Leadership culture: shaping and developing it

Companies sometimes find that objectives are missed and decisions not implemented, or that collaboration within and between departments does not work. If high sickness rates or staff turnover also occur, leadership culture can be a decisive lever for real change.

If the lived understanding of leadership is specifically aligned with corporate strategy and the organisation, this strengthens corporate culture as well as corporate performance. At the same time, employee satisfaction and loyalty rise when leadership is experienced as comprehensible and consistently in line with strategy and values.

Definitions of leadership culture usually focus heavily on the behaviour of managers. The systemic understanding of transformis takes a broader view of the term and thus provides starting points for actively shaping leadership culture.

According to this view, leadership culture comprises all the expectations and definitions, rules and norms that have taken shape around the question of how a company is led. This includes how leadership is talked about, how decisions are made and legitimised and how the tension between trust and control is lived (Luhmann 2000). In short: how leadership tasks are approached in a company is a question of culture.

In the transformis approach, leadership is a collective capability, that is, a capability of the social system that is not limited to individual leaders. An essential task of leadership is to maintain the company's performance in the long term and to effectively provide the impulses needed for strategic and organisational development.

An organisation's leadership competence is accordingly reflected in its ability to adapt to change, drive innovation and develop a coherent culture that supports the achievement of strategic objectives. Leadership is a team effort that is more than the sum of its parts.

How the capability “leadership” is developed in a company shows in one question: how do decisions come about? This means looking at structures and communication routines as well as the interplay of people in communication. Structures, rules and routines define the spaces of possibility in which impulses can be introduced, processed and decided.

Because leadership is always a team effort, its success needs robust relationships in which conflicts are negotiated. Those who lead in particular are under special scrutiny in an organisation and shape corporate culture massively through their behaviour. An essential factor for successful leadership is therefore the competencies of leaders.

Through a joint communication process, the understanding of leadership in the company can be made explicit, a target picture designed and the necessary leadership competencies derived. At the organisational level, leadership culture becomes visible, for example, through communication and decision-making routines, and at the individual level above all through the behaviour of leaders.

The process must therefore work out how decisions are to be made in line with the target picture and which leadership behaviour is desired or will not be tolerated.

The first step in developing leadership culture is a comprehensive analysis of the current situation that makes the existing understanding of leadership in the company transparent. As soon as it is clear how leadership is currently understood, lived and perceived, the leadership team can develop a target picture for the future direction.

Building on this, a concrete process is worked out that shapes the transition from the current to the desired state. It can include reviewing existing leadership structures and leadership routines, defining the necessary leadership competencies and targeted measures to strengthen managers. Agile monitoring is implemented to track progress continuously.

First, the current state must be determined and made transparent in the leadership group. Among other things, it must be clarified how leadership is understood, how decisions are made and what requires permission. This also includes how much trust superiors have in their employees, how they treat them and what influence hierarchical differences have on how people deal with each other. Finally, the question is how the company arrives at its strategy and a suitable organisation.

If the results of the analysis are processed jointly and the need for action is derived jointly, a strong, shared feeling of urgency, a “sense of urgency”, arises. In this step, the “away from” is clearly defined so that the “towards”, that is, the desired target picture, can be developed in the next step.

A future-oriented target picture must take into account the company's specific requirements so that it remains successful in the long term. This includes an intensive examination of the company's relevant environments and of the workforce. In this way, it is possible to find out which form of leadership is appropriate and effective at the organisational and at the personal level.

Structures, processes, routines and frameworks are then reviewed with a view to the target picture and developed further where necessary. The review ensures that all relevant definitions, frameworks and work instructions contribute to achieving the target picture. Two questions provide orientation: which communication and decision-making routines does the leadership system need in order to become effective in line with the new understanding of leadership? And are the existing structures and frameworks still up to date in this context?

The new target picture places specific demands on managers. It is therefore determined which leadership competencies are required, which needs arise from them and how these can be addressed in a targeted way. It must be clarified which competencies go hand in hand with the new understanding of leadership and what empowerment needs leaders have (gap analysis). Measures are derived from this and integrated into development plans.

Even while the target picture is being developed, care is taken to formulate observable and measurable objectives. This makes it possible to set up monitoring of implementation progress and establish a reflection routine.

It must be defined by what and how the implementation progress of work with and on the leadership system is measured, how monitoring is carried out and how the results are evaluated. It must also be settled how the need for action is recognised and measures are derived and fed into the process.

The question of how the workforce is to be involved in the process is taken up early and runs like a common thread through all process steps. Tailored involvement in each process step requires two guiding questions: which target groups and stakeholders exist within the workforce with regard to leadership culture? And which target groups should be informed, and which involved?

Set up in this way, work on leadership culture is a joint process of the leadership system, from the analysis of the current situation through the target picture to monitoring. It shapes leadership as a team effort.