How important is it for a successful mission of a foreign manager to integrate into the society of the natives? To what extent do senior female managers acknowledge their responsibility for the „women's question“? And do they feel powerful? Claudia Viohl, CEO and Chairperson of the board at E.ON, Czech Republic and Catrina Gemmerich, Managing Director of VIG Re Germany and Head of DACH and Nordics were guests of the final episode of the podcast series Women Leaders Beyond Borders hosted by Jaroslav Kramer.
You can watch the episode on YOUTUBE or listen to the episode on SPOTIFY and APPLE PODCAST.
Members of the highest levels of corporate management rarely have the opportunity to take a longer break during the holiday months. However, as Claudia Viohl admits in the final episode of the WLBB podcast recorded in the last decade of July, summer is usually a time when there is an opportunity to reflect on strategic topics and generally look beyond the immediate horizon. This fits well with the theme of the WLBB podcast, which is to look beyond borders.
Both ladies have a lot to say about this. Catrina lives in Munich and works in the VIG Re office there, but heads to Prague every six weeks or so to consult on business with the VIG Re team in Prague. The entire VIG Re team consists of 25 nationalities and Catrina feels completely at home in such international environment. „There's something personal that has basically been there my entire life. Born in Italy, studied abroad in the Netherlands, lived in the UK for some time, and then moved to Munich. And now I have the beauty of working in an international business that is headquartered in Prague, but has operations in Paris as well as in Munich, with basically belonging to an Austrian group. It is amazing.“
Claudia Viohl is one of the most influential foreign CEOs in Prague. In her words, it is impossible to get much traction as a CEO unless the manager in question moves to the country where he or she is to perform the function. „I decided three and a half years ago when I took on the role to move really with all what I have to Czech Republic. As I truly believe, if you really want to create impact as a CEO of a company, you have to understand in what kind of environment you work. I would say in fact I put my home base here and I live here, I work here, and I am landed. I have to say the language is still a challenge, but I am on the way.“
As Claudia points out, there are 3,000 people working at E.ON in the country and she is the only German. Therefore, she would consider it a sign of disrespect towards the employees if she did not try to adapt to the local context and understand local life. In her words, this would hinder the effective management of people and ultimately the achievement of the strategic and business objectives of the whole company.
From Catrina’s point of view, such efforts are a natural part of working in an international environment and she enjoys learning about difference. „I think this is really something that is probably part of my DNA. I simply love it. And this has also something to do with empathy, that you have sensitivity with whom you interact and how you interact. But of course, you always think about, okay, if there is a particular group of people coming from a certain country, are there specifics to have in mind? We as a team, need to embody this. But I think this is really the beauty and the essence of it.“
Claudia admits that it is possible to acquire the ability to adapt over time. However, those who have had a career growing up in an international environment are in a much better starting position. „When you are 40 years in an environment where I think your truth is created, it’s much more difficult to understand that there are other people out in the world. If you are grown up in an international environment, you have moved from one country to the other, you always have worked in diverse teams. It’s much easier to adapt and to cope with that. I hope you can learn it, but you need a lot of time.“
Responsibility to other women
There are several specific themes related to women’s leadership. One of them is the issue of responsibility. In this case, however, it is not purely a question of responsibility for the business, which naturally follows from a high position, but rather responsibility in a broader sense for something like a „female mission“, a burden that many women managers bear, more or less consciously. The phenomenon can be simply summed up in the reflection „I am the first female CEO in the company. If I don’t make it, I’ll make it harder for other women to get to high positions“.
As there are still more male than female CEOs, Claudia believes that there is still a certain amount of focus on this topic, and in particular, the topic of female leadership and diversity is always on the agenda whenever a woman fails in her leadership role. However, she says there is nothing in the statistics to suggest that women fail in leadership roles more often than men. She therefore offers a slightly different perspective. „Of course, we are role models and there are a lot of young ladies who love to watch us and would like to learn how we do it. Whenever I talk to younger ladies, I say, find your inner beliefs. The first is do a kind of self-reflection what you really want and not what other tells you want. You don’t have to be a top manager if you don’t want to, just be self-confident, think about what you want and then fight for it,“ Claudia says. She adds that she considers to be the least beneficial if a competitive fight breaks out among the women on the team.
Catrina follows up by saying that such thinking is foreign to her. Rather than projecting into the future „what happens if I fail“, she chooses to look to the past. „I’d rather look at where I stand and what I have achieved. This is great. And let’s build on that. I like to bring the positive perspective into things,. Of course, everything can go wrong but I’d rather like to focus on the positive edge of things and not so much on, let’s say, the potential risks that are associated with this, which is interesting because the nature of our business, reinsurance, is all about risk management but from a personal feeling. I would like to encourage every young female, but also every young male to think about what I like to do, what is really giving me enjoyment. “
Delivering change
In both cases, the positions of the two ladies and their tenure in them, in addition to common managerial administration, were also linked to the commitment of responsibility for ground-breaking projects. In Claudia’s case, it is the transformation of the entire energy sector, in Catrina’s case building the German office of VIG Re practically from scratch. Were these landmark projects what they accepted their positions for? And what is their relationship to similarly large tasks in general?
Catrina likes challenges and does not shy away from them. The last year and a half, which has been associated with building up the Munich office and the team there, has been very intense. „It is not finished but the first phase has been very successful. I’m very proud of what we have established since then, but I’m also happy to now drive this forward and bring more stability, resilience, but also an acceleration into this process.“ In the reinsurance environment, she says, there is no shortage of new challenges by nature. „The beauty of working in reinsurance is that the environment around us is always changing every year. So, this is basically always presenting you with new challenges and opportunities, because ultimately it is our role to increase societal resilience,“ she explains.
Claudia is a manager in an industry undergoing one of the biggest transformations in its history. As well as the challenge of taking on the role of boss in a foreign country, Claudia is thus expected to have an adequate strategy for these choppy waters. „I love challenges and I truly believe it is better to drive change than to be driven by change. I love to be active. I definitely asked for a broader role, for more responsibility and for a little bit personal disruption. But of course, when I arrived three and a half years ago, we had the biggest energy crisis ever in Europe. So of course, there is a better time to land as a newly appointed CEO in a country,“ she says. She adds, however, that it was also a welcome opportunity to get to know the workings of the company, the whole industry, and its links with other parts of the economy.
Am I powerful?
Both ladies are responsible for a demanding agenda and large teams of people and their results. In addition to these commitments, they also have authority. However, Catrina and Claudia both deny that they consider themselves powerful managers, but both feel they have the power or strength to get things done. „I feel that I have responsibility and of course power at the same time, but I have to carefully consider how to use and implement it,“ Catrina says.
An E.ON boss see it in a similar way. „I am aware that I have power in a sense of that I am the CEO, I can take decisions, people will follow me in a lot of aspects and will listen what I say. The question is how I use this power positively in every single second in daily life to make it better. Sometimes it´s a responsibility, sometimes it also can be a burden and I sometimes do not feel like a CEO. But people still see me as the CEO, so they act with deep respect. Sometimes I would love to see them be more open,“ concludes Claudia.
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