Michael Gross

Michael Gross is 3 x Olympic Champion (1984 & 1988), 5 x World Champion (1982 – 1991) and 4 x Sportsman of the Year (1982-84 & 1988).

Talent, knowledge and will – for Prof. Dr. Michael Gross the combination of competences is decisive. In the past as a sportsman. Today in his work as an entrepreneur, speaker and trainer, author and lecturer on digitalisation.

Michael Gross is Germany’s most successful swimmer, having won a total of 21 titles at Olympic Games, World and European Championships. He won a total of 39 medals at international championships and set 12 world records. Because of his swimming style in the butterfly and because of his large arm span of 2.13 metres at a height of 2.01 metres, a journalist from the French sports daily L’Equipe gave him the nickname Albatros in 1983.

Michael Gross is married and the father of a daughter and a son. He studied German, politics and media studies, graduating with an M.A. in 1990 and a doctorate in 1994. Michael Gross has been a lecturer for over two decades and has been an honorary professor of organisation and leadership at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main since 2023. Michael Gross is Managing Partner of Gross & Cie, Consultancy for Change & Talent Management, Königstein/Taunus.

Michael Gross lectures on the topics of management, motivation, self-leadership and on the subject of sport.

Michael Gross Lecture Topics

• AI transformation – man and machine as colleagues
• Digital Leadership – The new leadership of companies
• Change Management: Making Companies Fit for the Future
• Motivation – An Olympic victory every day
• Self-leadership – Making things simple in the digital transformation

Successfully implementing digitalisation

Almost all companies and managers know why digitalisation is important. Many have already decided what needs to be done. However, very few know how to make the digital transformation a success. The lecture shows the success factors and fields of action for a successful digital transformation in companies.

Making companies fit – ensuring success in the future

The only stable thing is change. More than ever, companies need to “make their organisation fit”. This means developing a performance culture that sees great opportunities for the future in new challenges. The lecture shows the most important tasks and mistakes in the implementation.

Michael Gross: Diversity, Resilience and Change to Digital Transformation.

Athlete and entrepreneur, speaker and trainer, author and lecturer. The diversity of his tasks and roles already developed in his school days. At that time, learning on land and training in the water stood in parallel in the foreground – until 1984, when he was allowed to pass his A-level and Olympic exams with only a few weeks between them. Since then, new challenges and opportunities have arisen time and time again – in recent years increasingly due to the digital transformation and artificial intelligence.

A good ten years ago, Michael Gross asked himself how digitalisation would change his life and his profession, no matter what technologies were used. The answer was simple: cooperation and communication in everyday life will develop in a revolutionary way within the digital transformation. New skills will become necessary, whether as a consultant to companies, a trainer in seminars or a speaker at an impulse lecture. After several years of work in theory and practice, the results have not only been summarised in numerous specialist books. As an honorary professor at the University of Frankfurt, Michael Gross is constantly reviewing scientific research and testing new methods in management and leadership. Michael Gross can utilise this work in his other tasks, including constantly updating keynotes as a speaker.

Management & Digital Leadership & Motivation

The digital transformation and the use of artificial intelligence bring him full circle to his experiences in his sporting career. In short: standing still means going backwards. Digitalisation always offers something new, almost daily, just as every training session used to offer new experiences. Today, however, deepening one’s own knowledge also benefits others. For Michael Gross, the exchange of experiences in the digital transformation is the exciting thing, whether as an entrepreneur and lecturer, as a trainer and speaker. For him, only one thing is certain: life is never boring.

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