As managing partner of the traditional brewery, Karl Fordemann increasingly recognized how important proper staff management is. “It takes more than engineering knowledge to passionately produce excellent beer,” he says. “It only works if you have employees who are equally enthusiastic.”

FURTHER TRAINING WITH CONSEQUENCES

Karl Fordemann took part in several further training courses on human resources management and development. He eventually decided to do something for himself as well and signed up for a seminar in self-development. For even though he found his work in the brewery to be varied and fulfilling, unresolved issues in his day-to-day life and particularly power struggles among the shareholders increasingly got to him.

Karl Fordemann had already encountered Viktor E. Frankl and his well-known book “Man’s Search for Meaning” as a boarding school student. In it, the founder of Logotherapy and Existential Psychotherapy recounts his experiences in various concentration camps. As part of the training, Karl Fordemann once again encountered the Austrian psychotherapist and his meaning-based Logotherapy. The psychotherapeutic approach is rooted in finding meaning and striving for a sense of purpose, even and especially in contradictory circumstances in life. “Viktor E. Frankl taught me that all the challenges you face in life carry a call for meaning,” Karl Fordemann explains. “For the first time, I asked myself in all seriousness whether I wanted to work in the family brewery for the rest of my life.”

NOT AN EASY DECISION

As a result, Karl Fordemann now saw the company’s internal conflicts as a stimulus for professional reorientation. He wanted to embark on a path of self-development. For almost fifteen years, he struggled with the decision to permanently leave his family’s company. “You don’t just give up a traditional family business,” he says. And yet he consistently worked towards it by continuing his training in Logotherapy. And when the brewery was sold to a much larger family business, Karl Fordemann knew once and for all that his future would no longer be in this field. – From 2009 until the end of 2021, he was managing partner of Hohenbrunner Akademie, now Grünwalder Akademie, with which he is still associated as a freelancer. Then and now, he is happier than ever: “I struggled for a long time, but in the end it was exactly the right decision.”

SECOND CALLING

The focus of the seminars and workshops offered by the Munich-based training center is on increasing the participants’ self-awareness. With profound conviction, Karl Fordemann points out how important it is to live in full awareness in the here and now and to recognize those opportunities that create meaning in one’s life. “It’s quite a joy,” he says about his second calling. “It is meaningful living at its best!” Large companies such as Allianz, BMW, DaimlerChrysler and especially family businesses send their employees to Karl Fordemann.

Karl Fordemann maintains close and friendly contact with his mentees. Hardly surprising, since he imparts his formula for a meaningful life with incredible warmheartedness: slowing down, focusing on the essentials, appreciating the small things and the great gratitude and satisfaction that ensue. “I am highly convinced of the idea and the concept of the TUM Mentoring Program,” he says. “Is there anything better for a young person than to build trust with a colleague of their own choosing who has professional experience, in order to work with them on questions about life after graduation?”