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Department Management & Economics
Leadership as a core competence of management: Regarding the Quadriga understanding of leadership
The term "leadership" often instils a sense of unease. In a democratic society, all citizens are equal by law and as an adult, one actually does not want to be led. "Leadership" sounds archaic, like something far in the past that no one actually wants to be involved with anymore.
However, in democratic societies, there is private property and therefore rights of disposal for good reasons; and companies need to structure these rights of disposal for efficiency reasons, i.e. create an organisational structure. Organisational structures set a framework, but do not always lead to the desired behaviour by the participants. In everyday company life, many small and sometime large management processes are required, in order to ensure an efficient process and this requires leadership. Expressed in economic terms, a company with good leadership makes enormous savings on transaction costs. The learning of management and leadership competences is therefore very high on the agenda of many companies for good reasons.
However, these competences cannot be learned quickly, but rather, on the basis of a development process over a period of several years. This is influenced by three factors:
- observing the management behaviour of others prior to and while assuming a leadership role oneself
- gaining information and behavioural tips from management training courses and leadership training
- requested or unrequested feedback from others regarding one?s own behaviour, i.e. a comparison of self-image and perception by others
It is typical that new, but also experienced managers, set to work with great respect for the subject of leadership. The term 'leadership' has a high symbolic meaning on which one is measured, and it can take a while until self-evidence is developed with leadership. Until then, there are a series of typical errors that are particularly made at the beginning of a leadership role:
- Many new managers try to avoid leadership. They withdraw at their workplace and neither control operational processes, nor social relationships at the workplace.
- Many feel more committed to the employees than to the corporate objectives and exhibit camaraderie instead of professional distance to the employees.
- A fear of making decisions is also frequently encountered. Topics are endlessly discussed with the employees, but the manager cannot take the initiative an issue an order.
Each of these three errors can lead to annoyed employees, who then prefer to handle things themselves, instead of integrating themselves into the manager?s leadership process. The result of this is that the manager is made even more uncertain in his or her management role and the situation becomes even worse.
In order to avoid this vicious circle, management and leadership competences not only need to be learned at an early stage, but also be refreshed repeatedly during the course of a career. This is the focus of the Quadriga events on the subject of leadership. We not only provide behavioural tips and point out how to avoid leadership errors, but also structure the event interactively, so that all participants can receive feedback from the other participants. This way, each participant can compare his or her self-image of his or her management style with the impression gained by the others.