Andreas Gebhardt is a juggler and speaker. Born in Germany, Karlsruhe in 1972, he graduated from the State School of Performing Arts in Berlin and toured the world as a professional juggler for 15 years. During the banking crisis in 2009, he studied tourism and economics parallel to his work as an entertainer on cruise ships, and dealt with project and change management. In his lectures, what belongs together comes together: the metaphorical world of juggling, the years of experience of a professional juggler, the economic background and the experience as a project consultant

What drives you, Andreas?

As a juggler and speaker, I want to encourage people to tackle things and projects whose outcome is uncertain in a light-hearted yet well-founded way. To do this, we need to be error-friendly and tolerant of mistakes towards ourselves and others.

And we need the conscious foresight that mistakes and setbacks have a value. They broaden our horizons, generate new knowledge and new experiences and thus also bring us a little closer to our goals. The path is created by walking and not by thinking about it. In my lectures, I use experiences from my own life and from my work as a juggler.

This is not only more entertaining, but also creates unusual analogies and images that stay with the participants longer than PowerPoint and flipchart. I see a lot of crazy great ideas and far too little active implementation. I wonder where this reluctance or even fear of the new comes from, when it should be a normal part of our development.

As a juggler, I say: things have to go wrong before we will eventually be successful with them. For that, we need a sensible approach to risk and space to experiment. However, it seems to me that the risk is often overestimated and the benefit often talked down. I think that’s a pity. We should ask ourselves much more often: What is the real risk that we are taking?

Without abstracting and inflating, it is often much lower than our feelings tell us. So just tackle it courageously and try it out. With a tolerance for mistakes and the knowledge that afterwards we will be smarter again and a little closer to our goal.

That’s what I stand for as a juggler and speaker.

Visit Andreas Gebhardt’s website, follow him on LinkedIN Here you can order his “101 Impulse Cards for the Development of Organisational Culture”.