Have companies a responsibility for charity?

Last month I had a discussion with a friend of mine about organization’s responsibility for charity. He was very tenacious that a company has to focus on their business and don’t ask employees to do some social events together. I really had not taken a position. I've been doing a lot of volunteering for a lot of years. I supported the activities of my previous employer, but I never participated with social group activities.

Coincidence or not? Last week my current employer organized a social group event. We went with forty colleagues to a retirement village. We had met the target to give the elderly a great afternoon with a walk around, making some tea and organizing a bingo with a lottery. I never organized or even experienced bingo, but it became three amazing hours to do that. We had organized the bingo and lottery for more than eighty people and there were a lot of prizes.

My biggest insight was, that it feels very good to help the elderly with my colleagues. We feel that we can really help them. My opinion about social activities became stronger. It’s important to give something back to the community together. Let’s give it a try!

How can you change office politics?

I worked 15 years in management functions of a telecom operator and now 5 months in a consultancy firm with a partner structure. You maybe think that there are a lot of differences, but I can assure you that that there are many similarities.

In both organizations you see the effects of a huge company. Middle management is very important to make the real vision and to coordinate activities. Middle managers are the leaders of the company and they have to collaborate with others to realize the goals. These middle managers have a lot of interaction with employees and top managers. The personal leadership skills are very important for these managers to keep the long-term vision in mind by making important decisions. The system of both organizations has a tremendous power of all individuals.

Last year I was been aware of this power in the simulation bases on a research by Barry Oshry called the Total System Power. Each individual, regardless if they were in the role of bottom, middle manager or top manager you can’t hardly break out of the system as an individual. In both organizations I see the tough call to change the system. Personal leadership is necessary to succeed.

NLP as basic skill for each operational manager

After 10 years management experience I thought about my next step to become a better manager. The feedback that I mostly got was based on communication skills. Not general communication skills, but the development of skills to offer me the agility to really make connections with my employees. Mostly I was busy with my own responsibilities and I have not always listened actively to my interlocutor.

With this feedback in tow I started training with a Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) Practitioner and later the Master's training program. I learned through this training a lot of basic communication skills. The most important thing is that you need to be aware of the impact communication has on your relationship with another person, and also on yourself.

After this training I couldn't believe that people can become leaders or managers without these skills. The only way to develop trust and respect is to communicate on a conscious level based on your feelings and emotions. Everybody can learn these communication skills. It would help everybody to express themselves better and it improve their personal leadership skills. Not everybody will be a world leader, but better communication skills lends itself to make a better world. You can only understand another person, if you understand yourself.

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