Leading with Attitude – Leadership in the Tension Between Humanity & Structure

Leading means more than organizing: it means taking responsibility for processes, relationships, and culture. This unit shows you how to understand leadership as an attitude – between clarity and attentiveness, structure and trust. With a focus on systemic thinking, conflict competence, and a culture of feedback, you will develop strategies that make your leadership more present, binding, and effective in human terms.

Warm up

Take a few minutes and reflect:

  • Which three values determine your leadership behavior?

  • In which typical everyday situations do these values become concrete?

Finished? Exchange with your buddy and consider:
What does attitude have to do with impact?

Learn

“Lead wolves” are not authoritarian, but present, clear, and trustworthy.

Jesper Juul describes leadership as authentic, relationship-oriented action. Attitude shows itself in language, decisions, behavior – and in how you respond to mistakes or criticism.

Characteristics of attitude-based leadership:

  • integrity and clarity instead of control,

  • cultivating relationships as a leadership competence,

  • taking responsibility – not shifting it,

  • role awareness and self-reflection,

  • openness to feedback and perspective change.

The leader influences the system – but is also shaped by it.

Systemic leadership means:

  • recognizing interactions,

  • seeing resources instead of deficits,

  • taking contexts and relationships into account.

 

FIND OUT MORE

 

Reflect together with your buddy:
What impact does my attitude have on my team?

Dive in 1

Shaping Areas of Tension, Conflicts, and Feedback

Leadership always moves in areas of tension:

  • relationship vs. results orientation,

  • closeness vs. distance,

  • trust vs. control,

  • openness vs. requirements.

These tensions cannot be solved – but they can be shaped.
Conflicts are not a disruption, but an opportunity for growth.

Conflict-competent leadership…

  • recognizes early signals and names them,

  • remains impartial and solution-oriented,

  • promotes spaces for dialogue (e.g., team supervision, collegial consultation),

  • reflects on own conflict patterns and body language.

Feedback as a leadership tool

  • Those who lead need honest feedback.

  • Feedback helps to understand impact – not just intention.

  • A culture of feedback is part of professional development.

GET FEEDBACK REGULARLY

 

 

FEEDBACK TOOL FOR LEADERSHIP

 

Think of a real conflict from your leadership practice:

  • Which systemic dynamics were involved?

  • What contributed to escalation – what to resolution?

  • How can you regularly obtain and use feedback from the team?

 

Transfer 1

Application in Everyday Team Life

Preparing and conducting conflict conversations systemically

  1. Choose a conflict-laden situation.

  2. Prepare yourself with the following questions:

    • Who is involved?

    • What are their perspectives?

    • Which patterns do I recognize?

    • Which blind spots?

    • What is my goal?

    • Which attitude do I want to adopt?

  3. Conduct the conversation in a role play with your buddy – feedback afterwards.

  4. Transfer insights into your everyday practice (e.g., create a conversation guide)

 

Reflect

Reflect

Self-reflection and feedback integration

  1. Keep an “attitude diary” for one week (What was challenging? Where were you authentic?).

  2. Collect targeted anonymous feedback (e.g., with a feedback form).

  3. Choose 2 impulses and formulate concrete steps for change.

Optional: Develop your personal statement of attitude in 3 sentences (“I lead by…”).

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