On several occasions I have asked myself what type of leadership provides us with the greatest lessons in matters of practice, and what elements I can return to develop a detailed thesis on leadership styles and tools for organizations. In my work as a facilitator and trainer, I have come across different types of leaders. We often meet the mass leader, the automatic leader, the academic leader, the Methodist, the practical, the active, the passive, the problematic, the individualist, in short. In business, presence of leaders does not mean proactive leadership. This is because leadership always presents highly articulated and defined facets. This is common for specialized people, however, in some business environments, it is difficult to form work teams,taking into account the different and irremediable styles of leadership.
What is leadership? When we think of highly qualified and successful leaders, we think of people like General Collin Powell, who led the American troops during the Gulf War; or Bill Gates, the Harvard failure who founded Microsoft and became the richest man in the world.
Surely you can name one or two people, in your own profession, who are successful leaders, visionary people and who have an almost intangible facility to perform any task and to inspire their subordinates.
Leaders are able to set a goal, persuade others to help them achieve that goal, and lead their team to victory.
Well, then we can define leadership as the characteristic of an individual who creates a generated commitment, and gives credibility to the people around him. A leader is one who does what is appropriate for his ability, direction, action and opinion.
Great legends and role models emerge from great leaders. Who has not heard of the military exploits of Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte or George Washington, or of the business exploits of Bill Gates, Donald Trump or Carlos Slim.
Generally, when we talk about leadership, we find a positive meaning of a person, or with great elements in an organization, however, there are many types of leadership that, far from taking proactive actions, trigger negative elements within the work team. A very clear case is that of soccer stars.
It seems incredible, but some teams have the most qualified leaders in the world in technical and football matters, however, they are far from being a powerful, united and winning team.
We can easily mention teams such as Real Madrid, considered the most expensive sports team in history, or Club América de México, the Dallas Cowboys or the Anaheim Ducks in ice hockey.
Who could even doubt the technical and tactical capabilities of each of its leaders, and their incredible physical abilities.
Currently, resources are being allocated to the interior of the organizations, in order to detect problematic leaderships or those incapable of generating integration with the work group.
Returning to the idea of the millionaire team, with poor results and no success, we can affirm that many leaders who essentially possess the skills and knowledge necessary to appear as leaders, are often unable to show a committed and cooperative attitude with the work team.
This could well be a logical consequence of the stardom effect, a situation in which the leader loses all perspective and terrain in which he could well incorporate his leadership in favor of the integral development of the team, but which, on the contrary, triggers extremely unfavorable situations. This type of leadership has begun to be called retroactive, since it generates conflicting interests, on the one hand between the one who delimited the initial objectives and on the other against the leader, who essentially possesses the necessary skills and characteristics, in technical or technical matters. practices, however it lacks the attitude required to face team challenges.
"Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, one must also do".
Goethe
