Carglass Germany, the leading supplier of replacement auto windscreens in Germany, has been placed in the top 10 of a prestigious competition of leadership initiatives held for the German-speaking world by the University of St Gallen, Switzerland.

Carglass Germany entered the annual St Gallen Leadership Awards for the first time last year; the results were announced in June this year. There were more than 50 entrants in the competition.

The winners of the top three places in the competition were two major German companies (Bosch Bamberg Werk and Lufthansa Technik) and a Swiss hospital company (Spital Thurgau AG). The ranking of the other seven winners in the top 10 of the competition was not given by the judges, but Carglass Germany was among them.

Carglass Germany has been applying the Legitimate Leadership Model for the past six years.

In a statement after the results of the competition were announced, Carglass Germany said (our translation): “At Carglass®, growth that is sustainable is called Care and Growth, and means that all corporate decisions are made with care and with an eye on people and nature. We are very pleased that this type of leadership was able to convince not only us, but also the judges of the St Gallen Leadership Awards of the University of St Gallen – and thank you very much for the top 10 placement! We would also like to congratulate the top three … we feel we are in great company here!”

The application process involved completing a formal document which included information on how the leadership initiative affected performance and what made it special, and then further input via an online structured interview, and a final assessment by a jury which was made up of human resources scientists, managers and professionals.

Carglass Germany ascribes some of its current business success to the application of the Legitimate Leadership Model. It is the most financially successful of all the Carglass subsidiaries in Europe, and the second most successful in the world, after the US. All the international Carglass subsidiaries are owned by Belron International Ltd.

In its submission for the leadership competition, Carglass Germany pointed out that a special feature of its application of the Legitimate Leadership Model was that after initial input from Legitimate Leadership, it had implemented the processes completely internally, using internal resources (although with guidance from Legitimate Leadership). It also ascribed the success of its implementation to the fact that the CEO and top executive of Carglass Germany are fully invested in the Legitimate Leadership approach, so that there is a consistent culture and message throughout the organisation.

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