Marco Bensen - Soft Management for Decisive Results

Marco Bensen

Soft Management for Decisive Results

Basics of Bold Leadership

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Editor: Marco Bensen

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Marco Bensen has been in management positions in the hotel industry for over 25 years, including many years as General Manager and Area General Manager. His career began at the Hotel Management School Groningen (NL) and led him internationally through several positions, in several hotel chains, in many cities and countries. In addition to his professional activities, Marco also volunteered as chairman, board member and board member of various associations and clubs and an academy. In addition to his mother tongue Dutch, Marco speaks German, English, Spanish and French.

In addition to all these experiences, Marco has deepened his knowledge and skills with a master‘s degree in Hospitality Management from the renowned University of Brighton. He dedicated his thesis to the topic of leadership. Over several decades, Marco has processed hundreds of books, countless reports, journals, texts, theories and online material on leadership, organizational development and personal development.

His passion for leadership was inspired by countless personal encounters with leaders from all kinds of industries, fantastic personalities, sensational and not-so-sensational superiors, and an incredible number of wonderful employees and colleagues. Not only did excellent leadership serve as an inspiration and example, he also learned from a lack of leadership and poor interactions with employees by average managers.

Motivation, productivity, effectiveness and ultimately the organizational and financial results, are fully dependent on the quality of leadership in the organization.

Content

About the Author About the Author Marco Bensen has been in management positions in the hotel industry for over 25 years, including many years as General Manager and Area General Manager. His career began at the Hotel Management School Groningen (NL) and led him internationally through several positions, in several hotel chains, in many cities and countries. In addition to his professional activities, Marco also volunteered as chairman, board member and board member of various associations and clubs and an academy. In addition to his mother tongue Dutch, Marco speaks German, English, Spanish and French. In addition to all these experiences, Marco has deepened his knowledge and skills with a master‘s degree in Hospitality Management from the renowned University of Brighton. He dedicated his thesis to the topic of leadership. Over several decades, Marco has processed hundreds of books, countless reports, journals, texts, theories and online material on leadership, organizational development and personal development. His passion for leadership was inspired by countless personal encounters with leaders from all kinds of industries, fantastic personalities, sensational and not-so-sensational superiors, and an incredible number of wonderful employees and colleagues. Not only did excellent leadership serve as an inspiration and example, he also learned from a lack of leadership and poor interactions with employees by average managers. Motivation, productivity, effectiveness and ultimately the organizational and financial results, are fully dependent on the quality of leadership in the organization.

Foreword

Soft Management and Hard Management

Introduction

Soft vs. Hard Management

Focus of Management

Theory X and Y and their self-fulfilling prophecy

Effectiveness vs. Efficiency

Authority? Of course! Authoritarian? No way!

Authoritarian

Authority

Humility – Servant Leadership

Ego

Hierarchy

Flat or steep Hierarchy?

Informality or formality?

Unconventional thinkers and crazy people

Works Council

Trust

The value of trust

Conditional or unconditional trust

Communication

The value of communication

Verbal and non-verbal communication

The quality of communication

Listening

Feedback

Methods of conducting conversations

Leadership qualities

Human Potential Leadership

Employees: costs, resources or potential?

Employees as a cost factor?

The role of human potential management

The value of human potential leaders

Customer or employee: who is more important?

Employee Experience

The value of employee satisfaction

Top info for hard managers

Employee satisfaction factors

Employee dissatisfaction

The job should be fun

Vision, mission, guiding principles and staff programmes.

Remuneration models and working conditions

Payroll and Benefits

Tarif & Co

Special and additional benefits

Working Environment, Work Form and ‘New Work’

New Work

Leadership 4.0

Training and further education

Cost or investment?

Advantages and disadvantages of training and further education

Coaching, Mentoring

Recruitment

Recruitment needs

Recruitment process

References

It is up to us leaders, to focus on the essentials of an organization - leadership and employee focus - to strengthen the organization and bring it forward sustainably. Marco Bensen

Anyone can perform hard management; you just focus on the numbers and only care about the employees to a limited extent. And of course, you do that under the safe protection of your own ego. But is it effective? To be sure, it has nothing to do with leadership. Leadership means taking care of employees. If you deal with your employees in a correct way - generously, supportively, trustingly, openly communicating, informing, participating - then employees will be more motivated, have a greater commitment, and accordingly will perform better.

In short: Leadership leads to better economic results.

For me, bold leadership means having the courage to step beyond the limits of your own inner world and to open up and dedicate yourself to the environment. To do this, you have to move out of the comfort zone of your protective ego. You will only be able to look after your employees, if you have the courage to do so. So, it takes a strong personality to engage in bold leadership.

This book serves to share bold and disruptive leadership techniques with executives. There is a lot of material on leadership; books, articles, interviews, studies, videos and personal experiences that are shared publicly. Many experts are very educated, have a lot of expertise, and apply scientific studies. However, you have to filter heavily in order to find the information you need bundled together.

It starts with the questions: What is leadership? How do you define leadership? If you look at the definition from various experts, you get as many different results. However, there are topics about which there is a consensus and there are some terms that are mentioned again and again: Leadership is about people; Leadership is about inspiration, motivation and vision; Leadership is about development, integrity, empathy and goals; Leadership is a skill that can be learned.