This essay delved into the new approach to leadership crucibles from the perspective of the emerging paradigm of complexity in the emerging XXI century, using theoretical sources and consultations with the authors, which allowed us to inquire about which Are they the new realities of the organizations in which we live? What elements characterize what we call leadership crucibles? And what new profiles of leaders are required to be consolidated? in today's organizations.
Abstract
In this rehearsal it was deepened on the new focus of the hearths of the low leadership the perspective of the emergent paradigm of the complexity, in the nascent XXI century, using for it the theoretical sources and the consultations to the authors, which allowed to investigate on Which the new realities of the organizations are in those that we live? What elements do they characterize what we call hearths of the leadership? and are How new profiles of leaders required them to go consolidating? in the organizations of nowadays.
Introduction
The new realities of the nascent century point, in effect, to the so-called age of knowledge, in which knowledge assumes the leading role in economic activity, as an essential raw material. This approach contemplates that things and people stop being a liability of the organization, to constitute its main asset.
In this new vision, administrative knowledge is also converted into an invaluable resource, due to the social and organizational demands that it contains, immersed in turn, in the need to have an efficient administration, where that individual is seen as active. main, not only for reasons of competitiveness or to be fashionable, but and above all, for reasons of survival and development with balance.
The demands for a new knowledge-based administration are increasing; and at the same time, the validity and timeliness of classical administration is questioned; because the new administration or rather the current one, seems to move away from the scientific-rationalist principles and from the bureaucratic-normative patterns that until recently constituted the support of successful organizations (Kliksberg, 1991; Giral, 1991). The clearest vision, or at least more evident, about the future is that uncertainty, complexity and dynamism will be permanent conditions for the direction of organizations.
For this reason, the challenge facing the science of current administration is to forge a type of management according to the organizational needs of tomorrow. That is, the theoretical knowledge that must build the necessary and sufficient scaffolds to explain and understand reality; and thus, in the field of praxis, being able to reduce the uncertainty associated with decision-making, consolidating actions that lead to the success of organizations.
The new approach tries to face the problem of business management from a new perspective, based on a renewed managerial profile, in which leadership appears as the main edge, and whose conditions force it to be proactive and not reactive, imaginative and creative more than pragmatic, and above all to have a holistic vision of things.
Leadership in 21st Century Organizations
A leader within 21st century organizations is one who sets his team in motion and energizes around the shared mission of the company; In other words, the leader strengthens in his team the belief that the achievement of the mission is possible; a fact that is fundamental for the life of the organization since people act according to their beliefs, because when you are truly convinced, you have a greater probability of achieving what you want, because you make the maximum effort to do so.
In this dynamisation process, it happens that people find great satisfaction in what they do, and that frustration is less, although the results that are achieved are not the most desired. Much greater frustration is when you feel or believe that something you want is impossible to achieve. On the other hand, as the effort is shared, secondary benefits can be found, among which it is possible to detail that the team knows each other more, new skills are developed and it is learned, with experience, how to do things better.
Maestres (2006), therefore, expresses that the main function of a leader is to ensure that the organization knows itself. In the same way, it states that it should be seen as a mirror of the process by which we know our competencies, our consumers, ourselves and also the reasons why we are in the business in which we are.
For their part, Bennis and Thomas (2004: 165) define experience as a melting pot, which is nothing more than “a transforming experience through which an individual acquires a new or different sense of identity”.
The Crucibles of Leadership
Based on this approach of the authors, the crucibles of leadership can take different forms. Some can present themselves as violent experiences, more prosaic episodes of self-doubt, among others; But whatever the nature, the truth is that true leaders have emerged from the strongest experiences, sure of themselves and their purposes.
In a study published in 2002 by leadership researchers Bennis and Thomas on the experiences of leaders (crucibles), the authors suggest that one of the key indicators of authentic leadership comes from the ability to learn from even the most profound experiences. negative. “An excellent leader is a kind of phoenix rising from the ashes of adversity stronger and more committed than ever” (Bennis and Thomas, 2004: 161).
It is also important to reinforce that things are changing very significantly in the 21st century and that it is not known with certainty where we will end up, but it is part of the task of these new emerging leaders to prepare to address the new realities of organizations in which that we live, in addition to visualizing the elements that characterize what we call “new economy of knowledge and innovation, and being in the face of changes and uncertainty, to maintain certainty amid uncertainty, of organizational complexity.
Successful leaders in the face of uncertainty
The changes that are occurring in all social settings, including organizational ones, in the face of the prevailing uncertainty, mean that business leaders are always valuing not only their position in the market, but also, from a philosophical and conceptual point of view, Keep reviewing the foundations of your organizational creed in order to constantly try to answer the following question: What must a leader do to be successful?
These changes represent a great challenge for leaders, on the one hand, because they must learn to manage very specific realities, and on the other, because they must assume an unwavering will to design and create new organizational scenarios that lead to success.
Leadership and complexity
It has been said that Management (Viedna, 1992; Hickman, 1992) has evolved on a path of search for principles that at the time have made the management of companies effective. Along this path, various approaches have been taken, various contributions have been made and various executive profiles have been outlined, of a normative, quantitative, behavioral, systemic nature, among others; all of them with rationalist criteria.
Now, the search for a new management and a new leadership, in addition to being based on complex management techniques, or in a supra-technical direction, that is, in the formation of a subject or subjects with creative, communication, interrelation skills, identified with the values of modernity, competitiveness, innovation, excellence, which also has a great vision and above all its own authentic leadership style, also requires a new human approach to managing, to retake values and ethics, and to be able to face adversity (crucibles).
In this new reality, where this leading manager must live, complexity is immersed, which is nothing more than the essence of nature and its phenomena.
From an etymological point of view the word complexity is of Latin origin, it comes from “complectere”, whose root “plectere” means to braid, to link. It refers to the work of the construction of baskets that consists of slicing a circle joining the beginning with the end of the twigs. The addition of the prefix "com" adds the sense of the duality of two opposite elements that are intimately linked, but without canceling their duality. In Castilian the word "complex" appears in 1625, with its variant "complexo", it comes from the Latin "complexus", which means "that encompasses", participle of the verb "complector" which means I embrace, embrace.
Complexity is, at first glance, a fabric of inseparably united heterogeneous constituents, which present the paradoxical relationship of the one and the multiple. It is effectively the fabric of events, actions, interactions, feedbacks, determinations, hazards, that constitute our phenomenal world. Thus, complexity is presented with the tangled, the inextricable, the disorder, the ambiguity and the uncertainty. Today complexity is our context. Its appearance in the sciences allowed a shift in the understanding of this term, which even led to the need to rethink the very dynamics of knowledge and understanding.
In which to do managerial, people and organizations move in full uncertainty, advancing based on trial and error, based on the principle of the rational, which is not capable of accepting uncertainty as part of certainty. For this reason, expectations are never met, since they are dynamic and are exposed to future events that modify them.
Behind the emotional support of organizations, there are expectations that are not satisfied. The new leadership faces this complexity, and it is this complexity that gives rise to the phenomenon of leadership itself; introducing what is now known as situational leadership; which is assumed in the face of a given complexity until it is overcome.
Conclusions
The emerging paradigm of complexity, which comes from the vanguard of contemporary physics, and contemplates the universe, along with the physical, biological, psychological and social systems; as a dynamic and complex framework of relationships between interdependent subsystems; From the organizations' perspective, it can be translated into the changing framework of relationships that coexist in them: relationships between managers and knowledge workers; relationships with customers and suppliers; relationships with the society served known as social responsibility; relationships with the past and the future (changes, flexibility), among others.
In this framework, the leadership function again shines as a strange attractor, capable of creating order in the chaos to which open systems tend, as outlined by the second law of thermodynamics. This is possible, because those leaders come from the chaos of complexity (crucibles) and have managed to survive in and of them.
Bibliography
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Master, Raúl. The leadership of the future. In: IESA debate magazine. pp. 36-39. Vol. 1l. Nº 1. January - March 2006. Editions IESA. Caracas.
