Leadership Education

Change processes often run in parallel, with no clear starting and end points for change. The highly complex change processes of today place high demands on the management of the company. It is not merely a matter of managing change - it is about getting people involved in a vision, overcoming change fatigue and resistance, and implementing new strategies, processes and behaviors in a targeted and concrete manner in the workplace.

At the same time, the demands on leadership are changing against the backdrop of social and technological developments: Leadership needs to plan, budget and delegate less. Rather, it is about connecting people with each other, building consensus on a common course and using and channeling the employees' willingness to participate and shape the company.

In order to meet current challenges, managers must work at the interfaces of strategy, communication, human resources and organizational development and combine these areas into an overall change process. This involves designing and implementing change processes such as reorganization, strategic realignment, cost and efficiency programs, process optimization & re-engineering, innovation and quality programs, identity, value and mission statement processes, post-merger integration, compliance, diversity, sustainability or security programs, Digital Culture & Enterprise 2.0.

The demands placed on managers have risen steadily in recent years. For example, managers have to create a loyal team out of very diverse, often independent employees acting in a virtual space - without having much direct power over them.

A traditional management style based on control can only fail in such an environment. Even today, it is usually not particularly effective. The leaders of the future need a different understanding of themselves as leaders and must be prepared to focus on empowering others rather than on their own power gain.

The indispensable skills of modern managers therefore include empathy, emotional maturity, integrity, openness and high ethical standards, human contact and appreciation, dialogue at an eye-level, a spirit of partnership with employees, all of which make a good leader. On the other hand, a good manager also needs the ability to set himself apart and not shy away from conflicts, to accept frustration from others and to bring his own authority to bear. Usually a person is more at home on one pole than on the other - then the art is to unite both poles integrally.

Restructuring, reorganization, M&A deal - an exceptional situation for any company. Reflexively, communication is reduced to two questions: How do we get the numbers story through? How do we get through the next weeks without bad press? Just as important: How do we use communication as a management tool that creates added value and holds the company together internally? And how do we design and convey a concrete picture of what the company will be afterwards, what makes it strong and what it stands for?

When have we overcome the exceptional situation? At any rate not for a long time yet, once the key issues paper has been announced. When the representatives' meeting has agreed. Or when a new investor is found. It is successfully mastered when a renewal process is set in motion. And that depends on many actors that need to be won over. These days, pure number stories are no longer convincing anyone: neither investors nor analysts. Managers, employees, works councils and trade unions even less so.

By offering a perspective on the future, you win the necessary protagonists: managers who motivate. Employees who are committed. The public and politicians who support. Investors who trust. Press that reports in a balanced way. This requires a vision and a corporate story of what the company should become after the exceptional situation.

Without conflicts no advancement is possible. Nevertheless, conflicts are usually perceived as disruptive and unpleasant. Especially in leadership and team contexts, this area of tension is part of everyday working life.

It is therefore essential for managers to be trained in conflict management. It is essential that they learn the skills to understand and deal with conflicts between individuals, in teams and in complex organizations. This always requires them to work on their own personality. The participants learn to sharpen their own awareness of potential and acute conflicts in order to be able to intervene in a differentiated and structured way. For this purpose, they learn various aspects of mediation and moderation as well as the implementation of organizational development measures for productive conflict management.

Communication is not everything, but without communication everything is nothing. This statement is especially true when companies enter new territory, change their culture or set a new direction. Employees, customers and shareholders want to be involved in the change, well informed and emotionally engaged.

They need answers to the questions that everyone asks themselves in a change process: What remains as it is? What is changing? What does that mean for me? If management takes these questions seriously, a dialogue with all target groups affected by the change is created. This dialogue resolves doubts - at the same time, the willingness to actively contribute to change grows.

If you want to successfully shape change communication, this seminar provides you with the necessary tools. An awareness is cultivated as to how people in change are emotionally well integrated. Management models promote the understanding of the effect of communication in change processes. Many practical examples from companies and institutions illustrate which strategies have proven themselves and which have prevented success.

Concrete instruments for the design of communication are applied in exercises and the seminar thus becomes a hands-on experience. This gives the participants a decision-making aid in change processes on the one hand and concrete options for action for shaping their communication on the other.

Topic focus:

• »Current models on the topics of change and communication
• »Effect of communication in change processes
• »Relationship between change management and communication
• »Design and successful implementation of communication processes
• »Examples from over 20 years of communications experience

The target group are first and second level managers, organizational developers, HR change managers and heads of communications departments.

Interpersonal communication also means ambiguity of messages in the sending and receiving process. Recognizing this ambiguity is becoming increasingly important in everyday management. The manager thus becomes a coach for his employees, whose strengths, weaknesses and leadership needs he must identify quickly. Those who know how to interpret the signals of interpersonal communication can conduct employee and team discussions much more effectively. The seminar deals, among other things, with the learning of person-centered dialogue forms according to Carl Rogers and communication models according to Friedemann/Schulz van Thun.

In transnational projects at the latest, many communication professionals realize how important inter- and intracultural communication is for their own work. But inter- and intracultural communication skills also play a central role in international M&As or global management projects. Based on current theories and a large number of case studies, participants are familiarized with the central principles of inter- and intracultural communication.

Every company has a culture. But only corporate cultures that provide employees with a working environment in which they enjoy working and perform well will have a positive impact on the success of a company. Many long-term studies have shown how important the leadership behavior of management and daily interaction with each other is for business results.

Employee satisfaction, open communication, goal orientation and continuous development are the key factors. Quality, respect, sense of responsibility and openness are the values that transform a corporate culture into a competitive advantage.

Participants gain a better understanding of the connection between corporate culture and corporate success. They learn more about the factors which promote performance and motivation and the factors which constitute barriers to growth and blockages..

Building on this, they will familiarize themselves with instruments to grasp their own corporate culture, define the desired target culture and plan the path to it. This is the basis for recruiting, retaining and developing the right employees for the company.

Topic focus:

• »Overview of current research on corporate culture and success
• »Motivational factors: What motivates people?
• »Power factors: What drives high performance?
• »Position-fixing: How to recognize the status quo and the lived values of a company?
• »Goal setting: Can cultural goals be SMART?
• »Corporate Culture and Talent Management
• »Corporate culture and employer branding
• »The importance of leadership principles
• »Examples of successful companies and corporate cultures

The target group are managing directors, company founders and organizational developers as well as the heads of human resources (development) departments.

An effective presence is just as important for success as excellent specialist knowledge. With charisma and the conscious use of body language, difficult situations can be mastered. Convincing argumentation strategies and situational repartee are also a must - and learnable. Through professional discussion leadership, managers can also extricate themselves from tricky situations.

Entrepreneurs, whether owners or employed managers, are increasingly being targeted by NGOs, politics, media and the judiciary. Managers are often the ones who suffer, and the boss often has to be the scapegoat.

But communication with all stakeholders is part of the entrepreneurial agenda. The trend towards personalization of top managers is unbroken: The CEO is a figure of identification, an anchor of trust, a talent magnet, an image and value driver for his company.

The road can be rocky, but CEOs and their communication strategists are able to set social issues and initiate a powerful dialogue with the relevant stakeholder groups. CEOs can create a lot of trust through language and public appearances. And they can motivate their employees and managers highly effectively through their inner mission.

The seminar uses numerous best-and worst-practice examples to show what CEO communication is, what makes it successful and how a communication strategist sets sustainable accents.

• »The framework of CEO Communication: growing influence of pressure groups, increasing jurisdiction of the communication environment, constant trend towards media personalization and scandalization of organizations.
• »The CEO as a brand: identification figure, anchor of trust, talent magnet, image and value driver - comparison of the current role profile with public expectations of the CEO's orientation.
• »Planned topic management: To what extent is participation in social discourse appropriate - can and should CEOs pursue an agenda setting?
• »From shareholder to stakeholder dialogue: How can a communications agenda be derived from the business agenda?
• »Internal mission: How a CEO ensures the motivation and identification of his managers and employees.
• »Language of Trust: The language of CEOs has contributed significantly to the loss of trust in many companies. But how does a CEO create trust through language?
• »The first and last 100 days: Not only the start, but also the departure must be very well planned and effectively staged - without exaggerating.

Yesterday colleague, tomorrow boss - a difficult situation. How do you correctly manage the role shift from colleague to superior? How do you manage the difficult interplay of closeness and distance from the beginning? And: How do you establish an open, but appreciative and constructive feedback culture from the beginning? Participants learn tools and interventions that strengthen their leadership profile and enable them to act in an empathetic and at the same time goal-oriented manner.

In the globalized network society, processes of self-reflection and self-management are becoming increasingly important. Extra-functional competencies such as leadership skills, coordination skills and methods of employee development and potential orientation are becoming more and more relevant for success in increasingly complex and constantly changing organizations. At the same time, the relevance of self-observation and process observation, reflective self-management and the willingness to learn and develop anew is increasing. This is where coaching with a comprehensive repertoire of systemic and person-centered methods and models comes into play.

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was long considered a childhood and adolescence disorder. In the meantime, numerous studies have shown that the symptoms of many children with ADHD persist into adulthood.

Those affected suffer, among other things, from deficits in work and social behavior, low self-esteem, low frustration tolerance and low resilience.

The previously common therapy model was drug treatment supplemented by psychotherapy. In the meantime, however, coaching has become a major factor in coping with problems in the professional and social world.

In this seminar the basics of ADHD coaching as well as the ADHD-specific coaching process and numerous symptom-guided interventions are taught through input and application-oriented exercises. The participants have the opportunity to bring in their own cases and work on them in a solution-oriented way.

Collegial case supervision offers the possibility to work on acute practical problems in teams and to develop solutions. The team members advise each other. This is a special feature of the concept. It is necessary to structure the mutual consultation process in order to ensure mutual exchange within the team and constant reflection on the work.

The aim of the seminar is to enable the participants to carry out these processes independently. In the course of the seminar the participants will learn various systemic and person-centered interventions of collegial case supervision with the goal of enabling the seminar participants in the medium term to lead or conduct their own collegial case supervision. According to the principle of practice-oriented seminar learning, the participants are taught selected models, tools and methods as guided help for self-help. The methods may include: the transactional analytical model of the driving dynamics, the inner team, the inner leadership team or the reflecting team.

In many organizations, negotiation and conflict resolution is becoming increasingly important. However, employees and managers often confuse negotiation with haggling, in which one party imposes its will on the other. The central focus of the seminar is to negotiate rationally rather than intuitively - a successful and appropriate negotiation result for both sides should be achieved. Using the so-called Harvard Method, founded by Professors Roger Fisher and William Ury, the negotiation process in the seminar is based on the following guiding questions:

• »How can even difficult negotiations be led to a useful result without one party losing face?
• »Under what premises is it possible to reach a partnership agreement despite conflicting positions?

The seminar deals with typical behavior in negotiation situations, how to measure the success of negotiations, catalogues to prepare a good negotiation, the model of smart targets, BATNA & ZOPA, information matrix & concession matrix as well as the planning of complex negotiations.

Social media is on everyone's lips and is changing not only people's communication behavior but also their purchasing decisions. Social media is the term used to describe all digital and interactive exchanges.

It took radio 25 years, television 13 years and Facebook 5 months to reach 50 million people. Social media is therefore currently the largest mass medium in the world.

Content marketing is the corresponding buzzword and describes not only a trend but also a sustainable digital communication strategy, because the best content is useless if it is not received by the target group.

Participants will get an overview of the potentials, opportunities and risks of social media. In a mix of lecture, discussion and interactive group work, they deal with digital communication platforms and necessary resources.