If quality or management by objectives sounded, leadership has not done much less. As is known, this intelligent way of managing people was already postulated in the first half of the 20th century, but leadership began to be talked about more in the late 80s or early 90s, when large companies seemed to propose the development of future leaders.
Due to the efficiency of companies, and also to nurture the budgets of the Human Resources areas and the prosperity of consulting firms and business schools, management has continually generated great mantras, among which it is worth highlighting leadership, often linked to change.
If quality or management by objectives sounded, leadership has not done much less. As is known, this intelligent way of managing people was already postulated in the first half of the 20th century, but leadership began to be talked about more in the late 80s or early 90s, when large companies seemed to propose the development of future leaders. Undoubtedly, this was a necessary postulate, more perhaps from McGregor's Theory Y and aligned contributions, such as those of his disciple Bennis in the 80s, or the previous and memorable one by James MacGregor Burns; But the fact is that leadership continues to admit different meanings, and that the orchestrated seminars do not seem to have contributed much to its development in managers. Perhaps it is appropriate to share now, already in 2004, some reflections,after almost twenty years sounding thebuzzword in our country.
Not everyone agrees on the meaning of leadership within the company, I do not know if at first it was considered that it was extragenetic because it was more convenient, just in case, or out of conviction. Perhaps what was sought was a type of leadership that could be developed as it had been developing in the 1980s to "young graduates with high potential"; or perhaps a type of leadership that left no doubt about the leadership status of the top executives of companies. I may be lacking information, but I believe that participants in these executive development programs were chosen in the 90s with very similar criteria to those used in the 80s, and that some directors opted for their clones. I would say that the first ideas of leadership in the company seemed to point more to the cognitive than the emotional,to thoughts rather than feelings, despite the existing literature: only at the end of the 90s did I hear an open relationship between leadership and emotions and emotional intelligence, and it was precisely on a conference organized by the Association for the Progress of Management.
Peter Senge says it: "Leader is usually synonymous with top manager." Much more if the senior manager carries out a great process of change. Remember or guess now who says: “Leadership is vision. There's nothing more to say". Such authority belongs, in effect, to Peter Drucker, who always calls bread to bread and wine to wine, openly. Well, putting a few more words, one would say that leadership is having a vision of the future and wanting to make it come true; so that, as Senge also maintains, vision and reality delimit the territory in which leaders move. But, although, in everyday language, only the leadership of top executives is openly recognized, there has been agreement on the need for intermediate leaders; These seemed to need the former, and the latter these, to approach the vision.You already know all this, but we have to tune in.
YES: everything that is said depends on what is understood by leadership; unless it is considered a position, and then perhaps we should talk about leadership. There may be a part of innate leadership in leaders (the most visible) and another that can be developed (the least visible, but no less important), but we will advance the concept along the path or paths that are opened to us. I ask the interested reader for a few minutes and some confidence to reflect together on yesterday and today, and even tomorrow, of leadership in the company. I know you can do it yourself without this pretentious observer and columnist, but let me spar for a bit. This same thing, mutual provocation, a dear colleague and I practiced, in the early 90's. My perspective may fall short, but I trust, at least,in that it serves (is useful) yours.
Starting to take visible steps, let's admit that, in the world of human resources, leadership has been interpreted as:
- Position at the head of the company, a department, etc. Task of the chief executive, typically in a process of change System or method of managing people Role of managers, complementary to that of management Family of interpersonal skills of the best Managers Specific ability to guide and energize others towards common goals Virtual position of the leader, recognized by his followers Enthusiastic, contagious and inclusive attitude after a collective achievement.
The reader will enrich the list, but, if these ideas are half-agreed and leaving for the moment whether the leader is born or made, I would already submit for consideration the systemic condition of interpersonal leadership (that of the last six interpretations): “one is not a leader if you don't have followers who see you as such ”. Said like this it may seem brusque, but also a truism, without ruling out dissent. You see, trying to define leadership, the need arises to define followership. It is, if accepted, the followers who make the leaders such, but it is possible to refer to convinced and energized followers, and not to defeated or interested followers. Things get complicated if we remember that, "rather than cultivating or favoring following, leaders have to develop leadership among their followers." This seemed to lead us to the collective of middle managers; these should be, at the same time, leaders and followers… Or perhaps, I believe, it will target all of us, including ordinary individuals themselves…, so that we can lead ourselves behind the corporate goals.
But the above - the systemic conception that, as of creativity, we make of it - collides with the leadership of forceful changes experienced in large companies, sometimes accompanied by very severe staff reductions. I experienced a change that seems to me inspired by John S. Rydz, being an employee of Alcatel Spain; Although the way to cut it was almost exemplary, it was not easy to get workers to share the vision of a workforce reduced to a fifth or sixth part (or to contemplate with satisfaction the anorexic weight loss of the company in the sector). Perhaps, more useful than advancing through the concept of leadership, it is to do so through the leader's profile; But let me tell you that the "leader" thing also always reminded me of his pastoral anagram (fold).
It will sound irreverent, but, even accepting its effectiveness and my point of observation being somewhat distant, I perceived our president, Miguel Ángel Canalejo, as a lonely, majestic leader, without visible emotions… (I told him), that is, something far from my concept, perhaps erroneous but spontaneous, of leader. So, betting on the systemic, interpersonal and emotional condition (positive emotions) of leadership, I count, however, that some reader sees it differently. In fact, already in 2004, with a certain distance from the big city and big business, and moving my desk to El Viso de San Juan (Toledo), I began to deepen intrapersonal leadership: as you know, a kind of self-leadership, aligned with the personal domain that, after a mobilizing and negentropizing purpose, Fritz postulated,Senge and many other experts, including Robert K. Cooper, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi or Martin Seligman. It can already be seen that here we would link with the quality of life at work, in a virtuous circle with the manager's efficiency (and against the vicious of entropy, tension, psychic fatigue and poor performance); but let's continue with the leadership.
Memories about leaders and followers
There are other possible expressions of the relationship: for example, the leaders and the leds; but, preferring the leadership " push " over the " pull ", one joins the leadership and followers.
Obviously, when talking about concrete relationships between managers and collaborators, there is much more than leadership and follow-up: there are, of course, transactions of a diverse nature. Limited observer, I spoke to them of the existence in companies of a leadership without followers, and of another with them. In practice, perhaps we should speak better of a leadership of many changes with few followers (among those who are not at risk), and of another leadership of minor changes, not so surgical, with more followers (among those who are not at risk). they hope to participate in the success sought). What do they miss? I would also like to add that the leader must be well aware that the organization is a… living system.
At the beginning of the 90s, I heard how some managers repeated: “The president has said…”, “As the president says…”, “This is what our president wants”. This seemed a bit suspicious to me, even if it didn't matter. I saw these managers as followers and not as leaders (with a certain irony, my dear colleague and I maintained, by the way and privately, that “the leader is a man who says things”). In short, I am left with the image, perhaps not very rigorous, of an uncertain, doubtful, fragile intermediate leadership; but I have already said that what I experienced from afar was, exercised by the president, the leadership of a great change that implied a change in the size and profile of the old Standard Eléctrica (later Alcatel Spain).
Still thinking of middle managers, I remember that, under the title "Leaders and followers", the magazine of the Spanish Association of Personnel Directors (AEDIPE) published an article that I sent them from FYCSA in its first issue of the 21st century. This is how I defined the boss-leader at that time:
“If we refine the profile of a good leader, we find competent and upright individuals, with exemplary behavior, who know themselves well, authentic, intuitive, capable of continual learning, good masters of their emotions, oriented towards achieving results, empathetic, optimistic, with a sense of humor, efficient, aware of the value and potential of their collaborators, receptive to them, creators of good performance teams, with clear ideas that they express well, persevering, self-confident, committed, with good capacity of analysis and synthesis, with a systemic conception of the company, interested in the development of their collaborators, capable of obtaining the best of them, willing to help them in their difficulties… For these individuals it is not difficult to find others to follow them ”.
Actually, what I was describing then was my particular vision of the ideal boss (whom I never met, perhaps because I was not the ideal collaborator myself), and I tell it because I think there had been a lot of this -of this merger, if not confusion, of the intermediate leadership with the ideal leadership - in the turn of the century. Without knowing well what should be understood by leadership, I think that all of us (I am referring to fellow consultants) tended to draw the best possible boss, unless we had more specific instructions, or fixation on some model.
It is not that there was no theory about leadership: perhaps there was too much and varied, and we did not delve into it enough. I may be wrong, but let's keep looking back.
More hindsight
When the buzzword started to play, there was certainly a lot written about leadership by now, even if we had barely read Kotter, or simply became familiar with Hersey and Blanchard's situationalism. This time I won't go back to Mary Parker Follett, but I will tell you about a serendipitous discovery on the Internet. In a document of the Armed Forces dated in Washington on September 15, 1953 (by then, Hillary had already returned from Everest, Bahamontes had not yet been crowned "king of the mountain" in France, and in our country Franco inaugurated many swamps and imposed the biretta to new cardinals)…, because that, in a document with this date and referring to the evolution of the role of executives, it was said that times were changing in companies, and it was attributed to Clarence Francis, chairman of General Foods,the following sentence: “40 years ago - he said then - the idea prevailed that what was good for the business was good for people, but what prevails now - remember that the document is from 1953 - is the idea that that is good for people is good for business ”. Francis, who was later an adviser to President Eisenhower, has another phrase to remember: “You can buy people's time, their physical presence in a place, and even a certain number of muscle movements per hour. But you don't buy their enthusiasm, you don't buy their loyalty, you don't buy the devotion of their hearts: that must be earned ”.but what prevails now - remember that the document is from 1953 - is the idea that what is good for people is good for business ”. Francis, who was later an adviser to President Eisenhower, has another phrase to remember: “You can buy people's time, their physical presence in a place, and even a certain number of muscle movements per hour. But you don't buy their enthusiasm, you don't buy their loyalty, you don't buy the devotion of their hearts: that must be earned ”.but what prevails now - remember that the document is from 1953 - is the idea that what is good for people is good for business ”. Francis, who was later an adviser to President Eisenhower, has another phrase to remember: “You can buy people's time, their physical presence in a place, and even a certain number of muscle movements per hour. But you don't buy their enthusiasm, you don't buy their loyalty, you don't buy the devotion of their hearts: that must be earned ”.But you don't buy their enthusiasm, you don't buy their loyalty, you don't buy the devotion of their hearts: that must be earned ”.But you don't buy their enthusiasm, you don't buy their loyalty, you don't buy the devotion of their hearts: that must be earned ”.
I have brought the previous paragraph because perhaps, apart from the changes, leadership appeared on the business scene in the 80s or 90s, to earn the great capital of positive emotions from people. I could bring many statements in favor of the smile (in the face of gravity or circumspection) and of positive emotions (in the face of negative ones) in the company, but I refer to the recent Expomanagement'2004 in Madrid, where I could see that it continues to preach (Covey, Peters, Maguire, Teerlink, Rovira…) emotional activation as a formula for success: it must still be a pending issue in many places… It is not a question, far from it, of postulating a populist leadership, nor that we are all exulting through the corridors, but that we know where we are going, and that the formulated future attracts our head,something lower to our heart, and perhaps, still something more (below), to our courage or determination.
I also heard (at the Expomanagement'2004 in Madrid), by the way, Tom Peters say that senior executives often talk a lot about the importance of people, and that they almost always lie; Maybe it is not so exaggerated after all… A friend told me: "The worst thing I have is that they take me for a fool" (well, instead of being a fool, he said something else), and he told me that he had attended the attempt of a manager to turn the results of a satisfaction survey of the people around, to end by exempting the management of your company from responsibility, and making the workers responsible for their own dissatisfaction; and he told me that shortly after that manager was promoted to CEO. The idea of a leader directing his cynicism to his own followers does not fit me: do you? Yes:it depends on what is understood by leader.
Perhaps top-level managers - those closest to ordinary workers - give more meaning to the concept of person, and are more consistent with this reality (unless what they have in mind is an inordinate desire for power). Do you see it that way? I know: considering others as persons, and respecting their dignity, does not depend on the hierarchical level, but on the individual himself. But yes: perhaps it is in this group where the interpersonal leadership that seems to run in the direction of people must reside, and, of course, the corresponding seminars are usually directed to this group. Regarding the senior group, it comes to mind that, perhaps, senior executives live at a certain distance from themselves, among other possible comments.
Interesting books on leadership had already emerged in the early 1990s, and even earlier, and we have to remember James MacGregor Burns, and cite, for example, Greenleaf, whose ideas of servant leadership have had to wait to be better accepted.. In the 90s, we already had various conceptions, such as those formulated by Bennis and Nanus in Leaders, Kotter in Leading Change, Kouzes and Posner in The Leadership Challenge, Rost in Leadership for the Twenty-first Century, Cooper and Sawaf in Executive EQ or Goleman in Working with Emotional Intelligence. All contribute to underline the interpersonal-emotional aspect of it.
Naturally, in these books cited there are not all the keys to how to develop leadership in managers, although, yes, some point out their doubts about the possibilities of a method on the rise (or that seemed to be on the rise): e-learning. Some large companies offer, on their e-learning platforms, online leadership courses, lasting just a couple of hours, although I suspect that these same companies send some of their executives to leadership masters in prestigious schools. But I didn't want to talk about leadership development, but about leadership itself, as the concept seemed to be interpreted in the company.
The changes
The reader will be left thinking that there are different changes within what is called “the change”. Considering that a change needs a leader, we can dwell a little more on them. I knew, in the 90s, of great programs of change: Nova Program, Leader Program, Cenit Program…; But, with or without a label, reading Capital Humano and other magazines, we then had news of great movements in companies: teamwork for improvement, proclamation of values, process reengineering, customer orientation, etc. (I remember, if anecdotes are also valid, that, in Alcatel, we all pronounced “zenith”, in paroxitone, without question: that is how it would have been pronounced when the Cenit Program was baptized, and, although I commented on it in my environment, I was not going to amend the plan to the Senior Management. Now, the Academy admits this pronunciation,but then no). I do not know if these changes were Janic or had a thousand faces, but I think that the most visible face (due to the liturgy) was the "cultural" one, according to the progressive weight of the human side of management versus the scientific side that, almost a year ago. century, promoted, above all, Taylor and the Gilbreths, and that continued to advance (benchmarking, reengineering, etc.).
It would seem that this vain display of poor scholarship related to scientific management is also unnecessary, but it is that, with so much visible liturgy, so much noise of the nuts, I came to think that, in large companies, cultural changes were orchestrated to divert attention from the reengineering in progress, and the consequent and successive cuts in staff. Obviously, it was not just about a cultural change: it was about several changes at the same time; one of them was typically associated with technological advance, but there could be a lot more, and a lot related to competitiveness, globalization… So the changes had -and have- their hard side and their soft side, and needless to say. And I would also insist that changes were taking place in the 90s, within organizations, with unequal impact on people, that is,with positive emotions and, perhaps to a greater extent, with negative ones.
No one is perfect, so if a CEO was very clear about where to go, and that was a good destination, perhaps it was too much to ask him to also fire up all the workers after the stated goals. The bad thing would have been - and perhaps it was thus in some case - that people had been resigned, skeptical, frightened, confused, depressed, to a fatal destiny, if not to sudden death; but the best and most desirable thing is that the leader leads us, prepared and proactive, convinced and contributing, to a destination of prosperity and satisfaction. In the latter case, we would speak properly of leaders (that is, when there is positive emotional activation of the followers). As one could also speak of leaders although it was not necessary to introduce major changes, and it was only about reaching new more attractive and energizing goals.I am again concerned about the acquiescence of the reader.
Bipolarization and Hymenoptera
Where is the doctrine of leadership heading? We will have to continue talking in other articles, if the reader agrees and does not see a threat in it, because there are many branches in this tree… that are entangled in neighboring trees. Read - I will continue to do so - good books, but reflect on what you observe around you. You can reflect alone, and perhaps better "in solidarity" with people around you, remembering to slow down inferences and balance allegation and inquiry. In not a few companies, let us say better "in not a few businesses", there is a lack of authenticity, vocation and professional autothelia, so that theories are immediately subject to adaptation to interests, and they lose purity; let us be, at least, aware of it.
We lack awareness of many things in the business world; awareness of ourselves and external reality. You will find this paragraph digressive (or worse), but one can have a narcissistic director, and not realize it; oneself can be an organizational psychopath, or a back stabber, or, more commonly and less seriously, a downer, or a lazybone, or a dog in the manger, and not (wanting) to realize it.
With all the importance of their contribution to companies, and here I wanted to get there, leadership came to separate people into two groups - leaders and followers - so that one felt, in reality, a leader (perhaps waiting to his turn of glory) or eternal follower. In reality, bipolarization existed before, but yes: leadership, as understood, perhaps came to nurture it rather than neutralize it, always in my questionable opinion. Let us remember that, in large companies, there were at least two soft skills training programs: one for graduates "with" potential and another for graduates "without" (although care was taken to call the latter something else), without knowing very much well what the potential consisted of. In short, but always with a margin of error, the leadership came to underline a bipolarization that went against the current.I'm not saying that there should be no distance between people, but here I prefer centripetal over centrifugation (always at a reasonable speed).
One felt, in short, inside or outside the paroxitonic elite. Being unquestionable the role of direct bosses (perhaps covering a nobody's space) and, even more, that of people (knowledge workersor simply workers), there seemed to be no room and shine in each community for more than one avowed leader, and his chorus of equally shaggy executives: let me exaggerate a bit, which I like. It is hard for me to imagine that a lower-middle-level manager would be seen as a leader, detracting from the team of High Pontiffs of business liturgies: they would not allow it. Even and with exceptions, when one of these pontiffs approached the workers, it seemed a studied gesture of approximation, as when a politician in the campaign takes children in his arms. Finally, I submit to the reader's consideration that leadership has contributed to elitization, which, in practice, would mean having contributed to the emotional distance of the supposed followers (not to mention the followers who have felt cheated).
Rather than finish, I would begin to sing the praises of intrapersonal leadership, which you have already experienced, and of which you will have your own opinion. The best thing - some experts seem to defend - is that we carry the leader within us, and form a community of aligned vectors, even if there is someone to build the system and ensure direction. It seemed that there was no need to talk about my desk in El Viso de San Juan (Toledo), but here I have observed the ants: I think they lead themselves very effectively. I doubt that any organization works so perfectly. I do not know if it is about small individual beings, or a collective being divided into small pieces… Each ant seems perfectly aware of its contribution to the community, and there are no deviations. Your diligence and efficiency seem to me to be enviable.I don't know if you will laugh at me, but I think here is the example we were looking for. I'm not saying that the system is not perfectible, but ours is clearly flawed.
I believe that this, functioning in community, is the best for companies, even if it is not the best for those who benefit from the status quo. So, speaking of changes, visions, values and emotions, and to provoke reactions, I join those who consider that there can be an upright and genuine leader (without being self-identified for it), who, open to participation and surrounded by necessary support, be, at the same time, architect / engineer of the organization and sociologist / psychologist of the same, and that promotes the self-leadership of all members of the organization after attractive common and shared goals. Nothing new, but still pending in many cases. It should be detected and analyzed collectively, when someone, worker or manager, visibly deviates its vector.Revolutionary? Let's hope that millions of years do not have to wait for organizations to function visibly better…
In this possible neosecular panorama, it would be possible to delve into the catalytic role of middle managers, but of this role and of intrapersonal leadership or self-leadership (with its dose of maturity, self-knowledge, purpose, courage, reflection, open-mindedness, good judgment, community spirit, commitment, political awareness, optimism, negentropy, etc.) we can speak in other articles, if, as I wish, the reader consents. For now, I thank you for sharing these 4,000 words with me.
