5 June 2020
On 26th May 2020, ULI NEXT UK Chairs James Lai and Rob Mello had a ‘Transition to Leadership’ series discussion with Juergen Fenk, SIGNA Group Executive Board, CEO of SIGNA Innovations AG and Chairman of ULI Europe. The event was the second in the series, which is open to all ULI NEXT members across Europe.
Juergen Fenk’s career leading up to his current position as an executive of SIGNA Group, a private real estate developer and investor covering Germany, Switzerland and Austria, is a journey of an individual with experiences in various sectors in diverse global locations. This widened Juergen’s horizons to become a leader with critical insight and core values to operate businesses.
Juergen shared his own experiences with ULI NEXT, focusing on number of core values which he learnt and believes, on the journey he took through his career development.
On his career departure, Juergen expressed to have an open and flexible approach for new opportunities arising throughout the career development – expressing that “Career Happens”. For him, his career journey was able to take place in Europe and US with various roles, as he was open and flexible to where he works, and who he works with. Such opportunities were also broadened for him to as he used the ULI platform to widen his network and to grow his global exposure.
Talking about career development, Juergen advises to choose role models and mentors to learn from but also to have an awareness on who to avoid – it is important to choose your style. Juergen recommended to proactively look for someone who can help you to build your career, pointing out that the importance of building different and diverse perspectives by choosing role models and mentors who are in the same field as what you do, but also in a very different field as what you do. His philosophy on mentorship is to help people to get into the market that you are in, passing good experiences to the next generation.
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For those who are entering leadership, he advises to trust your instincts, to listen and help people to grow responsibilities, and to be humble as people will appreciate it and will “pay this back”. Juergen believes that the focus of the leader is on building vision and strategy, rather than implementation. And it is important to be a hands-on manager, allowing people to do the best at what they are good at – seeing yourself as the captain to ensure people are at the right place at the right time. As a leader, he believes that communication is key to encourage participation of team members, for each member to feel included, and to feel proud to be part of the organization.
Juergen also shared his experience during the Credit Crisis when he was leading a team of 120 people in NYC, which is one of his toughest challenges that he had so far, and emphasized the importance of being human – despite the problem that you are in as a leader, you need to make sure to take care of other people and people dependent on you. The importance of the human element in business is one of his core values, which is reflected upon his advice to be generous on mistakes of others, not to destroy their confidence but to build trust with team members.
By the end of the conversation, Juergen left impression that he is an accessible and an open minded person with many different facets, as he is currently being coached by his younger team members on new technologies for Prop Tech, and ending the conversation saying “Meeting a lot of people is fun”.