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

Rolf van Dick: Coming to your own personal styles of leadership, if you are inspired by these
great people and try to be the leader that you just described to be effective yourself. What do
you actually do? For example to maintain kindness in situations where you have to work with
difficult people who are not kind?
Michael West: You talked about my role as the executive Dean of the Business School. And
for me that was an opportunity to try to put into practice the learning that I’ve derived from
Psychology particularly over the years about what constitutes leadership and what constitutes
an effective culture within organizations. So that was an amazing privilege to say well here is
a laboratory of an organization with 200 people, with a turnover of 15 million Euro and let’s
see what happens when you put this into practice. For me that was about making sure that
there was a clear vision for the organization that we had clear objectives at every level. That
the management team had clear objectives that the departments the teams the individuals all
had clear aligned objectives about what we were seeking to achieve. Making sure that there
was a climate within which people felt valued and respected and supported where we did a lot
of appreciation, awards for being innovative or inspirational. I think if you give a lot of
positive feedback to people, I think it’s very easy to give negative feedbacks; however there
are some sorts of behaviors that are so contrary to the values and norms of the organization
that if they are tolerated then they undermine the culture. And I think the mistake that we
make in many organizations is we do not deal with the bad behavior in an effective way
particularly when it is from senior staff. But my view has always been that when there is bad
behavior that it is dealt with swiftly, immediately and decisively. And if the individual will
not change the behavior, then they have to leave the organization. If you are not going to
contribute to the community if you going to undermine the community trough being
aggressive, dishonest or abusive then there is no place for you in the community ultimately. I
think there are number of steps up to managing that exit about coaching people and giving
people direction, but I think we have to be decisive in the end about saying that’s
unacceptable and you can not be a part of the community. So there are two sides to this, you
know. If you want to create a kind, positive and effective organization then there is a lots of
great things you can do but the other side of that is you have to be very clear and very
decisive about the behavior that go completely against the culture that you are trying to create.
In my opinion in many organizations we failed to be decisive.
Rolf van Dick: How do you think people can learn these qualities? Can we learn to become
effective leaders in the sense that you just described? Or do some people have an edge for
whatever reason.
Michael West: My belief is that we can learn. I feel what I have done is to learn to become a
little bit more effective over time. And I think that the things we have to put into operations
are not complicated. We need to give people a clear direction we need to have clear direction
in organizations and a big part of that is listening to what it is the people in the organization
want to achieve what the organization wants to achieve. So the role of a leader is a lot of time
listening and learning from the people he or she leads. Furthermore then helping to craft or
sculptor direction which both meets the kind of environmental demands that are around there
and reflex the values of the people within the organization. What we also need to do is to
ensure that there are good relationships within organizations, in other words people are
professional they work together well they get on. You talked about the coal mine which is a
dreadful environment, but for me what made it very manageable were the amazing humor, wit
and fun that the people had on the ground, as well as they were really looking after each other.
It is about creating environments of good relationships were leaders also needed to spend a lot
of time giving positive feedback. But that’s not about platitudinous that is about being