Leadership - What Really Matters: A Handbook on Systemic Leadership (Management for Professionals)

For this reason, the seminars, the Academy offers are always experiential and
behavior-based, and they strongly relate to the participants’ current problems. If we
at the Academy make concepts for our internal development programs, we place the
emphasis on a complementary approach that takes into account several elements at
the same time: seminars, project work, learning partnerships among the partici-
pants, the involvement of the top management as a sponsor and of senior executives
as mentors, and above all, a detailed clarification of what we want to achieve at the
outset.
It is important to us that the organization commissioning us has the opportunity
to contribute its own culture – and thus its past – without in the process clinging to
that past and blocking change. It is helpful if HR development managers and
executives are on board and take part by actively marketing the joint program in
internal newsletters and on their intranet. Thus additional attention, appreciation
and momentum are gained, which our trainers can in turn use in the seminars (see
H€ohn and Rosenberger, Management & Training 6/2002, pp. 22–25) (Fig.4.1).
A topic that had a boom a few years ago is e-learning. Virtual platforms for
networking leaders, experts and knowledge were created to allow them to learn on
their own, regardless of time and location. Companies like IBM, but also others,
have provided good role models, e.g. with instruments such as “Learning Labs,”
“Collaborative Learning” and the “Coaching Simulator.” We now know that only
“blended learning,” the combination of conventional seminars and web-based
learning, works best. This approach is now complemented by elements where
administrative transactions and internal process steps can also be taken by

the publisher as

driving force and

sponsor

appearing at the

meeting of

executives

Internet reports

Road shows with

trainers through

the departments

top managers as

mentors for

participants

basic management

programme

executive director

within a steering

framework for

navigating the

project

Fig. 4.1An example for learning processes in the media industries (Source:H€ohn and
Rosenberger 2002)

4.1 Can Relationships Be Learned? A New Approach to Leadership Development 197