REFLECT ON LEADERSHIP AND SHAPE IT EFFICIENTLY

The Reflective Leader System provides a structured and field-tested framework for consciously reflecting on and shaping efficient leadership. At its core, it guides leaders through relevant questions.

Questions for efficient leadership

Where does a need for regulation keep arising for us?

Typical irritations, problems, and needs for regulation where leadership is genuinely required.

Under what conditions do I lead?

Specific features of my leadership context in terms of regulation requirements and regulation capacities – such as uncertainty, interdependencies, diversity of interests, and competencies.

How do I fundamentally want to lead?

A clear idea of leadership with a primary leadership role. The four roles are Boss, Coach, Partner, and Enabler.

How do I shape my relationship with my followers?

Communicating, stabilizing, and putting the idea of leadership into practice in the lived leader-follower relationship.

How efficient is my leadership action?

Continuous reflection on my own leadership action and the attention it binds in light of acute and concrete needs for regulation.

Efficient leadership depends on Context

What constitutes good leadership depends on the conditions under which leadership takes place. Two things are particularly important:

What regulation requirements typically arise? And what regulation capacities are available to the leader, followers, and team? Keeping both in view makes it easier to assess where regulation can take place comparatively efficiently.

Regulation requirements

  • How clear are the expected outcomes, paths, and bases for decision-making?
  • How strongly do tasks, people, and units depend on one another, and how much coordination is required?
  • How different are the perspectives and interests that need to be taken into account?
  • How high are time pressure, risk, and strategic importance?

Regulation capacities

  • Do employees want to take responsibility and self-regulate?
  • Where are the knowledge and competence needed to address the need for regulation?
  • Who has the necessary authority and power to make decisions binding?
  • Do time, span of control, interfaces, and structures allow for efficient regulation?
  • Can the team regulate difficult issues openly and together?

Four leadership roles. Four ways of shaping regulation

Das Reflective Leader System unterscheidet vier grundlegende Führungsrollen: Boss, Coach, Partner und Befähiger. Keine dieser Rollen ist grundsätzlich besser als eine andere. Entscheidend ist, welche Rolle zum jeweiligen Führungskontext passt und eine möglichst günstige Regulation ermöglicht.

BOSS

Direct regulation: The leader takes on the regulation personally, evaluates, makes decisions, and gives instructions.

PARTNER

Co-regulation or distributed regulation: The leader involves several actors in regulation and shapes joint problem solving, idea generation, and decision-making.

Coach

Self-regulation: The leader activates followers through challenging questions to think and act independently.

Enabler

The leader creates structural, capacity-related, and situational conditions for efficient regulation – for example through rules, routines, competencies, and resources.

A different approach to leadership

The Reflective Leader System differs in important ways from common approaches to leadership development. And that is a good thing.

    Companies often choose the Reflective Leader System after many years of experience with traditional, frequently ineffective approaches to leadership development. At the same time, the Reflective Leader System requires a certain willingness to think about and approach leadership differently from what is common in many companies.