Highlights: Daimler Truck Board Member Jürgen Hartwig: How Leaders Must Adapt

Are there one or two traits or new ways of thinking that this requires from leaders?

First of all...

Yeah, we all talk as managers about learning, that learning is for others.

Learning is for our staff, learning is for colleagues, whatever.

I believe it starts with the fact that learning is also important.

By the way, I'm a board member of a big company.

It never ends.

It's also, for me, super important.

I have a mentor, especially on technology topics, who is in the mid-20s, And he's coaching me, not I'm coaching him about the future.

This is very different.

Second thing is when you have no certainty, it's really important that you create critical thinking, openness.

Everybody's discussing about psychological safety.

Sometimes I observe that this psychological safety is more seen as something I know what I'm doing in the next 10 years.

And I have a job guarantee.

Psychological safety for me means that you have people who voice out their opinions that they have the willingness to share also different opinions than your one that you discuss it that you also discuss things that are maybe end up nowhere and this is much more important in this way of new thinking than just giving direction and executing it this is a huge difference today and by the way even has changed not over the last 30 years this has also changed over the last 10 years, I remember 10 years ago, roughly probably 10 years ago, we had these VUCA discussions.

But when I think about today, volatile uncertainty is kindergarten.

What we had 10 years ago compared what we see today and disruptions overnight, like the war in Ukraine or other stuff, which is not volatile.

This is disrupting completely, which means you have to be much more flexible.

And you have to think about changing course, which was for quite a long time seen as a weakness of managers, is now one of the core strengths, I believe.