Why Leadership Is A Choice

In today’s volatile and fast-changing world, leadership is undergoing a profound transformation. Organizations are rethinking how they develop leaders — not just through skills and frameworks, but by cultivating mindsets that embrace uncertainty, empathy, and adaptability.

Benedikt Schmaus, partner at Oliver Wyman, speaks with Khadija Ben Hammada, chief people officer and executive board member at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, about how leadership is evolving in an increasingly uncertain world. They discuss the development of leadership skills, behaviors, and mindset on a global scale.   

The conversation highlights how leadership requires both the courage to challenge the status quo and a commitment to caring for people and the way decisions are made. Ben Hammada emphasizes that leadership is an ever-evolving concept that is never set in stone.  

The Leadership Growth program was developed to help leaders navigate uncertainty. Instead of offering a handbook on best practices, the initiative focused on co-creation, and a human-centric approach. They offer insights into how this model was implemented and the impact it had on employees and the business.

Benedikt Schmaus

We're here to explore a fascinating topic about leadership and how leadership is changing in a completely uncertain world and how you can develop leadership skills, behaviors and mindsets. At scale, at global scale. And Khadija I'm so pleased that you can join us for that. Thank you so much.

Khadija Ben Hammada

Thank you for coming to Darmstadt. Welcome.

Benedikt 

My pleasure. I'd love to start with a very open question. What does leadership mean to you?

Khadija

It's a fundamental question that we quite often ask ourselves. So, I always like to say that leadership is a choice, it’s a choice that you make every day as a leader, that I make every day as a leader. It's a choice that also comes with a lot of privilege, but a lot of responsibility. So, for me, leadership is all about a paradox, if I can say so Benedikt. It's about being capable to have a long-term perspective looking beyond the short term and bringing hope, bringing confidence to the organization to really think about how you shape sustainable future. And equally, it's about grounding yourself towards the reality where we are in right now and grounding yourself towards your people and your organization needs. So, managing those two elements for me is leadership.

Leadership is also about courage and care. I love those two because they are fundamental for any leader. The courage to challenge the status quo, the courage to stand up for something that is important for you, to take the most difficult decision in a responsible manner, but always to deeply care. Care for the impact you want to generate. Care for the people. Care on how you do things. So, courage and care are absolutely important. And at the end, leadership is all about building the right culture that can unlock an amazing potential.

Benedikt

I love that. Thank you. Courage, care, to build the right culture. And you opened with “It's a choice”. Can you elaborate a bit on that? Why is that so important to you?

Khadija

I think when you stand up as a leader, the day we give you the responsibility to be accountable of people, you need to know, and you need to make the choice to put this team first. Whatever matters. It's all about the team. It's not about yourself anymore. That's what I mean by choice. You also make the choice to decide what kind of legacy you want to leave behind you, how you want to show up, how you want to communicate, how you want the people to talk about you, to think about you, how you want to inspire. And those are the choices you make every day as a leader.

That's why I call it a choice, because you decide you are the one deciding the kind of legacy you want to build and how you want people to remember you and how you want to impact their life. A choice because the day you decide to say yes to this incredible responsibility and ownership of people, you need to step up and be at the level to put them first, no matter what.

Benedikt

In these times, especially post-Covid, but in general, times have become more uncertain. And there's choices to be made by leaders, now in terms of how to shift their behaviors, their skills, how they act. What is it that people need to shift and leaders need to shift in this more uncertain world?

Khadija

You put it very clearly. There is a completely uncertain world. I mean, if you look at the dynamic and the tension around us, we are asking a lot to our leader. We are asking them to manage a paradox, asking them to lead with courage and care. And we need also we are asking them also to drive a very, very disruptive technological revolution. And I think the shift that we need to see are our own behaviors and mindset.

If we just think about AI, if you if we take that as an example, we are asking our leader at the same time to learn about those new technology, about those new tools, and at the same time to empower their team to create control with the change to make, to reassure them that at the end, AI is here to support them, to accelerate impact and at the same time, they have to bring confidence, care and courage.

If we also think about you mentioned the post-COVID world. Our employees and the world around us are calling more for humanity, for more authenticity. And this is a shift towards a leadership style that I would like to describe towards more vulnerability, authenticity, letting your personality, the way you are, shine more than ever, and building that human connection. And I think it requires a deepened sense of self-awareness as well as emotional intelligence. And we need to see our leader to shift towards more of those elements. So, the more I think about it, and the more we see the emersion of a lot of new and fast and rapid new technology, the more human centric leadership approach is required, and we need leaders to take that shift.

Benedikt

I love that focus on humanity. As you described it. What's difficult about it, though?

Khadija

It's difficult because first, it's difficult because it's personal. It's also showing a little bit of vulnerability. And think about leaders, some of them are more introvert and extrovert. It's about bringing, a way about your personality that you might not have been used to do. And it also requires a little bit of courage.

I really believe that if you want to meet people where they are, you need to make that step forward. And the first person to go first is the leader. So as a leader, you need to take out sometimes the mask, take out the title, take out the level where you can be and come as you are with your strengths, with your weaknesses. Because no one is perfect. You are a work in progress, I am a work in progress but bring your full personality, yourself, the way you are, with your strength, with your weaknesses. Also showing that you don't have all the answer, but you are capable to ask the right questions, and you can surround yourself with the right people.

I always like to hire people who are smarter than me because that's how I learn. That's how I become a better leader. So, showing that vulnerability, I think, is the way to go. And at the end, we are all human. We want to connect at that level. 

Benedikt

Something I personally and we as a firm keep observing is, however, that when times get tough, some leaders tend to go back into old behaviors that are probably more command and control. Is that something you observe as well and how would you react to that?

Khadija

Actually, that's something we have observed and that's why we decided to partner with you and the firm to build that leadership growth, because we also felt that our leaders were slightly overwhelmed with the tension that we are facing internally and externally, and the natural behavior was to focus towards control because it's just a natural behavior. When you are, let's say, struggling with all those dynamics around you, you go into the details, you ask for data, you ask for all the facts. You want to reassure yourself, but you need to take a step back. You need to stay calm. First of all, to stay calm. Take a step back, think about the big picture and trust. Trust your people. The more you go towards control, demand, and control, the less you're going to trust your people, the less they're going to be capable to outperform and to provide a full potential. So, it's about self-reflection. It's about self-awareness, and it's about also knowing yourself and where you need to pull back and stop and take a step back.

Benedikt

What is your personal leadership role and what does it mean for you?

Khadija

I'm a leader, I'm a colleague, I'm a friend, and I'm also the head of HR. And I really take that role as a huge, huge privilege and huge responsibility. So first of all, my role is to make sure that we are building an organization from the culture, from skills, capabilities and operating model that is capable to drive for the next centuries.

The second part of my role is to make sure that we are a strong business partner to the organization, that we are capable to drive transformation, drive innovation, drive performance through our people because we have the right culture, we help because we have the right skills, because we are always ahead of the game, but also making sure that the culture that we display and we build enable everyone 62,000 employees to come every day to feel safe, heard, protected and capable to thrive on a regular basis.

And my last role, Benedikt, is to make sure that we are also the guardian of trust. If there is one function that must always lead with integrity, with confidence, and with clarity, certainly the people function because people are looking up at you. You are the voice to make sure that people feel safe, heard, respected, valued. And you need to make sure that whatever we do is enroll and respect and transpire the values of our company.

Benedikt

Let's move a little bit into the actual program. We wanted to talk about Leadership Growth, which you started a while ago. Can you elaborate a bit on what the ambition of this program was, but also the trigger for such a large program?

Khadija

The trigger was really the world around us. And also, internally. I mean, you mentioned that a little bit earlier. The world is evolving so fast. I mean, we see geopolitical tension. We also see a very aging, I would say, workforce coming all the way. We also see, society challenges. We see some wars around us. And we really started to feel that post-COVID, that leaders were struggling to navigate all those uncertainties. And we also felt that leaders wanted to come together, to rewrite together what leadership means in this new era. I really believe that leadership is evolving as much as culture. It's never set in stone, and it was very important for us that instead of giving them a book of what good leadership should look like, that we wanted to co-create that.

So, we re-created, we bring them all together, and we decided to build an intervention, not a training, an intervention that was capable to provide them the right space to co-create what leadership means. We also knew that if we want to make a difference, we had to let go of some behaviors. So, we came together. We looked at the future. We look at what was holding us back to catch that future, and we rewrite the leadership we wanted to see. So that was the trigger point.

Benedikt

I've hardly ever seen a company, frankly, that went as far as you went. Both in terms of boldness, in terms of going for the experience, co-creating that perspective, as well as scaling it up globally to literally 100% of people in any leadership role, which is immense.

Khadija

Immense. It was a bet.

Benedikt

Why you made that bet? And what it took to make that bet actually?

Khadija

Because we took that bet together and we took that bet because we were completely convinced that there is not one problem statement we can't solve without leaders. We knew that leadership was the key for everything, and we knew we had the right capabilities. We knew we had the right skills. We knew we had the right leader. But we knew it was time to come back together and collectively co-own that leadership new phase. And I think we jumped into it, openly, and you helped us also to shape it. And I think it was the right thing to do because today we only hear positive feedback towards that intervention. And so far, the feedback has been overwhelming.

Benedikt

What type of things can we already observe? And maybe specifically also from a business side, because it's a business program as much as it is an HR program.

Khadija

It's absolutely a business program. Let's be very clear. It's not an HR intervention. It's a business program. It has been built with the business, with our leader for business and for our leaders. And why it is so important to mention that because it must be customized. It must be personalized, it must be practical. And that's what we built together. So, the feedback we are receiving is faster decision making, stronger sense of commitment to the organisation, better collaboration. So, the fact that we also break the silos and bring people together was fantastic. The fact that also we empower leader to take responsibility towards their own leadership and to take leadership as a choice, was part of the success of this intervention.

Benedikt

I find it particularly fascinating from participants to get the feedback that, hey, we thought we have very different worlds in sectors and regions and functions. And it turned out, yes, there are different, but the leadership skills are so similar. And that was a main takeaway. And it takes a village also to make a program like this happen from the business side, from the HR side. Can you share a little bit about the challenges, but also the positive experiences work collaborating internally on this as well as externally?

Khadija

I mean, first, it was absolutely an amazing collective effort from the HR organization because you mentioned we had a vision, but we also had to convince our executive board and to convince the organization to really trust us with that intervention. The way we built it around was also something very, I would say, bold with gamification, with peer coaching, having access to young talent, giving feedback to senior leaders. The entire program was bold it was something different. But the fact that the team was completely fired up to make it a success was key. What was also key was the partnership, the partnership we had with you, because we knew that we were not capable to deliver that internally. Why? Because we wanted to have an external impulse. And I think you play that role very well. So that's how I would say this. This was capable to be such a success because we were grounded into the reality. We also are capable to take the right provider to challenge us. And we had the principle of success, practical, business oriented and very, very people and human centric.

Benedikt

Are there any other success factors, especially maybe looking forward to sustaining that momentum now?

Khadija

I think what we really want to to keep is the momentum and make sure that we don't basically fade out after maybe three days of intervention. So, I think this inner circle that we have built, the connection that people have built together, are basically maintained. I have learned and I have heard many people saying, hey, I'm meeting with X and Y, to maintain the network. We will have quarterly; I will say to touch base with the colleagues to make sure that the momentum is there. But at the end, leadership is something you practice every day during your day to day when no one is watching you. So, we also don't want to create too much of a platform. We want now to let go of our leader and we have identified a couple of opportunities to come back, make some pulse check and continue to support them.

Benedikt

This bold bet typically requires a lot of risk taking as well. Personally, some people literally put their careers or the next step in their career, probably on such a program and in an organization. Do you have any recommendations and tips to any other HR or business leaders out there on finding that boldness, taking that strong step.

Khadija

I think, first, if you are really convinced that this is something that will help your organisation you have to do it, Because I know, I remember when we met the first time, I knew that this was something we needed. I was very convinced, from the data point of view, from a culture point of view, from a leadership point of view. So, my advice for any HR business partner, if you know that this can help you, go for it, even if it's not a success, which was not our case, at least you will have tried. Because as I say, there is nothing that can't be fixed without good leadership and we need to invest.

Second, it's about also understanding that leadership is evolving, and it's not because we have addressed leadership that we had something to fix. No, we want it to be ahead of the game. We wanted to make sure that we support our leader to step up in that very uncertain world. So, make sure that you address something that you need. Make sure that you understand that there is nothing wrong if you do it in contrary, you are going ahead of the curve.

And finally, make it very practical. Make it a business case. Make it human. Make it, co-create with your colleagues. That's what I will do. And I think it's going to work.

Benedikt

Okay. That's fantastic. You mentioned that both of us are also work in progress in leadership. I can tell you; I've learned a lot in that journey myself on leadership and many other things. And one of them those things is that it does take a lot of conviction to go that big and bold step and create some real impact that goes with it. I'd love to thank you for that courage. As well as for sharing your experience with us. And we are curious to see the impact this has going forward.

Khadija

Absolutely. Now we have a bigger challenge. We go for the next 9,000 leaders. So, but we are up to the challenge and I'm sure together we will face it. And no matter what happens if we stay grounded and at the same time, we bring confidence and hope to our organization, no matter what will come, we will face it with grace, courage and care.

Benedikt

Merci, Khadija.

Khadija

Avec plaisir. Merci beaucoup Benedikt.

Benedikt

And to all of you, thank you for watching.

This transcript was edited for clarity

In today’s volatile and fast-changing world, leadership is undergoing a profound transformation. Organizations are rethinking how they develop leaders — not just through skills and frameworks, but by cultivating mindsets that embrace uncertainty, empathy, and adaptability.

Benedikt Schmaus, partner at Oliver Wyman, speaks with Khadija Ben Hammada, chief people officer and executive board member at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, about how leadership is evolving in an increasingly uncertain world. They discuss the development of leadership skills, behaviors, and mindset on a global scale.   

The conversation highlights how leadership requires both the courage to challenge the status quo and a commitment to caring for people and the way decisions are made. Ben Hammada emphasizes that leadership is an ever-evolving concept that is never set in stone.  

The Leadership Growth program was developed to help leaders navigate uncertainty. Instead of offering a handbook on best practices, the initiative focused on co-creation, and a human-centric approach. They offer insights into how this model was implemented and the impact it had on employees and the business.

Benedikt Schmaus

We're here to explore a fascinating topic about leadership and how leadership is changing in a completely uncertain world and how you can develop leadership skills, behaviors and mindsets. At scale, at global scale. And Khadija I'm so pleased that you can join us for that. Thank you so much.

Khadija Ben Hammada

Thank you for coming to Darmstadt. Welcome.

Benedikt 

My pleasure. I'd love to start with a very open question. What does leadership mean to you?

Khadija

It's a fundamental question that we quite often ask ourselves. So, I always like to say that leadership is a choice, it’s a choice that you make every day as a leader, that I make every day as a leader. It's a choice that also comes with a lot of privilege, but a lot of responsibility. So, for me, leadership is all about a paradox, if I can say so Benedikt. It's about being capable to have a long-term perspective looking beyond the short term and bringing hope, bringing confidence to the organization to really think about how you shape sustainable future. And equally, it's about grounding yourself towards the reality where we are in right now and grounding yourself towards your people and your organization needs. So, managing those two elements for me is leadership.

Leadership is also about courage and care. I love those two because they are fundamental for any leader. The courage to challenge the status quo, the courage to stand up for something that is important for you, to take the most difficult decision in a responsible manner, but always to deeply care. Care for the impact you want to generate. Care for the people. Care on how you do things. So, courage and care are absolutely important. And at the end, leadership is all about building the right culture that can unlock an amazing potential.

Benedikt

I love that. Thank you. Courage, care, to build the right culture. And you opened with “It's a choice”. Can you elaborate a bit on that? Why is that so important to you?

Khadija

I think when you stand up as a leader, the day we give you the responsibility to be accountable of people, you need to know, and you need to make the choice to put this team first. Whatever matters. It's all about the team. It's not about yourself anymore. That's what I mean by choice. You also make the choice to decide what kind of legacy you want to leave behind you, how you want to show up, how you want to communicate, how you want the people to talk about you, to think about you, how you want to inspire. And those are the choices you make every day as a leader.

That's why I call it a choice, because you decide you are the one deciding the kind of legacy you want to build and how you want people to remember you and how you want to impact their life. A choice because the day you decide to say yes to this incredible responsibility and ownership of people, you need to step up and be at the level to put them first, no matter what.

Benedikt

In these times, especially post-Covid, but in general, times have become more uncertain. And there's choices to be made by leaders, now in terms of how to shift their behaviors, their skills, how they act. What is it that people need to shift and leaders need to shift in this more uncertain world?

Khadija

You put it very clearly. There is a completely uncertain world. I mean, if you look at the dynamic and the tension around us, we are asking a lot to our leader. We are asking them to manage a paradox, asking them to lead with courage and care. And we need also we are asking them also to drive a very, very disruptive technological revolution. And I think the shift that we need to see are our own behaviors and mindset.

If we just think about AI, if you if we take that as an example, we are asking our leader at the same time to learn about those new technology, about those new tools, and at the same time to empower their team to create control with the change to make, to reassure them that at the end, AI is here to support them, to accelerate impact and at the same time, they have to bring confidence, care and courage.

If we also think about you mentioned the post-COVID world. Our employees and the world around us are calling more for humanity, for more authenticity. And this is a shift towards a leadership style that I would like to describe towards more vulnerability, authenticity, letting your personality, the way you are, shine more than ever, and building that human connection. And I think it requires a deepened sense of self-awareness as well as emotional intelligence. And we need to see our leader to shift towards more of those elements. So, the more I think about it, and the more we see the emersion of a lot of new and fast and rapid new technology, the more human centric leadership approach is required, and we need leaders to take that shift.

Benedikt

I love that focus on humanity. As you described it. What's difficult about it, though?

Khadija

It's difficult because first, it's difficult because it's personal. It's also showing a little bit of vulnerability. And think about leaders, some of them are more introvert and extrovert. It's about bringing, a way about your personality that you might not have been used to do. And it also requires a little bit of courage.

I really believe that if you want to meet people where they are, you need to make that step forward. And the first person to go first is the leader. So as a leader, you need to take out sometimes the mask, take out the title, take out the level where you can be and come as you are with your strengths, with your weaknesses. Because no one is perfect. You are a work in progress, I am a work in progress but bring your full personality, yourself, the way you are, with your strength, with your weaknesses. Also showing that you don't have all the answer, but you are capable to ask the right questions, and you can surround yourself with the right people.

I always like to hire people who are smarter than me because that's how I learn. That's how I become a better leader. So, showing that vulnerability, I think, is the way to go. And at the end, we are all human. We want to connect at that level. 

Benedikt

Something I personally and we as a firm keep observing is, however, that when times get tough, some leaders tend to go back into old behaviors that are probably more command and control. Is that something you observe as well and how would you react to that?

Khadija

Actually, that's something we have observed and that's why we decided to partner with you and the firm to build that leadership growth, because we also felt that our leaders were slightly overwhelmed with the tension that we are facing internally and externally, and the natural behavior was to focus towards control because it's just a natural behavior. When you are, let's say, struggling with all those dynamics around you, you go into the details, you ask for data, you ask for all the facts. You want to reassure yourself, but you need to take a step back. You need to stay calm. First of all, to stay calm. Take a step back, think about the big picture and trust. Trust your people. The more you go towards control, demand, and control, the less you're going to trust your people, the less they're going to be capable to outperform and to provide a full potential. So, it's about self-reflection. It's about self-awareness, and it's about also knowing yourself and where you need to pull back and stop and take a step back.

Benedikt

What is your personal leadership role and what does it mean for you?

Khadija

I'm a leader, I'm a colleague, I'm a friend, and I'm also the head of HR. And I really take that role as a huge, huge privilege and huge responsibility. So first of all, my role is to make sure that we are building an organization from the culture, from skills, capabilities and operating model that is capable to drive for the next centuries.

The second part of my role is to make sure that we are a strong business partner to the organization, that we are capable to drive transformation, drive innovation, drive performance through our people because we have the right culture, we help because we have the right skills, because we are always ahead of the game, but also making sure that the culture that we display and we build enable everyone 62,000 employees to come every day to feel safe, heard, protected and capable to thrive on a regular basis.

And my last role, Benedikt, is to make sure that we are also the guardian of trust. If there is one function that must always lead with integrity, with confidence, and with clarity, certainly the people function because people are looking up at you. You are the voice to make sure that people feel safe, heard, respected, valued. And you need to make sure that whatever we do is enroll and respect and transpire the values of our company.

Benedikt

Let's move a little bit into the actual program. We wanted to talk about Leadership Growth, which you started a while ago. Can you elaborate a bit on what the ambition of this program was, but also the trigger for such a large program?

Khadija

The trigger was really the world around us. And also, internally. I mean, you mentioned that a little bit earlier. The world is evolving so fast. I mean, we see geopolitical tension. We also see a very aging, I would say, workforce coming all the way. We also see, society challenges. We see some wars around us. And we really started to feel that post-COVID, that leaders were struggling to navigate all those uncertainties. And we also felt that leaders wanted to come together, to rewrite together what leadership means in this new era. I really believe that leadership is evolving as much as culture. It's never set in stone, and it was very important for us that instead of giving them a book of what good leadership should look like, that we wanted to co-create that.

So, we re-created, we bring them all together, and we decided to build an intervention, not a training, an intervention that was capable to provide them the right space to co-create what leadership means. We also knew that if we want to make a difference, we had to let go of some behaviors. So, we came together. We looked at the future. We look at what was holding us back to catch that future, and we rewrite the leadership we wanted to see. So that was the trigger point.

Benedikt

I've hardly ever seen a company, frankly, that went as far as you went. Both in terms of boldness, in terms of going for the experience, co-creating that perspective, as well as scaling it up globally to literally 100% of people in any leadership role, which is immense.

Khadija

Immense. It was a bet.

Benedikt

Why you made that bet? And what it took to make that bet actually?

Khadija

Because we took that bet together and we took that bet because we were completely convinced that there is not one problem statement we can't solve without leaders. We knew that leadership was the key for everything, and we knew we had the right capabilities. We knew we had the right skills. We knew we had the right leader. But we knew it was time to come back together and collectively co-own that leadership new phase. And I think we jumped into it, openly, and you helped us also to shape it. And I think it was the right thing to do because today we only hear positive feedback towards that intervention. And so far, the feedback has been overwhelming.

Benedikt

What type of things can we already observe? And maybe specifically also from a business side, because it's a business program as much as it is an HR program.

Khadija

It's absolutely a business program. Let's be very clear. It's not an HR intervention. It's a business program. It has been built with the business, with our leader for business and for our leaders. And why it is so important to mention that because it must be customized. It must be personalized, it must be practical. And that's what we built together. So, the feedback we are receiving is faster decision making, stronger sense of commitment to the organisation, better collaboration. So, the fact that we also break the silos and bring people together was fantastic. The fact that also we empower leader to take responsibility towards their own leadership and to take leadership as a choice, was part of the success of this intervention.

Benedikt

I find it particularly fascinating from participants to get the feedback that, hey, we thought we have very different worlds in sectors and regions and functions. And it turned out, yes, there are different, but the leadership skills are so similar. And that was a main takeaway. And it takes a village also to make a program like this happen from the business side, from the HR side. Can you share a little bit about the challenges, but also the positive experiences work collaborating internally on this as well as externally?

Khadija

I mean, first, it was absolutely an amazing collective effort from the HR organization because you mentioned we had a vision, but we also had to convince our executive board and to convince the organization to really trust us with that intervention. The way we built it around was also something very, I would say, bold with gamification, with peer coaching, having access to young talent, giving feedback to senior leaders. The entire program was bold it was something different. But the fact that the team was completely fired up to make it a success was key. What was also key was the partnership, the partnership we had with you, because we knew that we were not capable to deliver that internally. Why? Because we wanted to have an external impulse. And I think you play that role very well. So that's how I would say this. This was capable to be such a success because we were grounded into the reality. We also are capable to take the right provider to challenge us. And we had the principle of success, practical, business oriented and very, very people and human centric.

Benedikt

Are there any other success factors, especially maybe looking forward to sustaining that momentum now?

Khadija

I think what we really want to to keep is the momentum and make sure that we don't basically fade out after maybe three days of intervention. So, I think this inner circle that we have built, the connection that people have built together, are basically maintained. I have learned and I have heard many people saying, hey, I'm meeting with X and Y, to maintain the network. We will have quarterly; I will say to touch base with the colleagues to make sure that the momentum is there. But at the end, leadership is something you practice every day during your day to day when no one is watching you. So, we also don't want to create too much of a platform. We want now to let go of our leader and we have identified a couple of opportunities to come back, make some pulse check and continue to support them.

Benedikt

This bold bet typically requires a lot of risk taking as well. Personally, some people literally put their careers or the next step in their career, probably on such a program and in an organization. Do you have any recommendations and tips to any other HR or business leaders out there on finding that boldness, taking that strong step.

Khadija

I think, first, if you are really convinced that this is something that will help your organisation you have to do it, Because I know, I remember when we met the first time, I knew that this was something we needed. I was very convinced, from the data point of view, from a culture point of view, from a leadership point of view. So, my advice for any HR business partner, if you know that this can help you, go for it, even if it's not a success, which was not our case, at least you will have tried. Because as I say, there is nothing that can't be fixed without good leadership and we need to invest.

Second, it's about also understanding that leadership is evolving, and it's not because we have addressed leadership that we had something to fix. No, we want it to be ahead of the game. We wanted to make sure that we support our leader to step up in that very uncertain world. So, make sure that you address something that you need. Make sure that you understand that there is nothing wrong if you do it in contrary, you are going ahead of the curve.

And finally, make it very practical. Make it a business case. Make it human. Make it, co-create with your colleagues. That's what I will do. And I think it's going to work.

Benedikt

Okay. That's fantastic. You mentioned that both of us are also work in progress in leadership. I can tell you; I've learned a lot in that journey myself on leadership and many other things. And one of them those things is that it does take a lot of conviction to go that big and bold step and create some real impact that goes with it. I'd love to thank you for that courage. As well as for sharing your experience with us. And we are curious to see the impact this has going forward.

Khadija

Absolutely. Now we have a bigger challenge. We go for the next 9,000 leaders. So, but we are up to the challenge and I'm sure together we will face it. And no matter what happens if we stay grounded and at the same time, we bring confidence and hope to our organization, no matter what will come, we will face it with grace, courage and care.

Benedikt

Merci, Khadija.

Khadija

Avec plaisir. Merci beaucoup Benedikt.

Benedikt

And to all of you, thank you for watching.

This transcript was edited for clarity