Exercising managerial responsibility implies challenging yourself daily in the face of the organizational challenges posed by the reality of the market and recognizing that your management can give better results, that your work will be rated by the parties based on the evidence of success you obtain and not by the number of hours he works, by the profitability generated and not by the reports delivered, by the new businesses and clients he brought to the organization and not by the number of problems he solved, by the growth he had in financial terms and not by the times he was late from the office.
Being a manager, with a vocation as a leader, also implies identifying the factors that generate mistrust within the company, recognizing the elements that add value and those that produce division in the processes, motivating those who, with their attitude, contribute to achieving the objectives proposed and make sometimes painful and difficult decisions but necessary to maintain and preserve the image and reputation of the company before clients and suppliers. Being a manager goes beyond an assigned position, it is the opportunity to design and implement a management model that is recognized and valued by everyone around you.
Leadership is an attribute that has been talked about a lot in the organizational literature and that is established as paradigmatic in the action of those who have the responsibility to guide and take the reins of the organization, to formulate or comply with the organizational strategies that ensure permanence and growth of the company in the near future. Being a leader is a personal competence that is urgent and required by all those who make up the work team and who await a clear guideline from the arrival point, the leader becomes a benchmark for all those called, for all those who recognize day by day they need to know where the organization is headed.
It is necessary to remember here, referring to Tom Peters, that the responsibility of the leader is to change the rules before another does, to be purposeful and that it is better to be questioned for doing than for remaining motionless without dispelling the ambiguity and uncertainty generated by not identify the factors that announce the arrival of new times, perhaps stormy and risky for the permanence of the organization in an increasingly competitive and less compassionate market.
We have listened to exhaustion perhaps, that yesterday's successes do not assure tomorrow's, and yet we want, on many occasions, to take refuge in the lukewarm waters of mediocrity, settling to meet the objectives at their lower limit and letting things happen. It is possible that sometimes we are tempted to hide our heads like the ostrich and wait for the crisis to pass, finally on other occasions this formula has worked. However, the reality is that there are decisions that do not wait and that it is even necessary to take risks to regain lost leadership, personal, team or organizational leadership.
The managers of the areas, as well as those of the organizations, have a responsibility that goes beyond day to day and is to design action plans capable of motivating and involving team members in the search and finding differentiating results.
For many years the administration gurus have led us down the paths of metaphors, business histories, complex and simple concepts, certifiable and non-certifiable management systems, theories that go from A up to Z, of management and administration models, etc…, in such a way that perhaps our library became the recipe book of formulas, some magical and others helped with high-value software in order to find the remedy for problems that we identify in companies. We have gone through a history full of winning legends, of companies that have applied these models and managed to become a paradigmatic benchmark for business management,However, reality is responsible every day to show us that perhaps in this menu we have not included all the options or perhaps, on the contrary, it has many things and what was intended to be a simple solution ended up becoming a complex experience that generates resistance and rejection in the organization.
Organizational turbulence is an almost required premise in today's companies, navigating through the storm of competition and the hope of finding the blue ocean appears as a possibility on the horizon. The organization must emerge with talents full of initiatives and trusts that its leaders will recognize the best options to advance towards the achievement of the strategies proposed as winners.
Managerial leadership therefore requires some characteristics that nurture management in the company but also in personal life, implies the ability to reinvent yourself by recognizing the key characteristics of the process of personal growth. Below I propose a decalogue that will surely be incomplete but at least will be the starting point for all those leaders who feel fatigued along the way and would like to stop to take a second breath that allows them to discover that they can and have a lot to give in the daily life that corresponds to face.
As I say, it is possible that many more qualities, competences, values or factors are missing, but it is a beginning that will surely serve to review and recompose what we recognize that we can do better.
The leader who reinvents himself is a person who is characterized and identified by being:
1. Integrity: can be defined as a person who does the right thing even if it is difficult and who is consistent between what he thinks and what he does, his social behavior leads him to recognize that the private and the public are two different but not contradictory instances and that therefore what is said in private can be repeated in public. He is worth what he is and puts all his potential at the service of others in such a way that he becomes a benchmark for his work team, facing new scenarios with the certainty that his actions will be guided by appropriate behaviors.
2. Respectful: Its scope has to do with the ability to recognize and value the differences between the people who confirm the team, the leader who does not attack or run over different ways of thinking or opinions that do not resemble his own. Respect attends to the understanding of the characteristics that make us different, to understand that we may not agree but the behaviors must adjust to the parameters that have been socially or culturally established.
3. Able: It is understood that a leader possesses knowledge and skills that allow him to offer support to team members with his performance; it refers to the competence that the leader develops in specific situations. The capacities will be of great impact to the extent that they are used at the required time. This aspect is crucial since on many occasions we trust in the leader's capabilities and he disappoints because he does not use them at the moment and in the required circumstances.
4. Talented: This refers to the fact that you have the opportunity to demonstrate your ability to make the most of the knowledge and skills of the people who make up your work team, place them where they can give superior performance, and do the necessary follow-up to obtain the results. expected. A talented leader has the potential to recognize his strengths and weaknesses in the face of the different challenges that arise in his management on a daily basis, establishes routines that allow solving the urgent and important, and develops strategies aimed at planning the activities required in his position.
5. Humble: The leader has a self-concept of himself that allows him to recognize and identify the borders of his abilities and talents, puts his skills at the service of others and contributes generously without expecting that his contribution will be exalted as a determining factor by the team.. Humility is the silence that allows you to listen to others in your context, it is the possibility that the leader offers to remove the pride that often leads to failure for organizations, it is to understand that others have something valuable to say, that competence can also teach and from which you must learn every day.
6. Communicator: Recognizes that everyone in the team must know and know where the area or company is headed, creates spaces where everyone can express their opinions and establishes mechanisms that allow everyone to know the progress and difficulties in developing projects and tasks of the work team. Being a communicating leader is an opportunity to develop assertiveness as a differentiating factor in the interpersonal relationship.
7. Innovative: Leadership always requires someone capable of imagining the future that has not yet arrived but that it is possible to build. Propose new scenarios to obtain better results, enhance capacities and generate alternatives to take advantage of the new available technologies in the best way. This leader interprets the new realities and transforms them to benefit the expected results in management.
8. Visionary: If the leader is characterized by something, according to many specialist authors on the subject, it is precisely because of the ability he has to take a “helicopter look”, that is, to distance himself from reality and be able to have a holistic look In this way and in this way being able to recognize the factors that support or hinder the achievement of the team's objectives, he is a champion of change because he is capable, not only of imagining the future, but of seeing it from the present reality.
9. Persistent: It is the ability to understand that the path is not without difficulties and that it is necessary to insist despite the unexpected defeats and the unscheduled failures. Success is achieved after much effort, public recognition is a consequence not a cause, surrender cannot be in the leader's vocabulary, it may be necessary to stop, review the route, adjust decisions, change strategy or design new ones. alternatives but the arrival point must remain. In this sense, it is essential to strengthen what (as a point of arrival) and make flexible how the strategy will be developed.
10. Prioritize: Finally, and equally important, the organizational leader establishes a management model that allows him to recognize the best way to direct his efforts in the face of the pending issues that arise every day in the development of his work. Identify the topics that add value over those that generally represent a distraction. At this point it is necessary to recognize that the activities must be located in the differentiating relationship so that we can also optimize and strengthen the delegation processes to other team members who, due to their training, experience and / or disposition, will be a support in the execution of the tasks and a motivator in the expected performance.
I hope that these ideas help us to identify if the leadership that we exercise requires to be empowered, revised or at least encouraged, there are many occasions when perhaps we lose momentum and frustration makes us think that nothing else needs to be done and it is precisely in that moment when we can say the opposite and use our criteria to assume the decalogue seen as an opportunity to discover new horizons for and in the organization in which we currently find ourselves.
