I recently went one-on-one with New York Times Berlin correspondent Melissa Eddy. Melissa is the author of the new book Merkel’s Law: Wisdom from the Woman Who Led the Free World.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your insights and advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?

Melissa: I have had the great fortune of a loving supporting family and legions of good friends who’ve had my back. I do not think that I experienced any major failures, setbacks, or challenges beyond the ordinary. But having grown up in a small town in Minnesota, I was often dogged by the sense that my peers who attended private high schools were smarter than I was. This drove me to push myself throughout my education to try to get ahead. Only later in life did I realize that intelligence can be nurtured wherever you are and hard work can get you just as far, if not farther than opportunity alone. 

My determination to achieve helped me to land my job at a publication that I have admired since I was a teen. Growing up, I would beg anyone passing through the airport to pick me up a copy of The New York Times and bring it for me to read. I decided back then that I wanted to be a foreign correspondent and it helped that I had a knack for learning languages. I started my career covering the war in Kosovo, but after several colleagues were killed while on assignment covering conflicts, I realized that I wasn’t cut out to be a war correspondent. I shifted my focus to politics and more recently to business and economics and accepted that those jobs might be less exciting than being on the front lines, but they allowed me to balance a satisfying career with raising a family of my own.

Adam: What are your best tips for anyone interested in pursuing a career in journalism?

Melissa: In the beginning, always say yes. Whether it is getting up before sunrise, digging through an extra stack in an archive, knocking on another door, parsing more data, the willingness to go the extra mile for the sake of a story can make the difference. 

It is worth considering in our highly digitized age that nothing compares with being on the ground where something is happening. No text message, phone, or video call can replace speaking with someone face-to-face. This isn’t always feasible, but whenever possible, it is worth putting in the effort to get to the story yourself. 

Also, remember that anyone who you meet might someday be the key to a connection that could get you information or a story. Networks are essential to journalism and it is worth investing the time to build yours. 

Adam: How can anyone become a better writer and a better communicator?

Melissa: Writing, like any skill, comes from practice. Putting in the hours at the notebook — I still believe in the power of writing initial thoughts or ideas by hand — or the keyboard will pay off in the long run. A final work will rarely have only been through one draft, but you need those initial thoughts to have something to rewrite, restructure, and refine.

Reading widely is also helpful to building up vocabulary and exposing writers to different structures and rhythms. When I am stuck, I will re-read an author I admire, and contemplate what I like about their style or structure. Sometimes I will even try to use a structure as a template, for example, opening with an anecdote or a list, to get myself going. 

Adam: What do you hope readers take away from your new book?

Melissa: I really admire Angela Merkel’s down-to-earth, unexcited style of leadership and hope that readers will better understand the influences that played a role in her path to power and the choices she made to retain it. I hope that the book could inspire people to think about which qualities make a good leader and how to cultivate them.  

I also hope that readers better understand the culture that formed Angela Merkel, from her childhood as a pastor’s daughter in a system that was hostile to the church, to her decision to wholeheartedly embrace the freedom handed to her when that system crumbled after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. 

Adam: What should readers understand about Angela Merkel and her approach to leadership?

Melissa: Angela Merkel entered politics because she saw it as an opportunity to celebrate her newly won freedom in a democracy, after living for the first three decades of her life in a dictatorship. She never took that freedom for granted and deeply understood, having lived through the collapse of one political system, that you if you believe in a system, you have to do your part to uphold it.

Angela Merkel also viewed herself as a servant of her party and the people whom she represented, her constituents. For the first three of her four terms in office, she downplayed her role as the first woman chancellor of Germany and the first chancellor to hail from the country’s formerly Communist-led eastern states. Although this frustrated those who felt she was squandering a chance to promote them, she insisted that she had not been elected to serve only women or only former East Germans, but all Germans. In short – she declined to make her leadership about herself and made it instead about her country.

Adam: From your experience covering Angela Merkel, what do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader?

Melissa: I would name integrity; staying true to yourself and your values; being the best-prepared person in the room; prioritizing listening to others and seeking compromise whenever possible and retaining a level of optimism that change, even when challenging, is a chance for opportunity as the defining qualities of her leadership. 

Angela Merkel also refused to let herself be made small or bullied, as was famously captured on video when Russian President Vladimir V. Putin called his black lab to a press conference they were holding, although he knew she was uncomfortable around dogs. Merkel flinched ever so slightly, but she kept her face straight and kept talking as if nothing was happening, even as the dog sniffed at her legs. When asked about the incident years later, she brushed it off with a laugh saying that “a brave chancellor” must be able to cope with a dog. Even when she found herself in a difficult situation, Merkel put her responsibilities of herself as a leader ahead of even her own personal fears. 

Adam: What are the best lessons you learned from covering Angela Merkel’s leadership in crisis?

Melissa: Angela Merkel had a personal motto that power rests in calm. No matter how challenging the situation was that she faced, she always managed to remain cool-headed. When others around her became agitated, she would wait for them to blow off whatever steam the needed to, before engaging. This allowed her to always maintain a level of control. 

Thorough preparation was one of the skills that anyone who worked with Angela Merkel admired about her most. She has the ability to process and retain large amounts of information and she would devour thick binders full of data and notes before any meeting. This meant that she went into negotiations knowing all sides of an issue, giving her a better understanding of her opponents and helping her to reach a compromise that all sides could live with. 

Angela Merkel also remained true to herself but did not allow her personal convictions to stand in the way of progress. When she realized that a majority of Germans approved of same-sex marriages, she paved the way for a vote to be held on the issue in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, although she cast her ballot against the measure. 

Adam: What were the keys to cultivating a meaningful relationship with Angela Merkel and to developing trust? How can leaders build successful relationships and build trust?

Melissa: Angela Merkel did not build strong trust relationships with journalists. She saw us as useful for getting her message across but did not allow reporters to penetrate her personal sphere. Her home, her family, and her vacations all remained off-limits to the press. She demanded that her friends and political peers protect this privacy and anyone who violated it, by running to the press, lost her trust.

People were drawn to Merkel because they knew that they could trust her. As chancellor, she gave every minister a chance to speak their mind during her cabinet meetings. This approach was a shift from her predecessors’ style of running the meetings, where the focus remained heavily on the largest and most important ministries. Several people who served in her governments mentioned this willingness to hear everyone in the room and consider their input to being a skill they deeply valued in Merkel’s leadership. 

In larger discussions, such as during summits of European Union leaders, Merkel would take the time to meet one-on-one with leaders who she felt were not being heard or understood by the larger group. By speaking with them individually and listening to them, she was better able to include their point of view in the wider discussion. This approach earned the trust of many of her peers and contributed to her being viewed as an essential leader in Europe.

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?

Melissa: “You can do anything you set your mind to.” My parents told me that so often when I was growing up that I to this day can’t remember when I first heard it. But it is advice that I have passed on to my own children and have turned to when I have faced challenges or obstacles in my career.


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one-on-one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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