Management Coaching – a Worthwhile Investment in the Future
In companies with a modern management culture, leadership means more than just being the best in your field. In an increasingly complex working world, being an expert alone is not enough. Additional skills are required, which often have to be acquired first. Continue reading
Nowadays, a modern management positions demand much more from their incumbents than delegating tasks to their “subordinates” according to their expertise, experience and objectives. Of course, anyone who wants to lead in a company must have a basic understanding of the subject – whether they work in production, sales or development. However, in an increasingly complex working environment, leadership is not limited to being the best expert.
Contemporary leadership includes, for example, a certain empathy, the ability to realistically assess employees with all their different behavioral patterns and characteristics and to approach them individually. This includes the ability to help shape and communicate company goals and implement them with the team; to be able to make decisions; not only to challenge but also to encourage and to take the time to listen to the personal concerns of employees. Good managers will also see themselves as part of their team rather than as a hierarchical head.
That’s a lot of responsibility and an often unfamiliar role for someone taking on leadership in its company. And realistically speaking, hardly any managers have all the skills required for this responsibility from the outset – especially if they are new to the management role.
As a company with a modern management culture, we are aware of this challenge. We know that you can and must learn many of the skills of a manager like a trade – the prerequisite is to be able to train them again and again. This is why we hold an intensive coaching series every year for all those who take on a management role with us for the first time and supplement this with an intensive, multi-day in-depth workshop for all managers.
However, it is not only traditional managers who benefit from this coaching program. Employees without direct management responsibility who work at interfaces, manage projects or coordinate cross-team topics also take part in the training courses. This is because they are also faced with the challenge of moderating, steering and persuading in their day-to-day work – and thus take on a kind of indirect leadership role.
We take time for this. We take our new managers at all company locations out of their day-to-day work for a total of three times three working days during their first few months and provide them with comprehensive “basic training” under expert guidance. The agenda includes content modules and workshops on topics such as self-assessment, interviewing and collaboration.
“For us, this is a high, but also worthwhile and long-term investment,” explains René Steinbach, internal coach at Kuhn Industrie Holding and its affiliated companies. He is responsible for organizing our management coaching sessions and is also largely responsible for conducting them. “For us as a forward-looking company, it is crucial that our managers are more than just technical managers who only have their department in mind. They need to realize that their role goes far beyond technical guidance – like a good coach of a sports team, they should challenge, support and coordinate – even beyond the boundaries of their area of responsibility,” adds the coach.