One of the topics of main interest and of greatest debate in business and academic spheres revolves around the management of people and work teams in the challenging conditions posed by the new century: globalized scenarios, ultra-competitive markets and workers of the knowledge. In this framework, various questions are generated: what are the knowledge and skills that a good manager should possess? How to manage the productivity of knowledge workers? Is it the same to lead, manage or lead?
In this article we will develop a conceptual approach that seeks to provide a comprehensive answer to these questions. Based on two decades of professional experience as an organizational consultant and coach, I have developed together with my team this work approach that has allowed us to successfully accompany managerial development processes that made it possible to improve productivity and business competitiveness.
This conceptual approach is based on integrating the "systemic dimension" (the context and characteristics of the organization and the team) with the "personal dimension" (the competencies that the driver must develop).
Management and leadership:
“The 'era of performance' means that we are going to see
leadership emerge as the most important element,
the attribute of greatest demand and least supply”
Tom Peters
Many times terms such as management, management, leadership or leadership are used synonymously. We will try to clearly define the meaning we assign to each of these concepts from our conceptual approach.
The manager is someone who fulfills a "function" within an organization. The function gives an account of the responsibilities of the person in the position he occupies and is specified through the objectives to be met and the activities that correspond to him. When the organization gives a person formal power to perform a function, it determines to whom he must report and who functionally depends on him.
For its part, the "role" is the particular way in which each person exercises the function that was established. The role is not predetermined but arises from the way in which the individual embodies the position he performs, from the personal imprint that he gives to the function he performs.
In our opinion, every person who occupies a leadership or management position, to effectively perform his function, must exercise two different types of roles, but absolutely interrelated to each other: the role of administrator or manager and the role of leader. The two roles are necessary, complementary and interdependent. There is no more important role than the other.
The role of administrator (management) is related to setting objectives, preparing budgets, managing resources, establishing stages, planning and implementing the actions necessary to achieve goals and control results. When the manager assumes that people are just one more resource that she has to manage (a human resource), she develops her role exclusively through her managerial role. In this case, compliance can be expected from their subordinates, but hardly motivation, commitment and involvement with the task. This is the typical traditional manager.
This is a learning process that companies are currently going through and it is in this sense that Warren Bennis affirms that most organizations are overmanaged and under-led. Along the same lines of analysis, John Kotter argues that " most US corporations have excess management and lack of leadership."
Towards a new leadership paradigm:
“Being a leader means, above all, having the opportunity
to make an important difference in the lives
of those who allow leaders to lead”
Max De Pree
Have you ever wondered why there are so many theories, so many books and so many leadership courses and so few leaders? The answer I have found is that the greatest impediment to leadership development is our conception of it.
The traditional view conceives the leader as a charismatic individual who has innate and extraordinary characteristics, and who, based on these particularities, conducts the leadership of his "followers". What is distinctive about their actions is that they influence others and determine their behavior. 90% of the current leadership literature focuses its focus on the topic of influence. This view of leadership, founded on the “ paradigm of influence ”, implies the belief that leading is “making the other do what I want”. The failure of this model is due to the fact that it is nothing more than a modernized and sophisticated version of the traditional concept of "command-control", where it is intended to change the order by influence.
In my opinion, this issue has no solution until we change our notion of leadership. That is why I propose to think of leadership from a personal and organizational "development paradigm", understanding leadership as a leadership style that is committed to the development of its people. As Tom Peters says: " Leaders don't create followers, they create leaders."
Leadership behaviors:
“A leader is better when people hardly know he exists.
Of a good leader, who speaks little,
when his work is done, his goal is accomplished,
people will say: we did this ”
Lao-Tse
Other approaches to leadership, which sound great from theory but make practice difficult, seek to define typologies of the characteristics or styles of the “good leader”. From our perspective, there is no such thing as a “good leader” since the same person can act from leadership on some occasions and not on others. Leadership always has to do with action and therefore we can define behaviors that can be learned, observed and evaluated.
From this conception we characterize five basic responsibilities that define the actions to be carried out by every person who assumes leadership from the leadership and who conceives this role from the development paradigm:
1. Build a Shared Vision
One of the implicit commitments that any person who is related to others from leadership assumes is to generate and agree on a Vision that assigns meaning and values to the daily actions that they carry out jointly. Antoine de Saint Exupery expresses this concept with the force and forcefulness of metaphor, he says: « If you want to build a ship, don't start by looking for wood, cutting boards or distributing the work. It first evokes in men and women the longing for the free and wide sea.
2. Delegate power and generate responsibility
When leading from leadership, it goes from “delegating tasks” to “delegating power”, from establishing and controlling actions to defining and agreeing on objectives to be achieved. It seeks to mobilize the collective potential in such a way that all members commit to contribute their knowledge and energy in the achievement of shared objectives. In this way, the task of the driver is not to give orders and demand discipline but to transfer power (empowerment) so that each one can contribute their capacity and knowledge, generating value to the task. Who does not grant power and grants autonomy, cannot claim responsibility and commitment, since both are sides of the same coin.
3. Generate synergy and team spirit
To manage knowledge and collective initiative, work areas must be organized where it is possible to exchange and complement the diverse knowledge, where it is possible to think and act interdependently, and coordinate tasks, roles and processes based on the achievement of the established objectives..
It is the responsibility of the leadership to develop a team spirit and a cooperative interrelation style that generates a sense of belonging and enables collective action that is coordinated and complemented effectively in order to generate value for the organization and the client.
4. Facilitate the development of potential
The action of developing does not only presuppose training, instructing or teaching something, but serving as a guide and inspiration for the team members to unfold their potential and give the best of themselves. This implies supporting them to take on new challenges, accompanying and guiding their professional career and helping them to exceed their performance levels.
There are circumstances in which the development of people implies that those who lead from leadership must assume the commitment to facilitate their learning and change processes. In this sense, leadership means playing the role of coach with your people. In these cases, the leader / coach must face a process oriented to the development of people's potentialities, destined to unblock the aspects that hinder their capacity for action or hinder the achievement of the proposed objectives.
5. Emotionally predispose
One of the fundamental and non-delegable actions of leadership is to emotionally predispose, to create the emotional and bonding conditions between individuals so that an emotional climate is generated that enables everyone to display their potentiality and capacity for action. When the commitment, motivation and ability to add value that each individual and the team as a whole can contribute is valued, an organizational culture based on the emotionality of trust and enthusiasm must be generated.
1. Build a Shared Vision
2. Delegate power and generate responsibility
3. Generate synergy and team spirit
4. Facilitate the development of potentialities
5. Emotional predisposition
Leader / coach behaviors
The "inner" path of leadership:
"The most important responsibility
of anyone trying to lead anything
is managing himself as a person"
Dee Hook
We can affirm that true leadership begins with leading. What do we mean by this? That our ability to manage, lead work teams and promote the advancement of our organizations will be conditioned by our own personal development process and by the acquisition of the competencies that determine our effectiveness. It is on this conviction that we hold that the leader development process is run from the inside out and that Self-leadership or self-mastery is a necessary condition for the performance of effective leadership.
In my book "Personal Mastery, The Path of Leadership", I describe and develop the five basic competencies that are essential to effectively perform the "leadership behaviors" described above.
We will make a brief presentation of them:
This first competition implies acquiring a notion of meaning and purpose in our life. It is made up of the values, interests and aspirations of each one of us that give purpose and meaning to our existence and establish the directionality of our actions. It is the guide that shows us the way forward and gives us inspiration and enthusiasm on its journey. In it we can distinguish three founding elements: the Vision of the Future, Self-knowledge and the Design and Construction of the Future.
2. Emotional Strength
Emotionality is a predisposition for action and therefore conditions our performance. Depending on the state of mind in which we find ourselves, certain actions are possible for us to perform and others not. Emotional Strength is the ability of people to know and manage their emotions. It is the competition that enables us to:
• be aware of our emotional states (perceive, identify and understand them)
• possess emotional self-control
• have the ability to generate moods in our work environment that enable the performance of the actions necessary to achieve our goals.
3. Capacity for Learning and Change
The continuous and accelerated transformation of social and work scenarios raises the personal need for change and lifelong learning. This is why “learning to learn” is a key competence. New challenges and the rapid obsolescence of knowledge lead us to the fact that many of the capabilities acquired over the years, currently do not serve us or hinder our performance.
Our learning capacity is the only competence that can guarantee that our actions continue to be effective and that we acquire and perfect the skills that are required of us by the successive circumstances that arise.
4. Conversational Competences
We become aware of the importance of conversational skills when we understand that a large part of the tasks that we develop in our work activity have an important conversational component, since we do them in dialogue with someone else. Nobody can lead, negotiate, coordinate actions or work as a team if it is not through their conversations. The success of managerial performance depends largely on the quality of your conversations.
The art of effective conversation is closely related to the development of the following skills:
• Speak with power
• Listen deeply
• Inquire with mastery
• Get in tune
• Talk constructively
5. Interpersonal effectiveness
The result that we can achieve in any activity that we undertake will be determined by our capacity for action, but also by our ability to coordinate actions with other people. This emerges clearly when we look at the performance of work teams. A team made up of individuals specialized in their subject, who individually have an optimal performance, can achieve a synergistic operation that duplicates the individual results or, on the contrary, through an ineffective interaction can obtain a result that does not reach even half of individual returns. Interpersonal Effectivenessimplies competent action in coordinating actions, making agreements and commitments, managing conflicts and generating a network of high-quality links.
By way of conclusion we can say that the challenge for managers of the 21st century is to lead and develop their teams and organizations from leadership. An ambitious goal is for all managers to lead from leadership, but an even more challenging vision is for all members of the organization to act as leaders. For this to be possible, it is essential to understand that leadership does not have to do with innate characteristics but with specific behaviors and that in order to perform them effectively, a path that begins with Self- leadership and the development of Personal Mastery must be followed.
