ORIENTATION

Orientation

Interviews

In individual and group interviews, we record personal and collective values, as well as individual fears and needs and different perceptions of challenges and solutions. It is also important for us to get to know the company, the products and the different jobs that are interlinked with the corporate culture.

Culture Survey „Barrett Values“

Individual, as well as shared values and behavioral norms, all shape corporate culture. By employing one of the most comprehensive and detailed diagnostic tools, we assess your employees shared values, how they perceive they are lived in your company, and which values they feel should be incorporated to ensure a successful future. By comparing these ratings, the priority values and behavioral norms are identified, enabling us to specifically target and consciously cultivate them as part of a transformation program. The survey can easily be adapted to include additional company-specific values, thus enabling an assessment of how and to what extent current cultural guidelines (e.g. code of conduct) are being adopted.

Recurring assessment (e.g. annually or every two years), also allows the current status of a cultural transformation to be evaluated. We manage this culture survey as certified partners of the Barrett Values Center. It is completed anonymously online.

Being able to assess the rather soft and diffuse factors of a corporate culture has made it possible – also for colleagues with a rather logical disposition – to gain a good introduction to the subject. The culture survey enabled us to find out which values and behaviors are important to our employees and managers and which have an impact on our current situation. The evaluations of the different divisions, as well as my personal 360-degree feedback, were not only a stepping stone into intensive dialogue with my managing director colleagues, but above all with my senior managers and employees. This has given us a deeper understanding of ourselves, each other and the factors that are key for a successful future, which I deem invaluable.

Werner Zirlik, Director of Division Media Distribution, MELO Group

Transformations Elemente

Orientation
Vision and Values
Leadership
Team-Workshops
Executive-Coaching

aergon

Leadership Transformation
How we can support you
Where do you want to go?
What can you do immediately?
Who comes along?

VISION

Vision and Values

Vision and values workshop

Nowadays, most companies have a well-documented vision. However, all too often neither the leadership team nor the employees are able to translate this vision into everyday practice. This is probably because the vision was formulated by a small group of external consultants and is not emotionally anchored. The primary goal of a vision is to inspire and to provide a clear sense of purpose, enabling employees to identify themselves enthusiastically with their organization and to mobilize energy even in challenging times. Using a clearly structured process, we not only help your leadership team to identify their personal dreams, but also to form a shared and aligned dream for the company’s future. The result is a specific, emotionally engaging vision towards which which the entire organization strives.

During this process, shared values and desired behaviors help to guide the team and make them aware of their own underlying beliefs and unbconscious reactions. This strengthens their ability to consciously weigh up and choose behavioral options that are in line with the desired organizational culture.

vision werte strategie e

Culture workshop

In the Culture Workshop, middle management joins the leadership team to embark on a shared journey into the future, towards the vision. This journey empowers middle management with the right kind of energy and attitude, and they then plan the first steps along the path towards the vision. This highly emotional experience lays the foundation for the new organizational culture, centered on growth and values, and also serves as a lead-in to the middle-management leadership workshops.

LEADERSHIP

Leadership

Transformation-Workshops

Psychology, people’s conscious and unconscious experience and behavior, is probably the No. 1 factor that promotes, obstructs or even prevents internal processes, necessary management initiatives and even digitalization from coming to fruition.

Even the best initiatives can fail because of employees’ fears and ego and the lack of technical know-how among managers. And what’s more, they are not even aware of this unconscious incompetence – not knowing what one does not know. Almost all companies have long-standing, well-defined management guidelines and a code of conduct and values. Furthermore, most companies not only offer comprehensive management-qualification programs, but they also make them a prerequisite for management positions. So on paper, all companies should have excellent corporate cultures.

However, the above is often reflected only partially or not at all in managers’ behavior. Yet most of the time they are unaware of this, and instead blame circumstances or others (e.g. their employees) if financial results and human relationships do not correspond to corporate goals. Unfortunately, external circumstances and other people usually cannot be changed and managers often fail to use strongest management tool: themselves!

In order to be able to carry out a cultural transformation at all, one needs greater self-awareness. It is important to understand how perception and actions are influenced, and how managers can recognize and above all effectively adapt their patterns of perception and behavior. To change one’s habits, one first need to become aware of them and to identify whether they are effective or rather obstructive. The change process is a whole new ball game, requiring peace and deliberation, but above all time. This is why we do not offer a “one size fits all” approach for a cultural transformation, but only well-chosen elements as part of a comprehensive process.

We use polyvalent, psychologically sound and above all logical models from our proven program. These also provide fact-oriented managers with good visibility into the cultural side of their work and enable effective orientation in the context of the vision.

Rollout Workshops

The purpose of these workshops is to systematically apply the most important elements and insights gained from the Transformation Workshops to the next management level.

Leadership Workshops

Because values and people from different generations always have and always will continue to change the world of work, new types of leadership are continuously needed. On the one hand, hierarchies and status are losing significance, but on the other hand, younger employees in particular want clear leadership and decisions as well as individual support, integration and freedom. Whereas empathy and esteem used to be documented or rewarded in the form of financial compensation, today's employees want more than anything to experience such sentiments on a day-to-day basis. However, this also requires (new) skills and, above all, new managerial attitudes.

In our Leadership Workshops, we address these attitudes, the control of ambiguity between leading and letting go, proximity and distance, and the ownership of the system, as well as often quoted but rarely (effectively) used tools, such as (correctly) delegating, adjusting, praising and criticizing. Above all, however, we focus on the individual perceptions of employees, their values and their needs.

Over a period of 2 years, the entire management team of Berufsbildungswerk Waiblingen gGmbH participated in an outstanding, multi-level program for transformational leadership with Beate Junginger. Through a very good mixture of professional input and practical exercises, as well as implementation tasks and telephone coaching between the workshops, we have achieved extremely positive and tangible effects in leadership quality. Many managers found it to be the most effective and best advanced training in their career to date.

Roman Hanle, Managing Director, Berufsbildungswerk Waiblingen gGmbH

Train-the-Trainer workshops

To ensure comprehensive cultural transformation, these workshops provide selected managers and participants from the Rollout Workshops with the knowledge and skills they will need to implement the next phase. In the next phase, they will convey the most important transformation elements and tools to the remaining employees. When selecting suitable participants, the most important consideration is whether they possess the enthusiasm and charisma needed to get their colleagues on board. We place less emphasis on professional experience, for example a background in human resources.

The individually adapted trainer manuals are a valuable compendium of all content, exercises and workshop concepts as well as didactic tips, which is a valuable companion and anchor for internal trainers before, during and after the internal Rollout Workshops.

Online manuals and self-learning platform aergon campus

In order to support managers during the transformation process, to integrate the content into everyday life and to roll it out at lower levels, participants have access to a web-based self-learning platform for managers and team members. All workshop contents are described in detail, there are a total of 40 exercises, videos, book tips and above all a detailed training program for 12 months.

TOGETHER

Team-Development

Team workshops

These workshops provide a platform of trust and goodwill where members of the leadership team, as guardians of the system, can align themselves to form a community of shared values. Here, they work both with and for each other and act as role models for all other teams. We follow the principle of working “from up-set to set-up”, enabling participants to come to terms with the current situation, to put the past behind them and to generate the energy needed to move forward in the new direction. At the same time, the leadership team learns that conflicts are a normal and healthy part of a corporate culture, and practices finding solutions based on goodwill that do justice to all concerned. During this process, we also explain systemic topics – these provide clarity from outside, which is then internalized by the team and its individual members, helping to engender inner calm.

Here, a culture survey is particularly useful for identifying current and desired values and behaviors and it can be used as a springboard for targeted discussion.

POTENTIAL DEVELOPMENT

Personal Development

Executive Coaching

Even very experienced managers come to the point every now and then when they notice that things are no longer going as desired. On the one hand, this has to do with the increasing complexity and speed, but also with the constantly changing context, which at some point can no longer be controlled with the tried and tested means. Sometimes it is also a new role, a new team or new working environments, such as agile working, hybrid teams, the dismantling of hierarchies, home office and AI-supported working, which demands new thinking and action not only from experienced managers. In addition, in this world shaken by mega-crises, there are increasingly insecure customers and team members and their very individual needs. How can you provide meaningful support in the face of increasing pressure resulting from more and more tasks in less and less time?

If you have stressful thoughts and feelings, your body is already sending alarm signals or you are dissatisfied with your behaviour or that of your environment, coaching is a good way to get back into balance and to increase your effectiveness as a manager and at the same time as a private person. In a coaching process you can get to know yourself better, develop new perspectives on yourself, your environment and your challenges and then develop new strategies to finally (again) achieve the results you want with the people and situations. In the context of culture transformation projects, C-level coaching is an indispensable component to actively drive the change process.

Beate is a very structured, focused and experienced executive coach. She comes straight to the point, knows what she is talking about and has a good sense of humor. What I particularly like about her is that she gives enough room for the coachees to develop own attitudes and solutions for their issues. In the center of Beate’s coaching are values. She has a wealth of experience with organizational transformations, change management and leadership coaching. Beate it very keen (and savvy) on new technology and enjoys working with “tech people“ who themselves get along very well with her.