Leadership strength! Plenty of strength, not enough leadership?

Leadership strength! Plenty of strength, not enough leadership?

Are you a strong #Leader too? By nature, I am extremely structured—certainly one of my strengths!

Looking critically at my many years of leadership experience, I realise that, particularly early in my career, I followed this inclination and expended considerable energy trying to achieve #Impact in my area of responsibility. There was hardly a management method I did not try.

“We are introducing #OKR—objectives and key results,” a leader recently told me. Alarm bells rang inside me. I remembered a conversation with my coach, who said: “Mr Zeisig, I often experience you as very factual, very structured and extremely strong methodologically as a leader. That can sometimes feel threatening and restrictive to others. Try being a little more like #AtzeSchröder.”

“She’s mad,” I thought. “Atze Schröder!?” But I did print out a picture of the comedian and stick it in my notebook. Figuratively speaking, he is now firmly etched into my “leadership brain”: methods and techniques, metrics, dashboards, performance discussions, goal agreements, development conversations following HR guidelines—all these things matter.

Yet truly good leaders show a real interest in people beyond these methods and techniques. They hire excellent people and excellent #Leaders themselves, delight in others’ successes, inspire people, create space, let go, develop talent, give it a stage, foster togetherness and build real teams that trust each other. This also includes shared experiences people talk about years later, fun and laughing together. It need not involve Atze Schröder’s bad jokes.

What makes a good leader for you? Share it in the comments.