New thinking and action

It all began in 1991 with "Mythos Motivation". In it, Reinhard K. Sprenger, who holds a doctorate in philosophy, exposed the tricks and gimmicks for motivating employees that were common at the time (and still are) for what they really are: subtle forms of mistrust and manipulation. Instead of the hoped-for effects on higher performance, they sooner or later lead to the dead end of demotivation. The book became a bestseller overnight. In the meantime, the classic has been published in its 19th edition and, when one thinks of topics such as bonuses and salary management, is as up-to-date as it was 22 years ago.

Who's driving?

Sprenger's thinking revolves around an elementary concept of "freedom". And this goes beyond all "external" legal, social and political circumstances. What is meant is the autonomy and self-determination of each individual: The "inner" freedom of each individual consists in using one's own possibilities to choose. In this "freedom of choice" his individuality is based. Sprenger: "He gets behind the wheel of his car of life and consciously decides where his life will lead."

Sprenger makes it clear that this freedom of choice exists even when all the constraints and adversities that we are confronted with every day in our private and professional lives speak against it. He does not accept sentences like "I had no other choice back then". His clear

There are no constraints

The credo is: "There are no constraints!" The victim role we like to slip into doesn't get us anywhere. Whether we like it or not, the life circumstances we feel victimized by are the result of choices we once made. We may lament the consequences, but we had a choice - and, if we really want to, we can choose out of the misery we entered. For that we have to pay a price. How high it is, only we ourselves decide.

This applies even to the thorny problem of unemployment. Sprenger questions the claim that whoever is hit is just a "pawn in the labour market", a victim of incompetent management or merciless competition. Instead, those affected should ask themselves: "Who chose this company? Who turned down the alternatives at the time? Who chose this job? Who hoped for better times despite warning signs? What was done to prepare alternatives, to train, to upgrade skills?"

Of course, according to Sprenger, society should do everything possible to give people a life of dignity, i.e. with meaningful work opportunities. From the individual's point of view, however, "complaining doesn't help!" According to the rules of our economic system, an employee has a say in being transferred, promoted or fired by the company, he said. Whoever joins a company has chosen this "external determination" - good or bad, it has its price. Likewise, when one changes sides and goes into business for himself. Here he chooses other risks.

Sprenger explores the whole field of unemployment in a highly sensitive way. In some passages, one has the impression that a mastermind of the "Agenda 2010" is at work. Nevertheless, he gives encouragement for the future - with the guiding principle: "If you don't take responsibility for your unemployment, you won't take responsibility for a new beginning." You shouldn't trust politicians or entrepreneurs more than you trust yourself. Those who shift responsibility from themselves to others also let their lives be lived by others. And misses the chance to find the strength for a new beginning. It is much more practical to ask oneself, "What can I do now? What are my options for action?"

Everyone has the freedom of choice. Sprenger reminds us that statistically more employees leave their employers than vice versa. Those who have voted out their boss or the company feel a sense of liberation - "as if you were switching on the light". Because he has taken the freedom to choose and to act - and thus to take responsibility for his own actions.

Self-determined living

"Only freedom makes responsible" is another key sentence in Sprenger's thinking. In the "realm of self-determination", it is no longer "the others" who sit at the wheel of his life-car, but everyone himself. He has control over his life, he goes his own way - in the awareness that everything that is, he has chosen himself.

Self-chosen is a proud explanation pattern: "You take responsibility for the good and bad in your life. You are what you chose to be. You want it that way." If one doesn't like something, he can change it. Basically, this involves always having alternative possibilities, new ideas and life situations in mind. But: what others expect from one should be faded out. It is about experiencing your life as your own and taking responsibility for it.

Of course, this own life is not free of problems, difficulties and failures, says Sprenger. But everything that one experiences as suffering no longer paralyzes. No one should humiliate himself any longer as a victim of foreign powers. The possibility of being able to decide anew every day is simply more practical and exciting. Only those who take responsibility for their own actions shape themselves as a personality into "I-autonomy".

Sprenger's understanding of personal responsibility stands in stark contrast to management hits like "delegating responsibility" or "empowering initiative". When management principles state that it is the task of the

Freedom for ego autonomy

If the aim is to encourage employees to work "independently", this is, according to Sprenger, "the language of child rearing". And he is up in arms against this infantilization of employees.

Self-responsibility is an attitude. Tasks can be delegated, responsibility cannot. You can't "give" someone responsibility. "If your employee doesn't want to take responsibility on his own, he dives under it." But if he has chosen and said "yes" to the task given to him, he also bears the responsibility. It remains his action. Sure, the manager can take the responsibility away from him again, but to do so, he would have to take the task away from him, which often happens because something is declared a "boss issue," thus making it clear to employees that they are incompetent.

Trust - the sSprenger holds against it: Leadership for self-responsibility can only mean "leaving the employee in charge" - even when difficulties threaten. For some managers, this is still a great challenge. Sprenger makes it clear to them: "Leave the responsibility where it belongs, with the person who does the tasks!" Strengthening personal responsibility is the most important leadership task. Because it changes actions elementarily. Those who have the freedom and scope to find their own answers and take responsibility for them are always more creative than those who only think about what the boss wants.

Trust - the social capital

Trust is becoming a key variable in successful corporate management. Reinhard K. Sprenger deals with this in his latest bestseller "Radikal führen" (2012), among others. The problem here is that trust cannot be planned, it remains unmanageable in traditional management and does not fit in with the instrumental thinking of managers.

Those who trust make themselves subtly vulnerable, whether in their private lives or on the job. But many managers fear nothing so much as vulnerability and loss of power, says Sprenger. That is the reason why there is so little trust in companies.

Many companies are purely "suspicious organisations". Distrust can be organized, trust hardly. Managers simply do not believe that people in the company want to do good work. They don't trust the self-imposed quality standards of their employees. And they are extremely reluctant to let them find their own ways to the goal.

Who makes the first move?

let. Thus, the phrase "trust is good, control is better" determines the human image of almost all managers.

If you don't trust, you have to control, willy-nilly. But this is becoming increasingly difficult. Decisions and actions in companies today are increasingly interdependent. The degree of uncertainty is increasing. The scope of action of employees, especially highly trained brain workers, is constantly expanding and is no longer manageable for a manager down to the last detail. The tasks become more complex and also more incomprehensible for the bosses. How does one want to control what he can hardly judge anymore? Sprenger concludes from this: "They therefore have no choice but to trust."

Every successful company is dependent on cooperation. However, without mutual trust, this will not happen at all, or only at very high cost. "Trust creates social capital - both in the company and in everyday life," concludes Sprenger. That is why an organization characterized by trust will have immense advantages in the long term.

But the central question remains, how can trust be created, or in other words, what allows trust to develop? In many SMEs, trust traditionally grows out of the familiarity of a long-standing collaboration between the bosses and core employees. In larger companies, however, the hierarchy crushes any budding "honesty".

Relationships are made up of at least two people, but it often only takes one to change the quality. So who should start? If you're always waiting for the other person, you're giving up the steering wheel of your life. So Sprenger urges leaders to "Take the first step!" Leadership should "jump" into trust like jumping into cold water. Only leaders who trust themselves can do that. It is from them that the entry action must start to kick off the process.

Sprenger: "Only when you make yourself really dependent and vulnerable on the approval and performance of your employees, then trust is possible." Giving up power, understanding leadership as a service, that is the right way. Whereby trust and control are by no means mutually exclusive. "To enjoy trust is a greater compliment than to be loved," Sprenger quotes the Scottish writer Georg MacDonald.

In the motivation trap

If you follow the basic elements of freedom of choice, personal responsibility and trust, then Sprenger's thoughts on "motivation" are almost self-evident. Motivated employees make up the success of a company. Everyone will confirm this. That is why motivation has become the magic word of modern management. And all the more insistently because, despite all the efforts to motivate via sophisticated incentives and bonuses, hardly anything has changed in the motivational situation of employees in companies. A few are highly motivated, a large proportion remain indifferent, and most tend to do their job by the book.

All the more astonishing, according to Reinhard K. Sprenger, that the model of thinking that underlies the management credo of motivation is nevertheless still adhered to. Motivation and motivation are worlds apart. Motivation comes from within. Anyone who tries to "push" employees from the outside to get them to where they want to be is bound to fail sooner or later. The human image behind all motivation is based on deep mistrust: Employees don't do what they should on their own. So what is needed are incentives and impulses, carrots or sticks.

Every employee is unique, an individual, and not a screw that can be turned. They deserve respect and trust, not external control. The willingness to perform lies in the individual's own responsibility. According to Sprenger, this is the decisive point: real performance is achieved for its own sake, out of passion, out of joy in one's own work and its results, not through an orientation towards rewards or bonuses, which lead to the fact that

carrot or stick

how doing becomes only a "means to an end" for bankers. Only self-confident people who challenge themselves are capable of excellent performance in the long run.

It is therefore the task of managers to give employees room for creativity and personal responsibility, to open up realistic opportunities and to create conditions in which individuals can call upon and develop their will and ability according to their abilities. The important thing, says Sprenger, is to take the individual seriously "in his or her being. This also means that desired and expected behaviour is achieved through clear demands, communication, agreements and ultimately trust.

Sprenger refers to this as "consensus management". Instead of power-based decisions, it would be important to get the employees on board, to create agreements that integrate. With clear agreements on goals in the sense of jointly developed insights, there are no motivation problems.