating genuine connection in globally diverse teams.
Feel free to take a look at my book, Prepare for Landing: Leitlinien für interkulturelle Führung. It’s available in German language wherever books are sold in Germany.
