Leading People
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Leading People
Eva Maurer on How to Adapt to Challenges in Change Management and Leadership Development
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How are you adapting to the challenges in change management and leadership growth?
In this episode, Eva Maurer, Head of HR Global Development at a prominent automotive services firm, discusses her forward-thinking strategies that drive significant change within the corporate sphere.
Eva describes her journey from traditional HR practices to a more innovative approach that encourages self-exploration, open communication, and collaborative efforts to initiate change. She values resistance as critical feedback and emphasizes the importance of empowering leaders and their teams to customize their approaches to meet specific needs, moving beyond a standardized approach.
This episode offers valuable insights for anyone looking to bolster leadership efficacy in their organizations.
We explore the significance of employee feedback as an indicator of leadership effectiveness, viewing leadership as a role that supports both team achievement and individual wellness. Eva and I delve into the advantages of self-evaluation methods and the Harrison assessment for enabling leaders to reflect and better engage with their teams.
Learn how promoting a culture of ongoing conversation and appreciating employee contributions can lead to a nurturing, high-performance work environment where leaders and their teams thrive together.
As we enter a new digital era, the landscape of leadership training is quickly changing. Our discussion highlights the transition from conventional group training to personalized learning experiences that prioritise peer-to-peer learning and active engagement. Eva shares her experiences in transforming leadership training into dynamic eight-week programs that offer consistent support and practical application.
We also discuss the nuances of HR practices across different cultural settings, ensuring our insights are applicable globally.
Tune in for an enlightening session that will introduce fresh perspectives into your leadership development strategies for the digital age.
And, remember to follow us on our social media channels and share the podcast with colleagues and friends.
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Wide Circle
Welcome to episode 50 of Leading People with me, jerry Murray. This episode is brought to you by WIDE CIRCLE, helping you make better talent decisions. To learn more, visit WIDE CIRCLEEU. That's W-I-D-E-C-I-R-C-L-EE-U. How does one move from traditional approaches to embrace a more cooperative and individual-centric strategy for change management? And, in a world where one size certainly doesn't fit all, how does a HR professional facilitate personal and organizational growth with the ability to do so with a more dynamic approach? How does a HR professional facilitate personal and organizational growth without imposing a one-track pathway for everyone?
Speaker 1:In this episode, we're joined by the incredibly insightful Ava Maurer, the head of HR Global Development at a major automotive services company. Imagine being responsible for the growth and development of over 10,000 employees. Ava does just that and she's here to share her journey and insights with us. Ava's approach to leadership and development is not just innovative, it's transformative. She has moved away from prescriptive solutions to foster environments where leaders and teams can discover what works best for them, encouraging self-reflection and dialogue. But what sparked this shift and, more importantly, what can we learn from her experiences to apply in our own professional lives? Stay tuned as Ava unpacks these questions, sharing her journey, her strategies and her philosophy on HR that champions change, learning and growth. You won't want to miss this, so let's dive right in. Ava Maurer, welcome to Leading People.
Speaker 2:Hi, jerry, nice to be here. I really appreciate to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
Speaker 1:Yes, so, just for our listeners, we met recently at the Harrison Assessments Conference in Berlin and I find that what you had to share with the audience about your approach to talent and leadership is very, very insightful. So we're going to get to that shortly and, in particular, the topic or theme of change management. But first, I'm sure many of our listeners are wondering who you are. Maybe to help our listeners get to know you a bit better, how did you get to where you are today? Are there some personal places or events or things that happened along the way on your journey, or were there epiphany moments that brought you to a role today, where you're the global head of HR development for a pretty significant company?
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for the question. I'm quite complex. Well, I just started, I think, improving my, let's say, technical and professional skills. So that was the start here to become a better and better HR development specialist. But I don't know. At the middle of my journey, I understood that it's more about change management, about facilitating learning processes of individuals, of teams, of organizations. So I think that was the moment when I really changed my approach how to do HR development, that it is not about the perfect product, the most smart and most complex and most perfect product, but that it is about doing change in cooperation with the leaders. So I think that was really a turning point of my career and that makes things much more easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then in some of the preamble to this conversation, you've told me you've learned a lot about how not to do change management in an organization yeah, and that there are better ways than the old fashioned traditional ways of approaching. So perhaps explain what you've learned and how that evolved into a style of change management approach that you have today.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I think well, I really started with the idea that HR needs to be the very clever, smart person who knows, for example, what effective leadership means.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so very often we are hired and then someone is telling us how we are in the middle of a change process and you need to push and be the driver of this change process and then we are starting to create products and it doesn't work. Very often it doesn't work and there is a lot of resistance and what I've learned is to take this resistance as a really value adding information. So whenever my products are not bought, then there's something wrong with the products, because the managers, the leaders, the teams, they are my internal clients and I don't work to change their attitude, their values, their mindset, their leadership styles. My role is to support them in learning processes. They think that our value adding for them and for their team. It's not me telling them what is right or wrong. It's me supporting them to decide what might be more effective for their leadership and for their team. So I think that it's not so gone away from the teaching approach to a very cooperative change approach, I would say.
Speaker 1:So I'm curious were there some moments where you perhaps had interactions with some leaders or managers with the old board teaching approach, where you had that epiphany which went ha, could you share? Maybe are there one or two examples that you could share where I thought I was doing it this way and then somebody said to me hold on, hold on.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it was more. It was more a feeling. I felt uncomfortable with the old approach. So it always seemed to me quite arrogant that I should tell leaders what is effective leadership or what is right leadership. So it was more a feeling of something's wrong. But the expectation from my managers was, hey, you have to tell them, you have to persuade them that their leadership style is wrong.
Speaker 2:So the moment was more than I'll decide to do in coaching education and during the I attended a two day class to learn about the approach, solution focused and coaching approach according to Steve DeChaser. And there this approach that, hey, the client is the expert. Look at resources, do it together with your clients. Let them decide what the goal of change of leadership or whatever should be. Help them to take decisions, to help them to recognize resources, to be successful in learning, change processes. So that was this moment that I thought, okay, this questions everything what I've learned about HR, about change, about how to act as a headquarter function. And I thought, okay, it means to destroy more or less everything I've learned. And I thought about it two seconds and then I decided, okay, I'll destroy everything what I've learned, or maybe not everything, but a lot of the general approach of HR and then I did the education and changed my approach and everything become very, very easy after this, so much more easy and so much more fun.
Speaker 2:Because this teaching approach includes so much frustration, because we HR community, they want to solve problems, they want to support to a better company, they really carry us. So they have really good, they are really good reasons behind here. And then they get a lot of resistance and it didn't work and they're suffering and there's a lot of frustration in the HR community. And I get completely rid of this, thank you, Because it's not me defining what my work should achieve. It's my client's decision.
Speaker 2:I give impulses, of course, and I facilitate processes, like doing feedbacks on the basis of Harrison Assessment, for example, facilitating feedback processes from the team to the leader, creating workshops where they could think about if maybe customer expectations changed, and that's a good reason to think about. Should we change our approach as a team? So it's not that I'm doing nothing. One of my team members sometimes asked me what does it mean? That is the meaning that we are doing nothing? Of course not, but we are doing it in a respectful way, in a cooperative way, and we allow individual learning journeys, individual change journeys Not one fits all. Not trying to change the whole organization, the culture of the organization, and expecting that grown-up people are following concrete guidelines how to act in specific conversations. That's ridiculous, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean you mentioned to me before we did this conversation about this idea there's no right or wrong. I mean we live in a very binary black and white world today where there is an awful lot of conflict being driven by. I'm right, you're wrong on both sides of it. You talked about understanding leaders' goals and values, and that Tell us a little bit more about how that approach works for you in reality.
Speaker 2:So, for example, when I started in my current company, my boss asked me to review the current employer-bracial process so very classical, annual employer-bracial process and, of course, there's a lot of leadership in it. So there was a guideline how to do, how to execute this conversation, and I should review, and my first step was to ask the managers. I always talk to people and I'm asking them okay, how are you doing, how do you achieve the goals we wanted to achieve with an annual appraisal process? So how are you doing it in the day-to-day practice? How do you measure performance, how do you ensure employee satisfaction and these things you would like to achieve with an employer-bracial process? So how are you doing it? And so I'll give the message.
Speaker 2:I'm quite sure that you know how this works. You have some expertise on this. You are not the silly technical leader who needs to be teach by HR. And then I'm always asking okay, my boss told me I should change this process, what I should definitely not change? So I always wanted to know what should be. Yeah, kind of beware, beware in English. Yeah, so what shouldn't be changed? Because it's important to you, because it's maybe part of the informal culture, of the informal values of the company, what is important.
Speaker 2:And then I really ask okay, what is useful in the old process? What is not useful? Do you have some ideas? What should be the impact of this process? Not the details, but what do you think we should achieve with this process? And don't go too much into the details, and I always give the freedom to follow my process or not.
Speaker 2:I'm always telling leaders hey, in the details, but also in general. So if managers I have a lot of managers who know who are the team is, they have a very long professional relationship with their team members, they know each other and some of them they are doing management between doors, leadership between doors, and if they achieve the same goals I would like to achieve with my annual formal employer bracing process, then it's okay. They are grown up, they know their team better than me, they know what is effective and of course we need to double check if it's also effective for the team. So this is the responsibility we have as HRS. But in general, I think they know best how to be successful, especially when they are successful on the operational side. So there must be a reason why it works and it is in the resources and the strengths of the leaders.
Speaker 1:And just for our listeners, when you say between doors, that's very informal, just water cooler conversations and whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. Or maybe I'm going for dinner once a year and find out what is important to the employee. Because if the employee says, hey, I don't care about an annual embrace process and manages it, hey, everything it works, so he knows what I'm expecting. Or he's happy with his job yeah, I know that he doesn't want to do an next career step or whatever I'm covering with the formal process. It's okay. Yeah, it's their responsibility, it's their expertise how to manage their relationship and to manage performance, to manage employee satisfaction. Of course we need to double check, because sometimes it doesn't work for the employee. And then we need to facilitate again a process where both decide together hey, it might be useful to change something, but it's not me teaching them what they should change.
Speaker 1:Enjoying the insights and inspiration. Make sure to catch every episode by subscribing to Leading People on your favorite podcast platform, and please take a moment to rate us. Your feedback makes all the difference. Remember to follow us on our social media channels and join our LinkedIn group for more content and connection with like-minded professionals. Stay connected, stay informed and let's grow together. Who should evaluate leaders, then?
Speaker 2:Let us know if you have any questions or others in mind in any way. The team, because leadership is a service and in the end, there are two sides of leadership. We are expecting the leader to be successful, that the performance of the team works On the other side, that people are happy and that they have the framework for being successful and enjoying their job. The performance part we are measuring more or less every day, or maybe weekly. This is nothing I need to push here, because it is pushed by finance and by the CEO. The employee part should be measured by the employees, because I don't know what a specific employee needs to be successful and to be happy in his or her job. How should I?
Speaker 1:How are you going about that kind of measurement process, then, in terms of better understanding whether the employees are satisfied with the leadership styles that they are experiencing? How do you go about that?
Speaker 2:One thing is that I am facilitating self-assessment processes. I mentioned Harrison assessment. Of course we have an idea of what effective leadership could be, but it is always only an proposal. How we promote leaders will go through a leadership model and we talk with him or her about hey, this is the idea of how we think effective leadership could look like. Would you agree? Is it also your experience or do you find another way to be successful?
Speaker 2:There is a self-reflection, because I really believe in self-steered learning processes so that people understand that might be not that effective with a specific employee. Maybe he learns during the self-reflection. It works for three of my employees, but for two maybe not. I'll double check. Give them impulses to talk with their employees about leadership, about cooperation. Of course the employee bracer bros is an impulse. Hey, talk to each other and find out if it works or not. People give employees feedback to their managers in this process. There is an impulse if they want to give a feedback. There are standard workshops where new leaders and the team are talking about the cooperation and if it's effective for everyone and what might be changed Things like this. We are asking employees within the onboarding hey, is everything okay? The cooperation, does it work with the manager? There are several processes and tools and products in which we ask the employee, hey, does it work or not? And in which we encourage to talk about this and double check if everything is okay.
Speaker 1:I'm hearing a lot which seems to reflect a word called dialogue, where there's a lot of people communicating. It seems to be encouraged. You're interacting with managers, employees, employees are interacting with. Would it be fair to say you encourage this idea of ongoing dialogue Exactly?
Speaker 2:That's maybe a good point, that it's really. A lot of my impulses are about self-reflection and about talking and about double checking. Hey, is my perception that my employee is happy and that I'm providing the perfect support for him or her being successful? Double check, talk to them. Ask them if they want to do an employee or a brazel or not. Is it important to them? Do they need more orientation? Ask him, because I don't know. I have an idea that it might be useful to do this, but maybe it's not. And then prioritize here, but ask your employee. I think that's the deal.
Speaker 1:And you talk about supporting leaders in their own learning process. How do you typically do that? How do leaders feel about, for example, if a leader starts to struggle, because sometimes leaders may find or think that they have to know it all? You mentioned this at the beginning. You started off thinking sometimes HR does it really need to know everything, but actually you discovered maybe not. So how do you help a leader that may be struggling out there for whatever reason? How do you work with somebody to help them better understand themselves?
Speaker 2:First of all, I trust the manager of the manager that he is able to support his struggling manager. I assume so because they are senior leaders. They have a lot of leadership experience, so I trust them that they can deal with this by themselves. And if not, well, sometimes they're coming to me. Or sometimes employees are coming to HR and saying, hey, it doesn't work, and then there are different processes and products and tools to deal with this.
Speaker 2:We are still doing training and with a coaching approach too, so there's only very, very short Impulse speeches on introducing some model here, but always giving the time to think about if this model is effective or not effective, useful, not useful, but the starting point when we're struggling. It depends. Sometimes it's a feedback session, sometimes it's Harrison assessment, so starting a learning code and self-awareness combining with coaching. So I really prefer maximum individual learning journeys and training is always a group learning journey, which is less effective, but sometimes it helps manager to get in contact with others, understand that they are not alone, that everybody has the same problems struggling with similar things. Some has a solution for a specific challenge and so I really like them to learn from each other and not from the trainer, and our leadership trainer is supporting this approach, so she facilitates, let's say, social learning or peer learning processes. So, again with the assumption that there is a lot of cleverness in the room, in a training room, and it's not only in the head of the trainer but in the head of the attendees.
Speaker 1:So these things yeah, and how is your approach to? When you said training earlier, you kind of smiled. And how was your approach to learning and development evolved since, for example, the COVID pandemic? How has that been evolving in your? You've got an organization of 10,000 people right, so how does, how is that evolving for you and what sort of things have you noticed or what things have you tested out or tried to change to make make the learning and development more meaningful for your people? In the next part of our conversation, eva talks about the digitalization of learning and how this facilitates self-steered learning. She also highlights the benefits of active practice over active learning in transferring what's learned in a training program into the workplace, and she explains how turning a former three-day in-person classroom program into an eight-week online program with more regular sessions and check-ins has given more meaning to how the learning gets transferred to the workplace, which is always a challenge when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of training in the first place. So back to Eva.
Speaker 2:Well, to be honest, we haven't changed a lot, because we were digitalized three years before, because in an organization with 100 subsidiaries you cannot learn face-to-face. So it was when I started seven years ago. It became clear after I don't know three months that the face-to-face approach of learning wouldn't work. So we already did a lot of self-steered learning so that people really get some impulses in 90-minute live webinars, but then going through their own self-reflection, practicing in the day-to-day business, not in silly role model place, and so it was already there. So let's say the format was there and I think your question you're asked for something else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if we no, I just wanted to Because you're an expert in this. I mean, you've mentioned there the distinction between active learning and active practice. Active learning is role-playing in trainings. Active practice is taking it into the workplace. A lot of people are obsessed with active learning. It does have a place in training, and active practice is more effective because people take the learning and figure out whether it works in their job. Because that's the purpose of training people in the first place is to do something in their work, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this is why we are practicing, when we are doing a training on critical conversations, a critical feedback yeah, classical to them when people they practice it with their real employee, not in the training session. Yeah, so we'll give some ideas. Yeah, they're discussing it, they're doing self-reflection, they're getting some guideline which they can use or not use. They're practicing and then we are talking about, okay, what was effective, what not. They are also really kind of a group coaching process and they always can book virtual short coaching sessions before they are doing the conversation or after that to do some reflection what worked well and what not. So, yeah, we already implemented a very individual way of learning because people are different and people trust them that they are grown up and resourceful enough to decide what they need to learn and what doesn't make sense for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you talked earlier about impact and achieving results. What impact have you seen? You said you were digitalised before the COVID pandemic. What impact have you seen with this more individual approach and more applied, active application of the learning in small chunks transferred to the workplaces? What impacts are you seeing?
Speaker 2:To measure. So I really had. No, there was no alternative. Yeah, because we definitely don't let people travel around the world to attend face to face meetings. So in the first step it was really, let's say, a solution of a problem. Yeah, I couldn't, yeah, I couldn't put them into a classroom, but then the feedback was really great. But of course, I cannot measure exactly. There is no physical measurement on the impact of leadership trainings but people really appreciated the respectful approach and that I also adapted the product to their available time and that they need flexible flexibility. And some of them couldn't compare so they have no comparison the old classroom and the new learning journey, because before we did this digitalised version, there was nothing outside of Germany. So in Germany we had classroom trainings, outside we had nothing. And in Germany, yeah, there was a mixed feedback. So some would prefer to do it in classroom trainings. But in the end they said it's not possible for me or it's very difficult for me to attend a two day classroom training. So there are plus and minus points, yeah, but we all I think most of the learners agreed that this is much more easy and they really appreciated that.
Speaker 2:The transfer to the day to day business because it's an eight week learning journey. So the I think the three day program of the basic program it's now an eight week learning journey. That means you're getting eight weeks impulses and input and practice on leadership and that was really the main positive feedback that it's not two days, three days input, input, input theory, practising role plays here, but that it is that it is really that they get a lot of support during several weeks. Yeah, I think that was the main difference and the yeah, they see, and the main benefit they see.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a long time ago since I've implemented it, but of course, after I implemented it, we asked for feedback and of course, we were very careful, understanding if this works or not, and it doesn't work every time. So sometimes people don't show up and don't prepare and then it doesn't work Because it's a lot of you need a lot of discipline and being self organized to go through this very individual and self steered learning journey and some are better and some are not so good in this. This is why we are starting with time management, by the way. So we start, we are starting our leadership program with our junior leadership program with hey how to organize yourself, how to manage yourself, because it's of course. You need discipline to to go through this and make this effective.
Speaker 1:I'm putting myself in the shoes of our HR listeners and some of them might be wondering how does Eva communicate her philosophy to her extended HR team around the world? What experiences have you had of instilling this idea that it's all about us learning solutions, serving the leaders, etc. And maybe some cultural bumps on the road that might occur some sometimes. What's your experience of that?
Speaker 2:Well, again, I don't teach them. So what I do, I'm always explaining why my products look like they look here, and I think in my current company you really don't survive if you don't follow this process, yeah, well, well, we need to distinguish between the HR generalist role and the HR development role, because of course, there, when it's about labor law or things like this, there are red lines, yeah, and there are things where, where HR really needs to be the police, yeah, but of course, I'll try to influence when it comes to my products and processes, I'll try to to. Whenever I introduce a product, I'll. I'll explain how I'm doing this in Germany, because I'm implementing my own processes in Germany, because I'm the head of HR development global, but also the the manager for HR development Germany, and I'm always talking about what I think what is effective and why I think that is effective, and.
Speaker 2:But I let them decide what is the best approach for them, and leaders are different. So, for example, in in Central and Eastern Europe, I assume they might they might be a little bit different approach effective than mine. Yeah, so in Germany we have really very, very I really love the informal leadership culture of the term German management team. Yeah, so it's really easy, but but there are maybe other parts of the of the world where a different approach is necessary and it's not again, it's not me to decide how my HR colleagues who are competent when they're asking, okay, but first I assume that they're competent enough to make this successful.
Speaker 1:Okay, so to the end. Yeah, to synthesize everything, what? What is that?
Speaker 2:one thing, one take away that you want the audience to get today from your experience, what you've learned over the years don't be too much in love with your own products and be and I'm always open to destroy everything I've built up on a very regular basis when it doesn't, when it isn't value adding for my clients. And it's not easy and sometimes I'm struggling. Of course, sometimes I'm also proud on what I implemented, but I need to be ready to destroy everything If it's not value adding for my clients.
Speaker 1:How can people get in contact with you?
Speaker 2:You can always get in contact. We are LinkedIn or, in Germany, we are Xing. Yeah, so I'm I'm really glad about getting in touch with people who'd like to discuss this really, really important topics, and I'm always happy to get in a debate, because I really love to discuss with people who have a different opinion than me, because then I might learn something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we may even invite you to a collective discussion later in the leading people series, where we bring a few other HR people into a room, we get a nice debate going. So that's that's you've given me. I've been thinking of this for a while for our listeners to know that we will expand this a little bit, but you've given me a little bit of reassurance that that might be a reasonably nice thing to do. So, eva, I'll put some links in the show notes, but I suppose, on behalf of our listeners, eva, thanks for sharing your insights, tips and wisdom with everybody today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for that, Jerry.
Speaker 1:Coming up in the next episode.
Speaker 3:Even now, people are still stuck in this conversation that the office versus remote, seeing this as a binary terms, rather than understanding that it's. What are you trying to achieve, what's the try to, what's the type of work that you're trying to accomplish, and then build the model and not the other way around?
Speaker 1:Join Gustavo Rossetti and myself as he delves deeper into remote working cultures and how to design effective hybrid workspaces. So until next time.
