My dad visited Prague this week, and I got to play tour guide for someone who had never seen the city. We did a few different types of tourist attractions together including E-bike, walking, and food tours. I had already been to similar areas and monuments earlier in the summer, yet I was still very surprised throughout each one. I learned things I had missed the first time at almost every location. Guides pointed out details about the Astronomical Clock I had walked past a dozen times. I heard the history of the Charles Bridge statues in a way that felt more like a history lesson, and learned the deep roots of the Prague Castle and it’s meaningful impact to the city. We ate at my favorite spots, and I introduced him to the local dishes I have now grown to love. My favorite new item that we tried together was Trdelník, a local tourist trap sweet. This was a must try on the list and experiencing it together made me feel guilt free about the copious amounts of sugar in it. The biggest surprise for everyone visiting was that beer costs less than a glass of still water at most restaurants. Showing someone your temporary home changes how you see it. I noticed I had built real familiarity with a place that felt foreign two months ago.
A market expansion project I am working on helped keep me busy on the work side. I have been studying German B2B law, and the details are more interesting and confusing than I expected. German outreach rules under the UWG operate on a presumed-consent standard for business contacts, which sounds simple until you factor in GDPR notice requirements and the EU AI Act disclosure duties coming in August. A company cannot just build a contact list and start emailing. The legal footing shapes the entire go-to-market approach. Learning this taught me that expansion strategy is less about ambition and more about knowing the rules of the room you want to enter.
Before this internship, I would have described my leadership style as direct and structured. My experience came mostly from positions within my fraternity, where I served as Community Service Chair and IFC Representative, and from case work with campus clubs. In those settings, I led by organizing. I set the plan, assigned the roles, and pushed people toward the deadline. It worked because the context was familiar to me. I knew who I was working with, I knew the goals we were trying to achieve, and I knew what the standard looked like. Leadership felt like pure execution, you make a plan and you drive it forward until completion. Prague broke that idea for me quickly.
At my internship, I got assignments where nobody handed me a clear plan and nobody could tell me what good looked like. The DACH market entry project is the clearest example. My task was to figure out whether the company could generate real demand in Germany, and I started with almost no map. I did not know the market, the legal terrain, or the buyers. My old instinct was to organize and execute, but its almost impossible to organize your way through a problem you do not yet understand. I had to sit in the discomfort of not knowing and ask questions before I acted. This felt slow and uncertain at first. It also felt like the wrong kind of leadership to someone used to driving hard toward a set target. The main shift I experienced was when I stopped treating uncertainty as a problem to rush past. Working in a country where I do not only speak the language, but I’m not accustomed to the business laws forced me to lead differently. I leaned on my colleagues for context I could not get on my own. I asked more than I directed. I learned that good leadership sometimes means admitting you are the least informed person in the room and building your understanding from there. Back home, I would have seen that as weakness. Here, it became the only way for me to continuously make progress and move forward.
I also learned good leadership takes more patience. My old style wanted clarity and a full plan before moving. This internship taught me to move with incomplete information, test small ideas, and adjust as I learned more. The German law research showed me this on a small scale. I could not know the full legal picture before starting, so I built understanding in layers, checked assumptions against what I found, and then acted. That process showed me leadership is a skill as much as research is.
I am becoming a better leader because I no longer confuse control with competence. I used to think leading meant having the plan and driving it. Now I think it means asking better questions, trusting the people around you, and staying steady when the path is unclear. Showing my dad around a city I once found foreign reminded me that comfort comes from time and attention, not from knowing everything upfront. Leadership works the same way. You grow into a hard situation by staying curious and humble, and you get better every time you choose learning over pretending to know something.
