Successful leadership – a Norwegian study

A research study in a Norwegian plant shows that solution focused leadership training has significant effects and leads to strong improvements on the level of leadership behavior as well as on the level of hard facts like productivity.

“As a result of the solution focused leadership training the training participants feel more comfortable in their role as team leaders according to observations from the interviews and the significant results of self-perception in the questionnaires. A significant increase of their leadership abilities due to the evaluation of their subordinates was observable and can be highlighted as a major change in the level of behavior.

The dimension of communication, consisting of the parameters “communication style”, “giving feedback” and “information flow”, was also strongly influenced in a positive way. The training affects changes in several aspects which were consistently visible in all evaluation instruments.

Covering the topic of “time management and workload” the results are controversial at a first glance. On the one hand the team leaders worked on structuring their daily work differently and more effectively and it seems that they have succeeded. On the other hand both target groups of this questionnaire, the training participants and the employees, stated that their workload increased. This can be traced back to more reflecting communication of the training participants and to the implementation of a total production management during the time of measurement.

Referring to the level of results (…) it can be stated that in two areas, “returns by customers” and “faults in production”, a high effect and reduction due to the solution focused training can be observed.

(Klaus Hoffmann, Günter Lueger, Peter Luisser – Effects of solution focused leadership training on productivity and behavior – PEF – University for Management, Vienna / the training was conducted by two Swedish trainers – Urban Norling and Björn Johansson)”

The results of this study don’t surprise me at all. They match very well with the experiences I as a solution focused leadership coach and many others who work solution focused have made so far.

If you want to learn more about solution focused leadership, too, join my Skype workshop “Solution Focused Leadership – introduction for leaders” – The 1 hour investment for your future – Wherever you are!