Leadership isn’t a position, it’s a behaviour. And no matter where we are in our company’s hierarchy, we can all change our behaviour, and by extension our work culture, says Rainer Höll. 

Rainer Höll is an Organisational Developer: he’s a soul-searcher, a philosopher, a visionary, who helps companies ask themselves the tough questions needed to become better workplaces.

In his particular case, he realised that the organisation that he was CEO of at the time – Ashoka Germany – would benefit from a less hierarchical structure, so he took steps to change that. „We distributed the leadership across all members of the team; that’s when I switched my title from Managing Director to partner – all the permanent members of the team became partners,” he explains in this Podcast. 

Ashoka may be an extreme case of an organisation abandoning its hierarchies entirely – but there are lessons in this for any company. It’s about overcoming fears, building trust and authenticity, and a more open workplace. „There are so many conversations that don’t happen in conventional organisations because people are afraid of bringing up certain topics,” says Höll. „You have a default, which is the conventional hierarchy – but no one really questions it because no one knows if it’s dangerous to question it. But it’s entirely possible to have a conscious conversation about – is this the best set-up for us? It’s not about the intricacies and the details of the decision-making structure; it’s the cultural foundation of trust and conversational ability that you need to build.”

That culture of open conversation and trust makes for a more attractive workplace – and staff who are more open to developing leadership skills at any level. „There are a lot of competencies around emotional self-management or having a systemic view of an organisation – that’s a typical leader skill toolset,” he says. “If you distribute the decisions-making power among people, everyone needs to be able to do that.” And everyone benefits.

Speaker: Rainer Höll, Executive Coach and Organisational Developer

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Picture: Rainer Höll / Christian Klant

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

#getinspired #podcast #inspiration #MyCollective #getinspiredpodcast #ImpulseSessions #changemakers #leadership #sustainability #talentsustainability #parenthood #workwithouthierarchy #workculture #socialenterprise #newwork#workingparents #parentalleave #elternzeit #changingthenarrative

Laura Gersch is a parent. She’s also CFO at Allianz Versicherungs-AG. So she knows first-hand that having a family and a career at the same time takes planning – even if you don’t end up sticking to the plan 😊

As a manager, she asks parental leavers some tough questions. „What I want to trigger is the discussion in the family,” she explains. She doesn’t actually need to know those answers herself, she just wants the family in question to give it a think. 

„If the idea is to come back at some point and to somehow juggle two jobs and kids, then it’s very valuable to ask some questions up front. It doesn’t mean you will realise the plan because you cannot plan everything around babies. But I want people to think before they leave, What actually is my plan for coming back?”

Some of the questions that she says need to be on your list: 

⭐︎ the starting point: what do you mean by career? Do you want to just keep a toe in the water for now, or actively grow your career? 

⭐︎ the working model: once you’ve established that, how can you make it happen while also being there for your family? She mentions some options: full time but flexible hours / reduced hours / job-sharing.

⭐︎ preparing your re-entry:  Talk to your boss. And build peer groups at work with people who have had similar experiences and 😎programmes like @mycollective really help!

⭐︎ your financial independence, especially long-term: if you think that your decision to work part-time only affects your income now, you’re wrong. There are lots of different solutions to protecting your financial independence later, including having part of your household money go to pension payments for the parent who is doing more care-work and earning less money.

What other questions do you think we should be asking ourselves, as #workingparents with #careers ?

Speaker: Laura Gersch, CFO, Allianz Versicherungs-AG / Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Picture: Laura Gersch

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

#getinspired #podcast #inspiration #MyCollective #womenchangemakers #womenleaders #leadership #diversity #paygap #pensiongap #equality #careers #femalecareers #getinspiredpodcast #ImpulseSessions #parenthood #workingparents #parentalleave #elternzeit #rentenluecke

Job sharing seems to be the ideal solution to combine career and family. So why do people still hesitate? We speak to Dr. Nina Gillmann to find out more.

Since Nina Gillmann moved back to Germany from the States and saw that „management in Germany looked very white and very male” by comparison, she’s been on a mission to diversify our workplaces. So she set up TWISE – Twice Wise – an agency that creates job-sharing partnerships for people who want to work part-time in high-powered, fulfilling jobs. The solution is to apply for those jobs in tandem with someone who has similar experience and skills.

“One company asked me, ‚Frau Gillmann, can you explain why we fill any vacancy with one single person?’” Nina Gillmann remembers. It was a question that was meant to be ironic – but her honest answer was: “I don’t understand it – it makes no economic sense!”

As far as she’s concerned, working in tandem is a win-win for everyone. Companies attract more female talent in leadership positions, which means that they actually perform better. Parents can work in a position that is truly part-time but still give it their all. And companies get a much greater return than they would from one full-time staffer. 

„You get the equivalent of 140 or even 150% productivity back,” she says. “When two people have the same interests, they trust each other and they have no fear – this is where the synergies happen in a tandem. And that’s where we are arguing it goes from 120% productivity to maybe even 150. So it’s an economic no-brainer.” 

I could go on and on quoting the things that Nina said in this podcast – she said so many insightful and game-changing things that I wanted to write them all down! Instead, I encourage you to just listen to the whole conversation!

I will leave you with this: „Tandems lead to more women. Women make companies more successful. It’s just a very simple equation.” 💃🏾

Speaker: Dr. Nina Gillmann, Founder and CEO @TWISE

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Picture: Michael Kleinespel / Dr. Nina Gillmann 

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

Getting back to business after years of child care is tricky!

While we @MyCollective focus on new parents returning to their careers right after parental leave, there are also many women who leave their jobs for a prolonged time to take care of their family. We talk to Dr. Patricia Widmer about how they can come back. 

Patricia is the Vice Director at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland and has set up University programmes specifically for this – including the „Women Back to Business” programme and the „Career Relaunch“ conference.

She has found that finding the way back to a career-path is linked to three things, not all of which are within our control, but some of which very much are:

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 our social circle (including our family)

👩🏼‍💻 our workplace environment

👧🏻 ourselves! Our sense of what we can do, and what we expect from ourselves. 

In this podcast, she has lots of excellent advice on how we can impact those three circles, as she calls them. Ways in which we can manage expectations at home, at work – and our own. 

As a mother of two teenagers, she also has some valuable experience of her own to share 💕

Speaker: Dr. Patricia Widmer, Vice Director University of St. Gallen

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Picture: Dr. Patricia Widmer

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

During a stay in Shanghai Dr. Bettina Al-Sadik Lowinski, Master Certified coach, decided to do a PhD on how woman rise to the top. The result of her ongoing research – spanning 110 interviews in five countries – is her latest book, “Women in Top Management.”

In today’s podcast she shares some of her findings – all fascinating, and many surprising. 80% of the executives that she spoke to in China, Japan, Germany, Russia and France were mothers, which she didn’t expect. „In my coaching younger women in Germany hesitate to make a career with kids. What holds them back often is this „raven mother“ stigma.” she says. “ In Germany due to our socialization we hear, well that’s not possible, or it’s really difficult. In my global research I have found many women in senior functions who master their career with children. They organize support, they free themselves from expectations and they have defined their professional targets well!” 🙌🏽

But she also found that – at least among the current crop of top managers who are now in their late 40s and 50s – fluid working models are still very rare. That makes it all more important for those of us now coming back from parental leave to blaze a new trail, and to pioneer new and innovative working models at our companies – so that they become the norm in the next generation. “The near future will tell us which newer work models will support mothers but also fathers best,” says Bettina.

Which brings us back to the power of #rolemodels. Bettina found that in countries where there are a lot of women in middle to upper management, the whole work culture has changed as a result – in China, work dinners happen earlier, so that people can go home earlier. Women are powerful role models in their own families as well – women who were raised by working mothers have their role model from early childhood on. It is important that each woman finds her own paths and once decided, they should not feel guilty.

Speaker: Dr. Bettina Al-Sadik Lowinski – Author, Speaker, International Executive Coach (MCC), Founder of global Women Career Lab

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Picture: Bettina Al-Sadik-Lowinski

Graphic & Production: MyCollective