Modern leadership is becoming increasingly important in the face of ever more complex business challenges. My blog articles will give you specific ideas that you can implement in your leadership role.
You will find suggestions on the following questions, for example:
In uncertain times, it is a natural tendency to lead more closely. It is important that managers do not slip into micromanagement. What are the risks of this controlling management style for managers, employees and companies? How can managers counteract micromanagement?
Time is a managing director's most valuable asset. Without conscious demarcation, clear prioritisation and trust in the team, there is a risk that the really important, strategic tasks will fall by the wayside. This article provides concrete ideas on how to regain your self-determination and find time for strategic work.
In times of crisis, the management of a company is put to the test. Managing directors are faced with unexpected challenges that require quick decisions and flexible adjustments. A key strategy for successfully managing companies in such times is to strengthen autonomy in management. Paradoxically, however, many managers react in exactly the opposite way during crises: they restrict the autonomy of their employees. This article sheds light on why autonomy in leadership is so important in times of crisis and why managers nevertheless often revert to centralised decision-making processes.
In many companies, the traditional strategy process overloads the organisation. As a result, strategic goals are sometimes not achieved or are achieved late.
In this article, you as a manager will be given ideas on how you can change the strategy process in your company in order to avoid overburdening employees and managers and achieve your business goals.
Whether a strategy is successfully implemented also depends on how well it is understood by employees and managers.
In this article, managing directors will learn how they can communicate the corporate strategy in an understandable way and anchor it in the everyday lives of employees and managers. In addition to a structured approach, you will also receive specific formulation aids.
Remote leadership is part of everyday life for most managers. But how does remote leadership work? Not all managers have found a definitive answer to this question.
In this article, I give you ideas on how to lead remotely and maintain productivity and a sense of belonging in your team.
Effective questioning is an instrument of modern leadership. Because an effective question is always at eye level and opens up more room for thought and solutions than an answer.
In this article, you will find specific exercise instructions so that you as a manager can use this effective management tool more consciously and successfully. These will help you to refine your ability to ask questions effectively.
The fact that alternative career paths have hardly existed in Germany to date has led to many management roles being filled by people who do not fulfil this role.
This is not only painful for those who hold these roles, it is also painful for the people who are inadequately led.
And the most painful thing of all is that misappointed management roles cost companies a lot of money.
Meetings are time wasters, cost money and rarely lead to the desired result in the allotted time. This workbook is both a notebook and a valuable source of advice on how to lead meetings constructively to the desired result.
In view of the ever-increasing role that artificial intelligence is playing in our everyday business and social lives, I spoke to ChatGPT about the management and leadership tasks that AI is already supporting today and will be able to take over completely in the future.
In addition to the content-related aspects in terms of data analysis and decision preparation, AI has another important advantage: it has more time for leadership. Because unlike us humans, AI is capable of multitasking and needs neither breaks, sleep nor holidays. But is that enough to replace human leaders?
As a managing director, you are required to continuously change your organisation in order to meet the ever-changing framework conditions. Trust is fundamental to winning your organisation over to these changes. Trust requires authenticity.
In this article, I provide concrete impulses on how you as a managing director can find authentic leadership.
All companies have recognized that the people in their organization, with their expertise, represent the most important resource. Isn't it about time that the cost item "personnel" from the P&L is also countered by an asset on the balance sheet?
Sabine Walter discusses this question with Svenja Stöveken and Eda Wolff, both management consultants at Horváth, an international management consultancy for transformation, performance management and digitization.
In order for feedback to be heard and accepted, the right words are needed in addition to a stable culture of trust.
Read how to give constructive and to the point feedback and what else you can do to establish a constructive feedback culture in your environment.
In executive coaching we often get the question: "What is the best way to deal with low performers?". There is no blanket answer to this question. Rather, it invites us to take a differentiated look at the topic.
In this article I address the following questions: How do you find out the cause(s) of the drop in performance or underperformance?
How can you structure and conduct an appropriate appraisal interview?
What can you do to achieve an increase in performance?
If you have found the real causes of the low performance and the measures help to eliminate them, you have a very good chance of turning the low performer into a top performer.
In the course of the change in the understanding of leadership and leadership styles, managers in many companies are also expected to fill the role of coach.
In this article I answer the following questions:
What framework conditions enable goal-oriented and effective coaching?
Where are the limits for the manager?
Which coaching tools can be integrated into leadership work?
What opportunities does this open up?
The understanding of successful leadership has changed over the last few decades. But what is the essence of this change? What is the essence of effective leadership and how can managers utilise it to be effective in their leadership work?
Everyone has values. They give rise to convictions and patterns of behaviour. If these values are not transparent or if they are not given enough consideration in the composition of management teams, this can lead to conflicts but also to a drop in quality.
In this article, I would like to explain the role that values play in the composition of management teams.
How should I manage the first 100 days as a new leader? How should I behave when I take over a team or an area? What do I say when I introduce myself as the new boss? These and other questions are asked by many managers who take on a new responsibility within their own company or even in another company.
Zarah Speck has given you a Checklist that will help you build a foundation of trust in the first 100 days and find acceptance a
Conflicts - whether visible or invisible - cost organisations and our society money. This makes the ability to recognise, analyse and constructively address conflicts in order to invite people to find solutions together all the more important.
Humanistic leadership describes the understanding of humans, as the basis for influencing people in the company and choosing the appropriate management tools. The humanistic understanding of the human being is based on the assumption that the ability to develop into a "better" version of ourselves is inherent in each of us. What this means for companies and how the path towards a humanistic approach to leadership can be, explains Stephanie Wackernagel, lecturer at the Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences.
In the context of transformation processes, many fundamental decisions have to be made. How quickly organisations manage to make these decisions in line with the desired goals also determines the success of the transformations. However, managers are often caught in the dilemma of wanting to involve as many members of their organisation as possible in the decision-making processes on the one hand, but having to deliver results quickly on the other. In this article, we give recommendations for action that help to resolve the dilemma and find a productive decision-making culture.
It may sound paradoxical, but self-organised teams need leadership. In this article, we explain what this leadership is all about. We look at three central questions:
1 What does it take for self-organisation to work?
2. what is the responsibility of the teams?
3. what can a path towards self-organisation of teams look like?
4 What is the business benefit?
In many organisations, staff appraisals are scheduled at the start of the year. In this article, we look at what contributes to good interview preparation, how appraisal interviews should be structured; we show which pitfalls there are and how you can avoid them.
While some companies lay off or put employees on short-time work during the pandemic, other companies are hiring and have to answer the question for themselves: "How do we integrate new colleagues when everyone works in a home office?" The answer to this question encompasses various aspects: Getting to know each other, creating trust, communicating culture and values, familiarisation - all with or despite a digital proximity. In this article, we give recommendations on how to get off to a good start even in times of home office.
We are on the way to a new age. Digitalisation is the number one topic.
That is why it is often used and brings to light language creations that are worth looking behind: Digital Natives and Digital Leaders. What is behind these terms? And what skills do leaders need to successfully shape the digital transformation?
A decision-making organisation is the prerequisite for companies to work in a self-organised and effective manner to achieve their corporate goals. A decision-making organisation is therefore a prerequisite for maintaining long-term competitiveness, high employee satisfaction and entrepreneurial and economic success.
I explain three questions in this article:
What are the benefits of a decision-making organisation?
What framework conditions are required?
What does the path to a decision-making organisation look like?
Competence development is not yet strategic enough in many companies and is often delegated to HR. Similar to German education policy, many companies still fail to recognise that the actual assetwhat they have, the know-how and competences of their employees and managers is. Since in many companies decisions are still purely numbers-based, this asset goes down. This is because it is not accounted for as an asset, but appears in the income statement in the form of costs. One more reason to once again emphasise further training and competence development as a central management task.
"Delivering quality, handing over responsibility, involving employees and letting them do what they burn for - with a common goal, freedom of design and trust." so according to Dieter Furch, Managing Director of Stingl GmbH in Munichleadership. Read the interview to find out what this looks like at Stingl.
Corona requires it more than before. What was previously a marathon of successive meetings is now one too. A meeting marathon - only digital. In themselves, telephone and video conferences offer the chance to get to the point more quickly. The prerequisite for this is that they are conducted correctly. Here are some tips on how to do this.
Crises demand drastic changes in a short time. In these changes lie opportunities. To exploit these Opportunities to is used by, a healthy Balance between savings and investments be found.
For the Head of Innovation & Technologies at E.G.O. Elektro-Gerätebau GmbH in Oberderdingen, Dr Patricie Merkert, includes Leadership has two aspects: Enabling the development of potential and visionary thinking. In an interview with Sabine Walter, she explains what attracts her to leadership and how she manages to get the best out of people and her teams.
Silke Kirsch, executive at international exhibition stand builder Rappenglitz says: No matter who you lead, children, customers or employees, it is always about people. When we see them, value them and give them space for developmentthat would be a big leap towards a better corporate culture and ultimately also towards better togetherness in our society.
Many people define taking on management responsibility as a career goal. They want to lead. They want to take on responsibility. The motivation behind this is the development of one's own self and the development of one's own salary and status. But taking on leadership responsibility is much more than that.
In this article, I explain what leadership means to me and how others recognise that managers take this responsibility seriously.
We are located at the beginning of the 21st century in a fundamental social change. In order to shape this in such a way that we survive as humanity, a fundamental Paradigm shift required. We need a culture of trust instead of fear, as well as genuine encounters and sustainable relationships. We need courage and the willingness to take responsibility. - for themselves, for others and for society. In this article we focus on the Leaders in the 21st century and on three key leadership competencies which help rethinking the topic and are part of and a prerequisite for this paradigm shift.
Richard Edelman, head of the American communications agency of the same name, Edelman, put it very clearly in his interview with Chelsea Spieker on 22 October. "Stand up and lead!", he urged the leaders from German business. The reason for this call was the result of this year's "Trust Barometer", which was compiled by the Edelman agency for the "Made in Germany" seal of quality. It makes clear that the brand "Germany" has suffered damage. This article is therefore about leadership, what it means at the beginning of the 21st century and how it can help to restore trust in "Made in Germany".
Meetings are the number one time eater in many organisations. On average, managers lose more than one working day per week to unproductive meetings. This can be changed if meetings are adequately prepared and really conducted. In our Seminar "Talk.Clarify.Decide" you will not only learn how to get to the point in 10-minute meetings.You will also get an overview of three different leadership philosophies: Lean, Management by objectives, Agile leadership.
The figures from the latest Gallup Engagement Index are as sobering as ever: around 2/3 of all employees have resigned internally and are working to rule. The associated economic damage amounts to around 150 billion euros per year in Germany alone. One of the main causes of employees resigning are managers who do not fulfil their role.
In this article, I explain what the causes of inadequate leadership are, what competences effective leaders have and how developing an understanding of leadership is the first step towards an effective and modern leadership culture.
Agility is the new buzzword in the leadership world. Anyone who is not agile has obviously not yet understood it. Agility, it seems at the moment, is - along with digitalisation - the panacea for all problems that companies have. As we experience it, this often leads to grotesque situations. But Agility Is a Mindsetno tools. If companies want to become agile, the main thing is to embody this attitude and create structures in which this attitude can be effective.
Trust is the basis of a benevolent relationship, of good cooperation. It is even the basis of our own successful further development.
If we trust ourselves and our strengths, we will make different decisions. as if we lack this self-confidence.
Termination and separation processes are a great challenge for all involved. This leads to the talks being delayed or insufficiently prepared.
With these tips you can shape your separation processes in an appreciative way.
Executives spend between 60-90% of their working time in meetings. They lose more than one working day per week to unproductive meetings, according to a study by the market research company Harris. This is often because meetings are often inadequately prepared, not really led and the simplest ground rules are not followed. The following tips will help you to increase the productivity of your meetings so that you can make good use of your working time and that of your colleagues.
Mobile working has become an integral part of our working world. But there are companies that, after initial generosity with regard to working hours and work location, restrict mobile working again. One reason for this is the fear of many managers of losing control.
In this article we give Tips as you also lead at a distance in such a way that the result- and goal-oriented work is maintained.
Part of targeted leadership development are customised training programmes. These include training on personality development, communication and leadership.
What we teach in these seminars stays with you and leads to a return on your investment in staff and leadership development.
Training overview:
Leadership developmentOur top management coaching is aimed at managing directors, entrepreneurs and first-level managers.
Book executive coaching