Testimonial

Serdar, what motivated you to participate in the “AI in Leadership” training ?

It was actually a combination of two things. Our management had launched a program for AI power users and, as part of that, encouraged executives to further their education in the field. But things really got rolling during the weekly meeting with my boss and a colleague. The two of them were already using AI, whereas I hardly ever did. Professionally, I’d tried AI once with our open-item list. But it went back and forth so many times that I ended up doing it myself in the end. Personally, I’d never used AI. I was just old-school—I did my research the traditional way, using Google. For a long time, I didn’t see the need for it. My communication skills have always been one of my strengths, both verbally and in writing. AI-generated texts, on the other hand, struck me as emotionless. But with 18 employees reporting to me, I realized: I can handle some tasks more efficiently with AI. And my supervisor and my colleague wanted to deepen their understanding of the basics. So we looked for a suitable training and found what we were looking for at Haufe Akademie .

At the " training ," you noticed that many participants have long since been using AI as a matter of course. How did that make you feel?

To be honest, that really shook me up. I saw how naturally the others were already working with it. Suddenly, I felt like I’d been transported back 20 years. Back then, as a young professional, I used to look down on older colleagues who weren’t open to new things. 
Still, I never felt left behind in the “ training .” From the very beginning, the trainer made sure that absolutely everyone kept up. She kept coming over to us, offering support and checking in to see if everything was clear or if anyone was underchallenged. For those who caught on faster, there were also more difficult additional tasks. Everyone was truly challenged at their own level.