CEO Quarterly
The CEO Magazine

CEO Quarterly
The CEO Magazine

Leadership Best Practices

Increasing Your Company's Future Value
An interview with Leif Klingborg - Author of the K-concept

Leif Klingborg
Author of the K-Concept Book

CEO Q: How do you see your role as a leader of your company?

Klingborg: My role as leader is to connect everyone in my team to our future opportunities and then support them, step-by-step, to move there. The closer our hearts and minds are connected to our future, the more we can grow and develop our potential. Responsible leaders “gather their team” to build a common vision of the team’s ambition, value stream, future market, how to cooperate and so on. They regularly secure discussions supporting the common progress towards desired targets.

CEO Q: How do you build momentum to achieve results?

Klingborg: Successful leaders build momentum in each project and at each level of the organization by:

• Securing choices about the company’s direction; “who we want to be” and "what we are building on".
• Identifying and developing the unique competences that will bring the company towards the edge of our market
• Communicating values important for building solid progress
• Creating supportive blueprints of how to accomplish this momentum in a well-organized way

CEO Q: What is the role of training and support in achieving company results?

Klingborg: The CEO is supported by key team leaders with the goal of mobilizing all the company’s human resources to become the driving force in building their “Interesting Tomorrow”. To accelerate the momentum, co-worker needs to be more self-dependent, take more initiative, take on more responsibility and extend their desire to learn. Co-workers need support and training to achieve this! They want to release their potential and grow in their profession. The team leader's role is to develop training and support to close this gap and make the difference. More skilled and better trained leaders in an organization will accelerate the development of the human capital and the company’s overall performance. The balance between short-term and long-term team development is crucial to our ambition of building future value.

CEO Q: What are the team's expectations from their leader?

Klingborg: My experience sums up the workforce expectations as follows; “We have lots of ambition inside our teams and we want our leaders to keep up our positive constructive mindset about our opportunities. We expect them to take responsibility so we will have the best plan and make sure that we are connected with the top expertise in our area. The better our leaders facilitate the common thinking process within our team, and support us with external connections, the faster we will move.”  Team members want to feel ownership in their projects. People are expecting to be helped with this foundation; the context in which they deliver. Today, people have access to all crucial knowledge available in the world and the tools to connect and interact in new ways. They still need a method, a way of cooperating, that is fast, efficient and will support interaction with their surroundings.

CEO Q: How do you develop future leaders?

Klingborg: Great companies are eager to make choices about how to act today and in the future. They develop leadership behavior and company architecture to better fit with technological development opportunities and new behaviors that our environment is challenging us to find. Every generation’s needs are different. Each wants to find their unique style, way of thinking, communicating and acting. Leadership is about creating and facilitating the common thinking process of the people in the loop, it’s about them, it’s a living thing and it’s about today and the future.

CEO Q:  Can you share with us some of your key leadership concepts?

Klingborg: Understanding and participation are two key concepts when we first involve everyone. By providing insight and including them, each team member becomes an empowered part of the decision making process. Then they will make individual choices connected to the common direction of the team. There are choices behind every developmental step. Building “Our Tomorrow” will happen when we establish a learning-development process better and faster than the competition. Team members look for individual discussions/coaching about their contributions, their competences, their role and how to follow the plan. They feel empowerment when leaders nurture their “We-spirit”; they want cohesion, diversity, hope and an environment filled with energy and constructive ideas.

CEO Q: What is the best way to achieve a unified direction?

Klingborg: The team will get needed perspectives when their leaders regularly take the initiative to look from the outside in: Where are they currently in their process? How do they feel, think and act? They receive crucial help to analyze, package and learn from the past. They grow in understanding and will be even more united about the next step in their progress. We are on the right track when our foundation increases cooperation and builds up cohesive teams and team members’ self-confidence. Feeling strong, safe and secure in their working situation. The co-workers’ ambition of connecting with the market edge will grow. We are always on our way from yesterday towards tomorrow, somewhere between the old and the new! We know our direction! 

CEO Q: How best to train the leaders?

Klingborg: Co-workers want their leaders trained for:

• Continually growing team members’ and teams’ brainpower in their niche.
• Developing the emotional strength needed to be proactive in various situations.
• Growing social capacity within the team, building and developing relationships in every important field and direction.
• Increasing individuals’ and teams’ understanding how to stay fair, building trust and credibility in the market.

About Klingborg
Klingborg Consulting serves companies that have highly complex and challenging development processes. Klingborg's experience comes from cooperating with more than 20,000 leaders. The founder, Leif Klingborg, known as the “leader of leaders”, has successfully supported executives, leaders and world-class coaches. He is also the creator of the K-concept, a successful method of mentoring leaders to accelerate the movement towards their organization’s goals. Since 2000, Leif has been deeply involved in two renewable energy projects, seabased.com and verticalwind.se. Klingborg was awarded finalist honor in the 2010 International Book Awards. Klingborg lives and work out of Stockholm, Sweden. He can be reached at Klingborg.com

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