Success with contemporary leadership
Organizational analyses show that the understanding of leadership has increasingly evolved away from the heroic "one-man show" in recent years.
"Today, leadership can no longer just give instructions. It must engage in processes that are open to results. The key to success lies in joint performance," says Prof. Dr. Peter Kruse, German management consultant and honorary professor.
Change in thinking and behavior necessary
Teams, working groups and project groups have become the mainstays of successful organizations. Sustainable working relationships between the group members must develop and are mandatory prerequisites for the successful achievement of results - however, they can only be planned and influenced to a limited extent. In addition, the constellations of different groups are becoming increasingly complex, power symmetries more twisted, team compositions more volatile and time-limited. This leads to situations that are hardly predictable and raises many questions for managers.
Leadership has indisputably become more demanding and requires a change in mindset and behavior. According to the personnel service provider Hays, modern leadership follows new patterns. It involves employees more, actively involves and networks them, manages groups and uses the resulting energy positively for people and the organization. For example, social competence (78 % of respondents) is the top priority for managers. Anyone who works with groups knows that this involves a complex and dynamic network of relationships that calls for new leadership behavior.
Contemporary leadership skills
Current surveys show that organizations and people today do not need more or less leadership than in the past. Rather, leadership is needed that aligns its role with the current zeitgeist. The success of cooperation in groups does not depend on leadership alone, but on the overall interaction and cooperation skills of all team members. Whenever people work together, complex, group-dynamic processes take place. These run on a deeper level than the factual level and influence the overall result of the teamwork - positively as well as negatively. The decisive factor on the part of leadership is how and with what understanding it steers a group. This involves striking a balance between active control and the development of a group's self-controlling powers.
If leadership succeeds in perceiving, understanding and productively using the dynamics and power plays of a group, it can produce top teams and achieve performance benefits such as shared commitment, identification with the task and satisfaction. To do this, people need meaning, autonomy, and sustaining relationships. SMEs in particular have a great opportunity here to stand out from competitors - especially large companies - in the job market. The size of the company alone makes it easier to involve a large number of employees, to bring them into a relationship with one another and to jointly find the degree of autonomy that leads to top performance. The meaning is not given by the leader - it emerges through the joint process. This requires leaders to have a positive attitude towards people and to be able to engage with the process of the group.
The question is whether the old generation of managers can still meet today's requirements at all. The answer is yes. Because behavior can always be adapted, and the human brain can adjust to new things. Here, too, it comes down to a positive basic attitude.
Leveraging the team dynamic
Experience shows that calibrating one's own leadership behavior cannot be achieved in a quiet room alone, nor by learning traditional management theories. Instead, it is a matter of the leadership personality of the managers themselves.
Group dynamics training is a suitable form of learning for leaders. They differ from other training courses because they do not use standard recipes. Instead, they promote the development of personal effectiveness and strengthen diagnostic competence for the sensitive management of groups. They provide conceptual knowledge and train practical action competence. What is special about this form of learning is that the usual separation of experience (emotion) and cognition (cognition) is eliminated. Leaders can experience personal behavior and their own effectiveness among peers, examine conscious or unconscious leadership behavior, deal with attitudes and behaviors, and gain experience with new leadership practices. Finally, useful skills are strengthened, functional strategies are retained, and less useful ones are adapted or abandoned.
Leadership is and remains decisive for whether organizations become good or bad places to work, whether people in organizations experience joy and meaning or demotivation and disorientation. A group dynamic training is a way to initiate inner changes that increase the understanding for oneself and others in the leadership task. This leads to better results with less effort and more effectiveness. Those who can deal with complexity and lead with purpose and energy have an easier time. Thus, the type of leadership will remain a decisive competitive factor in the future.
Husi Giessmann Lippuner http://h-g-l.ch/
