Motivated employees are central to a company‘s success. And their emotional attachment is highly related to their level of motivation.
So, what differentiates leaders, whose teams sustainably deliver top performance and have satisfied and motivated employees? They create a positive work environment in which employees feel safe, encouraged and empowered, they value their people’s individual strengths, and they provide a sense of purpose. If you feel that this is easier said than done, meet Noah. This toolkit supports leaders in working on their skills as a manager and guides them towards building a motivating team culture.

Why «Noah»? Noah is the protagonist of an inspiring story of author and inspirational speaker Simon Sinek. In it, Sinek meets the barista in a hotel lobby and asks him whether he likes the job he is doing. Without hesitation, Noah euphorically affirms. He adds, however, that at his second job at a different hotel he is counting down the hours until the end of each shift. What makes the difference? In the first hotel, the management had been asking him how he was doing and if there was anything he needed to do a good job. In the second hotel, his management controls his every move to see if he is messing up.

As a leader, you strongly influence your employee’s motivation and performance – and thus the success of the company. The Noah Toolkit supports you in developing your leadership qualities by turning inspiration into enabling success. Grow and develop with Noah, to ultimately:

• create a positive working environment and a culture of trust.
• increase the commitment of your employees – regardless of their age, their generation, their gender, their nationality, … etc.
• enable effective and efficient collaboration and thus boost the motivation of your team members.
• set the conditions for continuous learning and innovation.
• build the foundation for the growth of successful teams with sustainable high performance.
• grow together with your team to successfully overcome VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity), crises and
  various challenges.

Positive Leadership centres around leadership and motivation. The approach is based on Positive Psychology, which focuses on how we build «the good life». The term was coined by Kim Cameron, who is known for his years of research on the effect of positively energised leadership on the organisation and its employees.

Psychological Safety ensures that employees will neither be sanctioned or humiliated for expressing ideas, questions, concerns, nor for making mistakes, or having critical or contrary opinions. The concept was developed as early as 1999 by Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School.

Since Positive Leadership cannot be realised without Psychological Safety, our toolkit combines both approaches.

Positive Leadership and Psychological Safety is structured into five dimensions that are equally important for your success (we‘ll take a closer look at those in the next paragraph). Based on this model, we have developed inspirational cards for you, that help you to implement the theory easily and effectively into your everyday activities and train your «positive leader» muscles. Simply draw a card – preferably on a regular basis – and off you go: Get inspired by the input on the front side of your card. Flip your card to find a short and concise explanation of how you can put theory into practice. Oh, and there is an additional goodie: each card comes with a QR code which leads you to in-depth, valuable information that we‘ve compiled for you. Depending on what is on your mind at that moment, you can of course choose cards according to your preference and mood. The categories are: Atmosphere, Relationships, Communication, Purpose and Psychological Safety.

Our advice: Drawing the final card of your deck does not necessarily mean that you’ve come to the end of your journey with Noah. Take a moment to reflect on what has happened since drawing your first card. Are there particular topics where it is worth taking a second (third, fourth, …) look – now that you’ve developed further?

Your experience with Noah is unique: what was your most special light bulb moment? How did you use our cards, so that they suited you best – did you, for example, re-sort the cards based on your specific needs rather than the original categories? Did you record your thoughts along the way? Let us and other leaders learn from you. We look forward to your stories. Connect with us on neex.ch!

The prototype of this toolkit was developed in 2022 as part of the CAS Next Generation Leadership at HWZ. Based on the enthusiastic feedback, we – Michaela Christian Gartmann and Stefan Iten – further developed the prototype. We founded neex, which now distributes «Noah». Further products and services in German and English will be released in the future.

But why is Noah so close to our hearts? As long-standing leaders and experts in the field of HR management and entrepreneurial coaching, we believe that Positive Leadership & Psychological Safety are fundamental elements for successful leadership! Shortlived trends fall short of our leadership model, which values individual abilities as strengths and positive differentiating factors, rather than rough edges that needed smoothing. Nonetheless, it is by far an enticement to a comfortable soft line approach. This model requires work and the willingness to face challenges. If you’re up for it, you can expect nothing less than gaining a game changing perspective. Leaders who embrace working the model will be rewarded by having a decisive impact on their team, their people experience and their company. With our toolkit, we want to empower you to be a Positive Leader, to succeed together with your team and to deliver sustainable best performance. The change starts with you.

We are convinced that this toolkit can help you to unlock your leadership skills and enable your team to achieve its full potential! We look forward to you sharing your success stories with us on neex.ch.