Onboarding for managers: How to get off to the best possible start in a new leadership role

149 Pages·2022·2.237 MB·English

by  Herbert Reiß

Herbert Reiß
Onboarding
for managers
How to get off to the best possible
start in a new leadership role
Onboarding for managers
Herbert Reiß
Onboarding for
managers
How to get off to the best possible
start in a new leadership role
Herbert Reiß
Deckenpfronn, Germany
ISBN 978-3-658-38883-6 ISBN 978-3-658-38884-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38884-3
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Fachmedien
Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022
This book is a translation of the original German edition „Onboarding für Führungskräfte “ by Reiß,
Herbert, published by Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH in 2020. The translation was done with
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Preface
What were my motivations for writing this book?
When I started working for my former employer as a financial analyst
46 years ago after completing a degree in business administration – before
which I had also completed a banking apprenticeship – I had no idea
where this journey would take me. At the time, I would have dismissed
the idea that I would stay with this company for 34 years as completely
absurd. And yet, that’s what happened. After 3 years, I was offered my
first supervisor position. As a very young man, I was allowed to manage
two experienced female employees and hire a third one. Of course, the
two women were just waiting for such a young, inexperienced man to
lead them, and my start was accordingly bumpy, plus my first hire wasn’t
exactly a hit either. I learned a lot from this experience, and I made my
way bravely until, after another 2 years, I was asked if I would be inter-
ested in going to France for a year to introduce new processes there as
head of cost accounting, as they already existed in the German subsidiary.
My wife was anything but enthusiastic at first because we had a daughter
of three and a half and she was about to give birth to our second child.
Eventually she agreed and we moved to France just a few days after the
birth of our son. My mission was a successful one, and I significantly
expanded my network in the company, which helped me move up to a
vice president position 20 years later because one of my coworkers at the
time brought me onto his team saying, “Herbert, I know from our time
v
vi Preface
together that you are an excellent leader and now I need you to realign
and lead a global organization.” I am still very grateful to my wife for this
stay abroad, because without her involvement, everything would have
been different in my career.
When my year in France was over with a lot of new leadership experi-
ences and the knowledge that I now “understand well the secrets of
French souls,” I was allowed to build up a new department in a European
business unit in Germany as financial controller, a task that couldn’t be
better. As this team had numerous contacts to very many American busi-
ness units, my international network grew very much, which I also main-
tained very well by regular visits. After 7 years as a controller, my
supervisor noticed that I was getting bored with this job and offered me
to take over a larger IT division with 120 employees, because it needed a
strategic realignment and a new management culture as part of a
company- wide restructuring.
After another 3 years, I was asked if I would like to take over the pro-
gram management for the construction of a new high-tech production
facility, a €150 million investment. I was attracted by the following chal-
lenge: I had proven that I was very successful in building teams and lead-
ing them to high performance. In the new role, I had to show whether I
could also lead indirect and very diverse teams with many external experts,
including architects, construction managers, and technology experts, i.e.,
without direct personnel responsibility. This phase was indeed an impor-
tant milestone for me because it was only in this situation that I realized
that I show my highest effectiveness as a true leader when I can ignite and
inspire people and develop them. I finally realized that this is my profes-
sional mission in life, this is my destiny or purpose of life.
That was also my common thread in the years that followed. Again and
again, I took over organizations or areas that acted very reactively, bureau-
cratically, and without esprit. Goals were not clear and customer orienta-
tion was rather poor. With a certain pride I may claim that I always
succeeded in developing a culture in these organizations with a very high
intrinsic motivation, which logically showed in top performances that
were noticeable beyond the borders. Periodically, company-wide
employee surveys have always shown the highest levels of employee
Preface vii
commitment, and I had always a very large number of internal applica-
tions for vacant positions in my organizations.
During this heyday of my work, there was a change at the top of the
company. For the first time in the company’s history, a new CEO came
from outside. This step was also important, because the company had
been very reactive and grumpy over time. A woman, and she literally
brought a breath of fresh air into the company, indeed the wind of change
literally became a hurricane. Principalities were torn down, the company
was finally given a uniform corporate identity, she introduced a more
performance-oriented remuneration system, and – something that did
not suit many managers at all – information was passed on directly from
the top management to all employees immediately. Many executives felt
disempowered by this, especially those who misused information as a
power. The new CEO wanted a culture change all around, especially
more agility. That bothered too many executives because it pushed them
out of their comfort zones. As a lucky incident, during those troubled
days, I came in contact with someone responsible for leadership develop-
ment at the corporate level. In a message to her, I brought to her atten-
tion that I was very concerned to see too many of my leadership colleagues
in almost active resistance to the new wind, pointing out that this should
not be tolerated because leaders as bad role models were putting the
important culture change at the highest risk. This cry for help had a very
important impact on my career. Some time later, the CEO appointed
about 90 internal senior leaders from around the world, representing all
functions, to an internal advisory group to help her with the culture
change, and I became one of them – needless to say, I was overjoyed with
this appointment. In the meantime, the need for culture change had
increased dramatically due to a complex merger with another company,
which at the time was dubbed the largest merger in the IT industry
worldwide. Now two cultures, some of them very different, had to be
brought together, a very difficult undertaking. We were all highly com-
mitted, and for a long time I was in the USA for a week every month.
This very costly effort to create a new culture was a big investment but
exactly the right step to develop the culture from within. However, the
big change we wanted did not happen. Why? Because the CEO didn’t
viii Preface
heed a very important basic rule that I didn’t realize until later and is now
very deeply embedded in my creed about leadership:
“Tell me by what you measure me on, and I’ll tell you how I’ll behave.”
To be concrete, we, the consulting team, created clear rules and also the
necessary “360° feedback process” to coach and evaluate leaders, but it
was not implemented top-down, or the CEO failed to force her direct
reports, the executive vice presidents, to apply the process first to them-
selves and then consistently further down their hierarchical levels.
This experience burned itself deeply into my understanding of leader-
ship and I developed from it one of my leadership imperatives, “Measure
it or forget it,” or “You get what you measure!” Measuring in this context
does not mean measuring in measurable units but giving feedback on
given rules and being consistent with the necessary resulting conse-
quences and changes. And so it came to pass. The executives were not
measured against the new requested behavior, the company performance
became weaker and weaker and finally the CEO had to take her hat – a
tragedy, because she was an inspiring, visionary leader. But it even got
worse. The new CEO that followed her was obsessed only with share-
holder value, i.e., that was his ultimate measuring stick, which in reality
was not his problem, but in my opinion the problem of a bad board of
directors, because they ultimately define what the CEO is measured
against. He almost managed to wipe out the exemplary corporate culture.
Nevertheless, I am very grateful to have experienced this tension
between leadership cultures. I have seen and personally experienced the
wonders that a culture of trust can do, but also the opposite, a culture of
mistrust and micro-management. It became crystal clear to me that it’s all
about leadership. There are successful companies, organizations, and
departments because they are well led, and companies disappear from the
scene for one reason only: poor leadership. I have also experienced this in
my personal environment, having had both excellent and good supervi-
sors, but also two very bad ones. In the case of the latter two, I drew the
consequences after some time and left, but not without first telling their
superiors very clearly and warning them that they must not tolerate this,
because otherwise fatal things could happen. In both cases, my
Preface ix
intervention was successful, because after a few months, the two were
removed from their management responsibilities.
All these important, invaluable, and indispensable experiences, with a
few lows but many more highs, moved me to leave the company after
34 years with the burning ambition of helping others and more people to
become not only good but excellent leaders. I knew that I had to start
with young people, and so I became a lecturer at two international uni-
versities, giving lectures and workshops on leadership. I wanted to share
my leadership experiences with young people from around the world so
that the world would have better leaders in the future. With this goal, I
also coached – and still do – people and teams who are already in leader-
ship positions.
And in 2013, together with other experienced leaders who share with
me the passion on excellent leadership and want to be trailblazers and
shapers of a dialogue on sustainable leadership, I founded the non-profit
association “Initiative Future Leadership” in Stuttgart/Germany.
Finally, my mission also led me to the decision to write this book, in
the hope that it will find many readers, so that the lives of many people
led will be better, that they will be led at equal footing and not as mere
recipients of orders, that they will be offered a trusting freedom of design
that will motivate them intrinsically to the highest degree.
This book is from leadership practice for practice. It does not claim to
be a scientific work on the subject of leadership. There is already enough
literature on the subject. The book is intended to give suggestions and
tips in a very compact form and in a very pragmatic way, which are very
effective because they are based on experiences made. From current expe-
riences with my customers, I know that unfortunately there are still lead-
ership styles that I have already discarded as outdated decades ago. In the
end, the reader will find that leadership is actually very simple. There are
relatively few things that must be in place. Conversely, if they are lacking,
however, there are dramatic consequences for effectiveness as a leader.
I would like to thank the many people I have had the privilege to
accompany on their development path, my very numerous co-workers all
over the world, my students, my coaching clients, and business partners.
They all encouraged me to write this book, and also the feedback I still
receive from them after many years, such as this very recent one after
x Preface
12 years: “You had such a strong, positive influence on my career. I thank
you, from the bottom of my heart, for always supporting me and cheer-
ing me on, it truly meant the world to me. I truly appreciate you, your
leadership, your passion, and kindness. You had such a profound impact
on me, believing, guiding, and encouraging me along the way made a big
difference. I would not have been a strong leader without your guidance.”
Deckenpfronn, Germany Herbert Reiß
30 June 2022