Leadership principles

State-of-the-art leadership and a sustainability mindset go hand in hand

The working world is in flux. As a result of demographic change and digitization, there is now a wide range of options for attractive employment relationships. Accordingly, companies are competing for talent on the labor market. In addition to flexible working conditions, employees expect an appreciative, state-of-the-art management culture. At the same time, many employers value sustainable, innovative, and entrepreneurial thinking on the part of their employees.

Against this backdrop, managers have an important role to play. They must be able not only to lead their employees but also to create a framework that promotes the development of each person and takes his or her individual needs into account. To ensure this, Körber has established five leadership principles.

Our leadership principles

First: We are entrepreneurs — our actions as an innovative team are globally sustainable and centered on our markets and customers.
Second: We achieve results — our actions are responsible, agile, bold, and result-oriented.
Third: We act on a basis of trust — we work together with empathy, transparency, and trust, and we have an open feedback culture that focuses on learning from mistakes.
Fourth: We empower and strengthen our employees. As pioneers, we value and develop our employees and care deeply about their safety and well-being.
And fifth: We promote diversity — we know the full breadth of our group-wide skills and competencies and use them in trustworthy ways.

Workshops and dialog formats for managers help to integrate the leadership principles into the daily work. Lea Klauk, Head of Learning and Development at Körber, works together with her team to continuously enhance the offerings

Lea Klauk, Head of Learning and Development at Körber, was involved in developing the leadership principles. “We want to create a common denominator in our company by means of guardrails. Everyone at our company should have the same understanding of what leadership means to us and what we want to achieve,” she says. “The principles thus provide guidance for our employees. We want to lead the employees as equals.”

However, formulating leadership principles is not enough. They have to be put into practice. Körber therefore developed a training program for managers about a year and a half ago. Over a period of several months, managers embark on a learning journey consisting of several modules that enable them to implement the five leadership principles in their daily work.

Managers from all Körber sites participate in the global program. The formats thus also offer participants the opportunity to network more closely with one another. “People from different cultures come together in the workshops from all over the world, bringing different skills and perspectives to the program. Ideally, this creates synergies from which our employees benefit in their daily work,” says Klauk.

"I enjoy a positive, appreciative culture where everyone can contribute their personal perspective. That’s a key contribution to long-term economic success."
Lea Klauk, Head of Learning and Development, Körber AG

In order to integrate the principles into our daily work, it’s important that ideas are also constantly shared outside the training courses. The workshops are therefore regularly followed by formats that span multiple Business Areas. Here, managers report on their experiences and use suitable examples to show how good leadership can succeed. “We are constantly soliciting feedback about the workshops and the communication formats so that we can refine them,” says Klauk. Appropriate adjustments ensure that a state-of-the-art management culture will continue to be practiced in the future.

Complex demands on today’s managers

Team leaders face demanding challenges. “They must lead extremely diverse and heterogeneous teams of people from different cultures and age groups and navigate through virtual work structures ranging from the permanent employee to the freelancer in combinations of remote, location-independent, and workplace-based models,” says Vanessa Klein, Senior Manager Group Communications at Körber. In addition, according to Klein, the team leaders’ job is to foster a cross-organizational culture that encourages learning and drives innovation — “from the employees working in production to those doing a desk job.”

Standstill is not part of our vocabulary. We are always moving to create a fair workplace for everyone."
Vanessa Klein, Senior Manager Group Communications, Körber AG

Statements

Yuan (Vikki) Lu, Asia Strategy Officer, Körber Business Area Technologies

“The leadership principles have made us aware that we at Körber look back with pride on our past as a new era of corporate culture takes shape. For example, my employees now have a better understanding of how comprehensive the topic of diversity is. This is a good start. Regular communication between the Business Areas has also become a part of the new normal — something I could not have imagined years ago. This not only makes us stronger and more efficient but also has a direct positive effect on new employees.

I also benefit from a mentoring program that is attached to the leadership principles training. I am responsible for the growth of our business in Asia, which requires me to be bold and creative and to use my expertise. This skill set enables me to bring together employees from different regions in Asia with colleagues at our headquarters in Hamburg. The fact that I, as an Asian woman, hold a strategic position is unfortunately still very rare in our industry. That’s why, with the help of the leadership principles, I want to encourage young female talent to be confident, show their passion on the job, and dare to express their thoughts.”

Marco Omeri, Head of K.Excellence and Global Project Management, Körber Group

“The leadership principles inspire me in my daily work. They motivate me and my colleagues to act respectfully and create an environment of trust. Our principles remind us of the elements that constitute a state-of-the-art management culture. I can always refer to the principles to avoid or resolve unfair situations in my daily work. They also help us to develop new potential that makes us better managers.”

Ercan Acik, Group Manager Product Management Services, Körber Business Area Technologies

“For me, two leadership principles are particularly important: ‘We empower and enable’ and ‘We promote diversity.’ They strongly coincide with my personal convictions. This makes it easier for me to credibly exemplify these principles and inspire those around me — for example, through small gestures that signal to my colleagues that we are working together as equals.

I consider it important to make sure that the working atmosphere is open to new ideas and encourages independent work. So, I occasionally have to put my ideas on the back burner so that the team’s potential can unfold more freely. The result is a motivated team that likes to go the extra mile once in a while to pursue projects and issues in a solution-oriented manner.”

Always developing

Even though the principles are already well received by the managers, promoting a modern corporate culture is an ongoing process. Accordingly, Körber targets specific areas for continuous development. “We want to have a culture that makes people want to learn, allows for mistakes, and gives us the opportunity, for example, to promote diversity even more strongly and network our Business Areas even more effectively,” says Klauk, the Head of Learning and Development. There’s always room for improvement, she adds.

“We also want to think more globally about our processes and not primarily focus on our main site in Germany. Our leadership principles put us on the right track here as well,” she concludes.

Further exciting insights into the world of Körber can be found at Insights.

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Procurement and Supply Chain Management

State-of-the-art leadership and a sustainability mindset go hand in hand

Our leadership principles

Complex demands on today’s managers

Statements

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