Great leaders need to be great communicators and articulate the company’s vision in a way that brings clarity and a compelling reason for employees to come along for the journey, according to Nicolette Barnard, Siemens ASEAN-Pacific’s head of leadership and development and acting head of HR for Siemens Australia.
“In a modern world successful leaders also need to not only manage change but to really thrive on change – constantly adapting to market and economic conditions,” she said.
“Someone at the forefront of good leadership has an inbuilt resilience, and can mobilise others to facilitate organisational transformation, no matter what the circumstances.”
Global engineering and electronics conglomerate Siemens, which employs 362,000 employees across nearly 190 countries and 2,700 people in Australia and New Zealand, has nine leadership capabilities which define what being a successful leader or manager looks like, according to Barnard: strategic-innovative orientation; change management; team development; value orientation; intercultural sensitivity; business results orientation; collaboration and influencing; leadership; and customer orientation.
Even though managers and leaders are measured against all of these capabilities and provided with ongoing feedback, Barnard said the ones most indicative of successful leadership are strategic-innovative orientation, change management, leadership and team development.
“At Siemens we believe in the saying that people will join a company for its brand, and leave it because of its management and ineffective leadership”
“Siemens puts a strong emphasis on collaboration among employees and leaders across business areas and markets as well as geographical borders. The best results don’t come from doing it yourself, but through collaboration with peers and employees,” she said.
The business places a strong emphasis on differentiating between leadership and management, with the understanding that the percentage of leadership and management required in a person’s career will change depending on their position, Barnard added.
“To ensure we equip both leaders and mangers with the essential capabilities they need to perform optimally in the business, we deliver a range of in-house learning programs,” she said.
Locally, Siemens has developed a management excellence program as a module based in-house course, designed around the actual capability gaps of our people managers. This is then built upon in its people business management program which Siemens Germany facilitates to prepare and equip managers to manage their people, with the aim of executing business strategies.
“At Siemens we believe in the saying that people will join a company for its brand, and leave it because of its management and ineffective leadership, so we also put emphasis on preparing and supporting our leaders and management on how to retain talent. It seems our approach is working as we have maintained single digit unplanned staff attrition rates in the past few years,” she said.
For the full interview with Barnard and feature on how great companies build top leaders, see the next issue of Inside HR magazine.
