Beyond Leadership E-Book

Matthias Mölleney

• Herausgeber: Verlag SKV AG
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 62

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The more challenging the times, the more crucial strong and effective leadership becomes. Beyond Leadership's consistently people-oriented approach fosters trust, respect and appreciation within an organization — and has already proven its effectiveness in hundreds of real-world applications. Most traditional leadership concepts focus primarily on the relationship between superiors and employees. However, in modern, flexible, and hybrid organizations, leadership goes beyond that. Success and agility can only be achieved when all team members are both willing and able to cooperate. Current leadership research supports this shift, emphasizing key concepts such as psychological safety and multidimensional followership. Alongside the theoretical foundations, this book provides a clear, step-by-step guide to applying this leadership approach in practice. With numerous examples, it offers hands-on strategies that make it a true workbook in every sense. «Beyond Leadership» is intended for executives at all levels and in all sectors, specialists in organisational and personnel development and those responsible for shaping leadership work in associations and other part-time public service organizations Content: Introduction: Cooperation instead of hierarchy The model of the Beyond Leadership Activation Circle: Structure and functionalitiy The steps: - Check-in: Focus on the main topic - Connect: Get to know each other at the highest level - Align: Align to a common identity - Imagine: Developing sustainable solutions together - Commit: The step towards implementation quality - Debriefing: The decisive consolidation - Check-out: The summarizing reflection The sustainability of Beyond Leadership: Beyond Culture Further application possibilities

Leseprobe

Matthias Mölleney

Sybille Sachs

Beyond Leadership

2nd edition: 2025

Matthias Mölleney | Sybille Sachs

Beyond Leadership

ISBN 978-3-286-51457-7

eISBN 978-3-286-11887-4

© 2019 Verlag SKV AG, Zurich

www.verlagskv.ch

All rights reserved.

Any kind of reproduction without permission of the owner of copyright is not allowed.

Project management: Denise Neuschwander, Yvonne Vafi-Obrist

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Preface to the 2nd edition

Since the first edition in 2019, we have been able to use Beyond Leadership in numerous companies, non-profit organizations, administrations, and in education and training modules. We have incorporated this experience into the second edition. In addition, we have all experienced the pandemic during this time and have seen that Beyond Leadership is also very effective in a virtual context.

In addition, the latest findings in the field of leadership have confirmed that it is a forwardlooking method for teams from all areas to work together efficiently and effectively, regardless of the topic they are working on. For this reason, we have expanded on the topic of trust and psychological safety in the introduction.

We would also like to thank the many people who have entrusted themselves to us as part of a Beyond Activation Circle. Patrick Cowden: Beyond Leadership is unique, we are grateful for your inspiration.

Matthias Mölleney and Sybille Sachs

Content

1

Creating trust in relationships and psychological saftey in the teams

2

The model of the Beyond Leadership Activation Circle: Structure and Functionality

3

The steps

3.1

Check-in: Focus on the main topic

3.2

Connect: Getting to know each other at the highest level

3.3

Align: Aligning to a common identity

3.4

Imagine: Developing mutually viable solutions

3.5

Commit: The step to ensure implementation quality

3.6

Debriefing: The decisive step

3.7

Check-out: The summary reflection

4

Sustainability of Beyond Leadership: Beyond Culture

5

Additional applications

6

Beyond testimonials

7

Endnotes

8

References

Authors

Matthias Mölleney

Head of the Centre for HRM & Leadership at the HWZ University for Applied Sciences in Business Administration Zurich. Former Global Head of HR Management at Swissair, Centerpulse and Unaxis. Director at the Future Work Forum, London. Various publications, especially in Human Resources Management.

Prof. Dr. Sybille Sachs

Professor for Business Administration and Head of the Institute for Strategic Management at the HWZ University of Applied Sciences in Business Administration Zurich. Supports companies in improving their stakeholder management and leadership as an academic expert and as a coach.

BEYOND Leadership

1Creating trust in relationships and psychological saftey in the teams

Hierarchies as the brakes of change

The workplace is experiencing one of the most fundamental changes since the Industrial Revolution. The visible aspect of this transformation is digitalisation, which allows completely new technical opportunities for communication and collaboration, not least through the use of artificial intelligence systems. Digitalisation accelerates change, opens up new forms of human-machine interaction, and increasingly dissolves corporate, industry and sector boundaries. This creates new structures and processes, which in turn require a new understanding of leadership.

Companies and organizations are confronted with major challenges such as climate change, geopolitical instability and demographic changes. As a result, uncertainty is becoming the new normal. This calls for new management and strategic approaches.

Traditional management methods rely heavily on clear reporting lines, the presence of stakeholders and risk assessments. These structures have proven themselves in industry for many decades and formed the basis for fundamental concepts such as the well-known St. Gallen management model. Lean management, business process reengineering, zero-base budgeting and other approaches to change in the 1980s and 1990s have also assumed classic hierarchical structures as a basis.

The topic of “New Work” has now arrived in all companies and organizations. The operational logic of companies has to adapt to the complexity of the digitalised and challenging world. There are two changes involved in replacing the classic one-dimensional manageremployee relationship with joint corporate governance across all hierarchy levels and company boundaries: due to uncertain framework conditions, top management cannot set strategic goals as they previously did (top-down problem). This requires increased employee participation, they must be more closely involved in the further development of the company (bottom-up problem). Neither employees nor executives are sufficiently prepared for this.

Cooperation ability leads to success

In order to be able to lead effectively in such network systems, other leadership concepts are needed. Consequently, there has been a significant shift in leadership research in recent years from the vertical relationship between superiors and employees to a more horizontal concept of collaboration and new concepts have started being developed for this (1) (2). In this collaborative understanding of leadership, the vision also takes on a new position. It no longer forms the roof under which everything is arranged, but is the foundation for a collective leadership culture.

Leadership is understood as a social exchange process that goes beyond the conventional relationship between a leader and a follower. In this leadership perspective, the leadership culture captures the leadership practices and beliefs that all employees have developed over time, which enable or prevent the strategy development and the establishment of structures in the company and in teams. It is based on cooperation: followership gains a new meaning in that all team members can be effective in developing and implementing innovative business ideas. Those leadership cultures that enable a high rate of collaboration between employees are most suitable for the digital world. Strategies are not developed on their own, but together with employees at all levels as well as with customers, suppliers and other stakeholders.

In this sense, Beyond Leadership is an extremely effective concept, which combines many years of experience in teambuilding with state-of-the-art academic findings regarding leader- and followership. It is an evolutionary way that unleashes and empowers the full collective human potential in any organization.

People in focus: the power of connections

But how can the ability to collaborate between leaders and teams come about after many years of defending your turf? Which operating system is most promising in an era of rapid change? The answer is simple to implement but highly demanding: people are the focus of attention, both in giving and taking. This challenge is met by research as well as consultation with the approaches of shared leadership (3) and ethical approaches (4). Being connected in the team has a positive influence in allowing change to be handled successfully.

One of the most promising approaches in practice is “Beyond Leadership”, an instrument proposed by Patrick D. Cowden which exactly fills the vacuum in management methods for network organisations. Patrick Cowden, former CEO of Dell Germany and former European head for Hitachi, left the rat race of the traditional CEO’s career over ten years ago because he realised that the management of large companies could not continue in the same way. He had seen how many corporate leaders were at their wit’s end after decades of budget cuts, restructuring, job cuts and motivation campaigns and were no longer able to mobilise their employees to put in their best efforts at planning and implementing long-term goals. Instead, more and more time and energy is being invested in even more narrow budget details, process optimisations, and delineating departmental boundaries, while usually achieving the exact opposite.

Patrick D. Cowden knows from his own experience what happens when he focuses on instruments and processes instead of people. That’s why his book, the management book of the year in 2013, was called “Neustart” (“Restart”) in German (5