2 questions
Leadership Trainer
Berthold Ebner
2 questions for Berthold Ebner who is helping executives in South Germany to become better leaders.
Why do companies need leadership trainers?
Team leaders in small and medium-sized businesses are often specialists in their profession who have been thrown into a management position without having learned how to lead. That happened to me years ago when I was promoted from a sales position – I was very good at selling – to a management position. Suddenly I had to manage six people. In most cases, there is no opportunity to learn how to lead, and we leadership trainers fill that gap. We help our clients to identify the needs and skills of their people and to deploy them accordingly. And we show them how to empower the people in their team to solve problems for themselves and lead them to independence, for example by asking for solutions rather than always having solutions ready.
What observations have you made in your management training courses?
Managers can learn a lot from each other, which is why we like to bring together managers from different industries in our training courses. Many are still thinking in old hierarchies and believe in mainly being strict as the superior. They are used to be the ones asking the questions in a job interview and not having to answer questions about work-life balance and the atmosphere in the team. But strictness doesn’t work with today’s young people, they need a lot of feedback. That’s why executives in companies are often completely overwhelmed by job interviews or performance reviews. At the same time, I see many withdrawing from communication and shying away from taking on leadership and responsibility. In the long run, Germany will not only have a shortage of skilled workers but also a shortage of managers. Although there are many models for working in a team, I believe that quick decisions require someone who is prepared to take the lead and assume responsibility.
Interview sidenote: Berthold says that he was already interested in sales as a teenager and young man: “When someone asked me what I was selling, I replied: ‘What do you need?’ I was very customer-oriented even then.”
You can find more about Berthold Ebners work here: www.leaders-academy.com
About the author: www.business-photographer.com
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