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

genuine being open being curious to learn being kind with people and above all being
appreciative and continuing to be appreciative. I think even just putting those steps in place
you are kind of 90% at the way there as a leader. Making sure people are clear about what it is
very quiet to do, making sure they feel valued, respected and supported and as I said earlier
intervening in the areas of the organization which are toxic and not allowing that to become
chronic.
Rolf van Dick: Those things you mention are simple messages when you say people can
learn to do this to become more effective leaders. I mean we have all this business schools
and training institutes and our research hopefully is putting into some practice. Why does it so
often go wrong? Why are many people so ill, burned out and especially absenteeism is a big
problem in the UK and in Germany. Why do we have these problems?
Prof. Michael West: I think the reason is, that we do not put the principles into operations
and I think it is a challenge for us, as researchers and as organizational scholars, to try to
understand why is it that given all the knowledge we have about what makes for an effective
organization managers and leaders not actually doing that in practice. And it seems to me
there are probably a number of reasons. One is a sort of cultural legacy that for the last 100
years we have had the legacy if you like the old historical industrial context where command
and control was the way that you got things done in mass production in the way you got
things done in heavy industries which were male dominated anyway. We have to somehow
let go of this cultural legacy and begin to recognize that that is not an effective way of
ensuring productivity and profitability in the well being of people as you indicated. I think
there is as well something about the leaders in organizations who are predominantly males,
and as you know the male approach is often to do do do and to be focused on getting things
done, making an impact, making a difference, driving and being strong. If you like
stereotypical female orientation of nurturing, enabling, listening and taking time, I want to say
that human communities have evolved in ways with to enable them to survive and human
communities had always a balance of men and women. Many of our organizations do not,
they are dominated by the men on the top and that I think is potentially unhealthy.
I think the third reason why we do not put into practice what we know from so much research
is that managers often feel that the people stuff although it is called soft, the soft side of
management it is actually the hard side of management. It is much easier to deal with a set of
accounts, a piece of technology, a set of e-mails to respond it seems then to sit and listen to
your staff when they have concerns when they have suggestions to change when they express
their anxieties. Somehow to managers it seems that the people stuff is hard rather than soft
and so I think they avoid it and yet everything that we know is that actually the people side of
organizations the outcomes are so much better because people take care of the technology the
finances and the other tasks.
Rolf van Dick: What are the biggest obstacles then or which obstacles have you observed to
make you effective leader? Is it the people you deal with, the environment, the rules or is it
maybe pressure from the outside?
Michael West: I think one pressure is the inbuilt tendency of organizations to standardize
procedures. Organizations are in the business of ensuring that there is a standard way of doing
things and that all of people who make up the organization behave in particularly ways. So
that tendency to standardization and homogenization if you like I think is a barrier, because
what it does is it tells people you cannot do things differently. Now at a superficial level
people will agree with what I am saying but I think it has deep consequences because it means
that many of the messages people get at work are messages to tell them what you can do and