The 38-year-old was one of the first female fighter jet pilots in Germany and could be the first German woman to fly into space.
(Photo: Maren Richter)
Dusseldorf At the age of 16, Nicola Winter held her first pilot’s license – hang gliding. After graduating from high school, she applied to the Luftwaffe and became one of the first female fighter jet pilots in Germany; flew first Tornado and then Eurofighter.
She was sometimes asked at air shows, where she stood in front of the fighter jet in her chic flight uniform and represented the Bundeswehr, where the pilot was. “I kept looking around, to the left and right and down at myself, and said: Apparently that’s me,” she says in the new episode of Handelsblatt Rethink Work.
Winter later trained pilots himself in the USA for several years and completed numerous survival training courses. She talks about how she once almost froze two toes and why a “stoic mindset” helps in critical situations – and actionism doesn’t.
She has often reached her limits, in the “valley of tears and sweat”, as she calls it. That is part of the system, especially in aviation. “It’s like high-performance sport.”
In 2018, Winter left the Bundeswehr and made a stopover at the management consultancy McKinsey. At that time she had technical know-how, was allowed to fly and build the fastest airplanes in the world and also learned how to lead people. “But I hadn’t yet understood how a company makes money, where what is really necessary comes from,” says Winter.
The 38-year-old, who studied aerospace engineering alongside her pilot training, now works as a keynote speaker, primarily on the topic of leadership, and as a lecturer on emergency and crisis management. It is also about what can be learned from the leadership principles of the Bundeswehr and how to keep your nerve even in the greatest stress – keywords: breathe, think, do.
From Winter’s point of view, there is a lot of bad leadership. The problem in Germany is that you don’t learn leadership in a targeted manner – and you don’t get honest feedback. She is convinced: “People who are existentially dependent on their bosses will always give delayed feedback.”
At the end of 2022, Winter made it into the astronaut reserve of the European Space Agency Esa from among 22,000 applicants and could be the first German woman to fly into space. The fact that the Europeans are in danger of being left behind by China and the USA in space travel gives her “almost sleepless nights”.
Physically, as a reserve astronaut, she needs to be in good shape. She shares insights into her fitness program (“My sport is running after my kid”) and explains why she believes that family and career cannot be “balanced” every day, but only over years or even decades.
More: Listen to the previous episode of Rethink Work here