We just often pretend that we don’t know. We build a life out of calendars, routines, decisions, numbers, conversations, strategies and expectations. We call it structure, responsibility, leadership or clarity. And sometimes it is. There is nothing wrong with making plans, taking things seriously, keeping commitments and preparing. Without a certain amount of order, life quickly becomes arbitrary. But somewhere along the way, we often confuse order with control. And a helpful tool becomes an inner cage, often without realizing it. We believe we have things under control: the job, the relationship, the effect we have on others. The direction in which our life is heading or the results of our work. Maybe even the mood in the room. At least it feels that way. And this feeling is reassuring. It gives us the impression that we are not at the mercy of others. Not weak and not dependent on chance, on other people, on failure or on life itself. <\/p>\n\n
But to be honest, it’s simply not true. Control only works as long as nothing unforeseen happens. And that’s exactly what happens all the time. People say things we didn’t expect. Customers drop out. Colleagues make different decisions. The body sets boundaries. Love changes. Markets topple. A sentence hits us in a place that we thought had long healed. A number, a rejection, a look, perhaps a silence – and suddenly we are no longer the confident person who has everything under control, but someone who realizes: I am much less in control than I had convinced myself. That scratches the self-image. Especially in people who have learned to be strong, reliable, solution-oriented and forward-looking. People who understood early on that control supposedly means security. Those who have everything in view are not surprised. Those who think ahead don’t get hurt. Those who lead don’t have to feel. And if you secure everything, you don’t have to trust anyone. Is that really the case? <\/p>\n\n
Or so it seems. But this is precisely where the rift lies. The need for control often doesn’t come from strength, but from insecurity, and underneath that often lies fear. The fear that something will go wrong, that someone will disappoint you, that you are not enough. And that others might notice how shaky things are inside sometimes. <\/p>\n\n
Control says: I have to hold on to everything, otherwise it will fall apart.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n Trust says: Not everything that moves is a threat.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n Control is not just an outward behavior, it is an inner attitude. It is reflected in how we react when things don’t go according to plan. How quickly we become tight. How quickly we explain, justify, correct or dominate. How difficult it is for us to give others space without intervening immediately. How little we can really stand when things remain open. <\/p>\n\n You see this every day in business. There is talk of personal responsibility, but every decision has to go through three loops. Teams are built up, but trust is not really given. The motto is: “Get involved”, as long as only one opinion counts in the end. People are supposed to be creative, but please without friction, risk and error. Leadership then suddenly becomes permanent supervision. Everything is approved, controlled and readjusted, not because it’s always necessary, but because someone can’t stand other people finding their own way. <\/p>\n\n This mechanism is particularly visible in CEOs. The greater the responsibility, the greater the temptation to confuse control with good leadership. A CEO sits in a place where uncertainty is constantly being negotiated: Markets, investors, employees, customers, competitors, public perception – everything moves and everything can tip. And that’s precisely why the reflex is to tighten up: more reports, more approvals, more control over communication, decisions and priorities. On the outside, this looks like successful and active leadership. Internally, it is sometimes just fear in a very well-paid position. A good CEO does not need to know everything. Above all, he must know that he cannot know everything. That’s a tough sentence for people who are used to giving answers. But this is precisely the difference between power and maturity. Power can decide, whereas maturity can listen. Power can push things through. Maturity recognizes when it needs to give space. Anyone who sits at the top and sees every criticism as an attack is not building an organization, but a court. Then people no longer say what is true, but what sounds harmless. And the bitter thing is: control often produces exactly what it actually wants to prevent. It makes people smaller. It takes energy out of spaces. It creates caution instead of responsibility. Because if you are constantly controlled, at some point you stop really thinking and getting involved. This has nothing to do with laziness, but with protection. Why be brave if someone is going to drive over it in the end? Why take responsibility if trust is just a word on a slide? This creates a culture in which everyone is busy, but only a few are alive. A culture in which mistakes are hidden. In which feedback becomes a threat and criticism is not seen as a gift, but as an attack on one’s own value. <\/p>\n\n <\/p>\n\n If you have to be very controlling, it is usually difficult to hear criticism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n Criticism opens a door that control prefers to keep closed. Ultimately, it says: There’s something you don’t see. There is an effect that you did not intend. Someone has a different perspective. There’s a blind spot. For a person who laboriously stabilizes their self-image through control, this feels dangerous. Not like information, but more like exposure. Yet feedback is essentially just that: criticism. Not in a cheap, destructive sense or as humiliation, but at best as honest feedback. It is an invitation to take a closer look. Criticism means: something comes back. Someone has noticed something and says it. It may be awkward, perhaps harsh or incomplete, but it often contains material that can be put to good use. The only problem is that many people don’t listen to feedback, they defend themselves against it. While the other person is still speaking, the rebuttal is already building up inside: “That’s not what I meant.” “That’s not true.” “You didn’t understand the context.” “But others see it differently.” You might nod, but you’ve actually already left. No longer listening, but in the inner courtroom. You are looking for evidence of your own innocence. <\/p>\n\n For CEOs, feedback is therefore not a nice additional format or a culture workshop, it is a survival tool. The higher someone climbs, the more filtered the truth that reaches them often becomes. People think more carefully about what they say. They embellish, prefer to wait or adapt. Not out of cowardice, but because power changes spaces. A CEO who doesn’t understand this ends up living in a polished version of reality. Everything seems more organized than it really is. Everything sounds more agreeable than it is meant to be. And at some point, reality arrives without asking permission first. <\/p>\n\n That’s why we need people at the top who not only tolerate criticism, but actively invite it. Not this decorative “My door is always open”, while everyone senses that it is better not to go through it. What is needed is a genuine invitation. A space for specific questions and quiet listening without immediate interruption. Without later “punishing” those who were really honest. Because the culture of a company is not shown by whether feedback is desired. It is shown by what happens to the people who give it. <\/p>\n\n Of course, not all criticism is wise and not all feedback is fair. Some people confuse honesty with rudeness. Some unload their own issues on others. Some criticize below the belt because they want to hurt. You certainly don’t have to swallow everything. Openness does not mean defenselessness. But anyone who rejects all criticism deprives themselves of the opportunity to grow. Not taking anything personally – yes, that sounds easy, but it’s difficult. Because of course criticism feels personal. Especially when work, attitude, relationship and identity are closely interwoven. If someone says: “That came across as controlling to me”, you quickly hear: “You’re a bad person.” When someone says, “I didn’t feel seen,” you hear, “You failed.” When someone says, “Your tone was harsh,” you hear, “You’re wrong.” But criticism of your behavior is not automatically a judgment of your worth. Feedback about your impact is not the complete truth about who you are. You can have done something wrong without being wrong. You can have hurt someone without wanting to be a hurtful person. You can learn without despising yourself. <\/p>\n\n Being open to criticism does not mean immediately accepting everything unfiltered. It means not immediately shutting down. It means noticing the first impulse of defense and still not acting on it. It means listening, even when it’s a drag. Even when the body gets hot or the ego screams. It means asking out of genuine interest: “What exactly do you mean? Explain it to me in more detail.” It means opening up this space instead of immediately filling it up again with explanations. <\/p>\n\n <\/p>\n\n Open up space. That sounds soft, but it is one of the most edgy skills of all. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n Because opening up space means relinquishing control. It means not immediately imposing your direction on a conversation. It also means putting up with someone speaking a truth that is not comfortable. It means not immediately focusing on your own intentions, but first looking at the effect. It means listening not only to the words, but to what lies between them. <\/p>\n\n In relationships, everything is often decided by this. Not the grand romantic gestures, not the promises, but the question: Can I hear what you say to me without punishing you for saying it? Many people claim that they want honesty. But they actually want confirmation in honest packaging. They want openness as long as it doesn’t hurt. They want closeness as long as they remain in control. But real closeness doesn’t happen where everything is smooth. It arises where someone is allowed to say: “That hurt me.” And the other person doesn’t immediately shoot back. Control wants security. But love needs trust. That doesn’t mean that trust is blind or naive. It doesn’t mean letting everything go, abandoning every boundary and excusing every behavior. Trust needs clarity and honesty. It needs agreements. But it also requires the willingness not to want to own the other person. Neither their thoughts nor their development, their reactions or their freedom. <\/p>\n\n Perhaps this is so difficult for many people because letting go is quickly confused with indifference. As if less control equals less responsibility. But the opposite can be true. Letting go can be a very conscious decision. Not “it doesn’t matter”, but rather: I don’t control what I can’t control. I take responsibility for my part. For my words, for my boundaries and for my willingness to listen. For the way I deal with uncertainty. But I stop forcing life to give me the guarantee that it cannot give. <\/p>\n\n Life gives no guarantees. Not in your job, not in love, not in friendships and not in your own development. You can do everything right and still lose. You can be well prepared and still fail. You can love honestly and still be abandoned. You can plan carefully and still be surprised. It’s hard, but it’s also liberating. Because if control is an illusion anyway, you no longer have to waste your whole life trying to maintain it. Then something else can emerge. More presence, more agility and more real connection. If you don’t have to constantly control, you can perceive better. Those who don’t judge immediately can hear more. If you don’t hold on to everything, you can see what wants to show itself. Suddenly, a conversation doesn’t become a battle for interpretative sovereignty, but a space in which something new can and may emerge. <\/p>\n\n In a team, this can mean not evaluating every idea immediately. Not reacting to every uncertainty with a process or immediately ironing out every risk. It can mean really letting someone do it and only then looking together at what has come of it. It can mean treating mistakes not as proof of incompetence, but as data. What happened? What do we learn from it? What do we change? Trust in companies does not start with fancy mission statements, but is reflected in the behavior of those at the top. A CEO who controls everything sends a clear message: I don’t really trust you. He never has to say that. It is enough for every decision to go back to his desk. When every deviation is viewed with suspicion and criticism is officially permitted but internally unwelcome. People sense this. They act accordingly and become more cautious, smoother, more political. And suddenly you have a company full of smart people who devote a considerable amount of their energy to not saying the wrong thing. <\/p>\n\n For CEOs, trust does not mean taking their hands off the wheel. It means not wanting to hold every steering wheel in the company themselves. It means giving clarity about direction without owning every step. It means choosing good people and then not constantly proving to them that you don’t trust them after all. Control may be reassuring in the short term, but it makes the CEO a bottleneck. Trust, on the other hand, scales and makes organizations grow up. Feedback plays a central role in this. A culture without criticism is not automatically a harmonious culture, it is often just a silent one. And silence is not the same as peace. Silence is sometimes just fear with good posture. In rooms where no one disagrees anymore, all is usually not well. Often people have just learned that contradiction is too expensive. <\/p>\n\n That is why criticism is so important. It keeps systems awake and prevents power from numbing itself. It protects relationships from slowly suffocating. It brings air into places where no one has opened a window for a long time. But criticism needs a space in which it can land. Otherwise it either becomes a weapon or a whisper. Opening up space therefore also means creating conditions in which the truth can be spoken – this applies to all areas of life. Leaders must learn to invite criticism without immediately controlling it. Those who love must learn not to treat the truth of others as an attack on their own. If you want to grow, you have to learn that pain is not always a stop sign. Sometimes it is a clue. <\/p>\n\n And perhaps this is one of the most important tasks of modern CEOs: to build spaces in which truth circulates faster than fear. Spaces in which bad news is not punished and criticism is not considered disloyalty. Spaces in which people are allowed to disagree before decisions become expensive. Because in the end, organizations rarely fail simply because of wrong strategies. They often fail because too many people have sensed what is wrong for too long, but no one has been able to say it out loud. A CEO who can hear criticism does not gain in weakness, but in reality. He gains access to what is already there: doubts, friction, mistakes, blind spots, better ideas. Feedback does not create these things, it only makes them visible. Control tries to avoid this visibility. But trust can withstand it. <\/p>\n\n Of course there is a limit. Not all harshness is truth and not all gentleness is a lie. Both are needed: clarity and warmth. Or to put it another way: edge and kindness. Criticism without dignity quickly becomes violent. Harmony without truth quickly turns into (self-)betrayal. Art always lies in between. To say what needs to be said without belittling the other person. To hear what is difficult without losing yourself. Perhaps this is the more mature form of strength: not to be untouchable, but to remain touchable without falling apart. Listening is an underestimated form of courage. Genuine listening is not the friendly waiting until it is your turn again. It is not this half-absent nodding while you inwardly polish your own answer. Listening means taking yourself out of the center for a moment. Not immediately sorting the other person into your own order. Not knowing immediately what is meant. It means giving the other person the chance to be more than your interpretation. And yes, that is uncomfortable because it costs control. If you listen, you risk being changed. And that’s exactly what many people are afraid of. Because what happens if the criticism is true? What happens if I really was too dominant? Too cold? Perhaps too impatient? Too much in my own movie? What happens if my well-intentioned behavior has put pressure on the other person? When my desire for clarity has narrowed the space? When my demand for quality has intimidated others? When my leadership was actually mistrust? <\/p>\n\n Then I would have to change something. Not as a dramatic self-accusation, but honestly. And honesty is sometimes harder than any strategy. It takes away our escape routes. It puts an end to the pretty stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. It says: look. Not to destroy you, but to make you freer. Because control ties up an incredible amount of energy. If you want to control everything, you have to constantly scan, check, anticipate and correct. That is exhausting. For you and for everyone else. You often don’t even realize how much constriction you are creating until people breathe a sigh of relief when you let go. Letting go doesn’t mean becoming passive. It means using your own energy better. No longer fighting against every wave. No longer having to win every conversation. No more fending off every criticism. No longer owning every process. It means being awake and present where it really counts. <\/p>\n\n This is a different kind of control, if you like: not control over others, but self-management. The ability to notice your own impulses. To recognize your own fear. Not letting your own offense immediately turn into action. This is much more challenging than controlling other people. Controlling others is often just an attempt to avoid having to feel yourself. <\/p>\n\n <\/p>\n\n Those who can lead themselves need to rule less<\/strong><\/p>\n\n And perhaps this is precisely the difference between people who close spaces and people who open spaces. Some come with a ready-made truth. The other with an attitude. Some want to be right, others want to understand. Some need control in order to feel safe. The others create security by giving confidence. <\/p>\n\n Trust is not a romantic fog – trust is actually very concrete. It manifests itself in small decisions. In letting someone finish. Not immediately taking a task back if it is done differently. Not simply smiling away critical feedback or treating a mistake as a character problem. Not reducing a person to their worst minute and not reducing yourself to your own insecurities. <\/p>\n\n Trust also means: I don’t have to know everything straight away. I can ask questions, learn, correct something if necessary. I am allowed to admit that I was wrong. There is hardly a stronger sentence than: “You’re right. I didn’t see that.” Not as a humblebrag, but genuine. This sentence can solve more than ten spasmodic justifications. Perhaps that is the core: control is often an attempt to protect an image of oneself. The image of the competent, the strong, the sovereign, the good. The one who has everything under control. Criticism threatens this image. Just like the unpredictable and other perspectives. So we prefer to control, explain and correct everything. But a picture is not life. An image must remain “smooth”. A person is allowed to be contradictory. A picture must not have mistakes, a person grows from them if they allow it. A picture needs control, whereas a person needs contact. <\/p>\n\n Deep down, we know all this. We know that we cannot control other people. We know that we cannot force ourselves to be loved, respected, understood or admired. We know that outcomes are never completely in our hands. We know that any system can topple. We also know that certainties are fragile. But we don’t want to feel it every day. So we build ourselves little control rooms and call them sanity. It may be that we sometimes need these rooms. But at some point they become too small. Then the moment comes when life comes knocking. Perhaps through a crisis, a conversation, a criticism, a loss, an excessive demand or a new responsibility. And suddenly the old strategy is no longer enough. More control doesn’t help. Nor does more pressure. Sometimes more analysis doesn’t either. Then something else is needed: the willingness to become soft enough to be aware again and clear enough to take responsibility. <\/p>\n\n Maybe it starts with a break. Not for long. Just long enough not to react automatically. A breath between stimulus and response. A short inner distance. There is an amazing amount of freedom in this. In this pause you can realize: I feel attacked, but perhaps I am being informed. I want to control, but perhaps I can trust. I want to defend myself, but maybe I should listen first. I want to close the room, but maybe something important is about to happen. This pause is small, but it can change everything. It can turn an argument into a conversation. It can turn a mistake into development, criticism into connection, leadership into real responsibility – and uncertainty into vitality. <\/p>\n\n In the end, it may not even be about getting rid of control. That would just be another control project. It’s more about no longer believing her when she pretends to be a savior. To recognize: Control promises security, but often delivers narrowness instead. It promises strength, but often only feeds fear. It promises clarity, but often prevents contact. More control does not necessarily make life safer, it often just makes it smaller without being noticed. <\/p>\n\n And perhaps you can recognize good CEOs not by how much they control, but by how much truth their environment can expect from them. How much criticism they can hear without becoming smaller. How much trust they give without relinquishing responsibility. How much space they open up without taking themselves out of the room. This doesn’t just apply to CEOs. It applies to everyone who leads: other people, relationships, families, teams and, of course, themselves. <\/p>\n\n Yes, trust is risky. Openness is risky. Really letting criticism get to you is risky. Opening up space is risky. But life is risky anyway. The question is not whether we can avoid risk. The question is what we take it for. For confinement or encounter, for justification or development, for a smooth self-image or a real life. <\/p>\n\n Perhaps maturity is exactly that: no longer believing that security comes from holding on to everything. Maybe it’s about feeling that something more sustainable emerges when you let go without walking away. When you remain open without surrendering. When you listen to criticism without tearing yourself apart. When you take responsibility without controlling others. <\/p>\n\n Control is an illusion. And deep down, you know that too. The real question is how long you want to pretend it’s your home. <\/p>\n\n <\/p>\n\n written by Yasmin Floria Kre\u00df – Business Partner of Frank Rechsteiner<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We just often pretend that we don’t know. We build a life out of calendars, routines, decisions, numbers, conversations, strategies and expectations. We call it structure, responsibility, leadership or clarity. And sometimes it is. There is nothing wrong with making plans, taking things seriously, keeping commitments and preparing. 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