”A bouillon cube of practical tools"

"When you challenge yourself and apply theory in practice, you'll find out how difficult it can be. But you also become more aware of the options you have. "

These words come from Birgitte Østergaard Lykke, who became part of AS3 in March 2017 as HR Legal & Administration Manager. Birgitte Østergaard Lykke became part of AS3's internal leadership training as an extension of her onboarding in the company.

Here you can read how she has experienced the first 9 modules of the education process, which she completes in the beginning of 2018.

A common starting point

The Leadership education is a concept that is being rolled out to all leaders and provides a common frame of reference internally within the organization. It ensures that everybody knows the DNA in AS3's way of thinking about leadership, and it is hugely important to me

When I began the education, I was presented with the Leadership Contract, which focuses visually on the four areas that characterize management in AS3. It provided a good starting point for me to talk through the individual areas with my own leader and I became aware of what they meant for my exact leadership.

A bouillon cube of practical tools

It is very valuable to train and try out conversational situations, rather than simply talking about them.. During the module on Difficult Conversations, the fact that we practiced the conversations two and two and then shared our experiences with each other in plenum it resulted in a very nice back and forth. There were some participants with a large amount of experience and some with less which resulted in many different perspectives being presented.

I have read many articles on transition management because I have previously completed a diploma programme in organizational theory. Many of those articles were written at a highfalutin academic level, but during the leadership education I experienced that the theory was boiled down to a bouillon cube of practical tools which fit very well into the AS3-context.

Leadership education in everyday life

I have the approach that you are never done learning, nor do you ever finish educating yourself as a leader. There is always something new you can learn. The leadership education has provided me with tools, which I become better and better at using in a variety of ways through my everyday worklife. The process has worked as a honing of what I already knew and it has clarified the effects of the things I did in advance.

In everyday life, you are not always aware of exactly what you do and why, but during the education I got a lot of things clarified and it opened my eyes to new possibilities

I'm in a slightly different situation than many other leaders in the organization because a large part of my job is to advise leaders in the organization when they have difficult employee-cases The education has therefore become a kind of natural baggage that I have with me when I'm, as an example, discussing with other leaders how to handle difficult conversations.