Dusseldorf It always helps that you’re smart when you’re leading people and businesses. More importantly, your intelligence is immediately apparent. Three things turned out to be “must-haves” for the successful manager of yesteryear: the elite university, the “summa cum laude” and the doctorate, which one could clearly carry in front of oneself on all business cards. Everyone should see you’ve got what it takes and you’re made for the executive chair. Decorated like that, you could be anything: secretary of defense, CEO, or brain surgeon.
Later – more than 25 years ago – it dawned on the psychologist Daniel Goleman: A razor-sharp mind and a know-it-all attitude alone are not enough to get employees over with and get the job done. The right arguments also need the right feeling. Only then are people deeply convinced. Emotion came before intelligence. The new faith taught: Empathy drives commitment and success. Since then, involvement has been a top priority in all management seminars. One reason why millions of employees today hardly get to work because of all the meetings.
But the world has become more complicated. Today even a high EQ is not enough for people and companies to surpass themselves. The leadership elite has to learn something new: relationship intelligence is the name of the new discipline. Now and in the future, the individual person is no longer the measure of all things, but the noticeable connection of the larger unit. The new masterpiece of good leadership is the ability to direct the strengths, the conflicts, the energies and the togetherness of ever-changing teams.
Leadership becomes four-dimensional: real, digital, integral and emotional
This is the reason: The matrix organization blows up every organizational chart. Even Excel charts and HR managers have lost track. At the same time, the corona virus has also led to massive side effects in the office corridors and companies and their teams have been dissolved in space and time.
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In the future, the ability to keep people and organizations together and alive will decide who will be in the executive chair. Leadership becomes four-dimensional: real, digital, integral and emotional. The quality of relationships with employees, customers and society defines entrepreneurial success.
Frank Dopheide is the founder and managing director of the management consultancy human unlimited, which specializes in the topic of “Purpose”. Previously, he was, among other things, spokesman for the management of the Handelsblatt Media Group and chairman of GRAY Worldwide.
(Photo: Klawe Rzezcy, Getty Images)
Adidas shows live on the big Dax stage what this means for managers. Kasper Rorsted is well trained, has been captain in the first business league for two decades and is assertive. The nickname “cane” describes his method of getting a company going.
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But as markets spiraled, the virus swept the world, the supply chain snapped and stores closed, the Manager of the Year 2019 had to learn his bitterest lesson. With its focus on financial markets, online business and global megacities, Rorsted had lost people – on campus, in shops and at the checkout. Under his leadership, the stock lost 50 percent of its value. World champion Adidas ended last year second to last in the table.
An eye-opening moment for shareholders. They realized that without people there is no business and chased the CEO off the field in the game. Ouch.
Relationship intelligence, the new way of leading, is obviously worth billions. This applies to all fields from now on.
His successor is a new type of player. Björn Gulden jumped over his own shadow and switched from across the street at Puma to the Adidas campus. The financial markets reacted with a La-Ola. A price jump of twelve percent caused the company’s value to increase by one billion euros overnight. The first laurels were earned even before the new CEO had picked up his employee ID card.
>> Read also: Björn Gulden: Der Umparker – his change was a sensation
What was the spark for this course firework? The character of the down-to-earth Norwegian is the most frequently cited argument. His ability to get people behind him – the board, the crew, the retailers, the markets – and so hold the store together.
Relationship intelligence, the new way of leading, is obviously worth billions. This applies to all fields from now on. We see every evening in the Tagesschau that Annalena Baerbock also makes colleagues Merz and Söder look old on the political stage.
The “superior” model is getting on in years. He is deposed and placed next to the general director in the archive of worn-out leaders.
The success model of the future is called Anchorman and Anchorwoman. You should try it once.
More: What HR managers advise managers in the crisis