Next Generation Leadership: approach and programme

Crises, stagnation, the shortage of skilled workers, digitalisation, complexity and volatility, and dealing with uncertainty place new demands on managers. Smart decisions are called for in a world that cannot be calculated.

To this end, the programme works on several core topics. It conveys a new perspective on companies as highly complex social systems and a changed understanding of the role of leadership. It implements its own leadership profile, uses findings from neuroscience, puts a focus on resources before a focus on problems and interlinks individual with organisational learning. It is implemented in a blended learning architecture with a learning platform and in-person events.

The basis is the understanding of organisations in modern systems theory. The basic element of organisations is communication, and the most important communicative event is the decision. Organisations are operationally closed and self-referential. They do not see what they do not see, they cannot be changed from outside, and they have one goal: to survive.

From this, transformis derives basic theses. When solving problems, organisations deal with problems of the past. Left to themselves, they are preoccupied with themselves. They are wasteful with resources and hold on to established structures and routines, even when these no longer fit. Without leadership, their members decide independently which skills they contribute. Organisations also tend to remain opaque to themselves.

The programme asks which problem of an organisation leadership is the answer to. Each basic thesis is matched by a field of tasks. Against the orientation towards the past, leadership ensures that development impulses are gained from the difference between present and future and that the organisation orients itself towards a jointly developed, attractive vision of the future. Against the inward orientation, it ensures that the organisation engages with its relevant environments and anticipates their requirements.

In resource management, leadership ensures that resources are deployed in a targeted way according to costs and benefits and that all processes are continuously reviewed for their contribution to value creation. In organisational development, it seeks answers to the question of what kind of organisation the organisation needs in order to remain responsive to its environments.

In HR management, leadership ensures the coupling between people and the organisation and mobilises people's performance towards the organisational objectives. Against opacity, it creates frameworks of observation with which the organisation can observe and steer its own performance from different perspectives.

According to this understanding, leadership will in future have more to do with navigating than with steering. The focus is on enabling: opening up spaces, creating opportunities and offering support so that employees can organise themselves largely on their own. Courage, respect and appreciation are regarded as the most important prerequisites for an open entrepreneurship culture.

In addition, there are framework conditions and incentives such as genuine role models, a higher tolerance of mistakes and a comprehensive understanding of innovation and innovation systems. This requires suitable organisational structures, modern learning architectures and interactive learning platforms that enable and reinforce the formation of new neural networks in managers. The keyword is neuro-leadership. The focus is on the manager's attitude, from which their behaviour follows.

At the core of the NGL leadership profile is the ability to manage paradoxes. transformis describes five areas of tension. The first lies between associating and dissociating: being in community with others and at the same time keeping one's distance, being on one's own and being able to decide against others. The second combines acceleration with deceleration, that is, action orientation, assertiveness and completion with self-observation and self-reflection.

The third area of tension requires creating room that allows the new and dissolves the established, while at the same time structuring processes and ensuring order and rules. In the fourth, the manager protects their own area of responsibility from irritations and ensures concentration, while feeding in relevant disturbances from outside and remaining open to the unusual.

The fifth is the relationship between exploitation and exploration: making targeted use of existing knowledge and experience for solving problems while remaining sensitive to decision situations in which skilful handling of not-knowing is what counts. There, the task is to search and to ask the right questions.

Neuroscience helps to better understand and influence learning processes. The focus is on brain-friendly leadership that creates trust and identification. It begins with the manager themselves: only when they know how they themselves function can brain-friendly leadership take place.

For smart decisions, the programme uses the affective evaluation system, the somatic markers. It distinguishes four types: the balanced type, the self-exploiter, the quick decider and the torn type.

The work is resource-oriented. It assumes that every person largely has the resources they need for present and future challenges. These resources are mobilised, attention is directed at solutions rather than problems, and the focus is on resource-oriented self-management. To this end, the programme combines cognition, emotion, motivation and embodiment.

In a learning architecture, organisational development and people development are effectively interlinked. It enables synchronous development on both levels and increases transfer efficiency. The frame of reference is the levels according to Deiser: from standardised to tailored learning to learning that is linked to internal change initiatives, to strategic business initiatives and finally to partners across organisational boundaries.

An exemplary learning architecture runs over twelve to 24 months. At the level of the organisation are the steps of work on the forthcoming change, such as strategy development, strategy implementation, restructuring or merger. At the level of individuals are qualification modules for several target groups, for example leading into the future, change management, cost and performance management, cooperation competence and stakeholder management, and people management. In between are fixed points for interlinking and reflection at which the status of implementation is synchronised.

Blended learning combines modern e-learning in a didactically meaningful way with flexible forms of in-person events. Individualised learning takes place online: independent of time, place and device, self-organised and at one's own pace. It is complemented by guided in-depth webinars and action-oriented in-person events. Organisational learning arises in reflective in-person events.

Learning platforms are an important part of the learning architecture. They enable lasting learning with a high degree of self-determination. Digital learning materials, learning videos, simulations and interactive knowledge databases increase transfer efficiency. The in-person events are designed as exceptional learning experiences.

A four-step learning loop describes how the elements are connected. First, individual learning needs are derived from the organisational challenges. Then participants select suitable learning offerings and take them up. In the third step, they reflect on what they have learned, share it and deepen it in practice. In the fourth, they use their personal development to master the organisational challenges successfully.

The loop connects targeted, individual and social learning with organisational learning. It begins and ends with organisational development and leads from one phase of development to the next.

With its view of organisations as complex social systems, the concept leaves behind the traditional assumption that organisational phenomena can be researched and explained causally. In this understanding, employees and managers are not part of the communication system. They belong to its relevant environments. They act like players in a game and make an important contribution to organisational communication. The game with its rules exists even without the players. Only their participation, their communicative contribution, brings it to life.

The strong life of its own that organisations have has a decisive effect on managers and their behaviour. If they do not meet collectively anchored expectations, the organisation can react unexpectedly and very fiercely. This reaction in turn affects the managers and their definition of their role. The programme therefore takes both directions into account: the forces of the organisation on the manager and vice versa.

This results in a shift in the role. The task lies less in making the right decisions oneself. Leadership ensures that all relevant information available inside and outside the company is fed into the ongoing communication process. How well this process is designed determines the quality of the decisions made.

This also gives rise to the requirement for developing managers. It should remain tied to the requirements and circumstances of the organisation and include the relevant environments with their foreseeable developments.

Neuroscience describes the brain as a dynamic, self-organised system of nerve cells connected in networks via synapses. These neural networks influence readiness to perceive, act and feel as well as motivation. Contrary to earlier assumptions, the brain remains changeable and capable of learning throughout life. This neural plasticity lets it work in a similar way to a muscle.

If certain patterns of perception, thought and behaviour are repeated frequently, the associated networks are reinforced. Well-worn tracks develop, that is, patterns of experience and reaction that run automatically and often unconsciously. A network that is no longer used slowly breaks down and the behaviour becomes less frequent. Learning follows the same principle: the more often a new behaviour is carried out, the stronger the connection becomes. According to Roth, all memory performance is based on experience-dependent changes in the brain that form the basis of learning.

The brain also evaluates which behaviour benefits or harms psychobiological well-being. A distinction is made between a cognitive evaluation system, driven by reason, and an affective one, driven by feeling. Experiences with objects and situations are stored, together with the associated feelings and bodily sensations, in the emotional experiential memory. Affective evaluation draws on these somatic markers. They react within milliseconds with “good” or “bad” and trigger a corresponding feeling or bodily sensation.

To build new neural networks, the programme mainly uses the positive markers. In this way, resources the manager already has are used to develop suitable behaviours from a self-determined attitude. For resource-oriented self-management, it draws on the Zurich Resource Model by Maja Storch and Frank Krause. It concentrates on existing resources instead of working through deficits. The aim is high transfer efficiency, that is, the successful transfer of what has been learned to everyday professional and private situations.

Interlinking can start from two sides. If the development of managers comes first, the first question is which organisational conditions and changes are necessary to secure the company's existence in the long term and what that means for managers. The qualification architecture then sets the pace for the work architecture. In parallel with qualification, the organisational conditions arise under which what has been learned becomes effective.

If the starting point is organisational development, the need for change at the organisational level is determined first and the work architecture derived. Then it is clarified what qualification is needed to master these challenges. Here, the work architecture sets the pace for people development. In both cases, no knowledge is produced for stock.

On the learning platform, participants mostly learn asynchronously and according to their own perceived needs. Learning management systems allow ongoing evaluation of usage and automated checks of learning success. Learners receive feedback and structure on their progress. People development learns which offerings are taken up and can adapt them.

Self-directed learning without a connection to organisational challenges, however, often remains ineffective. Regular reflection sessions are therefore planned to establish a shared view of where things stand. Because knowledge acquisition takes place on the platform, more time remains in the in-person events for reflection, evaluation, discussion and decisions. There, the learning experiences are brought into the organisation and necessary organisational changes are discussed so that the competencies acquired reach operational business.