all sentimentalism and all superficial claims that “we all love each other,” emotions,
expectations, fears and taboos need to be communicated clearly. As such, I feel
relationship management is the highest art in cooperative leadership.
This makes it all the more a pity that this strategic discipline in companies of all
sizes too often devolves into “management by firefighters.” It is often only after
finding an important employee’s written resignation on their desk that managers
appreciate (too late) the value of management and marketing of human resources.
In a certain respect the best employees are identical to the company’s best
customers: the loyalty of both groups is driven by their personal ambitions and
standards. Only the honest and consistent management of relationships and values
enables leaders to make full use of employees’ potential.
Abroad German managers are considered emotionally cool and disrespectful by
foreign colleagues – despite the fact that Germany is one of the top-ranked
countries in terms of “technical human orientation,” i.e., participation, job security
and social systems. For Sprenger this is not a contradiction; after all Germany
handed over dealing with the human element of work to systems and instruments
(seeHandelsblatt, November 12, 2004).
The Academy has addressed this issue in training for many years. Leadership
work is to a great extent the ability to make and main contact and appreciate others.
It cannot be replaced by the best incentive systems. However, as the goal is always
to achieve effective leadership under the given circumstances, leaders should
also receive instrumental help in the form of training, coaching and guidelines.
This reduces inhibitions in order to make the leaders actually deal with relationship-
related subjects. My experience has been that these inhibitions truly exist, because
communication and appreciation still tend to be associated with images of the
esoteric, psychology and sentimentalism.
3.2.1 Hard and Soft Factors – The Mix Makes the Difference
Good relationship management is an important basis for successful companies.
However, this is not enough for success. The challenge consists in connecting soft
and hard success factors and balancing emotions with the company’s goals. The
right mixture mobilizes these energy reserves in employees and leaders alike, and is
decisive in determining whether a company is successful or not. Here again we are
indebted to the late Sumantra Ghoshal for his crucial insights into what makes
companies grow:
It is not enough to make everybody feel good or for the executives to make their
employees happy. A vision and a strategy need to be created that appeal to the
employees, that “sweep them up, awaken and maintain their zeal for action and give
them opportunities to develop” (Bruch and Ghoshal 2004, pp. 62–65). Leadership
means creating optimal conditions and incentives in order to make the individual
perform better than he or she would otherwise.
124 3 Systemic Leadership or: Designing a World That Others Want to Be Part Of