Leadership – Core Competencies in Today’s World. Part 1

German version

The past year has taught us a lot about mindfulness – mindfulness towards our surrounding, other people, the environment, our everyday lives, and even and especially - ourselves. We have learned that many things are not guaranteed to be taken for granted the way we thought they were up until now.

For me, personally and professionally, as an executive, an entrepreneur as well as a “part of the team”, I have found it to be a challenging time, a phase that invited me to look closer at specific areas of my life and – from an entrepreneurial side – to see which topics are vital to be looked at more closely in regard to leadership. A phase that has shown me more clearly than ever just how much responsibility that position entails, and that this kind of responsibility goes hand in hand with as much responsibility for oneself.

I have come to ask myself how the job profile regarding executives has changed over the years, and what specific qualities are now demanded.

Surveys prove – among them the Survey ?Human Centered Lead? der Boston Consulting Group: “The job profile for executives has drastically changed over the past years, so much so that being in a leadership position seems to no longer be a main aspiration, even with those constantly hungry for further learning and development.“

As is well known, there are various leaderships styles, models, philosophies, and perspectives regarding the subject at hand. And with them come various new theories and views. So, even if there is not “the one” true or correct approach regarding successful leadership, I still believe there to be critical characteristics that outstanding leaders have in common.

Leadership is an active decision which has to be directly linked to an energetic, clear “Yes” and which goes hand in hand with great autonomy. Every day anew. Fully aware every day.

When I first came in touch with Helge Hellberg’s value-based 5 C Leadership Model – Clarity, Care, Courage, Curiosity, and Commitment – I was impressed by just how plausible, clear, and effective the model would prove to be for our company as well as for myself as an executive. I was also excited to find out that both our agency and we as individuals had already begun integrating the 5 C’s into our everyday lives and that the next step would be to officially establish them within our company in a clear, committed and transparent way.

Helge, the stage is yours.

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Interview part 1: The 5-C-Leadership-Model

Helge, your Leadership-Model is based on the following five core values – the 5 C: Clarity, Courage, Care, Curiosity, Commitment. Companies implementing these principles can experience them as a solid basis for future-oriented development and sustainable change, as much as they ensure a respectful corporate culture.

Since when has the 5-C-Leadership-Model been used in your coaching?

I have been working with the 5-C-Leadership-Model as an executive Coach for about 7 years now. It has been effective from day one, but it has never been more critical than now. Our expectations on leadership and our courage to ask for what we need has never been more explicit. The 5 C frame the much needed and necessary conversation.

What made you center your concept around the 5 C?

Over the past 25 years, I have focused my work around various forms of management, psychological science, philosophy as well as Buddhist teachings, or even shamanism, poetry, and other forms of wisdom. All these teachings share a certain set of values and basic beliefs. It is those values and beliefs that the 5-C-Leadership-Model combines into management principles that serve my clients as navigational aids. Aids which support them to balance out various traits which – in psychological terms – might be referred to as feminine and masculine values. Examples for such female traits are creativity, or empathy, or caring for others and oneself, while some specific masculine values include healthy boundaries, clarity, strategy, our healthy “No” as well as a freely given “Yes.” A leader practices and lives these principles, and has a healthy balance between feminine and masculine values – a great sense of care combined with clarity and healthy boundaries at the same time.?

So, in your eyes the 5 C stand for overall values?

Definitely, yes. To me, they clearly represent the core values of a life that is lived powerfully - to our own greatest potential. Fortunately, they are now being understood to be the same values when we ask “What is good, healthy, and powerful leadership?”, to enable the fullest potential of our colleagues and teams.

The 5 C, for me, represent a blend of the most critical core feminine and masculine traits, the essence of what we have lost in many companies and in our society at large. Leadership, or the 5 C, is what is needed most in the world. The world is changing quickly, professionally and personally, and it is up to us to manage teams that, for example, no longer work on site, or are increasingly diverse, and finally, luckily, are much more outspoken than ever before. We are all finding our voice now, and the 5 C are being expected by more and more employees around the world. We as managers must completely rethink our approach to managing people and must have a language that matches these core human values. Even if we all were to return to the office, for example, it will most likely be a hybrid office situation as we have learned to appreciate and discover the benefits of working from home. Are we losing our teams because of that? Are we losing our connection because of physical distance? Where we truly connected even before Covid? The 5 C help in addressing these utmost important questions.

?Has the current Covid crisis confirmed your model’s theory in certain ways?

Yes, it has, absolutely. The 5 C are the summary of a company’s core responsibilities. Those core principles are either present in the leadership of a company - or they are not. If you, as a leader, live them, transformation is possible. And if you do not live them yet, you can still train them. Leadership is a muscle.

Crises show rather bluntly what in your life is of substance – I absolutely count my model into that.

Photo by Grit Siwonia

Without a doubt – when I stumbled upon your model last year, I was fascinated and impressed right away with the clarity of the model. And I understood that we, as an organization, have already been incorporating and actively living your 5 C.

Absolutely – a modern, agile company such as yours has most likely already and very naturally integrated the 5 C into their daily work dynamics. In addition, in my experience, the more clearly and openly we can name and live the 5 C in your companies, the more we will feel them in ourselves and live them personally as well. That creates an immensely powerful experience, because leadership is a muscle, an attitude about how we approach life at large, personally and professionally.

It is the 5 C that enable us to restore a balance. It is these 5 C, these values, that have gone lost in many areas of our society. They are more missed and needed than ever before.

As soon as you have successfully implemented the 5 C you have a team that works efficiently, team members who enjoy their work, take on responsibility, can uphold commitments, foster honesty, interact interconnected and treat one another with care. You’ll get teams that are totally committed. Teams that start their workdays feeling secure are teams that can truly reinvent the world. Such a team would be able to bring back an astronaut from outer space with not much more than some aluminum foil and duct tape, just like back in the days of the Apollo 13 mission. Only in total safety, the full potential of a team is realized.

What a beautiful metaphor. Can you elaborate on what the 5 C specifically stand for, each one for themselves? And how are they related?

Yes, sure, I am happy to.

1. Clarity

There is often a lack of precision in the way we communicate. “Leadership is defined in the quality of specificity” is one of my mantras. Allowing everyone to see the full picture of impact, understanding the involvement of all stakeholders and their needs, oversight of all parts is critical for the success of a project. Today we call that “ownership.” Ownership comes from clarity. So often, teams are not given the full picture, for example financially, or understanding the consequences of failed commitments, etc. How can we expect ownership if those aspects are not known?

Clarity is also knowing what is true – or at least seeking to find out what is true. Seeking clarity lets us ask “What is the true problem that we are trying to solve?” “What processes do work and which ones don’t?”, “Which part of the task or our communication has been unclear?”, “Why we are meeting?”. Creating clarity within a team can transform a breakdown into a breakthrough.

Also, there are still many companies who set up and go into meetings without a clear agenda. They follow the same framework they have for years for their Monday morning meeting. That’s not an agenda! If being asked about the true objective of the meeting, as in “what problem are we trying to solve here today?” many of the participants would probably respond “I don’t really know why I am here or what my role is in this” or “I have things to contribute to the first part of the meeting but usually, during the second part, I just hang around.” You’d be surprised how often I encounter confusion among teams. Confusion is the opposite of Clarity.

Clarity represents an essential core value for teams and organizations.

2. Courage

Courage asks: “Are we courageous enough to address that which is not clear to everybody? Do we dare to speak the truth without yet knowing the answer?” That’s for example, “the courage not to know” – a critical leadership value. Leaders who know are not leaders, there are experts. That’s a big difference. Experts are awesome, but they don’t necessarily lead.

Whenever we realize that team members fail to follow a meeting, that they might be lacking focus – how are we, as leaders, dealing with that? The team member on the cellphone - do we ignore it? Do we give out a warning? Do we address it afterwards? Most importantly, do we actually want to know what is really going on for that employee? Maybe he or she has an emergency at home but doesn’t want to interrupt the meeting? Do we know? To what extent are we courageous enough to notice and speak up?

Courage to speak.

3. Care

Care means caring. Love and fear are the two basic emotions that we act upon. Seeing someone focusing on their phone during a meeting, there are several processes that are going off in our brain. We immediately believe that they are not interested in the meeting. That they are ignoring us. That we are being disrespected. That we must be boring or not competent enough to hold that person’s attention. And the list goes on… As a reaction to our fear, we become aggressive, or we look away, as we don’t know how to deal with it. In those moments, we are far from being curious, caring, or courageous.

If, on the contrary, we train to connect love and courage, we are much rather able to say “Hey, I noticed you being on your phone, is everything ok?” or “Is there something you need to fully be present in this meeting?” And it could very well be possible that the person across might respond with: “Yes, my daughter just had some sort of bike accident. I need 5 minutes to deal with it. Thank you.”

Care to end the conflict. The conflict that’s happening seems to be outside of us, but really is within ourselves, as we so often don’t know how to better deal with a situation.

Photo by?Jiroe?on?Unsplash

4. Curiosity

Curiosity means the intention to ask questions. Coming to every situation with a beginner’s mind. How are you? What is it that you need? Am I losing you? If we miss out to address misalignment, others will notice our lack of leadership as well. And then everybody sees Frank being busy on his cellphone again and I, as a manager, will do nothing about it. The result being nobody feeling safe with me as their leader, as they shouldn’t. Basic values and a clear attitude must be lived by example, every day anew. Curiosity is a valuable engine of growth. And if we miss it in one moment, we use the next day to go back to our miss the day earlier. Leadership is not about being perfect in every situation, but to coming back to these 5 C, the moment we realize we weren’t the day before. In this sense, Leadership as a standard of excellence.

We do not know every answer, we cannot know the answer to everything. Do we show courage and are curious to ask questions? “What else is possible? How can I be a better leader? What specifically am I committing to? What are you committing you?” If we find the courage to ask and address what keeps us from thriving, we will reinstate trust and alignment and we will create true solutions within our teams and our lives.

Curiosity. What else is possible? How can I be a better leader? What specifically am I committing to? What are you committing you? Excited exploration, instead of thinking we have all the answers.

?5. Commitment

Commitment stands for our promise and our readiness for action. Are we fully committed, thriving to achieve excellence? Are we committed to look closely? Are we showing up, fully? When commitment is truly lived, it means an immeasurable amount of freedom. Commitment is not only what we give or say, it is who we are, “I am commitment!”

Leadership is a muscle that needs to be trained. Leadership means commitment to our values, and it means that the people you are leading can rely on and trust you, 100%. That is leadership. They know that you are 100 % committed to your team and to yourself, to achieving excellence, to creating transparency, to providing clarity. That you will speak, if something needs to be pointed out. That you will not silently accept things that block the team or each individual’s success. And that you have learned to lead with care and empathy. Being a leader means also being innately human and being able to relate to the human experience in and of life. It is about fully leaning in, being awake to everyone’s full potential, in the most energetic, honest, caring, and courageous way possible.

And “like creates like”, meaning that if we show up as leaders with this awakened attitude, our colleagues and teams will follow us into commitment, clarity, courage, curiosity, and care.

So, in conclusion – the 5 C for you are a commitment towards a specific way of life plus they represent the corner pillars of leadership?

Very much so, yes. What’s the difference anyway? To lead a fulfilling life, we have to be awake, engaged, learning, caring, and be clear what we want and what we don’t want. That’s the 5 C! Commitment and effort towards a certain way of life to live our own full potential is the exact same approach toward and attitude of healthy leadership. In leadership, there is no difference of these values for our professional and for our personal lives. The 5 C count for both. Leadership is leadership, it does not differentiate between work and life.

There are two more C in your model (bringing it to 7 in total), which I would love for you to introduce at least briefly.

Of course. If a company manages to integrate and live the 5 C on a daily basis, it creates trust and safety with one another. Teams will never be productive if they cannot trust each other within the team or the company at large. The experience of trust and safety, however, automatically leads to the two other C: Collaboration and Culture.

I am already looking forward to my team getting their hands on this article, for them to get an even better idea as to why our company puts so much emphasis on the subject of trust and why we put so much time and effort into establishing it further.

Yes, wow – trust creates so much joy and freedom, really so many possibilities! And all of the sudden, it is not about the dynamics between staff, political games, or any fear when working with each other but all about working on the product and fully pitching in. Children only play freely when they feel safe. That is not different for adults. How great would it be if we all just felt completely safe and could trust each other 100 % – imagine the fun and productivity and all the great work results that could come from that!

Let me summarize at the end of our first part of the interview – what is it exactly that your 5-C-Model brings to the table and optimizes?

The 5-C-Model creates identification with the company, efficiency within the team and the processes, as well as open spaces for creativity and innovation. It encourages more active engagement within the team, more fun and trust, all while increasing performance and work-identification and satisfaction.

And what will disappear?

Discontent, disruptive energies, cynicism, absenteeism, talking behind each other’s backs, political games, finishing work only to be done with it but without much ownership, and disengagement with product, workplace, and/or colleagues.

Thank you very much, Helge, for this inspiring exchange. I already look forward to the second part of our interview.

Do you have any suggestions, feedback or questions you would like to ask Helge? Then feel free to post them here as a comment.

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Interview Part 2: The transformation of leadership roles. Read more

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About Helge Hellberg

Helge Hellberg is an international Executive Coach, who coaches in English and German. As a coach, it is all about creating tangible results and ensuring sustainable personal and professional growth for his clients. To achieve that, he combines deep intuitive listening with a multitude of methodologies and research-based systems – from Buddhism to Jung, from Landmark to the Hoffman Process.

In addition to leadership development and personal growth through Executive Coaching, he helps his clients with conflict resolution and team building, as well as the implementation of his 5-C-Leadership-Model as a management principle within the company. His work and projects have been featured in articles and TV segments on CNN, ABC, and CBS, the Huffington Post, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Mother Earth Magazine, plus various German Podcasts. https://www.helgehellberg.com/

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About Dorothea Feurer

As Managing Director and one of the founders of Shift, Dorothea Feurer holds responsible for the departments of leadership, client relationship, and team development. She focuses strongly on the topic of leadership as a company’s core competence.

Shift is a digital agency, based in Frankfurt and Hamburg, with a special focus on digital transformation and marketing solutions. At Shift, we love solving problems – preferably complex ones. In close partnership with our clients, we develop digital user experiences and user interfaces, based on a well-thought-out strategy, well-founded data, a goal-oriented UX design, as well as a safe and reliable technological implementation.

We believe: One of the most important success factors for companies and brands today are digital user experiences and platforms that make a valuable contribution, bring measurable success, and achieve their goals. We shift the future.?Read more (german version)?https://shift.agency/