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The nextleader does not lead alone

Often, you can’t shake the feeling that managers are expected to fulfill an incredible number of roles and tasks at the same time. This makes it all the more important for the nextleader to get to grips with his team and also use it for his leadership tasks. Either the nextleader succeeds in being the eierlegende Wollmilchsau, or he lets leadership tasks be solved by a dynamic and interactive influencing process in the team. In today’s article, you will find out which requirements must be met.

The talent check – discovering and developing potential

The promotion of young talent in the company, be it apprentices, dual students or trainees, is about developing potential and about the question of which best possible path to take in the company in the future. This poses an enormous challenge, as the young talents sometimes still lie dormant in the corporate context like diamonds in the rough that need to be found and polished.

How can training and HR managers discover these unique gifts and talents? And how do you reconcile these and personal orientation movements with future corporate interests?

The nextleader leads healthy – himself and others

Can managers and their leadership behavior be the cause of increased sick days and conspicuous absenteeism? Can leadership actually make people sick? Yes, it can. Managers have a significant impact on maintaining and promoting the mental health of their employees. And mental health in turn affects physical health. A large number of studies prove the connection between leadership and employee health. Employees who receive little support from their supervisors suffer more from neck and shoulder complaints as well as cardiovascular diseases. Employees who receive support from their supervisors, on the other hand, are more stress-resistant and their mood is significantly less affected. Studies have also shown that social support from the next level up, increases job satisfaction. Irritability, work-related anxiety, and fatigue depression are less common among employees who feel socially supported. They have higher self-esteem and exhibit more significant life satisfaction.

Accordingly, the nextleader should do one thing above all: lead healthily and, with his personal leadership style, make a contribution to keeping his own employees mentally and physically healthy.

The nextleader 25 years ago

What did nextleader look like 25 years ago? In a guest article, Dr. Winfried Felser summarizes his own experience, which he made in a small village in Spain in Lab 2000 in 1991. While it may not have seemed particularly exciting at first glance, even then there was the nextleader who won the hearts of his team, was authentic, created a sense of “we” through shared purpose, empowered new leaders and fostered autonomy, all while pursuing and achieving clear goals. Of course, the world has changed in the last quarter century, and yet these aspects are still just as relevant to leadership today, finding new application in the context of digitalization, the network economy, and other values.

The nextleader wins through trust

Far too often, executives still live by the motto “trust is good, control is better.” This completely overlooks the need to build trust in the leader-employee relationship in our dynamic and complex world. In today’s article, you can read how the interplay of integrity and trust makes it possible to build a trusting relationship.

The nextleader can be recognized by certain talents

In our consulting practice, we repeatedly find that applicants for a management position that is to be filled in the short term are often selected using the same methods as junior employees who are actually to be developed in the long term(s). Thus, there is no clean differentiation between competencies and potentials. But actually it is clear: If I am looking for a competent manager for a current management job, I need a competence diagnosis in order to make an optimal decision. But if I am looking for the best talents for a talent pool for later management tasks, then competence diagnostics reaches its limits. After all, how can even the best talent competently (i.e., confidently, consciously, and repeatably) handle difficult leadership situations without knowledge, training, and experience?

Therefore, it is time to implement sensible and action-based potential diagnostics in the entire trend topic of “talent management”. This also offers the chance to discover hidden and less visible talents. In a meta-analysis on leadership potential, we investigated which talents speak for high leadership success here. Read more in our full article.

The nextleader is developed, not born

Future leadership development must be personalized, self-organized and emotionally anchored. This requires a new understanding of “learning” and skills development.

The nextleader does not have to be perfect but reflected

It is an old adage that managers have to operate in the area of tension between employees and the company and manage this. If you read current specialist articles on the subject of tomorrow’s leadership and what the manager must be able to do, the question quickly arises as to how the nextleader is supposed to do it all. The truth is, the nextleader cannot be equally good at all tasks, but he must be aware of the requirements and his behavior in order to lead successfully in the complex and dynamic world. In today’s article, you will learn what role feedback and self-reflection play here and how the process can be meaningfully integrated into the company.

The nextleader promotes talent

Managers who recognize and use the individual talents of their employees lay the foundation for lasting motivation and top performance. The nextleader is aware of this fact and recognizes what is special in each of its employees. Read our post on how this is possible by hiring the right people, customizing the job for the employee, and how the nextleader makes the employee great.

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