In the realm of intercultural training, intensive cooperation is already taking place between Robert Bosch GmbH and ti communication, especially regarding the preparation of employees being sent on foreign assignments. It hardly even matters where they are going; our network of experts spans the globe: from Singapore to Portugal, the Netherlands, China and Saudi Arabia, all the way to Australia.

This year, we had the opportunity to support the Robert Bosch company using a different format: On the occasion of an international conference with participants from Germany, China, the USA and Japan, our trainers Anna Corbett and Susanne Taylor conducted a 2.5-hour workshop.

On December 7th, the head of the GPM regional group Regensburg, Dr. rer. pol. Christian Eisenschink, opened the event „Leadership in International Projects”. As initiator of the event, he welcomed the attending members and interested guests and emphasized that leadership in international projects requires cooperation on a cultural level as well as on management and personnel levels. Clearly-structured tasks and the right tone are prerequisites. The basic skills and abilities that managers should possess was the topic of the GPM lecture with Anna Corbett at ti communication.

The focus of the lecture was basic skills and abilities that characterise leadership and the expansion of these skills to include an international factor. The participants used the occasion of the lecture "Leadership in International Projects" to expand on and discuss various topics with lecturer Anna Corbett. Specific aspects, such as "cultural hurdles" or "leadership in the matrix", made for lively discussion.

Anna Corbet, speaker at the INTERCHANGE '15, about managers' need for "time outs" for reflection and course correction to run the highly complex day-to day management successfully.

Time pressures rule a manager's day, especially the daily business of managers active on a global level. Fast-paced change requires quick decisions and targeted change processes. In addition to demanding professional expertise and leadership tasks, managers are faced with the challenge of constant change, locally as well as globally.

Today, multimedia-based communication, remote management or the need for increased networking are only a few of the challenges that managers must master as a matter of course. Demands with regard to self-management, flexible management competencies due to internationalization and the often highly-complex day-to-day management business require an enhanced handling of one's own leadership role and leadership potential.

However, reality often paints quite a different picture

Employees are promoted into leadership roles and must master the jump to being a manager on their own. Frequently, they keep their entire line-up of tasks and fulfil their management role on top of those. As team leaders, the already manage their co-workers in global locations. People in such leadership positions rise up in the company, and with the move, the demands and expectations put on management, as well as the complexity of management tasks, increase. Management, strategic developments, and initiation and supervision of changes, often on a global level, now take the forefront along with several other issues. Operative tasks should be increasingly delegated. Several managers in middle management frequently still cling too strongly to the operative business, thus becoming trapped in the vortex of performance and time constraints. Discussions from practical situations show that clinging to the operative level is not always the result of day-to-day demands, but rather serves as an anchor of security in an environment of increasing global complexity.

Managers are like top athletes

Today, internationalization and globalization are among the dynamic factors of business. What moves companies to take advantage of your intercultural training courses?

Gerhard Hain: There are a number of typical hurdles in the intercultural realm that can influence business success. Just one example: In China, it is considered unethical to demand the fulfilment of a contract if the framework conditions have changed – that is a conflict of values with which should be dealt with in good time. Another example, also from Asia, relates to communication. Instead of the duty to provide information that is customary in Germany, in India there is a duty to obtain information – you ask about what you need to know. When German executives are the last to find out about important issues, they come to the false conclusion that their employees are sabotaging them.

Anna Corbett: But the most common example is probably time culture. Here, it’s insulting to keep the next person you are meeting with waiting. On the other hand, in other countries, it is impossible to abruptly end a conversation with someone in order to start the next appointment on time.  

Management training for skilled and management personnel

Management means having a high degree of responsibility. If you want to successfully manage teams, you need not only expert knowledge and skills, but also expertise in employee management. Successfully managing people means increasing the productivity of your company, no matter how large.

A basic prerequisite for managers is dealing with employees in an objective and professional manner. Just as important are empathetic and social skills, needed to promote result-oriented action.

The basic seminar “Managing Employees – Increasing Productivity” provides an initial look at and the fundamentals for day-to-day management in teams, departments and companies. Participants can identify the effect of clear and result-oriented communication and learn how to make their own style more effective.

Setting: The leadership basic seminar is planned as an open or company-internal course on two consecutive days. Ideally, participants would have overnight accommodations at the conference centre, in order to allow them to also come together on a social level.

Management trainees, whether hired externally or internally, are the potential and capital of a company. They lead the enterprise into (and in) the future. They are generally highly motivated and well-educated, have mastered new technologies and exhibit extraordinary achievements and results. They approach their leadership tasks armed with enthusiasm and new ideas.

Management trainees are usually young, many having rapidly completed a degree programme and started a career. According to a study of selected candidates, being recruited as a management trainee or “high potential” leads to a justifiable sense of pride, but also often to a feeling of being implicitly good. And if you are good, you become the benchmark!

What does it have to do with management?

Exhibiting extraordinary achievement in a field does not automatically qualify anyone to be a manager. Now, more than ever, management means the individual development of employee potential and the management of relationships, all with the goal of enabling people to achieve their full potential through cooperation in the structures and processes of your enterprise. Management trainees without management knowledge, management experience and self-reflection often treat others as they themselves would like to be treated. This benevolent yet naive management style assumes that other people in similar situations behave according to one’s own structures. However, behaving contrary to one’s own value and personality structures requires an enormous amount of effort and leads to frustration and a decline in performance, both on the part of the management trainee as well as that of his or her employees. The trainee’s initial enthusiasm often evaporates. His or her energy and eagerness for the task at hand diminish and trigger resistance.