As a manager, you move from a management role to a C-level role (or from a team lead role to a management role). What happens then? Are you thrown in at the deep end? Or do you jump in yourself? After all, there’s a lot of money involved in the promotion and the new challenge. As a new manager, you have to be able to clench the cheeks of your precious buttocks and hold on to it. Right?
Competence and mental development in competitive sport?
That’s what we do in competitive sport. Promotion of a soccer player to the Bundesliga? Joining FC Bayern Munich? And then: Just do it! You’ve trained long enough, now please just score goals.
Or do we? Is that how we do it? No!
The new top footballer at FC Bayern receives a well-founded, professional sparring session, at least in the form of the following modules:
- A – His role is clarified together with him. Playing position, game development strategy, next tactical steps. Expectations and goals are defined.
- B – His playing skills are compared with expectations and goals, strengths and development issues are identified.
- C – Mental experts help to reflect on how the individual player personality (energy, motivation, clarity, communication, dealing with conflicts, inner blockages, etc.) contributes to the goals – or makes it more difficult to achieve them.
- D – Finally, an individual development plan is developed from the role, expectations and goals, skills and mental issues. This is accompanied individually over the long term – with trainers, physiotherapists and mental development experts.
If the decision-makers at FC Bayern Munich simply threw top players onto the pitch and let them run – we would all shake our heads. And the good times at FC Bayern Munich would probably soon be over.
The success of players and teams is not only based on the current quality of the top players, but also on how systematically players and teams are developed.
False beliefs in leadership development
What we would shake our heads at in competitive sport is unfortunately still common in management development: just swim, you’ll get enough money! Unfortunately, the topic suffers from some false beliefs:
- Coaching is like therapy to fix our leaders who are not functioning well!
- If I, as a manager, look for a coach myself, I have failed!
- If it becomes known in the company that I am being coached as a manager, then that’s embarrassing!
Let’s go back to elite sport. An athlete seeks out his coaches, physiotherapists and mental experts in order to accompany his necessary further growth process, not because “he is not working at the moment”. Leadership development is not therapy for the dysfunctional. Nobody would say they have failed as a leader (sorry, mistake: athlete). And embarrassing? No! From my own experience – I also play competitive sport – successful athletes are always asked: Who do you train with? Who do you work with? For games, fitness and mental training.
I hope this comparison shows the absurdity of the beliefs described above. Systematic support for managers strengthens managers and companies, is an investment with an extremely high ROI and pays for itself quickly. Successful growth of companies through successful growth in leadership!
Overall program Change of leadership – how to do it right?
We have developed the following structure based on many years of experience in supporting managers:
A – We clarify the new leadership role, the environment, the new culture and discuss expectations and goals with the manager. We understand where the manager is coming from (environment, experience, culture) and discuss the individual strategy and tactics to achieve the goals in the new role. Our own leadership experience helps here – like all the other coaches in our team, I have decades of “real” leadership experience at top level. We know what it’s all about.
B – We jointly analyze the executive’s leadership competencies, understand strengths and weaknesses together and carry out a comparison with the specific role in order to identify strengths and development issues. The basis for this is the internationally established, scientifically based Global Executive Leadership Mirror (GELM®) developed in the Insead environment by the Kets de Vries Institute. This allows us to obtain a complete picture of leadership competencies (current and target) along 16 leadership competencies in the dimensions of Leading Self, Leading Teams, Leading Organizations, Leveraging Networks, Life Indicators and Perceived Performance. We weight the relevance of these dimensions individually, adapted to the specific new role. We don’t think so, we base our work on a well-founded analysis.
C – As mental experts, we help managers to reflect on how their individual personality (energy, motivation, clarity, communication, dealing with conflicts, inner blockages, etc.) contributes to their goals. We call the most important aspects of personality that can have a positive or negative influence on success “life themes”. The basis is a very detailed, intensive “life theme session” (approx. 3 hours). In other words, we ensure that the mental is linked to the content (the leadership skills) is linked. Mental work alone (classic coaching) is just as ineffective as content work alone (focus on “hard” topics, training).
D – Finally, the role, expectations and goals, competencies and mental issues are turned into an individual development plan for the manager. We support this development plan with focused content training, skills development and mental development. Typically, support is provided over a period of at least 9 months, usually 1.5 hours every 2-4 weeks. This often develops into a longer-term, joint journey with regular re-evaluation of the situation (point A), leadership skills (point B), mental issues (point C) and updating of the development plan. We are the external sparring partner who will accompany you in your new role. Just like in top-class sport!
The success of managers lies not only in their current quality (leadership strength, mental strength), but also in how they systematically develop themselves and how naturally this process is accompanied by their company (their training team, so to speak).
My invitation
Do you have a new leadership role? Would you like professional, comprehensive support for your development? Like in top-class sport? Tell me about your new role, your challenge and get in touch with me.
If you want to get straight into action, I invite you to a no-obligation meeting. Give me a call, write to me or book an MS Teams appointment directly below. Let’s clarify together which steps will make the biggest difference for you and your team now and how you can achieve success through energy, stability and focus.
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