Good leadership is a key competitive advantage

Leadership that makes transformation succeed

A strong culture of governance and leadership has a major influence on how effectively and efficiently strategy and change are implemented. It also determines how committed employees and external partners are to the goals.

However, leadership development only works if it is linked to strategy. Together with you, I develop leadership teams, management levels and leadership programmes that strengthen exactly what your company needs.

Developing strong leadership teams

The greatest lever is at the top. I work with you and your leadership teams on shared direction, roles, the ability to handle conflict and the quality of decisions. So that a group of strong individual performers becomes a team that keeps the whole in view.

In doing so, it is important to keep the particular characteristics of leadership teams in mind and to invest in them deliberately:

• The shared mandate: How clear is the team’s mandate for the shared area of responsibility to everyone?
• Competencies in the leadership team: How satisfied are you with the competencies in the leadership team?
• The principles of team development: How much energy do you invest in your leadership team? How does your team make use of conflict and differences, for example?
• Belonging: How strongly do your managers feel they belong to the company, the management and the leadership team?
• The tension between trust and competition: How do you use these different aspects for the success of your area of responsibility?
• Role model for others: How are you and your team perceived by those around you? How do the members counteract silo thinking?

Building blocks for leadership teams

The first three steps are mandatory:

1. Sparring with the decision-makers or the head of the leadership team, and clarification of objectives.

2. Interviews with the members of the leadership team and, where appropriate, other stakeholders, and derivation of working hypotheses.

3. Measures are then agreed together. Proven options include:

Team Excellence workshop (including shared direction and values; self-image; clarifying roles and expectations; making use of conflict, ability to engage in dialogue and building trust)

Strategy development workshops (including examining dominant developments such as AI, competitiveness, sustainability and global instability; drafting different scenarios; developing or deriving the strategy; comparing current and target situation; prioritising measures and target systems)

Strategy implementation workshop (including deriving an implementation plan; preparing communication to downstream hierarchy levels; implementation and performance check; identifying bottlenecks, whether structural or cultural)

Leadership programmes

Effective programmes are developed in close cooperation with top management and internal HR and organisational development. They consist of several modules. Between modules, participants try things out and put them into practice, then report back in the next module. This creates commitment. The mix: sound theory, self-reflection, dialogue with the executive board and employees, experiences and experiments. Never boring. Always relevant. No holiday.

The effectiveness of one of my first programmes, at HORNBACH Baumarkt AG, was scientifically evaluated in a diploma thesis on “Action Learning in Leadership Development”.

Possible modules, each lasting two days, include:

For senior management:

Strategic Leadership – Transformation Leadership – Self-Leadership – Performance Leadership – System Leadership

For middle management:

 Leading Myself – Leading Others – Leading Teams - Leading Performance - Leading Change