Guest article Staat-up e.V.: The key to successful digital transformation

This style is crucial for organisational success and differs greatly from the traditional transactional leadership style: transactional leaders focus on the quality of the sum of the processes (transactions) and rely on increasing employee performance through incentives and sanctions. In contrast, transformational leadership promotes the autonomy and motivation of employees and thus increases their intrinsic motivation. Transformational leaders take on four main tasks: individual support, acting as a role model, promoting creativity and inspiring motivation. These tasks enable them to support their employees holistically and convey the vision of the organisation.

Transformational leadership is therefore essential for the digital transformation of the public sector. But how do managers learn to lead in a transformational way?

Successful leadership requires both professional and interpersonal skills. These skills are shaped by personal experience and role models. Although some aspects can be taught through further training, the combination of explicit knowledge and implicit experience is crucial to success. Mentoring programmes, especially peer group mentoring, are valuable tools for learning leadership skills. They offer a protected space for the exchange of experiences and promote a growth-oriented mindset. Such programmes help managers to reflect on and further develop their own leadership style.

Peer group mentoring

Peer group mentoring programmes consist of groups of around ten people who are at a similar career stage. The focus is on sharing experiences: these groups are not about giving advice to peers on their problems, but about sharing experiences and learning from each other. Such programmes are widespread in the private sector and are now also being used in the public sector to support digital transformation and change processes. They promote trust, vulnerability and a growth mindset - the basis for transformational leadership.

Almost every conversation with employees in the public sector shows that the administration has recognised that the old leadership principles are not a model for the future. There seems to be no alternative to transformational leadership. Peer group mentoring programmes are a suitable format for supporting and empowering managers in this process.

Staat-up e.V. is a network for managers and employees in the public sector that develops peer group mentoring programmes for (junior) managers, among other things.