In this interview, Mitja Schulz, the newly appointed CEO of Debrunner Koenig, a Swiss wholesale company specializing in reinforcements, steel and metals, metal services, and technical products, describes his leadership style and shares the core leadership competencies he believes are essential for steering his organization through today's dynamic business landscape that places increasing demands on CEOs. He also discusses how he thinks about developing leaders who excel in collaboration, staying agile, and being goal-oriented; strategies he has implemented to develop these competencies within his leadership teams; and some common challenges that arise when building high performing teams. Looking into the future, he also shares how he thinks digital tools and AI will shape the future of leadership development, and how he is preparing his teams and wider workforce to adapt to these changes.

Below is a full transcript of the episode, which has been lightly edited for clarity.

Welcome to The Heidrick & Struggles Leadership Podcast. Heidrick is the premier global provider of diversified solutions across senior-level executive search, leadership assessment and development, team and organizational effectiveness, and culture shaping. Every day, we speak with leaders around the world about how they're meeting rising expectations and managing through volatile times, thinking about individual leaders, teams, organizations, and society. Thank you for joining the conversation.

Peter Behncke: Hello. I'm Peter Behncke, partner in Heidrick & Struggles’ Frankfurt office and a member of the firm's global Industrial and Financial Officers practices. In today's podcast, I'm excited to speak to Mitja Schulz, the newly appointed CEO of Debrunner Koenig, a Swiss wholesale company specializing in reinforcements, steel and metals, metal services, and technical products. Mitja brings a wealth of experience, having previously served as CEO of Gurit Holding and holding leadership roles at ZF Wind Power and ZF TRW Automotive Holdings.

Mitja, welcome, and thank you for taking the time to speak with us today.

Mitja Schulz: Thank you, Peter, for having me.

Peter Behncke: Mitja, how would you describe your leadership style and what core leadership competencies do you consider essential for steering Debrunner Koenig through today's dynamic business landscape that places increasing demands on CEOs?

Mitja Schulz: First of all, my leadership style: I'm a team player. I like to be surrounded by professionals who know their responsibilities and who are, in what they do, actually better than I am. Personally, I'm challenging the organization with targets and objectives.  I foster an entrepreneurial approach, and I expect that managers come to me or the board and propose solutions which we can decide and discuss, instead of just dumping a problem to the leadership organization. I'm always approachable. I personally do not really think in hierarchies, and I try to communicate across all levels of the organization. When I'm looking at the core leadership competencies, I think the ability to evaluate and select the right people is absolutely key. Also, decision making in volatile environments, as we see right now; people look up to leaders and they need decisions and they need guidance. And the ability to do that, fully acknowledging that there's risk associated to it, I think that is something which is very important. And also involving stakeholders and the team in change processes, which are necessary—I think it's the classical change management basically, which I think is also an absolutely important ability. And probably lastly, being a role model, leading the way. And, again, for me this is very, very important and I claim that walking the talk—you need to be able to stick to what you are standing for—and the people, the organization needs to recognize that when you are saying “We go left,” that everyone goes left, and you need to be the first one who goes left and you cannot go behind everyone else or go right, that will not work.

Peter Behncke: With your background in leading organizations, how do you develop leaders who excel in collaboration, stay agile, and goal oriented?

Mitja Schulz: I think it's a mix of personal discussions with those leaders. I think consequent feedback is very, very important. And when I'm talking feedback, I think it's also important to encourage those leaders to not only listen to feedback, but also to provide feedback. And also, to provide feedback across hierarchies, I think that's also an important skill for a modern leader, and to understand what drives people, what ambitions do they have? We are all driven by many different things. So, I think I'm personally a strong believer that personality and personal interest in someone is very relevant if you want to be successful and if you really want to win someone; then helping them to get through by providing support, trust, and encouragement. I think that is important. And consequently, asking questions to challenge the established processes, the established now and then, and to consequently foster out-of-the-box thinking. I think these are also things which make leaders stronger and foster the development of leaders.

Peter Behncke: Can you share a specific strategy you've implemented to develop these competencies within your leadership teams, and which was the most effective one?

Mitja Schulz: Yes. I have experienced that applying established HR processes and tools helps to progress in the right direction. For example, I’m a strong believer in a very structured potential and performance analysis of people and deriving from that a performance matrix and a potential matrix of people, and using this in a way to also help create succession planning in your own organization. I've also experienced that when you do this in cross-functional integration panels—where you are getting perspectives on your key players or on the people you evaluate by multiple others, stakeholders, peers, or managers—that also provides a pretty good overview and a structured overview that is good in assessing capabilities of leaders. And this is followed by a conclusion on the individual goal and the long-term target per individual, and then communicated with those people to align it also with their expectations, or to identify a potential gap between your intentions and the individual goals of individuals. I think that's also important to be aware that there is not necessarily a match, and there will not always be a match.

Peter Behncke: In your experience, what common challenges arise when building high performing teams and how have you addressed them?

Mitja Schulz: Not taking the sufficient time to bring everyone on board, [not asking whether] it is a specific conflict or a change, not talking to everyone who is involved, and by not doing that, leaving people on the side. That's a critical mistake or something that can happen. And I've seen that conflict between peers can arise when directions by managers are not clear. And in my view, this is something you really need to discuss, and this is something I'm taking after twenty-five years of experience. Once you recognize that something is not working smoothly, once you see that there are certain conflicts—I call them submarines—which lead sometimes to cultural misbehavior, as I would almost describe it. I'm personally really strict in trying to address those straight, to bring the people together who apparently have a conflict or an issue and solve it. And also be clear that when you cannot solve it, that you probably need to change something. I've experienced organizations who did not tackle those things and who allowed subcultures and certain misbehavior [to be] accepted over time, and that led to real, in my view, real issues in the organization. And this is something where I think you should not let that happen as a good manager of an organization.

Peter Behncke: How do you align leadership development programs with the company's strategic goals?

Mitja Schulz: First of all, I think it is very important to align those, and the company strategy overall determines the leadership skills required, so it should impact key elements of our leadership development, right? Just take an example from Debrunner right now, which is a 270-year-old Swiss company and who just recently, after 270 years, basically came to the conclusion that we should stronger internationalize. When I look at the leadership skills of our organization, these are very good leaders, but their focus was primarily in Switzerland. And you need a different skill when you want to go abroad, when you want to buy in Asia, or when you want to set up a new plan in Eastern Europe. So those are skills which you need to identify: intercultural skills, experience, and potentially some financial or legal backgrounds which you need to have. And we've done that actually, or the team has done that before my time, identified those [skills]. And now we are looking to develop those specifically to match our, in this case, strategic vision to internationalize the business. 

Peter Behncke: Looking into the future, how do you think digital tools and AI will shape the future of leadership development, and how are you preparing your teams and wider workforce to adapt to these changes?

Mitja Schulz: I think that's a really good question and obviously there is no, at least from my side, conclusive answer to that. I mean I could imagine that AI, or I would call it advanced software, could help by providing constant feedback to managers. You know, it's listening all the time and, by doing that, it basically creates a huge amount of data, and then it could help you to provide tailored development ideas to yourself by analyzing how you were interacting in certain situations. So, I think that could be a super cool tool actually, an individually applied tool for anyone, if you will. This is not limited to managers. I mean for me, the key thing is we should try new things out, right? We should not be afraid of those tools. What we do here, we are actually pretty advanced in applying digital tools, and also AI-related tools in certain business processes. What we usually do is we establish a pilot or lighthouse project, we invest a little bit of money in it, and then we take the reflections in the lessons learned from it and make a decision on an implementation. Still, you know, I think leadership has a lot to do with personality and with understanding the individual you're dealing with in-depth.  I'm probably old-fashioned, but I still think meeting people personally and talking to people will still remain a very, very important management tool and can probably not be substituted fully by a software tool.

Peter Behncke: How is Debrunner Koenig leveraging AI to enhance leadership development and decision making? And could you share some examples of how your teams have successfully used AI for leadership development?

Mitja Schulz: As I said, we have a couple of examples where we have successfully applied AI in our business processes, in certain process automation-related topics. We just created an object-recognition tool, which a construction worker can use onsite to take a picture of a defective part, and he will automatically be linked to our catalog so that he can automatically buy that part from our catalog. But so far, we have no real dedicated experience of applying AI in leadership development tools. 

Peter Behncke: Creating an environment where diverse perspectives drive innovation is crucial. How do you foster such a culture? 

Mitja Schulz: I think establishing cross-cultural teams is important and, you know, that really obviously also depends a little bit on your company and on your market. It’s significantly easier when I look back at one of my former roles where I was leading a global team with sites globally, it was much easier to have a global management team. At Gurit we had at certain times eight guys, a leadership team from eight different nations. Yes, that is important. Also, personally I think it's important to support women in leadership positions. I think it provides really different perspectives when you discuss certain topics among the leaders. I'm a big fan of doing this. And lastly, I would say, install multiple innovation or R&D hubs, which help you to better understand innovation, to drive innovation. And also here, probably not in the current role where our focus is primarily in Switzerland, but in my former life, I can say it was eye-opening to see how different teams in Western Europe tackled, how engineering teams tackled a problem, while my Chinese R&D team did a different approach and also reached very relevant and interesting results. So, I think leveraging those intercultural backgrounds in innovation is key.

Peter Behncke: Can you provide examples of how embracing diverse viewpoints has led to better innovation, performance, or outcomes within your teams?

Mitja Schulz: [Having] an international management team, I mentioned we had all different nationalities, that really helped us to embrace different viewpoints. Because it is eye-opening to see how a Chinese general manager or an American general manager reflects on certain things which we, from a Western European background, might see differently. Yes again, explicitly promoting women in certain management functions, I always felt that provided a more balanced view and a more balanced dynamic in the leadership team.

Peter Behncke: What role do leaders play in sustaining an inclusive and collaborative workplace culture?

Mitja Schulz: I think having the clear ambition that you are, as a leader, always, day and night, a role model for your people. People look at you, and so you need to stand behind decisions. As I said, walk the talk. Do not ask anything from your organization which you wouldn't ask from yourself. I think that this is for me really something which determines, in my view, a collaborative workplace culture. Probably another one as a leader is—when situations are very difficult, and I have experience in the last years of very, very difficult business situations where I also had to do some very, very tough decisions, closing plants, restructuring, you name it— is to still communicate positively and in an encouraging way, and to always treat people who are, for example, affected from those kind of changes, with the utmost respect. I think this is also something which again determines a positive, collaborative workplace culture.

Peter Behncke: In the context of a globalized market and increasingly polarized environments, how do you shape a multinational culture at Debrunner Koenig that integrates diverse cultural insights while maintaining a consistent global sensibility?

Mitja Schulz: As I said, Debrunner is a company with a very, very strong 270-year Swiss legacy, and our market is also primarily today Switzerland, right? But still today I'm surrounded here by a team which has sufficient international and intercultural experience. Everyone in the team worked abroad or lived abroad for a certain period of time which, and this is my own experience, really helps you to create or develop that global sensitivity which you need. As I said, we want to grow outside of Switzerland, so we are ready to try new things out, and we also understand that we will learn things which we did not learn before. So, acknowledging that when you do that, when you enter new territories, that not everything will work from the beginning. I think that is also important. At the end of the day, don't be afraid. Rely on your strengths. I think that is important as well. And again, coming back to global sensitivity in an environment which is super volatile, as our economy is right now, being calm and not making decisions overnight, I think that helps a lot to digest and then enables you to make better decisions than when being in panic. And I think this is also very, very important for managers and for the organization: That they see that the management team has a certain level of calmness, not to be misunderstood, they are not sleeping but are being calm, I think that's very important.

Peter Behncke: Mitja, thank you very much for making the time to speak with us today.

Mitja Schulz: Thank you, Peter.

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About the interviewer

Peter Behncke (pbehncke@heidrick.com) is a partner in Heidrick & Struggles’ Frankfurt office and a member of the firm’s global Industrial and Financial Officers practices.