Leadership Style: Open and Direct

How did you think about your style of leadership?

It was pretty open, in the sense of, look, I want you, you and you to achieve this, that and that. I set out goals and targets and I told them that I wanted them to get there. I was very open in my criticism, if things didn’t go right. I was very open, also, in my praise, when things went right. I was very, very open with everyone, in regard to, okay, I’m happy or not happy with this situation; that we have to develop faster, better, differently. It’s all about very open communication, with your best people. Not necessarily, with all your people, but basically, with the ones that you work closely with and I had about 20 direct reports. You have to work with those people, extremely openly and not be secretive. Also, when you criticize, don’t be secretive. We had a weekly conference call and when I wasn’t happy with the performance of one of those guys, I said so. Of course, the other 19 listened in. They have to live with it and he has to live with it, because again, that’s what responsibility is all about, that you openly address it when things don’t go right.

That’s how I did it. I could give you a good example. We had a huge fire in one of our silos; I think it was in 2014 or 2015. It was huge. We had a brand-new silo of sugar, 80,000 tons. It was the biggest silo in Germany. It was brand new and it was not even filled 100% at that time and then we had a fire there. The whole thing burnt down; we had lots of issues, in the city of Uelzen at that time. The major train line had to be closed down and 2,000 people had to be evacuated, so it was really monstrous. Three days later, when the fire had been extinguished and we had helicopters extinguishing the fire, I held a press conference in that city itself. Not where we had our head office. It’s a small city, but I went there on purpose, to show them that I was there, for whatever questions or criticisms you may have. We did that and, after that, it was, basically, okay fine; we’ve had a fire. We can’t see anything that the company did wrong, so off we go. The authorities never started any major investigation. It worked pretty well.