Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: What actually counts as remote-controlled work, and how is it reshaping work culture? In Room #863 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme “Pioneering Spirit with brAIn,” the group digs into human-machine and machine-machine control, the difference between work and performance, and why the fear of losing control usually says more about leadership quality than about the person being led. Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…
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 wonderful good morning to you. Today we’re talking about the transformation of work, and we want to take a closer look at what remote-controlled work actually is, how it functions in different fields, and what influence these changes have on work culture and the world of work. I’m really curious, and I don’t want to bring in too many impulses myself, because I’d like to see, when I say remote-controlled work, what you actually understand by that, what falls under it from your perspective, and I’m really curious which direction this room takes today too. So, as every morning, you’re warmly invited to join and bring in your first impulses, thoughts, and experiences, so we can sort our thoughts together in dialogue and see what insights get generated from that — all under our overarching theme, Pioneering Spirit with Brain. And with that, another quick reminder that the room gets recorded in full and gets published afterward, so joining automatically means you agree to that. We have three small room rules: a profile photo where you’re clearly recognizable, first and last name, and at least a sentence in your bio. Anyone who doesn’t want that for whatever reason is warmly invited to just join via chat and share thoughts, impulses, or questions there, so I can pick those up over the course of the room. With that, let’s see who’d like to start the dialogue with me today, and I’ll mute myself for a moment and see who wants to join.
I’m curious — we’re relatively few today, I notice, I don’t know if there are maybe technical problems or challenges, that’s rather unusual. Let me repeat the room topic for anyone who joined a bit later — today we’re talking about the transformation of work. What is remote-controlled work? How does it function in different fields, and what influence do these changes have on work culture? That’s what we want to talk about today, and honestly, this morning I didn’t want to bring in too many impulses myself, just to see what your first associations with the term remote-controlled work actually are. So you’re very, very warmly invited to join and share your first thoughts, so we can see together which direction this room takes shape and develops in. And with that I’ve already given the introduction right at the start — we’re relatively few today, it might be that the room isn’t showing in the main hall, we’ll just see how it develops. And yes, I’m quite happy if I can start a dialogue with someone first. A wonderful good morning, dear Jürgen, lovely that you joined — what are your first thoughts?
I think I couldn’t be heard partially just now — a wonderful good morning, dear Jürgen, I’m glad you joined, what are your first thoughts on the topic?
Good morning, dear Yasemin, good morning everyone in the room. I actually came into this room to find out what remote-controlled work is supposed to mean — the term didn’t mean anything to me in that combination at first, and that hasn’t changed so far, logically. As an initial approach, all I can do is look at the terms again. So first, remote-controlled — that forces the question for me, remote-controlled by whom or what? And I’m thinking in particular of the possibility of being remote-controlled by machines or remote-controlled by humans. And with work, for me that always immediately connects to a term with a question mark — is work meant here, or isn’t it actually performance that’s meant, or performance instead of work even? So my request now is to enlighten me — what is this actually about? Thank you.
Yes, thank you, thank you so much. Let’s first gather a bit — I think it’s really nice to actually look at this first, and then we can gladly move toward resolving it too. But especially when newer terms, in inverted commas, get used in certain combinations, the question arises, what do we actually interpret into that, or what do we imagine under it? That’s why I wanted to first look at this and gather associations. And one of the questions I’d like to include in this context is — in the past we’ve talked about home office or remote working or something like that — would that, for example, also be something that could fall under this from your perspective, or does that seem to be something different? Jürgen, did you want to say something more directly on that?
Yes, for me that’s the classic component of control by human rather than by machine — that’s exactly this two-part division. For me that’s actually the prototypical position for remote control via a human-to-human connection rather than a machine-to-human connection, or possibly even a machine-to-machine connection, which is coming up too. But absolutely right, home office is this topic for me.
And we have another combination we can include, besides the ones you mentioned, namely human-to-machine control too, which we can also take into consideration. Oh, sorry, is my phone actually open right now?
Yes, we can hear you.
Okay, sorry, yes, absolutely correct — let me try to switch that off again. Wonderful, thank you, thank you so much. I’d also like to welcome Layla — a wonderful good morning, dear Layla, what do you say about it?
Remote-controlled work — the transformation of work is the room’s topic, and we’re looking at this term, remote-controlled work, right now, to see how the whole thing functions in different fields and what influence the changes have on work culture. So I’m curious what your first thoughts and impulses on the topic are.
Well, I’d say, a wonderful good morning first to both of you and to everyone in the audience. When I think of remote control, I think of, I don’t know, I think of my childhood, of boys and girls remote-controlling something, best of all some cars and airplanes. I wouldn’t want to be that airplane, I wouldn’t want to be that car, but after what you all said I thought, well, aren’t we all a bit remote-controlled ourselves, in the sense that someone tells us, do this, that not everything springs from our own initiative? And yet we still feel like we’re doing it all ourselves. If we take home office, I’m trying to catch up here, whether that’s still remote control — I think it is, you said human, machine, that’s how we know it, right? I think there’s also machine, machine by now — that’s how I understand it, machine, machine exists too, I believe. And yes, a lot, a lot is going to change if we look at the transformation of work now. We have to say, we talked during the pandemic about whether home office was even an option at all, and now certain professions might soon no longer exist at all under certain circumstances. Things are going to keep developing very quickly, in a very short time, similar to how it was during industrialization — so something’s ahead of us, or in front of us. And yes, I think we’re all a bit like that car or that airplane, because we’re all, at bottom, a bit remote-controlled by our employer, or by the market, which remote-controls us a bit too. So, yes, I see it from a different perspective — maybe it’s an interesting perspective.
Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much. And I think, as we slowly approach this, remote-controlled is something that includes, so to speak, that whether it’s machine-machine or whatever, it’s at least something that isn’t close, not closely controlled but remotely controlled — meaning it involves a certain distance hidden behind it. That means, I’m not sitting at the PC, for example, entering something and immediately seeing results right there at the PC, but rather it’s about doing something from a distance. And in this combination, various aspects can actually fall under this — so it’s logical to say it’s conceivable to have these combinations of machine-machine, human-human, machine-human, or human-machine. And of course there are various examples we could cover under this. We could bring up remote working or home office in a very classic way — meaning work, in this context, basically means nothing other than tasks that get carried out. There are certain tasks that get set and then get completed remotely, so to speak, and the one who initiates that can, on one side, be a machine or a human, and the one who carries out the task, on the other side, can again be a machine or a human. And classically, since we already have established terms like remote working or home office working, we probably wouldn’t classically think of this under the term remote-controlled work — of course, if we think about it now, we could bring that in too and say, that would fall under it too. But I think this is really a new term here, so to speak — we’ll see whether it catches on, or whether other terms come along that are used more specifically in certain contexts, similar to remote working now. What falls under it, and here we’re really in these combinations we have, is, for example, an excavator, to bring up an example — that means, in the future, you might no longer need to be at the construction site, but have the option to control the excavator without a driver present. And this control could mean that someone is at the construction site carrying out the control, but it could also mean that this remote control happens, say, from the office or from home office. And a lot of changes are happening here — so our excavator is just standing in as one example, especially for fields where, in the past, this might have seemed relatively unimaginable. Especially in the discussion around remote working or home office work, it’s very often said, well, you can’t do that in all fields anyway, there are a lot of fields where that’s simply not possible at all — and so it becomes really exciting to look at what happens when you can have work or tasks carried out remotely, because it becomes possible, because the technology enables it. That’s one thing. And the other thing, especially if we bring up something like a lawnmower, for example, that at certain times, with the corresponding technologies — we talked about these smart technologies, if we pick that up again — that’s also a kind of remote-controlled work, only with the difference that these machines, through, say, the artificial intelligence behind them, or the automation behind them, decide based on certain parameters when it’s necessary to mow the lawn. So not waiting to receive this order immediately beforehand from a human, but certain automatisms are already built in, deciding, based on which criteria or components, aspects get evaluated, to make the decision, now it’s time to mow the lawn. So basically that’s also a form of remote-controlled work, just that here, again, different technologies contribute in the background, so we get further distinctions — am I sitting right there operating the device so it’s being done right now, or is it something that can run automatically once certain components are fulfilled? Jürgen, what do you say about that?
You brought up a term that, in relation to remote working and home office, represents a key term for me, namely the term time. And it wasn’t for nothing that I asked earlier whether we shouldn’t direct our gaze not just to duty-work, but also to performance. And the difference between work and performance — some of you will only remember this from school, but it applies equally to the business world — is that performance weights work output against time, against time expended. And that’s the question mark for me behind this question, or that was the question mark, work, or aren’t we talking about performance — what I mean is, with remote work you have to picture this: through remote working, ceteris paribus, with identical work output, performance increases simply because, for the person performing, for the person working, the commute falls away. That means the person performing, working, produces, let me say again, assuming an identical amount of work output, more efficient performance in a shorter time. And that’s also a subarea, a subarea, let me say cautiously, even in a machine-machine connection, because the machine, triggered by a pseudo-AI or whatever, starts at a very specific point in time — there’s no delay because I might have forgotten, oh, I need to operate the lawnmower now, or I first have to go over to the lawnmower, which basically leads to the work. I hope I’ve made that reasonably clear, but that’s one aspect. I’ve also had the experience in the past that, in discussions around remote work, around home office, this aspect — namely the distinction between work and performance — usually falls by the wayside.
Yes, absolutely. And one of the arguments in all these discussions around home office and remote work and so on was, among other things, also the fear that performance would then decrease or drop, that less would then be accomplished, because managers, for example, no longer have control over what the employee is doing and so on — and basically, that’s exactly why this distinction, or this perspective on it, has a certain relevance too. That means it’s not just about — you put it so nicely with the remote working example, it becomes very, very clear with these commutes — it’s the same amount of tasks to be handled, but what happens, in contrast, with performance? Does it increase or does it drop? In this case, as you just described it, it increases because the commutes and so on fall away — meaning I don’t have to sit in traffic first or anything, but can go directly to my workspace at home, so to speak, or to the desk, and can start right away, full of energy. But it could also, or could have, looked different — it could also have been that way, and that plays into it too. There are various components influencing this here — things like, I’m not isolated enough, I keep getting distracted by family members and so on, which could lead to a drop in performance with the same amount of work to be done. Would you like to follow up on that overall, Layla, Jürgen?
Yes, gladly, Layla, then Jürgen.
Yes, I’ve been thinking the whole time and thought, well, because I looked it up again, this is the digital nomad thing, that the commutes fall away. And I was internally thinking to myself, wait, that’s already existed for a while — if I think of drones, for example, that someone operates from a distance, all you have to do is press a button. Now, if we think of remote work, there are people in other countries who can take over my computer, and can say, with my permission in the best case, and then access it from there. And I think this model, working digitally, is actually, in a way, a kind of liberation. And then I thought to myself, well, what are we actually afraid of then? And then I thought, yes, we’d like to have the remote control in our own hand. That means my employer would like to have the remote control, the remote steering, over me — meaning they’d like to observe my work processes in order to control them. And that’s not a bad thing in itself, but this fear that exists is really this, well, you get distracted, maybe efficiency isn’t as high. But I think, I can’t cite studies now, but I don’t think it’s necessarily the case that performance drops. But I think we’d like to have the remote control in our own hand, I keep thinking, and thinking, yes, we’d like to do that. And then I thought, well, what about the lawnmower, if that gets automated, then it goes faster. Right now the human is still the one who says, in the smart home, like, watch TV at four, buy this and that. And next, I don’t know, maybe my digital home will do that on its own. And then I, as a human, am out of that control function, and I hand that over to some instance. And I don’t want to fearmonger and all that, but you always think, oh, what could happen then? And yes, then I hand these decisions over to a machine, or I no longer have control. And I think that’s definitely a point that plays into this, even though I also see this liberation — holding a conference and doing it digitally, because that was the case for me during Covid too, in my work situation, that I no longer had to actually be present at every conference, but we solved it digitally. I had the feeling it was more efficient, because it was very targeted, the time span was appropriate too. There are pros and cons. I’m still stuck on remote control, I’m still stuck on this PC, this joystick — we’d like to have the remote control, whether that’s my employer or whether it’s me with the smart home. And now you could think about the accumulation of consequences according to Hans Jonas, what would happen — but I know you’re very open to that, so I’m looking forward to your thoughts.
Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much. I’d already used the term control myself, in connection with managers and employees and remote working, and I find that really, really exciting and really important to pick up on more closely here and look at, because it really always comes down to this aspect of control, loss of control — behind that is the need for security, the sense of security we need, and we can open that up in all kinds of directions. You illustrated it so nicely with, I’d just like to have this remote control in my hand — and whenever we have the feeling of losing the remote control, or having to hand it over, in inverted commas, an uneasy feeling comes up. And we have that in a lot of places in everyday life too — people who, for example, don’t like sitting in an airplane, because they feel, well, I don’t have control there, whereas when I’m sitting in a car, I can influence, in inverted commas, where the car goes. Rationally speaking, the car isn’t the safer means of transport because of that — it’s actually completely irrational, every statistic proves that. Nonetheless, there are people who don’t fly because of that, or try to avoid flying — and we don’t want to look at climate topics or anything here, just note this as a fact for now. And this control, or loss of control, going hand in hand with this need for security that we have in the background, is really, really important in this context, in order to understand, especially when newer technologies come along and so on, newer developments we can observe, what’s actually happening in the background, or why I react the way I react to this or that — that certain chemical processes get triggered that lead to an uneasy feeling, for example. And the better I know what’s happening in the background, the better I’m able, in the sense of self-efficacy, self-regulation, to influence this again and deal with it accordingly. And especially the topic of control and loss of control is one of the aspects we’ll get to look at much more intensively in the future too, especially against the backdrop of rapid developments taking place and changes that have become, in inverted commas, our daily normality. And there we’re back at many aspects where we can build bridges now — whether that’s companies, where we’ve already opened up topics, who’d like a recipe-like approach, so to speak a kind of formula for methods they use — if I do A, B comes out, and so on. All of that basically has to do with control and loss of control. Jürgen, you wanted to follow up too.
Yes, exactly on this point I wanted to follow up — control. You brought up a term again that I see immediately connected to control, which I define in this context as leadership quality. And I’d claim that, in most cases, the fear of losing control is a sign of a lack of leadership quality. Because if I’m capable, as a manager, as a leader, as a supervisor, if I’m able to know the processes accordingly and assess and also appreciate my employees accordingly, then I’m able to hand over their self-responsibility and self-actualization to them, because the agreement process, leading by objectives — that’s currently a term that’s viewed somewhat critically again, but I still see it as extremely positive. Leading by objectives requires, on the one hand, a leadership and management quality that also includes the function of planning, steering, and control, which is part of the classic leadership qualities of a manager. If I have that, I have no problem saying, dear Yasemin, I know what you’re capable of, and you know what I expect from you, and I see it as entirely achievable that you deliver the concept by tomorrow evening, end of day. And with that, I hand control over into the sphere of self-actualization of the employee. I think we don’t need to talk about the enormous motivational consequences that has for the person carrying it out. But one circumstance I do have to add, to be fair, regarding performance — if the performance on the part of the person delivering the work drops due to, for example, the elimination of commutes, and also due to this state of alertness, watch out, I’m being monitored, then on the other side, the performance of the person who previously directly monitored, that falls away. So, to put it positively, through this handing over of control, the sphere of self-actualization and performance actualization of the supervisor also expands — they have more time for other things, and that’s basically what I stand for — home office, if set up correctly, my dears, is clearly, unambiguously, a win-win situation for me. Thank you.
Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much. That shows it’s not just about one side, but frees up time on the other side too, so to speak, for other things, and accordingly has positive effects — but also, in inverted commas, has the relevance that this even gets pointed out at all. I think, Jürgen, a lot of people don’t recognize at all that this doesn’t just have a benefit for the employee carrying out the task, but also brings a benefit for the manager. Here too, a lot of managers tend to look at the negative aspects with worry, instead of also discovering the possibilities and opportunities in it for themselves. And ultimately, the question we also want to explore today is, how does work itself change because of this — “Transformation of Work” is, after all, our title here — so we’ve now approached this “remote-controlled work” — what actually falls under it, what combinations do we have? And we’ve established, on the one hand, that there are indeed combinations we already know today — maybe we haven’t looked at them under this term necessarily, but they fall under it. Then newer components come along through technological developments, I’ll put it pointedly, daily, which in turn support the variants in a new way, like the excavator example, which can take on certain tasks remote-controlled. And the question is, how does this then change, through these changes taking place, work culture, or work in itself overall? And regarding leadership qualities, since you brought in this term leadership quality, Jürgen, I have another very concrete question, namely, thinking in the direction of, what actually is leadership quality then? Because when you talk about leadership quality, and this is my association, it sometimes sounds like it’s something you’re born with. And from my perspective, ultimately, especially when we look at which fears or which mechanisms are at play in the background, which needs we have that seem to be met or not met, it’s obviously more of an ability or a skill that can also be learned. And for that, I first need awareness of what’s happening in the background, so to speak, how I move into steering or leadership, and that leadership quality isn’t per se something that’s simply given from the outset, but is quite something that maybe rests on experience and so on, rests on awareness, in order to really consciously learn certain things and translate them into implementation accordingly. And I’d be interested to hear, how do you see that, Jürgen?
Thank you, Yasemin. I have a classic definition when it comes to leadership, and it sits in a definitional area distinguishing the leader from the manager. For me, a leadership personality is composed of skills and competencies — in parentheses, including experience — in the area of planning, steering, and control. Those are, for me, tools, I’ll call them tools, which, as you already mentioned, are learnable and also have to be learned — with planning scenarios, how do I approach planning, how do I steer a complex team, how do I steer dispersed teams, and so on. That’s core work, you have to learn it, the way a mechatronics apprentice learns how the individual parts of an engine fit together. And the fourth component is people leadership. So, for me, leadership quality is composed of four components — planning, steering, control, and people leadership. As I already said, that’s a learning area for me — these are learning areas I can learn, that I have to learn, and that I also have to hone and refine in practice, along with my learning successes, in order to arrive at experience. The fourth component, people leadership, dear Yasemin, is for me a manifestation of intelligence, and I categorize it under personal intelligence. And it’s understandable to everyone that there are people who definitely stand out and excel over others with this personal intelligence — they simply know how to deal with people, they have the empathic background, they have the necessary skills, let me phrase it a bit grandiosely, to accordingly meet an employee’s drive for self-actualization, meaning their drive for growth. And so, focusing explicitly only on this problem area, or non-problem area, sorry, this solution area, home office, focused on this area — a supervisor suffers a loss of control. He no longer has the remote control in his hand, as Layla said. There I say, no — he has it in his hand, if he’s a good supervisor, namely he leads, and he leads, for example, one of the models that applies here, by objectives. He simply hands over, for a certain period, this part of remote control into the self-control and self-responsibility of the employee.
Yes, thank you, thank you so much. And regarding this term personal intelligence, the question also arises, if we look very generally now at the term intelligence and IQ and so on, which we’ve already talked about, and also the various forms and manifestations of intelligence — the question here too is, what exactly is behind that? Because with general intelligence, we’d already established the fact that having a certain IQ doesn’t yet mean I apply that in a positive or meaningful or value-adding, performance-boosting, performance-enhancing context. And that’s why I’d find it really, really exciting to look more closely at this term, personal intelligence, what you’ve grouped under that — whether it’s also composed of various skills and components, so to speak, which ultimately leads you to describe or label that as personal intelligence, but here too, so to speak, something isn’t simply already given or present from the start. Could you say a bit more about that briefly, Jürgen?
Yes, it’s always astonishing how one thing leads to another in your rooms. I recently said in a room that I’m a very strong advocate for differentiating the term intelligence — that I said a general term, and we discussed this too, if I remember correctly, doesn’t actually exist. And then I said, but I have one. And with a bit of a smile on my face now, I say, my general definition for intelligence is, intelligence is what I use when I no longer know how to proceed. And now, applied to a leadership figure — although the term is negatively connoted, but I find it necessary to distinguish the manager from the leader — a leader who no longer knows how to proceed involves their employees, and thereby involves the specific intelligence present there, and doesn’t insist on their supposedly unique, somehow labeled intelligence, expertise, or decision-making competence, or whatever. That’s what makes the distinction, for me, between these leadership qualities and management qualities, and on the other hand also regarding the distinction of the term intelligence. I hope I’ve conveyed reasonably well what I wanted to say.
Yes, absolutely comprehensible for me, and there we’re back at this aspect of control and loss of control, because there are a lot of managers who have difficulties, precisely against this backdrop, involving the team in certain places accordingly. Maybe, on the one hand, it has to do with the fact that we’re socialized in such a way that we have the feeling, in inverted commas, that’s how we define a manager, or a trainer, or teacher — that they need to be able to give answers to certain things. These expectations behind that certainly have to do with experience and beliefs and so on too. And we don’t just have that with managers — we have it, as Layla can probably confirm, in school too, in training contexts, seminar contexts, and so on — whenever we’re operating in certain roles, so to speak, various expectations get placed on ourselves, and also from outside onto us. And here too, at bottom, we’re at this aspect of control or loss of control — the moment I feel I have to admit, I don’t have an answer to that, an uneasy feeling might suddenly arise. And what’s behind that is again this aspect, suddenly I don’t have my security anymore, in inverted commas. And that does something to you. And that’s why I find it so exciting to build these bridges here across these various terms, in different directions, to get a better understanding of how the whole thing is intertwined in this complexity, and what that ultimately triggers in us, or in others, and how changes to things like work or work culture and so on have an effect, and what happens there, why resistance comes up, why it sometimes feels so slow, in inverted commas, that the grass grows at that point, when learning processes take place. And with that I’d like to give Layla the opportunity again to dock in at various points — Layla, would you like to add something?
Very gladly. I’m at this point about meaning, added value, and security, and I thought to myself, well, what happens when we hand over the remote control? And then I thought about what actually is a good boss, Yasemin? Or a good female boss? My brother is self-employed and he handles it this way, his employees just get a lot of further training, and they can become really good — and yes, under certain circumstances they might leave then too, and that’s okay for him, because he knows his idea is good and his company is good. And then I thought about, well, if I’m sitting in class teaching, and someone knows better than me, that’s of course, because I hear, I always get pinned to this image, well you’re a teacher, aren’t you, you have to know that. And then I thought about, how is that in a leadership position? And then I thought, yes, I think it is the case that, what do you give up, purely sociologically speaking? And that’s also a security, well, it’s also a question of competence, and a competence struggle. And if I give my employee a lot of opportunities, let’s be really honest, they might get better — oh god, in the worst case better than me, the student who knows more than me, the employee who’s better than me. And now it also becomes a bit about interests — do they still represent my interests? To bring it into the work context — this is my company, this is my job. That’s where we’re back at meaning and added value. Is that still the added value then? I also lose this security if I give someone a lot of independence, or give them a lot of options, and give up this control function. And I think you mustn’t forget that — that’s purely sociological, that we simply have a hierarchy, that we also have power imbalances, to bring up the teacher context again. I’m not afraid of that, and you shouldn’t be as a teacher either. Of course it’s still difficult, though, because when you get pinned down to that, saying, okay, maybe I don’t know everything, but I know where to look it up and I know where it’s written, and you keep getting pinned to that. And then I thought, it’s similar in a leadership position — that you also keep getting pinned to that. And that’s why I find this so sociologically interesting, because I think it plays in whether we want it to or not — because it’s the case that, when we initiate processes like this, we give up the security of whether it’s running in our interest, whether someone gets better than me. And yes, the question is also, I don’t know, purely sociologically speaking, I’m really — if I look at my own working life, and I’m not just talking about the teaching profession now, I’ve done a lot, a lot of things — how is it when you have very good ideas, when you bring them in, when you’re maybe, I don’t know, really better, and your boss notices that? And I’m not saying I was always better than my bosses, not at all — but they have to give up security too. And if I’m really, really honest, in all the contexts I’ve seen so far, and not just related to me personally, it’s not always the case that it gets encouraged — sometimes it gets a bit fudged, and you get the feeling, I’ll limit them a bit again, because I want to keep the remote control in my hand, I want to have the remote control, and not you should have the remote control, because I’m the manager and I’m competent. Sorry, but I find it really interesting, so exciting.
Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much. And with that I’d like to slowly start connecting these bridges again. We’ve had quite a few different rooms in the past on leadership and self-leadership too, we’ve touched on various topic areas, and tomorrow it continues with the authors’ breakfast with Andreas Buhr, on the topic of leadership principles, “Leadership Works Differently Today,” the twelve guiding principles of Clean Leadership, as our guest at the authors’ breakfast — and I’m really looking forward to that too. And that’s why this room, in inverted commas, was also a bit of preparation, so to speak, to lay the groundwork for tomorrow, to establish the connections here in the direction of technology and so on, which we started with, among the various technologies, what’s behind them, what does that mean, and then to open up this room via this transformation of work, in inverted commas, in order to establish these connections — and I think that’s turned out really, really well today. That means, on the one hand, we’ve now talked about leadership, but I’d like to remind everyone that leadership isn’t classically only about the manager — the moment we talk about leadership, and these aspects we’ve just addressed, in connection with letting go, not having an answer to everything, dealing with uncertainties, or dealing with not-knowing, and so on, this whole complexity behind it, if we think about it, quickly has relevance not just for a classic manager, for example, but also for the self-leadership of every individual. That means it’s not just the other person we’re talking about here right now, when we talk about bosses or whatever, but we’re also allowed to point our finger again, not just at the other person, or rather, when we point the finger at the other person again, not in the sense of blaming, but we’ve now talked about what leadership tasks are and so on, or qualities, but also to pay attention here that three fingers, in turn, point back at us. And that means we’re quickly at self-leadership. And when we talk about self-leadership, we’re quickly at the term, we had this recently too, future skills, which is increasingly being discussed now, or meta-learning is also a term in that context. That means, basically, as I said recently, we’ve talked a lot about overarching key qualifications in recent years, and there was no agreement on everything that falls under it, but there was at least agreement that there are overarching key qualifications required in order to deal with, in inverted commas, cope with various challenges. And the term future skills, or meta-learning, is basically chosen as a term to signal, you could also say it’s a trend term again, sure, you could say that too, but we could also say it’s basically nothing other than talking about overarching key qualifications again, just with the signal, or the signaling effect, that it’s no longer just what we talked about in the past, but new elements, new factors, and so on seem to be added now, and to look closely at what future skills actually are. And it becomes interesting when we keep trying, in a recipe-like way, and here too the trap, here too we try to find recipe-like answers to what future skills actually are, and basically we’re allowed here too to let go of this aspect of control, or need for security, in inverted commas, and accept that we’re human, that we don’t know exactly what’s coming. We can plan for certain things, but especially these future skills, against the backdrop of complexity and not knowing exactly what will come tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that, has a lot to do with simply accepting, letting certain things go, and accepting that we don’t have an answer to everything. And that’s exactly what makes up future skills, this letting go and accepting. And I’m really curious about tomorrow’s authors’ breakfast with Andreas Buhr — we’ll talk about that too, and above all let’s see, I don’t want to give too much away, what these twelve guiding principles of Clean Leadership actually are, look more closely at where he stands on that, what he says about it, and how we can then build bridges accordingly, to look more closely at these terms, and also to cover such aspects as leadership, self-leadership, also considering future skills, meta-learning, such terms, against the backdrop of technological development and the transformation of work. So I’m really curious — you’re very warmly invited to join again tomorrow morning at eight, I think it’ll be exciting. And with that I’d like to move into the closing round for today, and ask again, what did you take away from the room today for yourselves, or is there something you’d like to highlight? Jürgen, Layla, in that order please.
Yes, thank you, dear Yasemin. Thank you, Layla, for your contributions — it was again, in my view, an example of how a topic can develop. I wanted to make a short addition to the statement before your last one, dear Yasemin. I’d mentioned that if this leadership quality of delegating, or handing over part of the remote control, is set up correctly, and this includes, and this is an experience value I’ve had as someone responsible for leadership, this includes very significantly the question, or the determination, of whether the other person even wants to be led at all, or takes on part of their own leadership themselves. Because there are still a lot of people who very consciously want to be led — with that we’d open up the topic of self-responsibility again, but that’s exactly the point. So, under whatever new aspect, believing that everyone is willing and able to take on this part of self-control, or self-steering — I think that’s the first step onto a wrong path. Thank you, and a nice Saturday to you all.
Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much. And that of course presupposes, on the one hand, that I, as a manager, also know my team and the people behind it, and can also know and assess their needs. And on the other hand, of course, the question arises in this context, does this person per se actually not want self-control, for example, or does it possibly also have to do with the fact that this person hasn’t learned that yet, or maybe there are certain fears behind it? That means, a lot here involves this role-switch into a learning companion role, a learning coach, for example, that’s the term often used in a corporate context, so taking on a different role than manager, in order to really determine, who am I actually dealing with here? And then, of course, all these background elements we’ve opened up come in — how does motivation work, how can our motivation system be activated, and so on. And we’d established, it’s not a one-size-fits-all principle, but needs a lot of different individual components, looking at this individually, even if it might seem, in terms of efficiency and whatever, higher, faster, better, more complicated — but that this is what’s ultimately more effective, and accordingly, again and again, and we could package that under the term “situational awareness” for the manager, so to speak — I have to look at, which situation am I in, who’s in front of me, what do they need, and how can I support, in inverted commas, or reach out a hand, so to speak, to accompany this person, and that this is one of the tasks of leadership too. I think that’s great, wonderful, and I think it shows very, very nicely how all these topics are interwoven with each other, and I find it really lovely what summarizing, concluding results we can arrive at with what we’ve already discussed before, building these bridges accordingly, and being able to hold onto that as a result too. Layla?
So my highlight is actually, well, when you said that three fingers point back at us, I always say that too, and I think both self-steering and external steering, and leadership, have a lot to do with that — with one’s own interests, with the interests of the other. Because I don’t just have to think about how the person I’m engaging with is, I also have to think about how I am. And I have to, at the right moment, push my own interests and my own ego back for a bigger interest that’s then meaningful, or for my interest, so for my company then. I found that really exciting, because I thought internally, we’d talked about human-human, human-machine, machine-machine, and then I thought, well, a machine has no ego — or maybe it does have an ego, from my perspective not yet, and then I thought, well, then it’s ego doesn’t get in its own way. And I found that really, really exciting, that a lot of components play into self- and external leadership, and many of them are human, and because of that there are a lot of interesting events ahead of us, and a lot of interesting points get raised. But of course also sources of error, hence interests and ego. I found that really, really exciting, both in myself and in the other person. Thanks for listening.
Yes, and to close I’d just like to say, a machine can also have an ego, a machine can also be empathetic, a machine can also have prejudices, but always only to the extent that we’ve programmed the machine to. And so we’re back at the aspect of saying, yes, whatever results we expect or should expect from machines in this context, both the problem, in quotation marks, and the solution, in quotation marks, lies with the human being, in quotation marks. With that, I wish you well, thank you, thank you so much. I found this mega exciting, and I’m really looking forward to tomorrow morning — I think it’s worth joining, so if you have the time and inclination, definitely join at 8 o’clock. Andreas Buhr, this is his second time with us, to present his new book together with us, so to speak, and go into depth. Feel free to take the opportunity too, not just to join and listen and take in impulses, but also, afterward, when we open up the hand-raising, to really bring in your thoughts or questions too. So I’m really looking forward to welcoming you here again tomorrow, together with Andreas. With that, I wish you a wonderful day, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow. Ciao!
