We call Leadership the ability to influence others, transform behaviors and, as a consequence, promote action; This ability to influence others is a very special characteristic that identifies leaders; It is a personal touch that is based on the essence of the person and that undoubtedly becomes the main input to work with others, whom we traditionally call followers.
Undoubtedly the characteristic of the leader or the essence of the leader is a differentiator that attracts the attention of others and that through it deep emotions and feelings are generated that transmit energy, understanding and passion to others, which in turn guarantee action individual and / or group and allow the achievement of personal and / or organizational objectives.
In general terms, we all have the possibility of becoming leaders or followers of someone else or someone else, or no one; If our decision is to become followers or simply not to follow anyone, we can give up the possibility of achieving our goals or objectives; But if our decision goes further and we want to become leaders, we must go deeper into our essence and the personal touch that we want to develop and transmit to others so that without the need for any method or artifice they decide to follow us and support our projects or ideas.
Developing the personal touch that can become attractive to others is based on “Being Different”; And that is only achieved through the creativity that the leader applies in those things he does, in the way of expressing his ideas; but above all in the way of solving the problems it faces, understanding by problem everything that involves making decisions.
Leadership is based on the future, so one of the main competences of the Leader must be the facility to make decisions that reduce uncertainty and that in contrast to it guarantee certainty of what may happen.
When writing on this topic; The first thing that comes to mind is one of Albert Einstein's most famous phrases " Imagination is more important than knowledge "; It seems easy, but applying this phrase in real life is more complicated than "we imagine"; Of course, it is much easier to turn to our memory and base our actions and decisions on the knowledge and experiences that we have accumulated over time and that we have validated many times through the knowledge and experiences of others and better still, if It is through the knowledge and experiences of those who by seniority or hierarchy are ahead of us (parents, teachers, etc.)
Our paradigms condition our way of thinking and with it our way of acting. Justifying our paradigms consumes most of our energy and resources; breaking these paradigms is not easy at all, but in the end it is a decision, not breaking them is very comfortable and avoids unnecessary wear and tear, so most of us very often prefer the second scenario "to accommodate ourselves".
The Leader breaks paradigms, through the impact that his creative thoughts cause on others, when he transmits them and consequently generates different emotions that promote action and guarantee the fulfillment of objectives.
Leadership confronts the needs and wants of the majority of people; it becomes a philosophy of life, very contrary to reality; While most of us seek stability, the leader promotes instability, seeks to break tranquility and do different things that "move the floor", that revolutionize our way of thinking and that allows us to change, modify, transform or simply CREATE new ways of doing things and achieving personal and / or organizational goals.
It is important to note that using creativity to achieve goals is not exclusive to the leader; It is through the leader that the development and application of creativity as a general means of achieving success must be fostered; The role of the leader is to convey to others knowledge about the need for why and why to use creativity and above all to encourage its application, clearly understanding the new needs of contemporary people and organizations, but beyond that, appreciating the new opportunities to use people's talent and potential, and thereby CREATE a better present and a spectacular future.
At the organizational level, the fundamentals of leadership apply in the same way; But to make it effective, it is necessary to change the structural scheme of bureaucratic departments, for efficient companies that are based on the aggressiveness of the application of innovation and creativity to satisfy the needs and desires of customers.
The departments structurally designed under feudal schemes must change to become service areas (entrepreneurship), which are based on criteria for generating value for the company in general, with emphasis on customers and their future, which without a doubt the challenge of the great leaders of our day.
The fundamentals of Organizational Leadership; refer to the management of change and are focused on the evolution of the needs and desires of customers, becoming inputs for the development of new products and services that can satisfy new business opportunities, developing new practices that in turn they become theories that will provide new elements for the development of current societies.
The leader's challenge is to guarantee that the traditional structural differences are changed by the development of different talents and complementary competencies that guarantee that the organization is different in the way and substance of its administration.
Being efficient is not a matter of structure, nor of clearly established functions, nor of technically designed processes. Being efficient is a matter of a generalized leadership approach without a position name that limits action.
Traditional leadership is disappearing; For many years, organizations were more concerned with designing and developing rigid, bureaucratic structures full of functional positions based on specialization and feudal management systems, where efficiency was punished by excess controls. These organizations paid tribute to the organization charts and the norms or policies that guaranteed the solidity of the structure and with it the tranquility that the hierarchy granted to the occupants of the positions, without going into analyzing their functionality.
The world evolved and within that evolution the demands of the customers have also done and continue to do so, the needs and / or desires of the customers are transformed very quickly and they seek to anticipate what sooner or later will become a fashion and which is accompanied by its own performance indicators, which today are designed by clients and not by traditional Managers.
One of the main demands of the contemporary world is agility or speed for decision-making, and this is only achieved if our value chains are clear and simple, if they respond to the mental structures of the clients and not to the structures organizational (organization charts) governed by tradition and custom; But above all this, it will only be achieved if the style of organizational leadership that predominates is based on contemporary mental schemes and not on the traditional mental schemes that history has instilled in us.
Within this new organizational scheme, hierarchy is replaced by creativity and functions are replaced by availability to act. Clients are increasingly inclined to those companies (people) who solve them and not to those companies (people) whose bureaucratic mentality is entangled between forms, procedures, controls and regulations that only hinder the decision-making process and the opportunity to understand how the world continues to evolve.
Sometimes from within the organization it is impossible to see what is happening outside, so it is important to break the traditional schemes and go out to observe this evolution, whose generational foundation brings with it needs, desire, expectations and interests very contrary to those who we are used to it.
Today more than ever, Leadership and Human Talent Development Management are accompanied by opportunities for those who want to see beyond the organization chart, beyond the structure, beyond the hierarchy and above all beyond the name of the position..
It is very difficult to think of "Be competitive" if the statement does not include leadership as part of the business development project.
Large organizational structures have changed to flat and agile structures that facilitate the decision-making process and thereby offer products and / or services to clients under the standards and conditions that the clients themselves define.
Leadership does not refer only to the way of directing people with an operational mentality (traditional followers); refers to the way of directing Human Talent, refers to and applies to influence and transform all mental processes that include the design and development of practical solutions to the needs and desires of customers, based on the quality of information, the which can and should be observed and used in a simple and permanent way, which facilitates the process of understanding and generating customer satisfaction, through key factors such as:
A) Timely Information
B) Agility in the Processes
C) Understanding of needs and / or desires
D) Development of new applications
E) Execution
F) Feedback
G) Development of new solutions (business intelligence)
H) Research and analysis
The competitiveness of our organizations and even more so of our executives (development of human capital), is based today on new competencies (business or personal), in which information management is key to understanding the needs of the future business and above all the competitive advantages that we can offer to a changing and increasingly demanding world.
In this sense, it is also important to consider that "There is no miraculous technology that can save an obsolete Management"; Therefore, both the development of information systems and the development of intellectual capital go hand in hand and cannot be separated, so the importance of the issue is even greater at professional levels that require new ways of leading and whose foundation It is undoubtedly the strategic focus that we must give to what we do in our different positions of functional responsibility, which without a doubt today more than ever should be transformed and become positions of strategic responsibility.
In conclusion; Contemporary leadership cannot be exercised within companies with traditional organizational structures; Let's break the structural paradigms and let contemporary leadership "LEAD"; Let's not limit it with outdated policies and norms, let's not frame it in the traditional paradigms of organization-based management.
