How do I combine the drive for better performance and decisive decisions with a caring and inclusive culture?
By Nick Van Langendonck (LinkedIn) – author of Doing Good Works – the Bible for ordinary people building extra-ordinary companies – and Paul Van Oyen (LinkedIn) – Chairman of the Board of Directors at What’s Cooking Group.
How do you lead with both strength and softness? How do you strive for performance without pushing people over the edge? It’s one of the most frequent topics debated in our Unbossers Netwerk events. Because in today’s business world, it often feels like we’re forced to choose between decisiveness and empathy, between results and relationships. But what if that’s a false choice? In this blog, I share a refreshing and nuanced perspective from seasoned Board Member Paul Van Oyen—someone who has learned to combine hard-blooded performance within the heart of a warm-blooded organization. His insights invite us to rethink what true high performance really looks like.
Leadership is not about making decisive decisions!
Paul Van Oyen, Chairman of the Board of Directors of What’s Cooking Group and former CEO, inspires me with a refreshing perspective: company performance comes from caring for people, which for him means ensuring the right context. Paul emphasised that leadership is not about making decisive decisions.
“By creating the right context, I made sure we were driving on the right track. But that’s all. I was an architect, sometimes also a guide, but never a commander”, he explained. When decisions came to him, Paul would first ask why. “What is still not right in the functioning of our company that this decision lands on my desk? Because leadership, he stressed, is about creating a context in which decisions are made in the right place, and that is rarely at top management level. ”
Leadership is always about the other
“Companies need to focus much more on humanism. The best managers succeed in leading the people entrusted to them by inspiring them to care for others,” Paul added. So, according to him, caring for people and striving for performance and growth are not opposites that need to be balanced. They are an extension, and they reinforce each other.
According to Paul, many leaders who build their careers on performance realise at some point that this is the opposite of what leadership is really about. An understanding emerges that leadership is not about them and their results, but about the others, because without the others, they are simply not needed.
Paul concluded by advising that we had better let go of our obsession with results and replace it with an obsession with the well-being of our people.
Unboss yourself and create a new kind of leadership in business.
I would like to add this. A pressing question in Unbossers Network—how do I combine the drive for better performance and decisive decisions with a caring and inclusive culture?—doesn’t come out of the blue, of course.
We are constantly exposed to the opposite. Our companies are often structured around the manager. There are companies where the glorification of the manager knows no bounds. I believe the problem is that when it seems like everything revolves around one person, there is also the feeling that the people in this position have a lot to lose.
This fear is evident in our management teams and results in a strong desire for retention and dependency that I also experienced as a company founder. Some teams and companies really grind to a halt when their managers are absent, while others stagnate because their leadership refuses to relinquish its place. Regardless of your vision on leadership, at the very least, we should be able to agree on this: this benefits no one.
Doing Good Works!
Nick & Paul
