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Africa
Sandra Lukas is part of the management team at Rhenus Road Freight. Having started her career as a trainee, she has been part of the Rhenus Group for almost 25 years. She explains in an interview what characterises good management and how important diversity is for the success of a team.
Editorial department: What is your job description or what are your responsibilities within Rhenus Road Freight?
Mrs. Lukas: I’ve been part of the management team since the beginning of this year and I’m responsible for network management and operations within Rhenus Road Freight Germany. We centrally manage the networks and operational departments and therefore have a fairly broad variety of tasks: ranging from observing developments in local and long-distance transport operations to attending freight forwarding management groups and even various workshops. I’m also managing the operational part of a merger project at the moment and this involves bringing together our two business sites at Hilden and Düsseldorf.
Editorial department: What have been the important milestones in your career, which have paved the way for you to take up your current position?
Mrs. Lukas: I had the opportunity to move from Unna, where I held my first management position as the department manager for customer services, to the Rhenus headquarters in Holzwickede and I was in charge of the continuous improvement and services department there. We handled the adjustments required for standard and IT projects at new business sites, for example. The company placed a great deal of confidence in me at that time and I was able to use this opportunity as an important staging post in my development.
Another important point in my career involved being branch manager in Unna, a position that I shared with our current manager, Thilo Meutzner, from 2014 onwards. He was an excellent sparring partner at my side and I was not only able to continue developing at a professional, but at a personal level too.
Editorial department: About 30 percent of employees in the world of logistics are women. Do you see yourself as a role model for women in the sector?
Mrs. Lukas: I’ve never really viewed myself as a role model. Nevertheless, I think that women should have the courage to take on more – even if this involves assuming some responsibility. However, employers play an important role here too: it was important for me to be able to work in a flexible manner when I was a young mother, for example. Rhenus already enabled me to work from home as early as 2008.
In my view, a manager isn’t the best player on the pitch, but is the best trainer on the sideline.
Editorial department: What are the distinguishing features of a successful manager?
Mrs. Lukas: In my view, a manager isn’t the best player on the pitch, but is the best trainer on the sideline. It’s true that my employees receive clear instructions from me, but they can independently work out how they want to implement them. Mutual trust is simply very important in order to realise the potential in a team. A manager needs to appreciate every facet of his or her employees, both their specialist knowledge and the personal factors in their lives. After all, private challenges can have an effect on their work too. It’s only possible to find solutions that work well for the whole team in a relationship based on trust.
Editorial department: How important is diversity for the success of a team, in your view?
Mrs. Lukas: Diversity within a team and even within the entire company is enormously important. In my view, it’s crystal clear that each person is an individual and therefore also introduces very different skills to a team. However, I believe that Rhenus is diverse and global as a company too. We have business sites distributed all round the world and are constantly in touch with them – with the cultural and geographical aspects that then automatically become an integral part of our work. And above everything else, the Group has its informal system of values that help us support each other – and we practise them on a daily basis.