Interview with Annette Overgaard Jensen from Plus Bolig

"The ball shouldn't be in the manager's court, but in the employee's court"

Annette Overgaard Jensen is HR Manager at Plus Bolig and has been through HR Solutions' two-day training programme in Situational Leadership and is certified in the concept, which she and her team use every day. Annette is also a user of Extended DISC®, which is used for recruitment, team composition and development measurements.

"Create understanding and reach your goals in an efficient and safe way: it's an eye-opener" says Annette Overgaard Jensen. Situational Leadership has helped Annette and her employees at Plus Bolig, as it has created a greater understanding between employees, as well as employees and management. According to Annette, she has learnt to read her employees better: "I've learnt to sit back and understand my employees," says Annette and explains that this has resulted in a calmness for her and her employees, as she doesn't constantly come and disturb them about deadlines. They work out a deadline together and set goals together. Annette better understands her employees and the fact that we as humans are all different and react differently. As a manager, you can walk in your own world, but with Situational Leadership in your backpack, you get there in a more efficient and safer way: "You get the employees on board and this is a motivating factor for managers, as both parties are passionate about achieving the goals that are set," says Annette. Annette continues and explains that what makes Situational Leadership unique is how you get a better understanding of your surroundings and that this has resulted in her becoming a better leader: "As a leader, it's important that I can pass the ball, as it's not always me who has to come up with the solutions. It's the employees who should have the ball and help come up with solutions," says Annette. According to Annette, the value of Situational Leadership is that you get task-oriented behaviour. The concept helps you to find employees' competencies, as well as to create motivation and development in the organisation, says Annette. The concept can also help you gain insight into the employees who are quiet, which is important as they contain a lot of good things: they are not always heard as they often have to think about things a little more.

The training programme has been really good because Kurt Lausen from HR Solutions is good at teaching and taking situations from the real world to make it more understandable and useful. According to Annette, this means that you get more enthusiasm and you use it afterwards, because the teaching helps to give a good picture of reality. Plus Bolig plans to do follow-ups in the future, both for team leaders and line managers: as it will make them stronger and more effective. Situational Leadership is a great tool to understand your employees better and create understanding, development and motivation. Annette has experienced this first-hand and says it's an eye-opener.

Annette is certified in Extended DISC® and according to her it is a great tool for development. The need for Extended DISC® arose when they were embarking on a major development project. They first started with an external consultant, but by becoming certified in Extended DISC®, Plus Bolig can certify their employees themselves, which has been a financial gain: "When we got on board, it became really good," says Annette. She continues and says that every two years they do a new profile of their 52 employees, who only think it's good to see if they have changed from the last analysis. This also helps to show the development of the employees and to get to know themselves and each other better. Extended DISC® is a great recruitment tool and Plus Bolig also uses Extended DISC® in recruitment contexts. They also focus on restructuring in the organisation, looking at employee competencies, team composition, but also redundancies. According to Annette, they have had development areas where they have had to work with and improve the lack of a common culture, lack of communication and lack of management skills. "The lack of a common culture was important to develop and improve, as there was a declining common culture which meant that the employees did not work well together," explains Annette. At the same time, management also needed to be better at putting on the leadership hat and engaging in dialogue with employees who were perhaps very different from themselves. Extended DISC® has therefore been a good tool for tackling how to handle a difficult dialogue and how to arrive at a common goal. Annette says it's a good tool as it has taught her to give more elbow room to her employees and it has given her a better understanding of her surroundings.

Extended DISC® has created great improvements for Plus Bolig through dialogue, but also in terms of competence. Annette explains that they are also certified in another product, but they only use Extended DISC® from HR Solutions, as it is much easier and clearer to work with. The best thing about the solution is how it helps them with recruitment and helps create a dialogue with candidates. It also helps with how you perceive and talk to others, so it helps create a good dialogue. Annette explains that she gets asked questions that she might not have asked if she hadn't used Extended DISC®.

The start of the process had some negative consequences in the beginning. One of the issues was that the initial feedback was not so good as some of the employees did not recognise themselves. Today, they don't experience anything negative with Extended DISC®. Today, they can see that they have moved on, and now that they can teach and analyse themselves, things are going really well. Employees can better recognise themselves when they have an analysis done, and they have become better at handling situations:" I can recommend the solution," says Annette. They are in the middle of a major development process and have not yet reached their goals, but they are well on their way: "You don't get there from one day to the next," says Annette. Extended DISC® will help them reach their goals, focus and help develop individuals and teams.