What We Expect from our Leaders

• Leaders as role models

Our leaders and their teams should make a sustainable contribution to BASF’s success and to safeguarding its future. This is why we want to strengthen leadership impact. We understand impactful leadership as leaders that serve as role models by developing and implementing business strategies in line with our corporate values. They should also have a positive impact on shaping day-to-day business, mobilizing employees and fostering their development. These expectations are part of the standard global nomination criteria for leadership candidates. Our leadership culture is founded on a global Competency Model, which sets out specific behavioral standards, as well as our global Code of Conduct. We offer our leaders learning and development opportunities for each phase of their career, as well as various formats that enable them to share knowledge and learn from one another. Global, regional and local offerings are optimally coordinated.

Regular feedback plays an important role in the development of leaders. In 2018, we tested new digital tools for providing direct, timely feedback in a number of business and functional units. This complements BASF’s long-established Global Leadership Feedback tool, where leaders receive feedback from their employees, managers, colleagues and customers on different aspects of their leadership conduct, and derive conclusions and activities from this in a follow-up process. In the coming years, we will introduce additional feedback tools. The use of these tools is binding in order to further enhance our strong feedback culture and promote personal development among our leaders on a regular basis.

Leaders and digital transformation

Leaders play a special role in driving forward digitalization. We offer training and other resources to prepare them and help them inspire their teams about the digital transformation. One example is the BASF Leadership Camp held in the fall of 2018, where leaders from all of the regions came together to discuss topics such as the role of leaders and the challenges of the digital transformation facing them, as well as the possibilities of digital project management. Leaders were also given the opportunity to participate in a modular course with cross-company digitalization projects. The program was run under the auspices of the Digital Academy, a network of large companies and the Mannheim Business School, which aims to drive forward the digital transformation in Germany.