Leadership must take people seriously and respect them – but at the same time,
managers should not lose respect for themselves and their work; otherwise they will
fall prey to the cynicism of disappointment and disillusionment, and will distance
themselves from others in order to avoid injury. But this is exactly how a good
leader should be: vulnerable and human. Every manager must then decide for
himself or herself whether they choose “the straight approach of making demands,
negotiating and arriving at agreements, or continue to play games of psychological
seduction. You must choose between the spirit of fostering self-esteem and
the specter of motivating from without,” as Sprenger concludes (Sprenger 2003,
p. 259).
Sprenger’s book closes with these thoughts on the “I” of the executive. Here
he touches on a very important issue, which I feel to be the core of successful
leadership, as I will show in Chap. 3 of this book. Whether a manager has the
courage and the strength to refrain from motivating and thus from demotivating and
relies on the employees’ will to perform and intrinsic motivation, depends essen-
tially on the “self-awareness” of the manager and their role.
2.3.3 Trust
One of the most important prerequisites for successful relationship management
and an expression of high emotional intelligence is the ability to trust and to gain the
trust of others, claims Reinhard K. Sprenger. If the manager does not trust their
employees and vice versa, leadership will not succeed – even if the right tools and
techniques are used. Lack of trust paralyzes collaboration and the productivity,
creativity and flexibility of employees and the entire organization, something
Sprenger shows quite impressively in his book “Trust: The Best Way to Manage.”
His approach should serve as an example for all those dealing with this subject and
who have made the demand for more trust a leading topic in the past few years.
2.3.3.1 Trust – A Scarce Commodity
But how do German companies really approach the issue of trust? Sprenger’s
bottom line is devastating: “We talk about trust when it is lacking. (...) The more
we talk about trust, the worse the situation is” (Sprenger 2002b, p. 16). While all
managers claim to trust in their subordinates, the former themselves want to receive
more trust from their superiors – and the same is true a level higher up in the hier-
archy. Mistrust dominates the relation of managers to their employees and vice
versa. The employees suspect that “up there” nobody adheres to the agreements
anyway, that everyone has only their own interests in mind and that managers are
generally untrustworthy. At the same time, the superiors suspect their employees
are generally reluctant to do their jobs and need to be stimulated into working at all.
Quite a few executives are obsessed with the idea that their employees want to
90 2 Occupation or Calling: What Makes for Good Leadership?