16.07.2021 Isabel Hempel 6665

What soft skills does a manager need?

Being a manager today requires completely different skills than ten or twenty years ago. Healthy leadership, self-management, resilience and employee motivation are just a few keywords that describe the soft skills of the modern manager. But how do people acquire these skills, which are so essential in our complex working world?

Leadership 4.0, healthy leadership, self-management, resilience, employee motivation: keywords like these are on everyone's lips, not least because digitalization is rapidly changing our working world. In everyday working life, however, it is still too rare for managers to consistently question their own actions and work on developing their emotional skills. "Many managers don't have a lot of time and expect to receive brief tips. They learn a lot at introductory seminars, but receive little support in practical application," says management coach Matthias Könning from the pme Familienservice Group. "However, constant self-reflection is an important step."

The willingness to self-reflect often only grows out of necessity. "Many managers, for example, find themselves confronted with a recurring conflict situation with a particular employee and are looking for a solution," says Matthias Könning.

Analyzing personality traits

Numerous studies have shown how exhausting unspoken disputes are for teams. Smouldering conflicts poison the working atmosphere and can disrupt performance in the long term. They tie up energy and creativity and cost managers in particular a large proportion of their working time (up to 30 percent). If a manager has recurring disputes with certain team members, for example, it is worth analyzing them as part of a coaching session.

"Am I doing something wrong?" This question is often at the beginning for managers seeking help. "At the beginning of a coaching session, I like to work with a model from resilience research that focuses on a person's personality traits," explains Könning. The client recognizes whether he or she is more analytical or empathetic, value-oriented or action-oriented. "For example, if you are very creative and constantly demand new ideas from your employees, they can quickly feel overwhelmed. Then it makes sense to take a "creative" break so that the new ideas can settle and be implemented."

The manager then has to slow down their own pace so that their team members can keep up and ask how the team is doing and what could strengthen the team spirit as part of constant feedback.

Targeted strengthening of team resources

Coaching can also focus on how a team's resources can be used more effectively. "Given the need to constantly adapt to the market as a company, it is crucial to know how resilient my team is and where I can strengthen it through targeted leadership," says Könning.

According to Fritz Zehetner, four factors seem to be particularly important for leadership responsibility:

1. to develop an awareness of one's own strengths and weaknesses and of the role model effect of one's own actions.

2. to be driven by your own motivation, to inspire the team and to create realizable visions.

3. the ability to get employees on board mentally, challenge them, convey new insights and break down outdated thought patterns.

4. to perceive each team member as an individual and to utilize and promote their skills. 

Whether these factors come into play in everyday working life can be well analyzed in the context of coaching.

Coaching on the job

More and more often, coaches accompany a manager on the job for a day and observe how they work: How does the manager deal with their own resources? How do they use their knowledge? How is he or she structured in terms of time? What leadership style is recognizable? How does communication take place? The strengths and potential for further development are then discussed together.

However, coaching can also take place online. Matthias Könning uses the option of video calls and a special digital tool that makes it possible to work systemically with the client. "We can work with a kind of digital flipchart. The work done in coaching can be visualized well with the help of this tool and is retained as a PDF document."

Brief supervision in day-to-day business

Coach Könning sees another option, which is still new for many companies, in so-called short supervision sessions. These take place regularly in well-structured groups with several managers. "A coach leads these groups and helps them to help themselves, so that in the end a kind of guideline for internal supervision is created through which everyone can learn from everyone else."

Matthias Könning knows from his own working environment how important it is to constantly question your own actions. "As coaches, we have regular supervision sessions ourselves and constantly take part in webinars and short training courses to reflect on our own work."

In contrast, managers are often so deeply involved in the processes that an external view is usually completely absent, "At the moment, we too often still have a firefighting function. We help when the child has already fallen into the well. In the long run, however, it is worth every company investing in preventative and conceptual work."

Matthias Könning works as a management coach at pme Familienservice. The most important step that managers should learn is constant self-reflection, says Könning.

Learn more: Coaching for managers