Will Alfons Hörmann remain President of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) after all?
The catchphrase of the culture of fear that threatens and burdens employees in his organization has, one might believe, proven to be wrong.
The DOSB's search committee, which this week asked eight candidates for the successor to the Allgäu to hold talks, could immediately stop its work.
If the "comprehensive and scientifically sound analysis" is correct, which the DOSB commissioned from Permitto GmbH Wiesbaden and presented on Tuesday evening in a two-and-a-half-page summary, in the survey of three quarters of the employees, out of 159 people, is 1272 Individual reviews only once mentioned the term fear.
The authors present their research to be so profound that they do not even have to take the spoken word at face value. You even got information about it, write what the respondents think. The result is just as spectacular as this ability. It could be summarized as follows: nothing to do with the allegations that were made in an anonymous letter in May. The results showed, comments Veronika Rücker, CEO of the DOSB, that there is no evidence of a comprehensive - and here she distances herself from the ugly term: - "culture of fear" in the DOSB: "That made us all a lot easier."
Surely the president too.
Then why does Alfons Hörmann not express himself in the DOSB representation?
As usual robust and resolute-defiant as in mid-October, when he trumpeted the now published result at an event of the Badischer Sportbund Süd and listeners came to the conclusion that Hörmann was the victim of an intrigue.
Perhaps the most recent reluctance is due to the fact that the DOSB ethics committee dealt with the matter between the accusation in May and the discharge at the beginning of November.
Its chairman, Thomas de Maizière, stated after many discussions in June that there was obviously a lack of mutual trust and the necessary trust in the skills of the employees at the headquarters of the umbrella organization in Frankfurt.
Because the former defense and interior minister associated self-reflection, demotivation and rumors, dissatisfaction and ambiguities with the leadership behavior of the presidium and board, his recommendation that Hörmann should ask the vote of confidence at the general meeting in December was convincing.
Instead, the president has announced his resignation.
One can only speculate why the ethics committee's surveys and the analysis of the - as it self-describes - consulting boutique for change management & transformation produced such different results.
They don't go together.