With playful leadership to corporate success

How do you get your company on the road to success? - Of course, you can't do it without your employees. But this is often where the problem lies. When conditions change, corporate structures must also change and evolve. But what happens if the employees, especially the managers, don't follow suit?

Our company has grown strongly over the last 15 years. By now, our management team at allsafe consists of almost 30 people. Many managers have been with us since the beginning. In this long time, they have found their role, defined it for themselves, and defined their scope of responsibilities - some of them several times. But the company was still smaller then. The structures have changed. So we have to keep rethinking and reorganizing roles if the organization as such is to function in the long term. Of course, that goes hand in hand with a lot of uncertainties.

With fun & games to new corporate structures

To take the heaviness out of the topic, we made leadership a game in a workshop with our managers. We don't want to dictate anything to anyone; at allsafe, there is a very free and flexible, autonomous corporate culture. We want our employees to think and act for themselves.

That's why we didn't start the workshop with monologues from the management, but with an interactive game in a large circle in which we threw balls to each other: "Jens! - I catch the ball and throw it further: "Matthias!" ... Little by little, more and more balls came into play, the coordination became more and more demanding - almost like in everyday work.

A simple game, but one that lightened the mood right at the start and created a common atmosphere for everyone. This was followed by our allsafe business game, a board game that represents our everyday processes and business areas. Each executive took a Playmobil figure, gave it a name and positioned it where they saw themselves in the company: in their role.
Viewing the company as a game in this way facilitates the self-reflection that now follows. Because this is where it gets interesting: How does Klaus situate himself? Where would Heike place him? Do you see yourself in the position of management, as an expert or in leadership? What do you consider to be your area of responsibility?

In our final discussion, we exchanged ideas among ourselves about the individual roles. At the end of the day, I myself was positively surprised at how well the workshop was received by all participants.

Goodbye hierarchy! 

The fact that this workshop was such a success is, in my opinion, due to the framework conditions: It is important that every single employee in the company thinks about their role, reflects on themselves. But instead of pushing your team to do this reflection, you can also encourage them with a playful approach. It's important to give participants space to develop and evolve themselves. If that space isn't there, people don't approach it with an open mind, they just focus on staking and securing their claims. They have the feeling that their roles are already defined.

Our corporate culture includes self-leadership. I am insanely proud of our employees. Everyone at allsafe wants to achieve something, independently - and we give them that space. Because only when your employees have room to grow can your organization grow, too.

Jens Laufer

 

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