Investments that come to fruition

Successful leadership development …

• provides a concept and a plan of action which corresponds to your corporate strategy and the continuous development of the leadership and corporate cultures.
• is based on a competency model: It includes a clearly recognizable profile of core competencies. It is aligned with the corporate strategy and culture and is the basis for training contents and the leadership tools which are to be implemented.
• finds the appropriate balance between centralized control and decentralized autonomy.
• prefers a heterogeneous or international group of participants.
• works with experience (e.g. action learning, learning from projects) and includes a mixture of different ways of learning.
• includes self-responsibility as a central principle for successful learning.
• defines a selection process which makes it possible to recognize potentials and actively involves respective supervisors.
• is continuously evaluated and developed further.
• leads to further, self-organized ways of learning such as collegial coaching. It is an investment in the continuous development of the corporate culture. Purely quantitative evidence for the viability of leadership development is too short-sighted and does not do justice to the complexity of this topic. What is important is that the management and HR are as a whole are convinced of the principle benefit and the indispensability of leadership development.

Individual elements of the learning process:

Giving and receiving feedback

The leadership development programme encourages and demands a mutual learning process within a group. This means the integration of regular learning and feedback cycles – by the trainers as well as by the participants.
The learning methods become continuously more demanding as the development of the process within the group takes its course. Due to constant trainers it is possible to work in a process-oriented manner and to reflect on the group dynamics in terms of a joint learning experience. This additional plane helps the group to increasingly build up their ability to practice self-guidance and self-organization and to use this productively, for the later implementation of collegial coaching “on the job”.
After completing the seminar blocks, it is possible to receive qualified, structured feedback from the trainer and to define development areas and steps for targeted further development together with the trainer. Both are set down in writing.

Implementation phase

Transfer planning is conducted at the end of each module. Participants of the leadership development programme select leadership issues and gain experience with these.At the beginning of each module these transfer experiences are reflected on and evaluated. From the very beginning learning is linked to practical leadership work within this seminar.

Learning partnership

Every implementation phase includes at least one meeting with learning partners. This type of networking creates an appropriate, effective framework for selectively discussing current leadership challenges.
The learning partnerships are formed at the beginning of the leadership development programme. Two colleagues respectively, who have not known each other thus far, form a continuous, trusting partnership throughout the duration of the leadership development programme. At first they work on providing answers to selective questions; as time goes by more and more practical cases are provided and reflected on.
This is ideal as preparation for the collegial coaching sessions later on.

The power of leadership

Leadership means the development of employees. With this in mind, the supervisors of the participants are placed in an essential role. They are the ones who provide “on the job” targeted feedback and who allocate increasingly more responsibility by means of extended duties. This is taken into account at the beginning of the programme, after the 4th module as well as at the end of the programme. These breakpoints are used to carry out feedback sessions between the supervisors and the participants.

Steering committee

The reliability of working on useful concepts and the chances that the development processes connected to these will last and lead to visible results, is increased if a steering committee takes responsibility for it.
Prerequisites for the work of the steering committee:

• Size of the steering committee: 3 - 5 people
• Representative composition of the group

The most important duties of the steering committee are:

• Process responsibility
• Definition of and agreement on the contents of the leadership development programme
• Contact with participants 

Collegial coaching

After completing the seminar blocks the leaders continue to receive support through the introduction of collegial coaching. The interactive methods which are taught in the seminar blocks provide an important basis for the coaching. The leadership circle is set up in the following way:

• Formation of collegial discussion groups
• Prerequisites are trust and the willingness to reflect within a group
• Meetings at regular intervals (e.g. every eight weeks), concomitant to day-to-day work (e.g. approx. 2 – 3 hours)
• At first internal support through personnel developer; by and by the group will organize itself
• Contents, e.g. – consultation amongst colleagues to address individual daily leadership issues – learning to apply structured procedures for collegial coaching – expert discussions

Implementing what you have learned in practical phases

The seminar blocks encourage and demand a concrete implementation of that which is learnt into one’s own practical ways of working and leading. This is achieved particularly by means of

• Transfer tasks for topics from the seminar blocks
• Learning partnerships
• Involvement of supervisors

Learning methods within the seminar blocks

All seminar blocks include experience-oriented leadership exercises. The respective contents are worked out and trained in a hands-on and process-oriented manner.
The participants actively contribute their goals, experience and questions and link them to the learned contents. In terms of content, the group actively agrees on individual focus areas. A broad range of brain-friendly learning and working methods are used to ensure that a lively learning and working atmosphere is maintained at all times. The following individual working methods are used:

• Experience-oriented group exercises
• Short inputs from leadership and communication research
• Dialogue and exchange of experiences
• Individual and group work
• Plenary reflection and discussion
• Application of metaphors, symbols and storytelling
• Short exercises to enable brain-friendly work
• Role plays
• Short films
• Feedback
• Learning partnership / self-study / recommended reading
• Reflection of practical phases
• Transfer planning