Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: What role does reflection play in leadership? Dr. Yasemin Yazan explores leadership with Jürgen, Marc and Sabine — from a Gallup study on employee loyalty, to why Marc considers Trump a master of emotional manipulation despite despising him, to the sharp line Jürgen draws between managing and truly leading…
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
A very good morning. Today we’re continuing with reflection in leadership as our room topic under the overarching theme of reflection, and today we want to engage with the question, what role does reflection play in leadership. We’d already picked up the leadership topic before, and we can gladly connect this or that in terms of terminology today too, and maybe another note — when we talk about leadership, we can of course consider two components in particular, leading other people on one hand, and on the other hand self-leadership, leading yourself, that we include both components here too. I think the last few days were also very, very strongly aimed at this component of one’s own inward view, and here we can now certainly also choose the focus, to actually look more toward the outward side, so leading other people, but nonetheless gladly making the cross-connections too, and gladly including this or that with regard to self-leadership too. So you’re all really, really warmly invited to join in this morning too, with your first thoughts, impulses, experiences, maybe also concrete examples to illustrate, to shape the reflection room together today, and see which direction the room develops in, and what insights we can derive from that for ourselves. And for those joining for the first time today, another reminder that the room is recorded the entire time. That means, anyone who joins automatically agrees that the whole thing gets published too. Then we have three small room rules: a profile picture where you’re recognizable, first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio. And anyone who doesn’t agree with that, or can’t speak right now, of course has, as always, the possibility to contribute something in the chat too, so we can pick that up here over time, provided it hasn’t already been answered or addressed elsewhere. Yes, with that I’d like to mute myself and see who’d like to start with me this morning. A very good morning, dear Marc. What are your first thoughts on the topic?
Good morning to the group. Nice to be back with you all. I’d like to go straight to the question, what role does reflection play in leadership, and answer the question with what we’ve learned so far. We see what we want to see, and so I’d answer the question, with which role does reflection play in leadership. It plays a big role, it plays a small role, and it plays no role at all, because we see what we want to see. And in my thoughts I came across the Gallup study, and to engage with this topic, to reflect on it for myself, I recalled the Gallup study, and the Gallup study is about — my topic, reflection, whether it plays a role, so you can follow my train of thought, I’m not referring to self-reflection now, but as a leader in a company, or as a leader, or as a leader in politics. There are leaders there too. And then I thought about it, thought about the Gallup study again, which shows that 20 percent of employees in Germany have mentally checked out, 45 percent are looking around. And now to the question, to what extent does reflection play a role in leadership. From that I’ve now — of course I’d like to give a clever answer, but these are only assumptions I can make. If 45 percent are looking for a new job, and 20 percent have mentally checked out, then either the possibility exists that leaders maybe don’t reflect at all, or they reflect and don’t apply the knowledge they’ve gained, or reflection by leaders has no effect at all, or I only see what I want to see, because with 35 percent something else seems to be happening. They haven’t mentally checked out, they’re not looking around either. So that could of course also be evidence that reflection is important after all, because otherwise maybe not 65 percent of employees would have checked out, but 80 or 90. And then two words that occurred to me afterward, to actually be able to address the topic — that I then distinguish, reflection as a leader, are we talking about team leadership, or are we talking about command and obedience, in the sense that there are also structures where team leadership and reflection aren’t feasible or applicable at all — and these terms, team leadership and command and obedience, play a really big role for me there too.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much, and what I also find great is that in your formulation you basically already did this — that you didn’t necessarily draw conclusions already, but actually opened up the different options, saying, well, it could be this, could be that, and I find that great, because it doesn’t go into evaluation, but actually opens up the various options, which factors or quantities could play a role here, and what that could mean as a consequence, but that it’s not fixed yet, so not establishing a direct causality, but also, with the 35 percent you talked about, there could be various factors too. Maybe those are employees who are still relatively new to the company, so they’re still looking around, or whatever. You could attach various interpretation possibilities to that now too, but ultimately we don’t know. What is a fact, at least, is that the Gallup study really did deliver these results, and interestingly there’s also this feedback loop here, or conclusions drawn from the study, that the leader plays a really essential and important role. And I found it so nicely put by you too, with, you could of course now get the idea that leaders maybe don’t reflect at all, or reflect in a way that apparently, in some way, isn’t serving the whole thing well. Maybe more factually oriented, simply, so to speak, in the context of the company, oriented purely toward the subject matter, the professional topics, they might well reflect quite a lot, but maybe not sufficiently with regard to collaboration, the team fabric, and so on. All the way to the last point you addressed too — what does leadership actually mean in this context? There are different forms of leadership, so there are also various terms that are gladly used, starting from supervisor, leadership, whatever, and it also says a fair amount about the hierarchical structures, or the extent of power structures, for example, or maybe also about the person’s attitude in a company. That can also be company-dependent, depending on the corporate culture too, how leadership is accordingly lived or implemented there. So, thank you so much for these various thoughts. Yes, and we see what we want to see. So it can play a big role, a small role, or no role at all, depending on how we look at it. And that connects again to the point we already picked up quite strongly yesterday too, that it makes clear, on one hand, that a conscious reflection has relevance, so not one that automatically takes place in some form, so to speak, but that it’s really consciously carried out. But that it can be the case, as we talked about yesterday, that external accompaniment can therefore certainly make sense, to uncover blind spots here, so that only what’s seen within the bubble, so to speak, that we’re in, gets seen, and unconscious bias applies, that we can’t always outsmart that, and this basically underlines again the relevance, how important this outside view, or the outward look from a third, independent person is, who’s maybe not in the organization, who isn’t biased, who doesn’t think within this bubble, in quotation marks, and accordingly can also draw attention to that through the corresponding questions, for example. Would you like to build on this too, Marc?
Yes, gladly. At this point I’d first like to thank dear Jürgen, who bears a large part of the responsibility for me reflecting like this. We talked yesterday, Jürgen took the time, we exchanged for an hour yesterday, and among other things we also talked about this room. And it became clear to me that, regardless of who, when we’re on stage and I bring an example now, and we — I’m just assuming we all have similar values, and that’s why similar thoughts run through all our heads. And that it can simply be exciting, in a reflection room, to also maybe take on the position of the devil’s advocate. So a contrary position, because that also helps me restructure thoughts, so to also think about things that actually don’t fit my value system, or that I don’t actually stand behind, because that raises new questions, forms new thoughts, and that’s overall more exciting than if I take an example and then get applause and say, I see it exactly the same way, I see it exactly the same way. And in this thought model I then engaged with this question, which reflection, so what role does reflection play in leadership? And unfortunately, God knows, I came back to the former president of the USA, where I thought, well, does he reflect? I’m convinced, without being a scientist or a psychologist, that this man is pretty narcissistic. But at the same time, as I said, I don’t like him. I stand by that, I’d put that in writing anywhere too. Nonetheless, I consider Trump one of the best people-readers I know. He uses a really, really big topic to pull people onto his side. He uses emotions, his entire rhetoric is built on emotions, completely detached from reason. Many things, if you engage with them, can be disproven and you can say, that’s not true, if we go into exchange. So if the two of us go into exchange, dear Yasemin, then I work with statistics, then I bring in scientists to consult, then you say, yes Marc, I see it, okay, I might have a different opinion, but I can prove it. But if I only address emotions and completely switch off reason, that seems to work, and in doing so, on this topic, what role does reflection play, I also came to the realization that 47 percent of people don’t live in democracies. I’m a big fan of democracy, please my values here too — I’m grateful to be able to live in Germany — but I’ve also taken note that 47 percent of people don’t live in democracies, and that there are also people, leaders of these non-democracies, who certainly don’t reflect in the sense of, how’s the market doing, how’s my citizen doing, do they feel good. And in doing so I caught myself sometimes looking to China for certain solution approaches too, and I’m definitely not for a dictatorship, definitely not, that doesn’t match my values, but back then, during the Corona period, I thought, isn’t this crazy, they build entire hospitals, cities, within a week or several weeks, here the application wouldn’t even have gone through yet. And then my head starts thinking, well, is that really the case, is a democracy, with all the problems we have and all the challenges facing us, is it always good if, to solve a problem, you form a circle of chairs and say, Jürgen, how do you feel about this, and Marc, what should we do, and say, no, I don’t know either, I need to reflect first, I need to think first, we’ll meet again in five years, while the problems mount in the meantime — and I notice that my brain uses extremely much energy on this, because I definitely want to keep this democratic understanding, as we do, and yet I sometimes ask myself whether reflection, in the role of a leader, a head of state, can always lead to an effective solution. I haven’t found a fitting answer for myself yet either, for how I could solve this better.
An interesting point, thank you so much, and here of course the question also arises, in quotation marks, how is democracy actually understood then? We’ve also talked about that in the past, and as in many other contexts too, yes, it might tend toward, I’ll stick with the image you used, I find it wonderful, with the circle of chairs being formed and endless debates then taking place, so to speak, and no agreement, no decisions, or decisions keep getting postponed further and further. By the way, also an image that keeps coming up for us in companies too, in very, very many places. The question is whether that has something to do with the form, so to speak, that’s being lived, so whether it has to do with democracy the way we understand and live it, or whether it’s also other aspects, like, for example, we also had this aspect with us yesterday, taking on responsibility and also making decisions, or being aware of your role, and so on. And in that sense this is again a kind of, I’ll call it a field of tension, where it’s about maintaining a certain balance, to a degree. On one hand really tolerating and listening to opinions, and at the same time, depending on the responsibility in the role I’m in, and the task I’ve taken on in various contexts, and if I then have decision-making authority within my scope, then accordingly, after having listened to opinions, maybe also making certain decisions if applicable, and not endlessly continuing to discuss. In this context we also like to talk about, for example in schools too, something like cuddle pedagogy, or something like that. Or in training this term is also used quite often. So, that a certain balance is established here, so to speak. And you see this again and again in company structures and forms too, how this is lived. The question is just whether you really turn it into an endless debate, or whether it’s just about, in quotation marks, opening up a corresponding framework, to also hear different expertise, to gather different opinions, to arrive at results together in exchange. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to wait until everyone agrees with it. And basically the structures are certainly there in democracy for that too, so that corresponding votes take place, majority voting, and so on, which ultimately lead to being able to bring about decisions too. I’d simply — this is just a thesis, feel free to check it for yourselves too, or give a statement on it — my impression is that it doesn’t ultimately have to do with the form per se, but with other connections, like, for example, not wanting to bear the responsibility, or not wanting to be the “bad guy” afterward, in quotation marks, that there’s simply too much debating in various places and too long no decisions are made at all, because you maybe shy away from making a decision, so to speak, and then also taking on the responsibility. There we’re again at the culture topic overall, which is also often present and prevails in companies. When something goes wrong, then people don’t look at what we can learn from that and do differently next time, but often you just look for the scapegoat, to let heads roll. And of course nobody wants to be in that role. And that sometimes leads to no decisions being made at all. Marc, would you like to build on this too?
Yes, I can underline that 100 percent. And yesterday I dug a bit deeper into the topic between command and obedience and team leadership, and found a pretty clever answer that I also fully agree with, from the bottom of my heart. As so often in life, it’s not just the one or the other that’s right, but both points have their justification. And practical examples where reflection might not be quite so helpful are in all safety-relevant matters, where you have to act immediately. Command, obedience. Someone gives a command and I have to act. I don’t need to engage with it, simply based on their experience. And these are things like in the military. If a general or a colonel says, we’re doing this and that now, then I can’t engage with that. It needs to be done now. If we’re in a crisis area and someone has command and the experience of what needs to be done now to save lives — that’s a matter of seconds, there’s no time for discussion. And then I — you just said the great word, responsibility. I’ve also observed that in companies. I used to get to accompany my father to meetings. And there were high-ranking managers sitting together with million-dollar salaries. And the smallest things, which were really totally unimportant, weren’t decided there. They discussed for hours about things that had no relevance at all. It wasn’t about whether a new fleet of vehicles worth several million was sold, or something like that, but it was really, really
about really, really small things. There you could also make a wrong decision. Not exaggerating, but say, do we drink Senseo coffee or another coffee. It’s really completely irrelevant. One likes this, one likes that. The company isn’t at risk, but you discuss even things like that. That’s just an example now. Of course we didn’t talk about coffee, but it simply had no relevance. And you just said the word responsibility, dear Yasemin. And trust belongs to that. I watched this state talk show yesterday evening with the social psychologist Harald Welzer. And that’s when it became clear to me too, trust belongs to responsibility too. When we were children — if we think back, when we were children — that could actually be totally comfortable and nice too. Our parents decide things for us too. They don’t discuss everything with us either. And it became clear to me — and it doesn’t bother us, though we’re rebellious — why doesn’t it bother us? Because we trust our parents. Because we know they only want the best. And the social psychologist yesterday addressed a big problem we currently find ourselves in, the current state of things. He wrote a book about the boomer generation and the current generation, Gen Z, where Andreas Wollermann is also an expert. And the big problem the generations currently have is that we, the boomer generation, grew up in a model of the success trap and growth model. So we’re all — performance pays off and success is important. And now we have a new generation, and this new generation no longer trusts the proposed solutions. So in politics, with a whole lot of political questions, trust is missing. There are still people who take on responsibility. There’s also a new party right now trying to establish itself, wanting to take on responsibility. I don’t trust this party. And if trust is missing, then it can’t work either. And that’s why I find you used really important words in what you just explained, dear Yasemin. Responsibility is one thing. But that also implies trust on the other side, because if I can’t trust someone, then I don’t follow them either, and then I also have the problem of carrying out this action. And that became clear to me again yesterday evening, that this is a really, really big aspect, this trust and responsibility. So, on one hand we need people within a team and a company who take on responsibility. And then we’re back at reflection, or also communication. What can these people do so that trust is regained? Because if I have no trust, nobody follows me either, neither in the political sense, nor in the entrepreneurial sense.
Yes, thank you so much, and especially in this context of trust, and there we’re back at the Gallup study, that’s ultimately also about the aspect of loyalty, so to speak, this connectedness to the leader and to the company, where it becomes clear — and there are other findings that show this too — that it’s primarily the leader who plays a really essential role in this context, whether that connectedness to the company is there. That means, we always have a connection to individual people, which also has an impact, for example, on whether we feel connected to the company. Let’s assume, for example, we have a leader, so an employee and a leader, and there’s connectedness there — the leader gets replaced, and somehow things don’t work out with the new leader — then the connectedness to the company can also very, very quickly start wavering, because the connectedness runs largely through the direct leader, so to speak, through the leadership role that plays a role in this context. Of course team members and so on play a role here too, but through the way the relationship, in quotation marks, between employee and leader is shaped, that has a really big impact as an influencing factor on the connectedness to the company too. And with the term loyalty, there are various aspects involved too, it’s about things like moral values, the construct, how does that fit together — those play a role here of course, the inner connectedness as a really big factor. And especially with this aspect of connectedness, the topic of trust also plays a really, really big role. And so I find it exciting that you brought in this term trust here too. I told a story once, I don’t know if you remember, and for those who might not have heard it yet — many years ago, at one of the companies I worked for, it happened that someone at a check-in counter, a customer, more or less — I’ll exaggerate a bit now to make it clear — an employee at the ticket sales counter, who almost had their hand crushed with an object that was standing there, without going into details. And then, with a lot of tension, people really watched to see how this would be handled. So would this passenger, who was also a frequent flyer and had a corresponding senator status, and so on and so forth, and had taken this liberty against the backdrop of having, from their view, possibly left a lot of money, in quotation marks, with this airline over the entire time they’d flown with the airline. And maybe it was a moment of anger in which this happened, so you can’t generalize that, but nonetheless quite devastating. And the corresponding leaders apparently, after consulting with the relevant departments in the company, came to the conclusion to strongly suggest to the employee that they refrain from filing a lawsuit at that point. And that led to a huge uproar among the staff, because the people employed there felt somewhat left in the lurch. And if you’ve experienced something like that yourself, it’s crazy what emotions swing through you when you have a really, really strong loyalty, a really strong connectedness with your leaders and thereby with the company too. And then an incident where you maybe don’t even know the employee yourself. In my case it was actually so that I didn’t know the employee at all, that was just hearsay, because it simply got around. And everyone watched with a lot of tension what was actually happening here, and how the company deals with its leaders, what decisions are made, and what circles that ultimately drew, what emotions that triggered, and what incomprehension there too, and what that did to the individual employees who weren’t involved at all in this whole chain of actions that took place here, but ultimately a kind of wave that was generated here, so to speak, an energy that spreads throughout the whole company, even though you maybe don’t even know the employee, but you watch precisely how it’s handled and what that means, what would happen if it had hit me, and the view is there accordingly, and it shows what impact that can ultimately have, and how quickly a built-up connectedness, a built-up trust — that it’s also really, really fragile, so to speak, really brittle at that point, and that’s why, once built up, it’s not simply there per se and not to be regarded as a given, but rather it can, I’ll just say, always be worked on, to also maintain that. And from my point of view, to build the bridge back to reflection in leadership again, that it also plays an important role in reflection to consider such aspects too and act accordingly. Marc, would you like to build on this again too?
Very, very gladly, dear Yasemin. And I have a grin on my face, because I’m looking at my phone display and see Jürgen there, there he is, and expect Jürgen to come on stage, which he’s now done, and warn me, hey, stay on topic. The topic is, what role does reflection play in leadership? And I’d just said command and obedience, and now also, dear Jürgen, I just wanted to go into the aspect of team leadership again, because we also have entrepreneurs here. For me, team leadership is a really, really important aspect, so reflection in leadership, because I personally, as a person, can only say, in a company where I’m perceived, where I act team-oriented, where my boss says, hey, that’s a great idea, when you come, when you come with the proposal to Stefan or to Raphael and say, hey, I’ve thought about this, that they don’t immediately say, that’s nonsense, we’ve never done that, but if someone instead says, that’s interesting, I need to think about that too, if I feel welcome, welcome in the sense of being perceived, then of course working in such a company is much, much more fun for me.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you so much. Then let’s make sure we bring in Jürgen and Sabine too, and then we can gladly make cross-connections again too. A very good morning, dear Jürgen.
A very good morning, dear Yasemin, Sabine, and dear Marc. Since you’ve ostentatiously called on me to come on stage now, I’m gladly complying. And I’ll build on this example you brought, dear Yasemin, because I think, bear with me if I go into this again, that there’s a clear difference with regard to the terminology that, especially with your example, in my view became very clear, this difference. Namely, I mean the difference between reflection and thinking, or reasoning. And we’ve already exchanged sufficiently about what reflection is. Roughly, an inward view of, especially, my strengths and weaknesses, my behavior, my motivations and emotions that I have. So a clear self-reference. And thinking — this differentiation, not meant unkindly, we’re still putting it off, but it’ll inevitably come at some point when we engage with thinking, thinking-I. Thinking is something different for me. And now to your example, dear Yasemin, to maybe make the distinction clear, or from my point of view. From this behavior, from this case at this counter, you can splendidly reason about leadership, leadership as a topic in this company. But reflection, for me, is — I don’t want to say further-reaching, but the somewhat different kind of thinking, namely about the role of the respective affected leader in this context, so the pure self-reference. How did I behave in this situation? Detached from the way the general leadership presets were in this company overall. No, how did I behave in this context? What did I do? What didn’t I do? Why didn’t I do it? And how did I feel while doing it? That’s the distinction, for me, that I always advocate for, that I consider really important, especially with our overarching topic — making the distinction between reflection and thinking. To say it briefly again, for me thinking represents, I reason about leadership, and reflecting, I reason about my role, my leadership. I think that’s the genuine topic of this room for me. Thank you for listening.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much, and I find that the complexity of the topic also becomes really, really strongly clear here again, because this example in particular shows that there are immediately different levels too, so not just with regard to differentiating reflection and thinking, but we’d also established, on one hand, that there are different reflection loops, and here we now also have different levels again. So we now have, on one hand, the level of the incident, so to speak, on the level of the employee in direct interaction with the customer, where the employee themselves can go into reflection and inward-looking, in order to then make evaluations, and so on. Then there’s, I’ll call it a reaction from the leadership staff in this context, who first, on the surface, choose a strategic approach and accordingly make a decision, and this decision is then, so to speak, brought back to the employee with a corresponding recommendation. And then maybe another reflection takes place again, in the next step, with the employee again too. And at the start, I’d like to come back to that, we also talked about how leadership isn’t just leadership outward, but also self-leadership, which we can include here as an aspect too, in the sense of self-efficacy too, so to speak. And what happens now in the next step of the reflection loop, so to speak, at that point, and then again derived from that, what does the employee do with that, or how does that feel for the employee in their own inward view, in self-leadership, so to speak, and what consequences, and so on, are then possibly derived from this, which then again have an effect on, for example, do I stay longer with the company, do I leave, or whatever. Jürgen, would you like to look at this again with this holistic lens?
Thank you, sorry, dear Sabine, I’ll try to keep it brief — that was, as so often, an opening that, in my view, leads to the concrete starting points, what I can reflect on with regard to leadership, in reflection, not in thinking, in reflection. And there, for me, tied again to your example, one of these positions, for instance, where the inward view and the outward view of the company differ, is that the leadership of the company gives me goals. But I, hopefully as a leader, have a vision. An idea going beyond that, of what I stand for, and for what I let my goals become a vision, and specifically, under certain circumstances, at very specific positions, as in this example, these can indeed become contrary between the company’s goal-setting, what they understand as leadership, and what I understand as leadership. And that’s the difference, for me. Admittedly, it’s certainly very hard to always make the separation between reflection and thinking. But I think there are always starting points where this meta-level, this transcending, this going beyond the whole and only relating to the self, comes into play, and that, for me, in this case, is exemplified, for example, by this vision, this topic of vision, and basically then, further, about the manner of understanding a leadership style. But okay, now to Sabine, thank you again for letting me add this once more.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you so much. And with that let’s gladly bring in Sabine too. A very good morning, dear Sabine.
A very good morning. Yes, you could have kept talking. I was excited to listen. My thought, Jürgen had already anticipated part of it — when you started with your airport case, it was actually about the fact that this is of course a really extreme example, but in a diluted form probably happens somewhere every day. Not that the customer maybe has so many problems, oh nonsense, that the customer somehow throws something around, but in a different form. And I ask myself, if we’re now talking about reflection by leaders, then of course it’s great if I have a small family business and the boss is at the top with their visions, then that’s certainly all really easy to handle. But what about — I was in a corporation for many years, so to speak — what about in the corporate world? Is the leader there actually always given so much space to reflect at all? Are they allowed to reflect, or would reflection then result in, my values are being trampled on here, I should actually leave this company? I just wanted to throw that into the round, this multi-layered reflection by leaders in corporations.
Okay, thank you so much. That means, maybe reflection also isn’t even wanted, possibly, from the company’s structures, from the company’s attitude, so as not to even discover this or that for yourself. Exciting, exciting thesis. Jürgen, you wanted to respond directly to that.
Yes, I’d like to gladly pick that up from Sabine and say, that brings us to a side battlefield we haven’t looked at so nonchalantly at all yet, namely the distinction, in my view, between leadership and management. And dear Sabine, we come from the same industry, from the same field, and we certainly have multiple examples of how, at very specific positions — I’ll hold back on my phrasing now — at very specific positions in the hierarchy, mostly managers sit, but not leaders. And that’s the really essential difference, which Yasemin already highlighted in her intro. For me, put briefly, the distinction between a manager and a leadership position is the carrying responsibility for leading people. What lies below that, in quotation marks below that, is the toolkit of a manager, and that can be relatively briefly concretized as organization, planning, steering, and control — anyone can look that up in a business management textbook. So, that’s managing. That toolkit is managing, and
the person who has it, and now let me try to loop back to my last remark, follows a target vision of the company, a target vision. They don’t follow mine, possibly not my vision, and it doesn’t have to run contrary either. But the whole thing becomes a vision when I, as a leader, see myself as responsible for, for example through corresponding motivation techniques, through the way I communicate with my employees, becoming a leader. So, in that sense that was another really interesting point you brought up, dear Sabine. Thank you for that.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Go ahead, Sabine.
Yes, I’d like to say something to that. Jürgen, I can follow you completely and I see a lot of it exactly like you do, only I’d now like to be in your position and talk to a board member and say to them, hello, below you there are only managers, you have no leaders. What would they say to that?
That happens very often, dear Sabine, and I fully agree with you. But I can only talk with the manager, with the board member, at the level of how they task me. And that’s exactly the crux of the matter. If you compare, especially in the freelance sector, how many interim managers are being sought — because as a freelancer you’re an interim manager, an interim personnel — then you’ll find, or at least I’ve found, that well over 90 percent of the offers and potential assignments were for a manager on time, but not a leader on time. And that’s exactly the point where reflection starts for me, if I, for example, say, I’m now accepting an assignment as a manager on time, and then reflecting and saying, so, they hired me, they want this IT system landscape changed in exactly two years, and I’m the process owner. So, and now I reflect on that and realize, if I only manage, I have no chance, because I need other people for that. And even though, as a manager, and especially as an external one, this leadership position doesn’t actually fall to me, because they’re not disciplinarily subordinate to me, I have a responsibility for them, namely that they succeed together with me. And that, for me, is on one hand this distinction, becoming aware of whether you’re managing or already leading, and on the other hand, of course, living under the constraint of saying, I have an assignment, and I’m successful for the entrepreneur if I achieve my management and my goal in their sense. But I, for myself, am successful if, in achieving this goal, I’ve brought along all the other employees who belong to me in this context. That’s why I think this distinction you brought in, with leadership and management, is so important. Thank you for listening.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you so much. And especially this distinction, and then, against the backdrop of reflection, also recognizing that, for achieving this goal, this component, humanity, in leadership, and so on, so everything that falls under that too, building trust with employees, is also a really essential and important component, which ultimately also contributes to the company’s goal being achieved, and against this backdrop needs to go hand in hand. And that’s something that’s maybe underestimated in many places, or falls by the wayside. And here too we can speculate again, in quotation marks, is it because there’s too little reflection, or what are the actual reasons behind it? One of the aspects that often also plays a role here, and I think we’d already addressed this in the context of leadership in the past too, is also, for example, how the selection of leaders is made, and there we often have the problem that, for example, the best professional employee gets put into a leadership position, and not necessarily because that person also brings the corresponding leadership skills and competencies. So that could, for example, be one aspect. But there are certainly a lot of other factors that also play a role here and have an influence on this. Go ahead, Marc.
Yes, now, for the very first time since I’ve been in this room, I want to turn to the listeners and ask you to give some kind of sign. I just want to establish whether I’m a unique case here, or whether that’s common. Dear Jürgen, I can follow your remarks, I can underline all of it too. I just noticed, with your remarks, with the word leader — if I were applying for a position now and I’d say, I’m your leader, that’s so negatively loaded for me, precisely because the word leader is negatively loaded, that I’m having a really, really strong problem implementing this distinction between manager and leader for myself. I’d now just like to ask the listeners to give some kind of sign, whether I’m alone in this, whether, if I came into the company and said, I’m your new leader in the sense of leadership, whether similar — without evaluation, just whether the word leader triggers similar associations for them as it does for me. Thanks for participating.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you so much. And while the first reactions come in here, Sabine also wanted to build on this. Go ahead, Sabine.
Nice that you picked that up, Marc. That was exactly my train of thought when Jürgen brought that up earlier. But I didn’t want to pile on, because I see the leader topic exactly the same way. And what I also wanted to say, Jürgen, I can follow you with everything, it’s just that it contradicts, for example, how the employee is valued in corporations. Because HR often does nothing but look for great, passionate, and so on, employees. Once they’re there, does the leader or the manager, I’ll leave both terms side by side, ever have the task, theoretically, of actually valuing them? And that’s where we often have the crux, that it no longer quite matches up.
Jürgen, would you like to build on this too?
I’d like to build on this again with regard to this connotation of leadership. I’m aware of that of course, and I also quite consciously out myself for the fact that I quite consciously use this word in German, because it’s about the factual, professional content for me. And I think that if we’re aware, and made aware, that a connotation, whether positive or negative, changes the original meaning of the term, then I see myself called upon, on a purely professional level, parenthesis, emotions set aside, to also push back against that linguistically. And I was always an opponent, I’ll say this quite openly and honestly, I was always opposed to rephrasing the whole thing with the so-called “leadership,” because every other-language speaker in a project, when it came to the topic of leadership in the project, automatically connected it to Führung and someone who has the Führung, calls them the Führer. And that’s why I position myself, I’ll say it again, so clearly, in order to get away from this — and I’ll call this now, going in the direction of an unconscious bias, because, in my view, the consequence of that is, if I avoid the term and don’t become aware of what it actually factually contains, then I also don’t develop an understanding for it. That’s my opinion on that. Thank you.
And possibly also no identification, connected to that, with my task and role as leadership or a leader. Go ahead, Sabine.
Jürgen, I’ll grant you that. I think we Germans are also a bit like that, always afraid to use something because it could possibly be interpreted differently too. I can completely live with your explanation now, and find what you mean completely fine. And I also believe it’s representable in a corporation, if, so to speak, the leader lives out leader-equals-manager in their small microcosm. Whether that’s representable on a large scale, I don’t know, but at least if a mid-level leader now has 15 people, then they can deal with those 15 people in a way that fits somewhere. I think it’s still a long road. But on the substance, I’m completely with you.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you so much. And here too, we’re back, in quotation marks, at cuddle pedagogy — the approach, or the insight, that it’s not about always pleasing everyone, in quotation marks, and not everyone always agreeing, and nonetheless still having to make decisions, even as a leader, which is one of the essential tasks, after all, against the backdrop of having reflected, having gathered different opinions, information gathering with the team, with the individual, hopefully diverse team members, where you bring in the different viewpoints and perspectives, and then, based on that, also make the corresponding decisions, and then get into doing again as a community, as a company community, as part of the company. And yes, with that I’d like to move into the closing round for today. Reflection in leadership was our room title today. What role does reflection play in leadership? The question we wanted to engage with. And let’s bring it together once more. What are your highlights, or what can actually be held onto now from what we’ve discussed? Marc, Jürgen, Sabine, gladly in that order. Marc.
My highlights are my own feelings. Thank you, dear Jürgen, thanks to everyone. Also thanks to everyone who gave the sign. That’s totally exciting, and also nice, to be able to go into interaction with you like that. And for me, my personal highlight was establishing live, in real time, how much emotions — that was an emotion for me — and terminology hinder me from being able to have new reflections, from being able to enable new thinking, because these emotions influence me really, really strongly, and the emotions are exclusively occupied — I’m reflecting on that live, real time — through the terminology, through nothing else. Thank you for the learning hour, and thanks for letting us start this morning together.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Jürgen.
Yes, I thank both Sabine and Marc for actually significantly expanding the topic that was already stamped in my head, and the actually expected goal. My heartfelt thanks for that. You said it at one really specific point — it becomes clear that this topic too has an incredible complexity. Dear Yasemin, I’ll ask you back, which of your topics actually has no complexity? Thank you, a wonderful day to you all, and we’ll be in touch.
Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much, Sabine. We can’t hear you yet, Sabine. Maybe it’s not working right now. I’ll wait a moment to see. Maybe she has no signal, or it’s not working for technical reasons. Let me use the opportunity to announce tomorrow’s room. In the meantime we’ll see if Sabine can connect, whether that works again or not. Ah, there, Sabine.
I’m baking next to my cake and lost my phone. That’s why I couldn’t join earlier. Wonderful. Yes, so a really great room, and I hope and wish that leaders always make the topic of reflection their mission, because it’s really important and can really only move us forward. Great room. Loved it again. Have a wonderful day, all of you.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you so much. Yes, and as we mentioned, it’s relatively complex again today too, with the topic. And I find it nice, ultimately, that by breaking these topic areas down into individual rooms, into overarching topics and then specific rooms too, we always have the possibility here to connect back. We’d already worked on the leadership topic before, so we really have the possibility to pick up this or that again too, and not start from zero everywhere, so to speak. So I think it’s really worth looking at this in sequence, in a kind of series, so to speak. For those who aren’t here every morning, feel free to use the time and opportunity to actually listen to one or another of the recorded episodes on the podcast too, to maybe listen in again here, to deepen this or that, especially if you missed it. But also for those who’ve already been here, feel free to use the opportunity to go into repetition too. You won’t find all episodes, against the backdrop that not all episodes were recorded. But from a certain point we decided it’s a shame if we don’t record this, and so much of what’s discussed simply gets lost. And against this backdrop we then jointly made the decision to record all rooms by now, and accordingly the corresponding episodes are also accessible in the podcast from a certain episode onward. And otherwise we also have the author breakfasts, and so on, where aspects or topics like leadership have certainly also been picked up and similar, where you could also go into deepening and repetition again. And I think, at certain intervals, that also makes sense, especially against the backdrop, also neuroscientifically grounded, that our neural networks, so the learning that takes place here, so to speak, that also regresses again if we don’t train it, that we then, accordingly, through small — it doesn’t always have to be the whole episode either, but if we keep having, in quotation marks, nuggets, where we listen in, short excerpts or similar, that the neural network then gets reactivated again, and through this activation it’s ensured that these connections we’ve established are maintained and don’t regress again. So maybe that as a tip here too. And where you find the podcast, feel free to check the Deep Talk Club’s page too. The various links, and so on, are indicated there, or partly even embedded, if you want to listen via the website. Otherwise you’ll find us, with the Deep Talk Club, on all possible channels where podcasts can be heard, we’re represented everywhere too. And yes, with that I’d like to move on to our room topic for tomorrow. I’m looking forward to that. Tomorrow we continue with reflection formats. What are classic formats of reflection? So this is about, you could also call it settings instead of formats. Basically, yes, so that we just take another look here. In the coming days, and this might also be helpful with regard to distinguishing the terminology — I mean, there can be very different assignments of what you understand under formats, what you understand under forms and types. Tomorrow we have reflection formats. That’s about something like, I don’t know, a dialogue is a format for me, for example. Then the day after tomorrow we have forms and types of reflection. What forms and types of reflection come to mind for us? There we want to pick up things like writing, conversation, and so on. And then we have the methods of reflection. And with the methods, that’s basically about the techniques for me. So, what helpful reflection methods are there? What can be applied? What do we know, so we can go into exchange on this too? Maybe then one or another of you can also try out something you maybe weren’t familiar with before, to see and test how that works for me in the sense of an appropriate reflection. And then we’ll round it off on Sunday with the digital campfire, where I’ll also bring in some unvarnished insights from my own life and business. And specifically it’ll be about aspects like improper application of self-reflection methods and possible dangers too. I’ll also pick up the topic of unconscious bias again, the aspect of understanding the brain, how does our brain actually work, what does that mean in this context, and what dangers arise from this, how can I deal with that. And on Monday, provided we don’t still have something open where we decide, maybe it makes sense to open a separate room for XYZ, under this overarching topic of reflection, I’d like to then transition, on Monday or at the latest on Tuesday, depending on whether we want to add something else or not, into bringing together the reflection part, because we’d said we want to open up a more complex topic this time, split into three parts, so reflection, then thinking, and acting. Then we’d gradually transition into the second part with thinking, approach it, and look at the specific rooms, and then, once we’ve specifically looked at reflection, thinking, and afterward acting, bring it all together again too and look at this process as a unit, so to speak, and re-establish the interweavings. So maybe that’s a start, so you have a bit of a sense of the schedule that’s now planned, and against the backdrop of the terminology, which can also be assigned very differently, so you roughly know which direction things are heading in the coming days. I’m definitely looking forward to being able to welcome you here again tomorrow morning. Provided you have the time and inclination to join, feel free to connect and join in too, to bring in various perspectives here too. Thank you so much to everyone, and hopefully see you tomorrow. Ciao.
