Dr. Geertje Tutschka, PCC
"Leading with LEAD: Learn. Create. Care. is to make a lasting difference in the lives of others in line with your personal values." Dr. Geertje Tutschka, PCC
"Leadership is her theme. It always has been. It does not matter in which socio-political or social context leadership takes place. No matter whether it is about self-leadership, the challenges as a leader in business or leadership responsibility in a voluntary or private context:
Leadership takes place - with our best self or another.
Dr. Tutschka stands for the topic of leadership like no other. The LEAD method she developed is the product of academic training, international experience, competence and expertise: in multinational teams and complex systems, in corporate and personal crises.
Taking responsibility. Giving security. Conveying trust.
LEAD: Learn. Create. Care.
Dr. Tutschka is a lawyer who uses the law as an effective tool for strategic, economically successful but also sustainable development: As a professional musician with a ban on studying in East Germany, she decided to study law "in the West" after the so-called reunification in order to be able to understand the unification treaty of the two German states.
She completed her studies with a downgraded 1.0 East German A-levels in record time with a result among the best 30 % of her class and thus received the BaföG full scholarship from the federal government, was one of the first salaried female lawyers in one of the oldest law firms operating throughout Germany and subsequently completed her doctorate in the three years in which she had her three girls. She was a lawyer in the automobile industry when she and her family were sent to Detroit during the automobile crisis. It was here that she finally discovered the heart she had been missing for law until then, and she completed training in intercultural communication and professional coaching.
From this symbiosis she developed the concept of legal coaching, which she has been practising very successfully for years and teaches at the CLP Academy. At CLP - Consulting for Legal Professionals, the leading consultancy for lawyers and law firms, she advises on leadership and strategic law firm development in addition to her teaching duties.
In addition to contract law, her law firm specialises primarily in German-Austrian legal relations: Dr. Tutschka holds, in addition to the German licence to practise as a lawyer, an equal licence to practise as a European lawyer in Austria. She is a professionally trained coach according to international quality standards and holds the certification as a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) of the largest professional association of professional coaches worldwide, the International Coaching Federation (ICF). She has also completed special additional training in NLP - WingWave (Germany), BodyTalk - Mindscape (Switzerland) and Symbolon - Reflexionscoaching (Austria).
In her private life she lives with her husband and their three teenagers on the German-Austrian border near Salzburg; as a synaesthete she has additional perceptive abilities and expertise in IQ/EQ as well as giftedness and sensitivity - both of which she incorporates into her work. If you cannot reach her by phone, you will find her somewhere in solitude with her dog: in the Alps, with the sled dogs or on one of the long-distance hiking trails.
Since 2014, she has been at home not only as a trainer and lecturer but increasingly also as a professional speaker on the event stages. She has been able to convince audiences in Germany and Austria as well as internationally:
didacta, cebit, Leipziger Buchmesse, Zukunft Personal, b2b Nord, LegalRevolution, Corporate Counsel Congress, herCareer, Karriereforum Wien, DAV-Anwaltstag, österreichischer Anwaltstag, Coachingtag, Global Leaders Forum Vancouver and Warsaw, EMEA Leaders Forum Cape Town, GPWA Detroit, Women in Law Vienna, First Ladies of Law London, Women in Leadership Berlin, University of Luxembourg, Academie voor de Rechtspraktijk Netherlands and many more.
You can find out more about her keynote topics under Keynotes.
Dr Tutschka writes regularly for CLP - Consulting for Legal Professionals and numerous professional magazines. She is also the author of numerous reference books:
With her debut novel "Fern der Heimat so nah - eine Expatiate Geschichte" (German/English), which grew out of an aid project for Detroit's street children, she was nominated for the shortlist of the Indie Award at the Leipzig Book Fair in 2013 even before it was finished.
Dr Tutschka is the first president to lead the professional association for German and Austrian lawyers, DAV Austria, and can draw on her many years of experience in the German and Austrian legal industry, her strong network, but above all her expertise in strategy, leadership and intercultural know-how.
DAV Austria was founded in Salzburg in 2020 as the 12th foreign association of the German Bar Association (DAV) with the purpose of promoting professional exchange between the German and Austrian legal profession for business, politics and further education. With approximately 62,000 members in 250 local lawyers' associations, the German Lawyers' Association has represented every third German-speaking professional for almost 150 years. The DAV's foreign associations have the important function of supporting the German-speaking professional network of the legal profession across national borders and mediating between national interests, and thus represent an important interface not only for the respective professional colleagues at home and abroad, but also for the German economy and the European internal market. Germany is Austria's most important economic partner; especially during the Covid_19 pandemic, but also already in the years of the so-called refugee crisis, there was an important common "need for regulation" in German-Austrian border traffic.
Dr. Geertje Tutschka, lawyer, Professional Certified Coach (PCC) and trainer in legal coaching has been heading the Coaching Award for HR Excellence for the use of coaching in talent development programmes in companies and organisations since 2017. With her Prism Award team, she coordinates, organises, supports and accompanies on the one hand potential applicants of the renowned award and on the other hand IT, event team, partners and sponsoring as well as last but not least the 10-member top-class expert jury for coaching from science, media, further education and HR.
Among the award winners in the past years were CMS TaxLegal, Volkswagen, Adidas, Vodafone and SAP with their coaching programs.
"Precisely because coaching is not a protected term, quality management, transparency and sustainability are of utmost relevance, especially for users. This is true at the C-level in large international companies as well as in low-threshold offers for career and life coaching but also in pro-bono coaching for a good cause. Coaching can make a significant contribution to many important issues of the future if the industry finally succeeds in drawing clear dividing lines between professional and effective coaching and offers that merely adorn themselves with the term "coaching" to appear modern. The Prism Award of ICF Germany can and should contribute to this distinction."
The ICF Germany, a Top 10 Charter Chapter of the world's largest professional association of professional coaches, honoured Dr. Tutschka for this in 2020 with the Team Recognition Award for special voluntary commitment to the coaching industry.
When Dr. Geertje Tutschka, PCC of the world's largest professional association for professional coaches with more than 40,000 members took over as president with a small board in 2016, it was one of 15 associations in Germany that had joined forces in the so-called Round Table Coaching (RTC). Three years later, ICF Germany was one of the top 10 chapters (out of about 150) with a membership growth of 100%, a large dedicated board team with numerous city chapters and project teams, the most successful Virtual Education for Coaches in Germany as well as the multi-day professional and public congress "Coachingtag".
With the HR Hand book "Quality Management in Coaching" (German/English) and the launch of the coaching award Prism Award, Dr. Tutschka as president and her board team have been instrumental in focusing outwardly consistently on the strengths of the association such as international quality standards and Ethical Guidelines for ICF Germany, thus moving away from people to content. Internally, in these almost four years, she and her team have on the one hand created solid growth structures and on the other hand completed a cultural change towards a virulent participatory association.
For these years in service, ICF Germany received the ICF Foundation's "Gift of Coaching" award for special voluntary commitment to social change in 2018 and the ICF's "Chapter Recognition Award" for 2019 for the association's special success in the German coaching market.
Changes take place, with or without us. As a leader, one is often caught between the fronts of supporting and implementing the entrepreneurially important changes and at the same time taking along the people who have been entrusted to one's care.
As president of an association of professionals in the highly competitive coaching market, Dr. Tutschka knows the so-called "growing pains" of an organisation as well as the fear of loss of identity for all those involved or the importance of "cultivating one's ancestors" in future changes when the development path becomes steeper and the wind blows more sharply in one's face. She also knows about the fine-sensory reciprocity when different cultures clash in building the German-Austrian professional network for lawyers. And how tenaciously homogeneous management teams cling to their self-made crystal ball to legitimise themselves.
In these situations, it is important to underpin visions with objectives and to know when these should be immovable or questioned again. It is also important to enter into or disengage from strategic partnerships when the time is right. Above all, however, it is important to reflect on oneself as a leader and to know one's goal crystal clear on the one hand, and on the other hand to bring one's core team and the larger community on board with the right communication and to form them into a togetherness.
Business crises are always personal crises and leadership failure is always personal failure. You don't need clever advice. What is needed is open and honest sparring at eye level. With an appreciative and experienced view from outside, a partner with whom you can investigate the causes in order to learn from them. For it is not by simply getting back up and moving on, but by moving on in a different way that the crisis becomes an opportunity.
Leadership style, however, proves itself during the crisis. That is why crises are the acid test for every leader - and not just since the first Corona lockdown. Leadership is recognised by the fact that security and reliability are radiated in times of crisis.
Geertje Tutschka knows what it means to stand in the eye of the hurricane.
Already at the age of 19, she experienced during the reunification how the world around you changes from one day to the next and what you have achieved is no longer worth anything if people are not taken seriously in their fear and disorientation.
Later, she became involved in the automotive crisis in Detroit as President of the PA for the preservation of the International School, accompanied many of the expatriate families there through the shutdown of the city and initiated a project to support the street children of Detroit. With the launch of the 1st International Round Table in Detroit, she brought all the stakeholders important to the families to the table to talk about the future of all the children of this city.
"Dr. Geertje Tutschka has put her heart and mind into serving families in Metro Detroit for years. She has left a visible mark here in every way." Christina Griesser, President GPWA
With CLP - Consulting for Legal Professionals, Dr. Tutschka has been supporting legal departments and law firms in their strategic development for years. Growth can take place internally through the optimisation of processes, communicative interaction or the release of resources such as time and money. But it can also take place externally by opening up new markets and target groups, developing new services or even a strategic repositioning.
One of the most underestimated topics of the management team is "being able to let go". This is where Dr. Tutschka's LEAD method comes in, first and foremost initiating the growth process of the management team as the initial spark for the strategic development of the company.
As Managing Director and founding partner of CLP, she knows from her own experience the challenges of building a successful and crisis-proof company, a strong team of employees and a solid customer base.
With almost 15 years of experience as a German expatriate, who alone got to know the "German guilt" of National Socialism from four insider perspectives, she unmasks typical German and Austrian history, culture and language in everyday life when it creates an encapsulated vacuum, e.g. through homogeneous management teams, and ventilates it with new ideas to enable free breathing and growth. Climate protection, waste avoidance, diversity and digitalisation are not fashionable topics for her, but new interpretations of classic business growth structures.
To this end, she also takes aim at non-political topics, puts her finger in the wound and doesn't like to leave her foot in her mouth. The proverbial "pink elephant in the room" is her favourite animal, along with the "silverback".
And: With her, it's never about mere theory; she talks in order to do business.
Legal coaching is the integration of professional techniques from business coaching into legal work. This can be done selectively as needed within the framework of the advisory or negotiation mandate, but will usually be done through a self-contained coaching process in a mandate. Similar to mediation, the client chooses whether, how and when coaching should be included in the mandate or should be used in addition. Legal coaching, as a specialised form, is always applied in relation to a legally relevant decision-making process and, unlike coaching and, incidentally, mediation, cannot be used by non-lawyers. At the same time, the legal expertise in legal coaching can address the client's concerns in a much more individual way than in mere counselling.
It was developed primarily for more effective client communication, but it also strengthens the client relationship in the long term and leads directly to greater client satisfaction. At the same time, coaching leads to more reflection and an increase in communication and leadership skills on the part of the coach. This benefits not only the legal coach but also his or her staff.
Coaching is not a protected term and many people today think that they have to call classical counselling modern coaching. However, on the one hand, this deception lacks the bite, i.e. the effectiveness of the coaching techniques, which can only be learned with a profound training. On the other hand, professional coaching also stands for certain quality standards and ethical guidelines to protect clients from harm by amateur coaches.
Dr Tutschka, who trained in coaching in the country of origin of coaching after 10 years as a lawyer in the USA, developed legal coaching as a method after returning to Europe between 2012-2016.
The professional training in legal coaching, the so-called Legal Coaching Training Program, has been offered worldwide exclusively by the CLP Academy since 2016. Dr. Geertje Tutschka, PCC exclusively developed the training curriculum and concept for this and is still a trainer today. In doing so, she can build on her experience as part of the training team in post graduate legal training at the Distance Learning University of Hagen, Master's programme in Law.
It is true that more and more lawyers are taking coaching courses for personal development and are integrating what they have learned into their work. Mediators also repeatedly refer to the application of their mediation training outside of mediation as coaching. However, coaching is neither mediation, nor counselling, teaching, training, public speaking or therapy. It can also only be used to a limited extent in the leadership relationship. Nevertheless, professional coaching training primarily focuses on the personality of the coach and helps to achieve a deeper understanding of one's own strengths and weaknesses, conscious communication and human interaction, and thus usually personal maturity.
The training in Legal Coaching consists of four modules:
And can only be completed by lawyers or comparable professions who also have a certain amount of professional and life experience. The curriculum of the coaching training is based on the international quality standards of the largest professional association of professional coaches, the International Coaching Federation (ICF). As an extra-occupational 6-month post graduate training, it has always been designed as a distance learning course in at least 2 modules and will be conducted completely as a distance learning course for the first time from 2021.
You can find out more about the training and the current training courses at the CLP Academy.
As a lawyer, Dr Geertje Tutschka, PCC focuses on scientificity, fact-based evaluation and logical cause-effect relationships. She developed Legal Coaching with this approach.
Since coaching is not a legally protected method, the profession of coach is not defined by law and coaching training does not fall under the jurisdiction of the state, as is the case with legal training, it is all the more important to demand content orientation and tested quality.
For 25 years, the world's largest professional association for coaches has been working for uniform, scientifically proven and evaluable quality standards and with the 8 core competencies and ethical guidelines has now set professional standards for a quarter of a century that are recognised worldwide.
As a specialist in leadership, she knows the pitfalls when coaching is applied in the leadership relationship with the buzzword "New Work".With her many years of experience as President of ICF Germany, she knows the current coaching market and its developments like no other. As head of the coaching award Prism Award, she stands for excellent quality in coaching programmes: with well-trained and certified coaches and coaching trainings that meet international requirements.
She brings this experience to the training in legal coaching.
Dr Geertje Tutschka has been a professional speaker on international stages for over ten years:
"I'm passionate about leadership." Dr. Geertje Tutschka, PCC
"Unconventional, witty, authentic, cosmopolitan, lady-like, eloquent, with profound expert knowledge" are the buzzwords her partners and listeners use to aptly describe her.
If you book her for a keynote, a panel or a lecture, she will probably bring along a story about her time in Detroit during the automobile crisis, about her experience as a musher on the Iditarod sled dog team or about getting her own STASI file on her 18th birthday and not having a home country any more. She might talk about what it means to raise three children in three different countries, to hike alone across the Alps or to experience life as a synaesthete. Or something completely different ...
"Strategic business development" and "branding" in relation to "leadership" are her favourite topics, especially in her special fields: NGOs and the legal sector - both key sectors for the future from her point of view.
What she excluded from universities for political reasons when she started her personal career, she has now integrated into her leadership model LEAD. Learn.Create.Care and her FIVE STEPS TO SUCCESS method.
Already in 2015 and 2016 she was listed as a "Top 100 Trainer" in DACH by Speakers Excellence. In 2012 she was among the top 10 "most viewed" LinkedIn profiles; in 2016 among the top 5% "Best Xing Networkers". Today, she has a media reach in the six-figure range.
In the past years she has been booked on many big stages, but also many small very target group specific ones:
didacta, cebit, Leipziger Buchmesse, Zukunft Personal, b2b Nord, LegalRevolution Frankfurt, Corporate Counsel Congress, herCareer, München Karriereforum Wien, DAV-Anwaltstage, österreichischer Anwaltstag, Coachingtag München, Global Leaders Forum Vancouver and Warsaw, EMEA Leaders Forum Cape Town, GPWA Detroit, Juristentag, Lawyers Business Lounge, Women in Law Vienna, PANDA Frankfurt, First Ladies of Law London, Women in Leadership Berlin, University of Luxembourg, Academie voor de Rechtspraktijk Netherlands, Sydney, Shanghai ...
From the beginning, she has also been at home on the virtual stages of this world: in addition to various event formats, also on YouTube, in various podcasts and in publishing.
How do I set up a law firm? How do I develop it? Where is the legal services market heading? How can I use digitalisation and "LegalTech" for myself? This book offers the answers to questions on "founding a law firm and law firm management". It thus helps to decide when the right time is to establish your own new law firm or to restructure an existing law firm in order to realign it - and thus be fit for the future.
Legal training is supposed to develop specialist knowledge and analytical thinking in future lawyers - and thus trains them to be little more than clerks. For a long time, the "law firm enterprise" was a matter of luck - or at the mercy of the owner's natural instinct. Today, that can no longer suffice. It is time to face up to the responsibility as a law firm owner. It is time to decide: Are you a lawyer or an entrepreneur? Or will both work in the end? (Verlag Dr. Schmidt)
Setting up a law firm has never seemed so easy.
You hardly need more than a laptop and a mobile phone, you might think. The service providers in the technical service sector have really caught up and there is every conceivable kind of support, advice and information available today.
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Current marketing topics for lawyers - comprehensibly and compactly summarised by law firm marketing experts: Every lawyer wants suitable mandates, satisfied clients and committed employees, in short: a successful law firm. Effective marketing strategies are important instruments for this. The e-booklet "law firm marketing step by step" (Law firm marketing compact) bundles the most important topics on law firm marketing on 20 pages: The 12 authors are experts in marketing and specialise in solutions for lawyers. In addition to practical tips, they also present themselves and their firm as competent partners for law firm marketing. (Deutscher Anwaltverlag, 2016)
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The teaching material on "The Law Firm" was developed in cooperation with the German Lawyers' Association for the Master's programme in Law at the Distance-Learning University of Hagen "Lawyers Practice". Dr. Tutschka used current examples from practice to show how important "" are - for newcomers to the profession as well as for those returning to the profession. The teaching material can only be obtained during the course of study at the FU Hagen (as of 2017).
The teaching material on "The Law Firm" was developed in cooperation with the German Lawyers' Association for the Master's programme in Law at the Distance-Learning University of Hagen "Lawyers' Law and Lawyers' Practice". The team of authors, Dr. Auer-Reinsdorff and Dr. Tutschka, bundled specialised knowledge on office technology and "time management in the law firm" in a compact and competent manner for newcomers to the profession as well as for those returning to the profession. The teaching material can only be obtained during the course of study at the FU Hagen (as of 2016).
Coaching has established itself as a valuable development tool in organisations. There are numerous studies on the effectiveness of coaching, which prove the increasing demand for coaching. However, the quality of the individual services often falls short of the original expectations. A major reason for this discrepancy seems to be a rather unspecific understanding of coaching.
On closer examination, one discovers, both on the part of the providers and in coaching concepts and internal coach pools in organisations, that virtually any support for individuals in one-to-one contact is described as coaching. It is not uncommon to find training dialogues, therapy talks, supervision approaches and very often also classic counselling talks in the range of services offered.
In view of such a market development, the question of measures to ensure the quality of coaching is becoming louder and louder. In many areas of application, it seems to be time to put the established instrument of coaching to the test.
Save time and gain energy for a happy and successful expatriation to the USA. Expatriate with your family to the USA for a few years? Yes or no? You have to decide pro or con, check the expat contract, clarify school issues and are confronted with complete unknowns - and all this in the tight schedule of a family daily routine? What you need is a quick, excellent and comprehensive overview from experienced expat insiders!
This Quick Guide gives you concise tips on key topics such as:
Expat Contract Contents, Expat and Partner Careers, Family, TCK - Education, Schooling USA, Recognition of School Qualifications in Germany, Everyday Life and Culture - Differences in the USA, Success in USA Business, Return Planning.
USA Expat Quick Guide - Contract, Family, Career by the interdisciplinary team of experts Tutschka-Dittmeier-Kuschel offers you compact, unerring advice and information on how best to master the challenges of the USA-Germany temporary balancing act.
Imagine packing your suitcase, grabbing your two children and following your partner to the other side of the world. You decide the whole thing in a few weeks. - Would you be so brave?
Of course, you're going to a civilised foreign country and everything is financially secure. It would also only be for a limited time. - Sounds tempting?
Oh, did I mention we're going to Detroit, the city that's ranked number one in crime statistics for years? And which has now been officially declared bankrupt? - Never ever?
NJW, Coachingmagazin, ManagerSeminare, LTO, Haufe, Soldan, Beck, Degruyter, DATEV, Training Aktuell, Wirtschaft und Weiterbildung, Xing-Magazin, LinkedInPulse, Unternehmensjurist, DjBZ, Österreichisches Anwaltsblatt, Radio Ö Salzburg, Leipziger Buchmesse, Oakland Press, Salzburger Nachrichten, IHK Magazin, advotec, JUVE
Dr. Geertje Tutschka
Contact Germany
Hopfenstrasse 8
D-80335 Munich
CALL. +49 (0) 89 206054 272
Contact Austria:
Fischbachstr. 17
A-5020 Salzburg
CALL: +43 (0)662 234164
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