Pressure doesn’t start in the meeting. It starts before you join, when your mind is ten steps ahead, your inbox is on fire, and your body turns up but you don’t.
This brand new session from Volker Ballueder is a reminder that leadership isn’t just strategy and decisions, it’s a state. You set the emotional temperature of the room, often before you’ve said a word. And presence isn’t “soft”… it’s the fastest way to stop being reactive and start leading with stability.
Key Takeaways from Volker Ballueder:
- Your presence sets the emotional temperature – If you arrive anxious, the room tightens. If you arrive calm, the room settles. People feel your state before they hear your plan.
- Awareness creates choice – Presence is noticing when stress is leaking into your tone, emails, and impatience — then choosing how to respond instead of letting pressure decide for you.
- One small habit can change everything – A single deep breath before a meeting (shoulders down, jaw unclenched, feet grounded, phone face down) creates space to lead with clarity, coach better, and protect against burnout.
About Volker Ballueder:
Volker Ballueder is a seasoned leadership coach with over two decades of commercial experience across SaaS, tech, and high-growth scale-ups. Having led teams through acquisitions, restructures, rapid expansion, and the pressure of board-level decision-making, he brings a rare blend of strategic clarity and emotional intelligence to every engagement.
He works with founders, CEOs, CROs, and senior leadership teams who are navigating growth, tension, or change. His approach is direct yet supportive, cutting through noise, surfacing the real issues, and guiding leaders towards sharper decisions, stronger culture, and sustainable performance.
His background spans executive coaching, psychotherapy, NLP, and mindfulness, giving him the tools to address both the strategic and human sides of leadership. Volker’s clients include leaders from global brands such as PepsiCo, Sky, JCDecaux, Boots, and DHL, alongside ambitious scale-ups facing real-world pressure.
