Very few leaders have had solid training in good people leadership.
Working with leaders at every level – regardless of company size or industry – I keep noticing the same thing: even basic employment-law knowledge, or a sound grasp of established leadership concepts that the business takes for granted as the basis for proper conduct, is often simply not there. That holds true even for concepts that have been in place at the company for years and should be applied independently – structured feedback conversations, for instance. Instead, people lead by instinct and on the basis of habit, often without input from specialists or any consideration of risk.
What goes unnoticed for a long time can tip over in an instant: a well-meant question about family planning, or a „young team“ in a job ad – and a rejection turns into a discrimination claim under the AGG (Germany’s General Equal Treatment Act) of up to three months’ salary. A poorly justified dismissal does not hold up before the labour court and ends in an expensive settlement. Your best people quit inwardly first, then for real – replacing them costs time, money and knowledge. And a casual exchange about sensitive employee data becomes a data-protection breach.
Pointing out such gaps to an experienced leader with years of responsibility – a seasoned operations manager, say – is personally delicate for the managing director or for HR: it touches on competence and standing, the roles are rarely equal, and you still depend on working with that very leader day to day. Many blind spots stay hidden from everyone involved anyway. After all, the path into leadership usually runs through technical strength and ambition; people leadership itself emerges on the side, as learning on the job or in a generic crash course on the change of role.
In day-to-day business, between client coordination and product development, there is rarely time for one’s own development in this field, or the personal focus is missing – even though employees are the very foundation that makes managing every other business priority possible in the first place.
This is exactly where HR BOOST! comes in: as a comprehensive, face-saving refresher across every relevant topic area. Where a topic is new to you, you build solid knowledge in a targeted way. Where you are already well versed, we work – in a protected setting – on your own complex cases, to professionalize your knowledge or to share your experience with colleagues and benefit from the mutual transfer.
