How does business success depend on the relationships between people? The fatal consequences for companies when this damaging gap between management and employees is established.

For more than 30 years, I have been working in various positions for international companies in the printing industry, with between 100 and 18,000 employees. Over all these years I have enjoyed my job and it has always been super exciting for me to meet colleagues and customers in all parts of the world and to experience business, progress and success together with them.

But I have also witnessed the other side at first hand: conflicts between superiors and employees, frustrated colleagues in standby mode, companies in crisis, mass redundancies, ...

What did I observe again and again?

In every company there are different people working with different goals and drives. Most of them secure their existence and feed themselves and their families. Based on this, they satisfy their wishes, such as a standard of living, a car, a house, travel and a few dreams. Many, perhaps most, spend their entire work life in this way until they retire.

People who decide to enter leading positions expect more. They like to lead or manage, to influence, they enjoy achieving goals. Status, importance, authority or making a contribution plays a major role for many executives. For this, executives are also prepared to contribute more.

Sooner or later, however, many executives find themselves in a field of tension that causes problems in the company and in their private lives:

• They work long and hard, and their private lives often suffer as a result.


• They are too involved in the operative business, there is not enough time for active leadership.


• They lose the close connection to the team - because they themselves are stressed, they are no longer interested in how the individual employees are feeling.


• They lose the understanding for what is motivating their employees and what is their basic attitude to work


• They think they have to solve all problems themselves, with fatal consequences: They don't trust their employees enough, communication suffers. Employees are the priority behind the operative business, problems of the employees are ignored

At this point potential for conflict can arise, which often leads to a large gap between executives and employees, because the employees

• expect to communicate clearly and regularly, and that their motivation and development wishes are taken into account


• very often want to take on more responsibility, e.g. in operative business and with customers


• lose trust in their superiors and in the company, if they are not recognised and appreciated adequately for their performance


• feel abused when superiors adorn themselves with the performance of employees in front of their superiors or customers without mentioning it

The fatal impact on the business

The effects of this conflict in relationships become really expensive for the company:

• dissatisfaction, frictional losses, demotivation, communication problems, employees and even middle-level executives switch to standby, people become ill in the long term or leave the company


• the performance of individuals, teams and departments decreases, goals are achieved too slowly or not at all, direct and indirect costs increase - these costs directly reduce profits!


• at a certain point the security of the company is seriously endangered

How can executives “bridge” this gap to their employees?

a-Leadership Authenticity Coaching goes beyond the boundaries of conventional management consulting and business coaching: the method focuses on the mutual relationships between people in the company. Because every individual is different and relationships have a direct influence on the performance and stress perception of people. And in times of crisis, functioning or non-functioning relationships have a massive impact on whether a company is able to realize the important percents of success that determine whether the company makes a profit or a loss.

Companies need powerful employees and executives who act as one team in order to remain successful in the face of competition even in times of crisis. People become powerful when they know themselves well, know exactly what they are talented at and what they are not, and act authentically based on this knowledge.

If leadership takes the individual needs and relationships of the people in the company into account accordingly, frictional losses are eliminated. At the same time, appreciation, recognition, respect, trust and a healthy readiness to perform increase without additional burden. The result: people are happy to work in the company and the company achieves its goals much more efficiently.

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