Leadership-Interview-Transkript - Sozialpsychologie - Goethe ...

element of people oriented, enablement and empowerment, very self-motivated structures
around that. So you can do both, and I think that is at the core of all the learning after Douglas
McGregor. It is all about the combination of the one element with the other element. What
makes military leaders – the good ones – so successful, is because they care so much about
the people in their organization. They know: If we make mistakes as leaders, people will die.
And in a military environment, it is not like in sports or in business, where you want to win
21:20, and you still win, right. No, no, you want to win 21:0. No casualties on your side, you
do not want to write letters home saying ‘your husband’ or ‘your wife’, ‘we lost them,
because of mistakes we made in the field, in the organization, in the strategy, in the way we
lead’, right. So I think, if we look at it more deeply, and I grew up in the military, there where
you care the most, you will have the most of success. If you care and add the analytical and
methodical strength to execute, you actually have the best of both worlds. And I think the
future of great leadership is combining that in the best possible manner. And maybe an
additional answer: That will be different, situation by situation by situation, yes. But it will
have both.
Rolf van Dick: What you are describing is also I think the modern, latest research on, say,
transformational leadership. Leaders need to be able to both work with transactions, paying
people or rewarding and punishing people for good or bad performance, and on top of that be
considered, provide a vision, etc. Now, you can obviously also care for the wrong cause. So,
which role do values play for deciding which is actually really good leadership or not? I
mean, we see so many leaders of the banks at the moment, during the financial crisis, that
have been good leaders because the banks have made large profit, but obviously whether they
are really good leaders is at least a question…
Patrick Cowden: A very relevant question. Especially the last three years, five years, maybe.
You know, I call it the ‘phase of extreme capitalism’, we are gone very far on the capitalistic
principles, of shareholder value, and doing anything it takes to maximize that principle. And I
think it went the wrong way. I think most of the world would say it went the wrong way. But
the question really gets back to the point of, you know, what is underlying all these systems,
that really makes the difference. And I am with you – the method is on the one side, the
process is on the one side, and then the emotional leadership on the other side, emotional
intelligence. What everyone forgets is, what is underneath that. We do not talk about that so
often. We talk about transformational energy, we talk about organizational energy. I was just
in St. Gallen recently, with Heike Bruch, and talked a little bit about those pieces. I think what
we forget is underneath that we talk values, underneath that we talk beliefs. And we neglect
those two layers of organizational and transformational process. And because we neglect
those layers, we get into problems a lot faster, because when you neglect something you do
not talk about it, and when you do not talk about it, it is not a conscious element of your
leadership structure, your leadership culture, and your leadership style. So what I believe is
that the underlying element is what I call ‘belief’. It is believing in yourself as a leader,
believing in your team, and believing in the purpose. If you do not believe in it, you may not
know what it is. If you have got the wrong purpose, everything you do afterwards – it will be
going the wrong path, right. So I think it is really important as a leader to get back to the
basics of the fundamental beliefs that bind the organization together. It starts with yourself,
extends to the team in the organization, and has a lot to do with the purpose. Only after that
can you start talking about values. What are the values, that connect all the people in the
organization together, that are bound to those beliefs. And those values, you know the words
are integrity, and sincerity, and honesty, and openness, we say that a lot, but do we actually do
it every day and in every interaction we have? So I think those two pieces, Rolf, you are very
right, they are so fundamental, but they are so neglected in the discussions that we have and