"Authority and leadership are above power and management capacity when we want to generate a synergy in our work team in a solid and sustainable way."
Every Manager must have the ability to effectively lead his work team if he wants to maintain synergy and motivation in the medium and long term. The effectiveness of applied leadership is directly linked to the authority that the person called to lead a team is capable of building.
What hinders the construction of a solid authority is the non-differentiation in the application of transcendental concepts such as management, leadership, power and the term authority itself. These four terms are often confused in their vision and practical application. Regarding management, it is important to consider that people or officials of an organization are not managed, human beings are not managed. What is managed are inventories, resources, customer orders, among other things. You manage things, and you lead people. Leadership can be defined as the art of influencing people so that they can give their best effort to achieve the objectives that the organization has set for itself.. In the above definition one of the keywords is "art", which can be defined as a learned or acquired skill. Leadership is influencing others, through a series of skills that everyone can learn and develop if they articulate the appropriate desire for appropriate actions. Appropriate actions have to do directly with emphasizing how to achieve the mental involvement of each of the members of the organization, directly linked to the relationship capacity developed by the call to lead.
Max Weber emphasizes the difference between power and authority, definitions that are still in force today and have a lot of applicability when talking about leading a team. Weber defines power as the ability to force or coerce someone, despite disagreeing, do your will because of your position or your strength. Many managers use their power, establishing penalties for not fulfilling responsibilities and goals set for the people under their charge, which makes officials do their tasks out of fear rather than out of involvement, conviction or pleasure. In turn, Weber defines authority as the art of getting people to voluntarily do what you want due to your personal influence.Authority consists of getting people to do the manager's will voluntarily, that is, because they have been asked to do so and not because they have been threatened but they do. It is important to emphasize that power is defined as a capacity, while authority is defined as an art.Exercising power does not require intelligence, skill or courage, just as it is not meritorious in management. However, displaying a level of authority over people requires the development and application of additional skills. You can be in a position of power in an organization and not have authority, and vice versa. You can have power by occupying a high position, inheriting a lot of money or having many influential acquaintances, this does not apply to authority. Authority has to do with who you are as a person, with your character and with the influence that you have built on people.
A manager must build his authority if he wishes to maintain a synergistic and motivated work team in the medium and long term. Using only acquired power usually works initially to achieve short-term goals, but tends to wear down relationships in the medium and long term. This is not to say that sometimes it is not necessary to exercise power, but this should be simply sporadic in order to redirect critical deviations in organizations. Power must be used because there is no choice but to draw on the more traditional means of education such as firing a very underperforming employee or formal attention. The important thing is that when there is no alternative but to exercise power, the leader must make it clear why she has been forced to do so. And it is that if we have to resort to the exercise of power it is because the authority has failed or in the worst case we do not have authority.
Every organization is a social entity, that is, it is made up of people, and when we work with them pretending that they do certain things, we generally do not find two aspects, the tasks that we must enforce and the human relationship. It is easy for a manager to throw the balance in favor of accomplishing tasks and neglect human relationships. If we concentrate only on tasks, we will find ourselves in the medium term with high staff turnover, lack of quality service, low level of commitment, low level of trust, among other things. But also, if we focus more on human relations, the organization will not meet the established goals. For such a situationA manager to have an effective leadership must build his authority on the basis of the achievement of the assigned tasks through the promotion of human relationships. Organizations, teams, families work when human relationships work. Therefore, a leader must build solid relationships that functions within their organizations, and this must be based on the search for the satisfaction of the needs of each of its members as we do with our clients, this includes officials and employees. shareholders.
In conclusion, leadership depends directly on our ability to solidly build our authority, and not on our power. You should seek to lead a work team, through the voluntary acceptance of the Manager's authority by the team. A manager must lead and not manage her work team, this includes striking a balance between the assignment of tasks and human relations. Human relations within the organization will be solid when the satisfaction of the needs of all its members is known and sought effectively. Authority, and leadership itself, are above power and management capacity when we want to generate a synergy in our work team in a solid and sustainable way.
