Absorbing newcomers into a team is part of the long game
Marco Bode, head of the SV Werder Bremen Supervisory Board and European football champion
Florian Kohfeldt has been SV Werder Bremen’s chief coach for three years and amazingly, that makes him the longest-serving coach in the Bundesliga after Christian Streich in Freiburg. In his job, continuity is often something clubs aim to achieve but rarely manage. Our friends at HSV have had 18 head coaches since 2010! Here, too, change is a constant. Players come and go – it’s not unusual to start a new season with seven or eight new players in the squad. That makes for big challenges in the dressing rooms, as newcomers need to get used to a club’s atmosphere, philosophy and culture and the coach’s strategy to be able to perform as well as they can. That means integrating new players – and coaches – is crucial for a team to succeed. These days, as a club, we invest a lot to ensure this process of integration goes as well as possible. However, clubs all too often put a lot of effort into scouting for players and spend a lot in the transfer market but fail to do enough once they actually have a player.
“Just like players in a football team, employees need motivation – and not only at the start.”
Marco Bode, head of the SV Werder Bremen Supervisory Board and European football champion
In companies, too, continuity matters but teams of employees are also experiencing higher turnover and a faster rate of change among staff. During mergers or acquisitions in particular, companies face the huge challenge of creating an atmosphere in which new employees quickly feel at ease and can enjoy their work. A key factor that’s all too often forgotten is the important role played by “older” employees who have been there longer. Much is changing for them, too, and it is they who truly shape a firm’s welcome culture and the way newcomers experience the company! That means leaders have to focus on the whole team, rather than just new staff. Integration really means bringing what is already there together with the new – which means change for everyone in a team.
I myself was always one of the “old” ones as I only played for my SVW – but integrating new players is something I’m very familiar with! And after my soccer career, a couple of times, it was me who was the new one.