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One Size Fits None: An Appeal for Better Leaders

One Size Fits None: An Appeal for Better Leaders

by Hamza Khan | Feb 27, 2023 | International leadership development, Leadership Impact, Leadership Tips | 0 comments

One Size Fits None: An Appeal for Better Leaders

According to Deloitte University Press, 86% of companies have identified developing new leaders as an “urgent” need. And upon closer inspection, it’s clear to see why. 

Incompetency as a Norm

When it comes to managers’ performance, alarmingly, the norm seems to be incompetence. In a recent study, Gallup found that companies fail to choose suitable candidates for management roles a staggering 82% of the time. Now to be fair, there are not many qualified potential people to choose from in the first place.

In another report, Gallup revealed that only 1 in 10 people possess requisite management talents, such as the ability to build relationships that create trust, open dialogue, and full transparency. And of those who do end up becoming managers, their talent is seldom nurtured. 

A survey by Career Builders found that a whopping 58% of managers receive little-to-no management training. Alas, most bosses aren’t necessarily good at making the people around them better. And how this plays out in workplaces across the planet is disheartening.

For instance, a Harvard Business Review study uncovered that 58% of people trust strangers more than their bosses. So arguably, they are more willing to let their children get into an Uber driven by a complete stranger than they are to let them work with their boss. In light of these findings, it’s no surprise that most employees—upwards of 80% according to some of the most comprehensive studies—are disengaged, looking for other jobs, and ditching traditional employment to pursue entrepreneurship. 

Who is your Leadership Inspiration?

As it happens, the modern workplace is overrun by bosses who aren’t qualified to lead. Reflect on your career for a moment by thinking about the best boss you worked for, as well as the worst boss you worked for. Once you’ve visualized them, ask yourself: whose leadership style do you strive to emulate?

If you picked the best boss you worked for, then you have an innate understanding of the complex problem at hand, as well as its embarrassingly simple solution.

On one side, it’s heartening to see organizations worldwide upgrade from simple Corporate Social Responsibility commitments to more holistic and comprehensive Environmental, Social, and Governance commitments, as well as aspire to B-Corp status.

Glimpses of a positive-sum thriving future are visible through the cracks of the prevailing zero-sum failing system. A full year before we plunged into the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic, Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, made this urgent appeal to his contemporaries at the 2019 Business Roundtable Forum: 

“The purpose of business now transcends shareholders. We need a reinvented system focused on employees, customers, communities, and the planet.”  

Leadership Inspiration

Meaningful Leadership

Benioff believes that companies should use their power to advance meaningful causes. And chief among them is the fight against climate change. In doing so, he joins a small but rising list of industry captains—including Patagonia Founder Yves Chouinard, who made headlines for relinquishing his entire stake in the company to fight climate change—who speak up about the necessary structural changes required to stand a chance against the world’s most pressing issue.

So on one side, it seems that leaders have their hearts in the right places as far as environmental sustainability is concerned. But on the other, a peculiar problem is intensifying: organizations are living shorter and shorter lives. Consider that in 1958, the average age of an S&P 500 company was a healthy 61 years. But in 2023, that number is down to a mere 18 years.

In fact, McKinsey calculates that most S&P 500 companies will disappear by 2027. I suspect that this rate of decay has a lot to do with the aforementioned issue of bad bosses. As I wrote about extensively in my pandemic-inspired book, “Leadership, Reinvented,” during times of change and crises, people don’t “step up”—they actually “fall back” and “sink” to the level of their values, training, and preparation. 

Given that most managers are incompetent and that our world is becoming increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, the problem becomes clearer: overwhelmed and incompetent bosses are reverting to and doubling down on a counterproductive style of management—a remnant of the early Industrial Revolutions, known in the leadership literature as “Dominance.” 

Dominance-Oriented Leadership

Dominance-oriented leadership it’s a one-size-fits-all style of management which relies on force and intimidation to induce fear. Below are common traits of this leadership style:

  1. Assertive
  2. Highly Directive
  3. Top-Down
  4. Traditional
  5. Command-And-Control
  6. Hierarchical 
  7. Coercive
  8. Intimidating
  9. Punitive
  10. Authoritative

Dominance-oriented leaders are inclined to enjoy giving orders, intimidating subordinates, overly relying on reward and punishment, and prioritizing the organization’s needs over those it employs. The one critical problem with this management style is that it doesn’t replicate.

And so, in the truest sense of the word, it’s an unsustainable approach to managing. After all, think back to the bad boss you visualized earlier—you’re actively choosing not to replicate their management style.



Dominance-oriented leadership

Caught up in Dominance cycles, most companies—whether on the S&P 500 or FTSE Eurofirst 300—haven’t committed to comprehensive measures to fight climate change, such as running net zero carbon operations. Staring into the abyss of time, afraid, the managers of these companies are making the grave mistake of prioritizing greater profits.

All the while, they’re exacerbating the very problem that will upend their business. Intimidation can beget compliance, but relationships based on Dominance are less stable. Getting out of unstable survival mode involves looking to the opposite approach to Dominance, namely, Prestige. 

Prestige-Oriented Leadership

This style of management involves the sharing of expertise or know-how to gain respect. Prestige-oriented leaders are servant leaders who care about relationships with their team, avoid intimidation and coercion, strive to be role models, use soft power to influence subordinates, and create more organizational leaders. Below are common traits of this leadership style:

  1. Transformational 
  2. Humble
  3. Non-Directive
  4. Empowering
  5. Egalitarian
  6. Inspiring
  7. Generous
  8. Admired
  9. Supportive
  10. Authentic

Benefits of Prestige-Oriented Leadership

Compared to Dominance, Prestige is more tedious to manifest, for it requires substantial tailoring to the needs of individuals. But the caveat is that of the two, Prestige is the only style that is widely and willingly replicated. In this way, it’s the only sustainable option. But putting aside the question of ease, Prestige is actually better for business.

A ten-year examination of stock market returns for the 20 best-ranked public companies on Glassdoor reveals that 60% have beaten the S&P 500, and 91% have had positive returns. And behold, Fortune’s Top 100 best companies to work at also outperformed the S&P 500 over the past decade. The top company, Adobe, beat the market by 9.5% each year and returned 1762% during this time.

And according to the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, companies that promote a culture of health, safety, and well-being also outperformed the market by 2% per year, with a weighted return on equity of 264% (compared with the S&P 500 return of 243%). It turns out that exceptional places to work create outstanding returns for their shareholders. So while Prestige may be a more challenging path to the top, it’s absolutely worth doing.



Prestige-Oriented Leadership

Dominance or Prestige?

Are there situations where a Dominance-oriented leader performs better than a Prestige-oriented leader? Yes. A top-down, dominant approach can be efficient when a solid plan is in place, and a highly coordinated, unified effort is needed to deliver it.

A dominant leader can make each part of a company adhere to clearly defined actions, and can save time through quick and firm decision-making. But all this assumes that there is a healthy relationship between managers and employees, and that good communication and buy-in have taken place.

Which, as we know, is simply not the case in the modern workplace. One way to rethink the Prestige-Dominance dichotomy is as a permission-based blend—the privilege of successful Prestige orientation is the earned ability to switch to Dominance as the needs of the organization and its people change. 

For Human Resources and Learning & Development professionals, the business case is clear. And it needs to be communicated to managers across the organization—potential managers, newly minted managers, and C-Suite alike: lead with Prestige. Early in my career, a mentor advised me that a leader’s true purpose is to “develop new leaders.”

A coordinated contingent of Prestige-oriented leaders is critical to navigating our world away from impending environmental catastrophe and toward a sustainable positive-sum future. And this global effort depends on every organization’s ability to develop new leaders. 

Hamza Khan

Hamza Khan

Keynote Speaker

Hamza Khan is a best-selling author, award-winning entrepreneur, and globally-renowned keynote speaker whose TEDx talk “Stop Managing, Start Leading” has been viewed over two million times.

The world’s leading organizations trust him to enhance modern leadership, inspire purposeful productivity, nurture lasting resilience, and navigate constant change.

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Greater employee retention through generational diversity

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by Karen McCullough | Feb 27, 2023 | Best Practice, Leadership Impact, Leadership Tips | 0 comments

Greater employee retention through generational diversity

Over the last few decades, generational diversity in the workplace has increased significantly. The youngest Generation Z brings in new energy, while the oldest – Traditionalist Generation – often clings to used structures.

Sometimes it can be difficult when different generations work together. Keynote speaker Karen McCullough talks about such generation management in an interview.

Short fact check

Pew Research Center defines the birth years of generations:

Traditionalists: 1928-1945
Baby Boomers: 1946-1964
Gen X: 1965-1980
Millennials: 1981-1996
Gen Z:1997-2012

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Being a servant leader – Servant Leadership

Being a servant leader – Servant Leadership

by Gunther Fürstberger | Feb 14, 2023 | Leadership Impact, Leadership Tips, MDI Inside | 0 comments

Being a servant leader

“Servant Leadership” is a concept by Robert Greenleaf that describes the manager as a servant to their employees. What this model is specifically about and what its strengths are, you can read in this article.

The origin of the approach

In Hermann Hesse’s “Morgenlandfahrt”, a spiritual seeker experiences how the disappearing servant turns out to be a true leader in retrospect. This story inspired Robert Greenleaf to develop his life’s work, the concept of serving as a leader. A number of well-known authors and CEOs of companies such as Starbucks, Nordstrom and SAS followed him in designing and practicing servant leadership.

A talent management executive at a large international corporation told me one day, “I don’t believe in the honest intent of servant leadership. To me, it seems more like a motivational ploy. In the end, the ‘servant leaders’ earn a lot more than the employees they seem to serve.”

 

Trick or mission? Manipulated motivation to high performance or the revolution of the working world that turns the hierarchy pyramid upside down?

Managers, especially CEOs, should ask themselves what kind of leadership culture they have and want in their own organization.

The purpose of leadership

What is the purpose of leadership? This is a good question to start a reflection on developing your own leadership culture. The why question is closely related to the „for whom” question. Which stakeholders in an organization are given priority? The shareholders, the employees, the customers? Customers, in a broader sense, can also be certain groups in society or even parts of nature for which the organization wants to create added value.

Focus on employees

Servant leadership is usually associated with a focus on employees. Greenleaf sees, among other things, employee growth as a hallmark of servant leadership. “Serving the community” is also found as a frequently mentioned goal. And then there’s the aspect of getting employees to perform at their best by serving. Shareholders understandably feel comfortable with the latter.

The desired leadership culture is derived from the purpose of the organization. If the purpose of the company is to maximize profit, then human resources tend to be seen as a mean. And servant leadership will consequently be a downstream mean to promote the purpose of “motivated, high-performing human resources.”

While the upside-down pyramid is well suited to question a culture of exploitation of the powerful over the subjugated that has been going on for ages, contradictions arise if taken to its logical conclusion. Institutionalized leadership almost always goes hand in hand with power, e.g. with the right to impose positive and negative sanctions. This makes it easier to achieve organizational goals and often also benefits the led, e.g. through higher security.

However, the history of mankind until today shows that power has often been used for one’s own advantage. And in order to maintain the privileged position of the leadership group, subtile and brutal suppression mechanisms have been used.

Leadership Development

For the common good

The inverted pyramid thus also expresses the desire that leadership does not exploit but support and that the leader put others before themselves. For at least 2000 years there have been rulers who have called themselves servants, from Marcus Aurelius to Joseph II, Frederick the Great to Queen Elizabeth.

In this way, they have expressed how they interpret their privileged right to rule for the common good. Even if they did not donate their castles to the poor, they may have done more for the wellbeing of the people with the servant attitude than absolutist rulers with a “the–state–is–me attitude.”

There are also good arguments why a radical reversal of ruling relations and privileges would not be fair: Those who make an above-average commitment to goals that benefit others should also be entitled to a reward. This commitment can be in terms of time, talent and resources. However, it is questionable whether this justifies a CEO earning 147 times as much as a typical worker in Germany and 300 times as much in the USA.

In addition, there is the legal perspective with the legally anchored liability of the CEO. Someone has to take personal responsibility for wrong decisions and this is normally the managing director registered in the commercial register. Payment defaults or accidents can result in liability. Who bears this liability risk if we turn the pyramid upside down?

In the end, it will probably remain with individuals and they must then also have the possibility to implement decisions. We can flatten the pyramid, we can supplement it with self-coordinating networks, we can develop an empowerment culture – employees and managers can service each other – but ultimate, personal responsibility will remain.

Servant leadership in companies

Companies associated with servant leadership include Nordstrom, Fedex, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines (Herb Kelleher), SAS, and Marriott. Let’s look at what each of these companies value. In most companies, the positive impact of employees being treated well is seen in good customer service:

  • For example, the first stated corporate value at Marriott is “Put people first.”
  • Nordstrom also placed a lot of emphasis on customer service 120 years ago. “Do whatever it takes to take care of the customer”. (John Nordstrom 1901). This attitude has been passed down generations in the entrepreneurial family and has been enriched with humility and employee service orientation.
  • FedEx has built a servant leadership culture. FedEx believes that engaged employees – individuals who trust the organizational goals and have a strong desire to contribute – will implement the organizational plan and ultimately ensure the success of the organization.
  • At Starbucks, long-term CEO Howard Schultz emphasizes the company’s purpose: “Servant leadership is about serving a higher purpose, and when that higher purpose is recognized by everyone in the organization, everyone is indeed a servant of that purpose.” Kelly Creighton describes the organizational culture at Starbucks as: “A culture of belonging, inclusion and diversity.” It also always puts its employees first and encourages everyone to grow into leadership roles within the company. At Starbucks, employees are encouraged to build strong relationships with each other and collaborate and communicate openly. Employees can ask questions and reach out to their supervisors. Ultimately, Starbucks takes the view that “how you treat your employees is how you treat your customers.“
  • Jim Goodnight, founder and CEO of SAS says “Treat employees as if they make a difference and they will.”
  • At Southwestern Airlines, the empowerment idea is especially held dear: Colleen Barrett, former president of Southwest Airlines, explained, “Our whole leadership philosophy is very simple: treat your employees right, and good things will happen.” She assumes that Southwest Airlines has created policies, procedures and rules, but ultimately empowers its employees to use their own common sense and good judgment when needed. It trusts its employees to do the right thing when necessary and does not reprimand them for doing so. For example, if a stranded customer needs a hotel room, employees are empowered to help them if they can. And when dealing with the public, employees are encouraged to find the best solutions and approaches that make sense for the situation at hand.
hackatons create innovations and ideas for leaders

Conclusion

The term “servant leadership” could be misunderstood in the sense of continuity and exclusivity. I.e., that the manager always acts as a servant to the employees and that therefore, there would be no room for the manager to be supported by the employees. This seems onesided and unrealistic. Robert Greenleaf also called his first publication “The servant as leader” and wanted to emphasize that the desire to serve should come before the desire to lead.

Just as the communist countermovement to industrial age capitalism did not yet represent the final chapter of economic history, servant leadership also offers itself more as a line of thought and less as the terminus of a leadership culture. If we understand leading and serving as polarity, then this makes it possible to find a suitable balance for the situation in the interaction between employees and managers.

Similarly, the misunderstanding would be that serving goes in one direction. Namely, that only managers should serve their employees. Transactionally, this would be a reversal of the parent-ego to child-ego relationship. Traditionally, leadership has been seen mostly patriarchal and sometimes matriarchal, i.e. the leader has to care for the children similar to parents, but can demand obedience.

The inversion of the parent-child relationship does not really work. The relationship of two adults who support each other would be more constructive. Especially nobles and rich people have servants. The term servant indicates a subordinate position. This could be resolved in a contemporary understanding of leadership: Employees and managers support each other, partly in different ways and with different means, but at eye level, with mutual appreciation.

“If you support your employees first, they will support you.”

This application of the reciprocity principle will often bring the desired, voluntary support from employees to leadership. But there is a more enduring motivation than this psychological barter: when leaders and employees pursue common goals or a shared mission out of inner conviction and support each other to the best of their ability.

Ultimately, it is the intent of the servant leader that makes the difference: Do they care at least as much about the well-being of others as they does about their own, or do they just want to make employees feel serviced so they will work harder?

The term “servant leadership” is misleading to many. But undoubtedly, one of the most important tasks of leaders is to support their employees. This starts with perceiving and listening to what the employees need from the leader.

In summary, the main meaning of Servant Leadership could be seen as a pendulum swinging away from autocratic and exploitative leadership, but not as a final leadership concept. Rather, partnership-based cooperation at eye level between employees and managers is more suitable for this in order to pursue the jointly shared corporate mission.

Sources:

• https://www.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/karriere/ceos-verdienen-300-mal-so-viel-wie-arbeiter-a-1041409.html

• https://www.amazon.de/Spiele-Erwachsenen-Psychologie-menschlichen-Beziehungen/dp/3499613506

• https://www.amazon.de/Die-Psychologie-%C3%9Cberzeugens-Robert-Cialdini-ebook/dp/B01MUDPFCC

• https://www.marriott.com/about/culture-and-values/history.mi

• https://hrdailyadvisor.blr.com/2018/06/01/5- real-life-brands-embody-servant-leadership/ • https://www.pallikkutam.com/edu-news/servant-leadershipstories#:~:text=FedEx%20 believes%20that%20engaged%20employees,and%20ultimately%20ensure%20organi-

zational%20success.

Mag. Gunther Fürstberger

Mag. Gunther Fürstberger

CEO | MDI Management Development International

Gunther Fürstberger is a management trainer, author and CEO of Metaforum and MDI – a global consulting company providing solutions for leadership development. His main interest is to make the world a better place through excellent leadership. He has worked for clients including ABB, Abbvie, Boehringer Ingelheim, DHL, Hornbach, PWC and Swarovski. His core competence is leadership in digital transformation. He gained his own leadership experience as HR Manager of McDonald’s Central Europe/Central Asia.  At the age of 20 he already started working as a trainer.

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How to strengthen social capital in the workplace

How to strengthen social capital in the workplace

by Jana Wölfl | Jan 26, 2023 | Digital Transformation, Leadership Impact, Leadership Tips | 0 comments

Why do you like your job?

Is it the work, the salary, or perhaps the interaction with your colleagues? 

The latter is being neglected in many companies, especially during the pandemic. Until then, people had lunch together from time to time, chatted briefly at the coffee machine or worked together on projects.

How to foster exhange and strengthen social capital in the workplace.

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Our journey of becoming CO2 neutral – reasons and tips

Our journey of becoming CO2 neutral – reasons and tips

by Alexandra Eichler, Gunther Fürstberger | Dec 10, 2021 | Leadership Impact, MDI Inside | 0 comments

MDI is CO2 neutral

The pandemic has made us more thoughtful.

Adult education in presence is connected with traveling. Often these are only short distances, but we also had seminar weeks where participants came together from all over the world. With the Pandemic Lockdowns, we switched to virtual delivery and realized that continuing education is fun and effective this way, too. Of course, it’s not quite the same. Still, we know from several of our customers that they want to continue delivering our programs virtually in the future.

If we conduct about half of the measures online, then

 

  • we reduce the CO2 footprint,
  • we save participants’ and trainers’ travel time
  • the company saves travel and hotel costs
  • we still get the opportunity to meet in person from time to time, exchange ideas, network and have great experiences in the real world.

We don’t want to say goodbye to travel either, as travel itself is an important learning tool. But we are striving for a balance between being present and online. It’s win-win-win! 

For the main lever travel, we want to make sure that

  • when choosing the means of travel, we give higher priority to the ecological impact than to personal convenience, e.g. public transport whenever possible.
  • the location of the seminar is deliberately chosen in order to optimize the average travel time of the participants.
  • the relation of travel expenses to implementation time is taken into account, e.g. a 2-day module instead of 4 half-days. Or if it has to be half-days, that these are, if possible, arranged in such a way that the trainer can supervise several groups one after the other.

Online meetings also cost energy and cause a CO2 footprint

but significantly less than most face-to-face meetings. While energy use could be reduced by switching away video, we strongly discourage this, at least for seminars.

Good video and audio transmission is what makes online seminars a truly effective alternative and prevents unnecessary travel. But here, too, we see a few levers we can pull:

Tips for hosting more sustainable online meetings

 

  • Video quality does not have to be excessive.
  • People who are in the same office can get together in one room and have a hybrid conference with the online participants.
  • The choice of technology has a massive impact on energy consumption: using a fiber optic line is several times more environmentally friendly than using 3G mobile Internet, for example.

Despite all efforts, MDI produces an annual CO2 emission of 119 tons.

To neutralize this, we support the following projects

  • We have neutralized our greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing certificates from the “VCS & CCBS Forest Conservation Brazil” project. Here we support the strict monitoring of the management of forests in Para.
  • In addition, we also wanted to do something at our site. So we also signed a bee patronage and are privileged to enjoy the honey of our bees as well.

MDI’s vision is to work on a sustainable leadership culture for a better world.

For us, sustainability includes several aspects, but ecology is a very central one. Growth can no longer be the main paradigm of economic activity. Renewable resources and the calculation of long-term environmental costs should be natural components of any corporate strategy.

As an executive development institute, we see ourselves as having a special responsibility here. In the sense of Walk the Talk, CO2 neutrality is actually an overdue requirement for us.

Authors:

Gunther Fürstberger

Gunther Fürstberger

CEO , MDI Management Development International

Gunther Fürstberger is a management trainer, book author and CEO of MDI, a global leadership development institute and managing director of Metaforum. His core competence is leadership in the digital transformation. He gained his own leadership experience as HR manager of McDonald’s Central Europe/Central Asia, among others.

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Alexandra Eichler

Alexandra Eichler

Senior Project Management & Management Assistance & Office Management

Alexandra Eichler  is not only a Senior Project Management, Management Assistance & Office Manager. At the same time, she is passionate about sustainability and demonstrates it throughout the MDI office. She has led the major Co2 neutrality project and completed it at record speed, setting many steps towards a more sustainable mdi.

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How can VR help with leadership training?

by Anita Berger, Dominik Etzl | Oct 11, 2021 | Leadership Impact, Leadership in the digital transformation, Leadership Tips | 0 comments

How can VR help with leadership training?

Our Virtual Reality & Leadership Development Experts Anita Berger & Dominik Etzl talk in this Interview about Leadership Impact through VR.

Immersive learning through virtual reality

can help organizations address some of today’s key leadership challenges.

Why is virtual reality for leaders on the rise?

Dominik Etzl: Apart from the fact that VR is cool and is guaranteed to remain in every participant’s memory for a long time, VR leadership training solves a long unsolved problem: bringing virtual teams together in a (virtual) room where they can work together on problems and solutions – not just via the camera in front of the screen – but with full physical engagement and an almost face-to-face feeling.

What do new VR leadership trainings look like in practice?

Anita Berger: Some of the training experiences are designed to be “played” alone, practicing individual situations for yourself over and over again and constantly improving – for example, giving a presentation in front of a virtual audience or even the board of directors.

Other VR trainings involve the whole team and you can think of it more like a virtual escape room.

Others you do alone, but you have physical coaches next to you who guide you through the various scenarios and reflect on what you’ve experienced between VR experiences.

In addition, a distinction can be made between those VR trainings that are tailored to one’s own company and learning situations and those that are standardized and can thus be used in a variety of ways.

In order to have the greatest possible impact, it makes sense – as is already known from face-to-face training – not to view VR leadership training as a stand-alone solution, but to integrate it into a learning process that includes a good mix of synchronous and

What opportunities and possibilities does VR offer?

Anita Berger: VR offers the opportunity to engage with a broad range of content topics in an experiential way from different perspectives in iterative loops.

Different perspectives: Currently at MDI we work with 3 roles:

  • the space travelers
  • the guides/coaches 
  • the observers.

All have the opportunity to immerse themselves in all roles.

The space travelers are the players who, if you use the soccer analogy, are supposed to be on the field scoring the goals. The space mission is about saving others.

The guides/coaches have the opportunity to help the space travelers accomplish the mission. They are the coaches on the sidelines who do not play themselves, but are instrumental in the success of the mission by recognizing and responding to what the spacewalkers need.

Observers are tasked with watching what is happening on the field and on the sidelines, and sharing it in debriefings. One can also use the role of observers for assessment or development settings.

After each mission, participants switch roles and therefore gather lessons learned from the different perspectives.

Iterative Loops:

As in real life, there are many uncertainties, knowledge, and information that must first be acquired. Participants experience certain phases as exciting, fascinating, frustrating or chaotic.

After each round, what is experienced is reflected upon, processed and placed in the respective context of the content. The mission is started repeatedly until it succeeds. Therefore, the knowledge gained from the previous mission can be implemented right away.

Content topics:

The Apollo mission makes it possible to work on various topics and sets of questions.

For example, if the content context refers to “Overcoming Disruption” the different phases of

  • “Fail Fast”
  • Learning Together”
  • “Performing together”

in the different missions can be experienced by the participants.

Reflection phase:

In addition, a content-related discussion can take place, for example on topics such as:

  • Dealing with and coping with uncertainty, complexity and (over-)demanding situations.
  • Performance as a (virtual) team
  • Leading (virtual) teams to performance, through communication, collaboration, inclusion
  • situationally adapted leadership
  • Strengthening (self-)confidence and resilience
  • taking and transferring responsibility

The novel setting offers attractive and exciting development opportunities for leaders at all seniority levels up to top executives and for entire teams.

Can you actually learn better with VR?

Anita Berger: It’s best to let the results of studies speak for themselves

  • Learning takes place up to 4 times faster than in a traditional seminar setting.
  • VR learners are up to 275% more confident in implementing what they have learned after training
  • a 40% improvement over classroom training and
  • a 35% improvement over e-learning training.
  • VR participants felt 3.75 times more emotionally connected to the content than face-to-face learners and 2.3 times more than e-learners.
  • Three-quarters of participants surveyed said they had a wake-up call during the VR course on diversity and inclusion and realized they were not as inclusive as they thought.
  • During VR learning, participants were significantly less likely to drift off with their attention.
  • In the PWC study, participants in the VR setting were up to 4 times more focused during training than their e-learning peers and 1.5 times more focused than their face-to-face training peers.
PwC VR Soft Skills Training Efficacy Study

Virtual Reality for Leaders | Hands-on VR Workshop on 26.11.2021

In this compact hands-on workshop, we will show how leaders learn immersively using VR.

Experience three exciting perspectives for leadership & development in one day:

As an active participant, as a coach and as an observer.

Secure your workshop seat now!

What technology and requirements do you need for implementation?

Dominik Etzl: Until recently, the hurdle to working with VR in your own company was relatively high.

In addition to the special VR hardware from Oculus, Vive, or Sony, for example, you also needed a powerful PC to start the system in the first place. In addition, there were a lot of cables and sensors. If, on top of that, you didn’t have a permanent VR room available, but had to set up and take down again and again, or even move to a different location, you can imagine that this was partly off-putting and only suitable for a niche.

However, these times have largely been history since 2021 the latest. Nowadays, you can buy a powerful VR set starting at €350 and it includes everything you need in terms of hardware to get started. Processing power and sensors have been built into the headset in the latest models, e.g. the Oculus Quest 2, so that a PC, cables or external sensors are no longer necessary.

This makes it very easy and uncomplicated to set up and transport – even for those who have no experience with VR. In the past, it was still common to rent VR hardware – today, a purchase makes much more sense in most cases, because the price difference is cancelled out by the effort. The only requirement is now a room of about 2.5 x 2.5 meters per player, which can easily be found in most offices.

Can every company afford this?

Dominik Etzl: As already written above, one can distinguish between those VR training experiences that are tailored to one’s own company and those that can be purchased in a standardized way.

Which one is right for one’s needs depends primarily on whether the skills that are to be learned with it concern very specific processes in the company, or whether it is about, the general ability to collaborate, agile principles, handling resistance, etc.

Whereas the former usually requires several months of production time and corresponding financial resources, VR leadership training aimed at general soft skills is already available at a slightly higher normal daily training rate. Then you also have trained VR experts to ensure that the VR training is effective. 

The original german article was written for magazintraining by

Anita Berger

Anita Berger

Executive Coach, Consultant, Trainer & Managing Partner MDI

Anita Berger is an executive coach, consultant and trainer specialising in leadership development and international human resource management. She is a partner of MDI Management Development International. For more than 15 years she has worked in management and leadership positions (among others as HR-
Director at Coca-Cola Hellenic and HR Manager at Konica Minolta Business Solutions).

  • LinkedIn
Dominik Etzl

Dominik Etzl

Trainer & Solution Development Manager MDI & Manager Metaforum International.

​Dominik Etzl is Solution Development Manager and Trainer at MDI Management Development GmbH and Managing Director of Metaforum International. His focus is on topics of digital transformation, as well as OKR (Objectives & Key Results), agile leadership and lateral leadership. His goal is to support managers in leading a valuable contribution to their environment: on an individual, corporate and societal level.

  • LinkedIn

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Impuls Series - The Future of Workplace Learning

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Fast and targeted learning, especially for leaders, is becoming increasingly important in an intensifying digital and agile world. Therefore, Marina shares her personal learnings with us. We kicked the series off with these topics:

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  • personnel developers as trusted guides
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Hey, Marina is a member of our LinkedIn expert group

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Redefining the workplace as a new area of impact

The call for more flexibility in combination with home office and digital collaboration is giving rise to new forms of organisation. New technologies and digitalisation are leading to new forms of work and employment that are detached from space and time and also require the redesign of physical workplaces.

Just as learning technologies and processes will be built around employees as users, the office will also be built around users in the future.

In the future, we will mainly enter office spaces for two reasons:

  • Due to psychosocial needs, i.e. to exchange informally with colleagues and not to be alone
  • Because of the technical assistance systems, not primarily to work there. What used to be the printer, which was absolutely necessary for getting work done, will be the holodeck in the future. Holodecks are rooms that create simulations and virtual worlds by means of holographic projection. We may not be able to create rooms like those in Star Trek in the near future – but VR and MR technologies already provide the necessary technology to create immersive learning experiences.

Arguments for face-to-face training

A still unbeatable argument for face-to-face training so far is the possibility to leave the workplace, the mobile phone and the laptop stay off, so that one can really concentrate on the new topic.

Another argument for leaving the workplace when learning is that there are too many distractions when learning virtually at the workplace. It is simply too tempting to check one’s e-mails and work through one or two things “on the side”.

In addition, leaders tend to schedule their employees for appointments immediately before or after the training.

The office of the future

The office of the future supports its users in their current needs. And these are no longer open-plan offices for working together, because we have learned that we can also work well virtually.

So in the future, when reorganising office space, not only meeting and communication rooms should be considered, but also theme rooms, rooms for experimenting and learning in equal measure.

Functional feel-good ambience has been proven to increase performance. In future, the office must support human performance by offering a promise of learning and achievement.

In-depth literature | personal recommendation:

 

Personal Magazine plus:

Arbeitswelten (working worlds)

 

The Human Factor@work. Industrieverband Büro und Arbeitswelt e.V. (IBA)

New Work Order

Marina Begic

Marina Begic

Digital Business Development Expertin und Senior L&D Consultant

Marina has been working on new, effective learning methods and the future of corporate learning for over 15 years. In her current role, she is responsible for Digital Business Development at MDI, where her focus is not driven by the current buzzwords, but primarily on the feasibility of digital transformation for clients such as Erste Group, Lenzing, Semperit, Deutsche Bahn, Andritz AG, Uniqa, Mayr-Melnhof, Frequentis, RHIM. Her greatest strength is bringing loose ends together, which she impressively demonstrates time and time again with her big picture view and multi-dimensional approach. Her greatest passion is to provide learners not only with an experience, but also with real, lasting value for their real challenges.

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Virtual Reality for Leadership Development

by Aline Depoorter | Jun 22, 2021 | International leadership development, Leadership Impact, learning effectiveness | 0 comments

Learning better with virtual reality

Virtual reality for leadership development on the rise

It’s high time we use VR learning in leadership development.

That’s why MDI Management Development International and Jenson8 are partnering to transform leadership development through virtual reality.

The new “VR for Leaders” portfolio includes solutions for recruiting, assessment and leadership development.

You learn better with VR

  • 4x faster training than in the seminar room.
  • 275% more confident to apply learned skills after training.
  • 375% more engaged with the content than learners in the seminar room.
  • 400% more focused than learning via e-learning.
Learn even more >

Using new technologies

The most important issue for L&D leaders right now is not just introducing new technologies to improve engagement and enable virtual delivery of programs, but rather using new technologies that will make a real difference for your teams.

Send leaders into space

Sending leaders into space may sound a bit like a stretch, but sending your teams into a completely foreign environment could be the best thing you’ve ever done for your talents.

Because it’s

  • the future,
  • it’s sustainable,
  • scalable
  • and can even be implemented solely virtually.

Immersive learning can help organizations address some of today’s key leadership challenges, such as identifying soft skills, retaining talent, and improving employee engagement.

VR learning can be 

  • anywhere,
  • at any time
  • and can be conducted in any country in the world.

The pandemic promotes new ways of learning

The pandemic has pushed HR to find ways to solve the problem of distance learning, as well as ways to still

  • Create closeness at a distance,
  • build trust,
  • improve communication
  • and improve collaboration.

These issues are not new, and long before COVID came along, HR and L&D leaders were wondering if it was really still necessary to get on a plane, take two to four days out of the office, stay in a hotel, and get everyone together to do a team-building exercise?”

New VR leadership training

The new leadership trainings offer an immersive environment that feels real to participants, as well as

  • Assessment,
  • Coaching,
  • Leadership,
  • Team building
  • and other L&D elements

Through machine learning, artificial intelligence and validated psychometrics, the multiple immersive applications enable leaders to learn by doing, not just seeing or hearing. So virtual reality makes content come alive, not just digital!

* PWC REPORT 2020

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