Herb Nestler brings to every task four decades of experience
coaching and training professionals from over 35 countries
From global CEOs and senior executives to young high-potentials just beginning their
careers, Herb Nestler has coached more than a thousand people and trained many more during a career which has spanned more than 40 years. He has assisted people faced with taking on a challenging new position, those needing to improve their communication and leadership skills, others needing to adapt to new cultures and those whose personal careers or companies are in crisis.
His key foci are leadership and interpersonal communication. Specific topics include principles of leadership, vision, motivation, giving and receiving feedback, understanding personality differences, managing conflict, dealing with personal and cultural differences, effective negotiation, presentation skills and body language.
Nestler brings to his coaching and training programs a unique background and varied experiences that make him ideally suited as a facilitator for helping decision-makers navigate the challenging waters of today's fast-moving business as well as assist newcomers to our global world to find their personal style while assimilating to a new corporate culture.
Educated in the United States where he lived for the first 40 years of his life, Nestler received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Education and a Master of Arts in Business Communication from Northwestern University.
As a university teacher he served on the faculties of the University of Illinois at Chicago, North Central College and the European Division of the University of Maryland where he specialized in business and interpersonal communication as well as journalism, mass media and performing arts. He continues to lecture from time to time at Passau University and at the LMU in Munich where he also mentors graduate and PhD students in developing their dissertations on business-related topics. As a trainer, he has presented seminars and workshops for companies and organizations in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East on effective leadership and communication skills.
He has served as Director of Education for an international trade association headquartered in the U.S. and was responsible for the training of volunteer leaders and well as staff executives in the worldwide Rotary club organization of more than 1.5 million members in his capacity as Division Manager for International Meetings, Training and Travel. He has organized training and management meetings in 35 countries. He has also held sales and general management positions with the Westinghouse and Plough Broadcasting companies and has regularly negotiated international contracts with citywide and regional implications.
A resident of Germany since 1988, Herb was the first person in Europe to be certified by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) to conduct their leadership seminars. He is also a trained Myers-Briggs Type Indicator facilitator, certified as a Person-Centered Coach by Strathclyde University and authorized to administer the Pressure Management Indicator, an instrument for helping people to cope with stress. He has also been published in several American trade and professional journals. Recent articles include "Intuition as a Key Factor for Implementing Theory U" in The System Thinker and "Overcoming the Barriers to Innovation" in The Journal of Intellectual Asset Management.
Among the tools he uses in his development programs are Hersey & Blanchard's Situational Leadership Model, the MBTI, transactional analysis (E. Berne), life positions (T. Harris), career anchors (E. Schein), the Tuckman Team Development Clock, just to name a few.
Herb is regularly called upon to coach staff members of the European Patent Office, Robert Bosch GmbH, ESG Consulting and he recently completed coaching all the key personnel at Unicon Software. Since 1988 Herb has been conducting coaching and training programs in Europe and around the world for these other companies: AIRBUS Deutschland, British Telecom, Continental Automotive, E.ON Energy, KIA Motors Europe, Goodyear Tire, JD Power and Associates, Siemens, KPMG, Kurtz Holding, Sartorius AG, Villeroy & Boch, CITGO Oil, VDMA, Körber AG and Haniel as well as for the City Colleges of Chicago, the International Association for Exposition Management (IAEM) and Meeting Professionals International (MPI). In the medical field, he has conducted training for Abbott Laboratories, Altana, AMGEN, Analyticon Discovery, Astellas, Lilly Pharmaceutical, Mylan, Novo Nordisk and Nycomed.
Among his proudest achievements are the development and delivery of a program to teach and encourage managers in Siemens to utilize the techniques of performance coaching in the daily leadership (The Leader as Coach), the Programme for Emerging Professionals at Airbus Deutschland (developed and conducted with Veronika Rolle-Green) and the Leadership Accelerator program for Kia Motors Europe, which was awarded the Silver International Training Prize 2010-11 from the German Association for Trainers and Coaches (BDVT).
My Inspirations
(A very personal statement from Herb Nestler)
If we are fortunate in life, we will come into contact with some people who inspire, mentor and guide us. We take with us and cherish the wisdom they share. I had many such mentors, but the people listed below played a unique role in my life, some in my daily life and others from afar.
It is my profound hope that I have done and will continue to provide similar inspiration for others.
David C. Bell, who taught me to demand of technology whatever I needed in order to create what I was dreaming and to not allow other people to stand in my way. I was particularly blessed to stay in contact with him from the time I was 15 until his recent passing.
Margaret Crowley, who as a high school teacher inspired me to be a communicator, whether standing in front of an audience or via the mass media.
Dr. Dena M. Faires, my university communications professor who set high expectations which became the basis for my striving to always deliver the highest quality.
Dr. Charles Stamp, who opened my eyes to the burgeoning field of media technology and encouraged me to make it my playground to experiment with convergence.
Professor Marshall McLuhan, the one person on this list who I never personally met. But his ideas surrounding the concept "The Medium is the Message" gave me profound insights.
Bob Moomey It is hard to find the words to expressive what Bob meant to me over the 40 years we knew each other. He hired me for my first commercial broadcasting position, then became my first business partner and became a such a close friend that we considered each other brothers. I learned so many things from him, but his greatest contribution was that he never doubted my ability to do whatever I set out to do and reminded me that it is better to try something even if it fails than to spend the rest of my life wondering how it would have worked out if I had tried.