Much of the success of your organization is in the hands of leaders. Are you the leader of your company? To become the leader that your company demands, you must start by identifying yourself as one. Then, mastering the traditional approaches, as well as the new leadership trends that the world needs, these are fundamental tools for your success. Some notes are also given on the reality of leadership in Cuba.
"To go ahead of others you need to see more than them…"
J.Martí
Of leadership
The world is constantly evolving; There are more "explosive" periods than others, but transformation is the essence of our history. From an early age they teach us the main actions that have taken place, positive or negative, that caused substantial changes (both cultural, economic, political or social) in humanity, in other words, that revolutionized human thinking; It does not matter to speak of the ancient era as the modern one, the repercussion is the same.
To this end, we can recall what the great empires such as the Macedonian and the Roman represented, to name a few, the Inquisition, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, all the struggles for independence, and more recently, the great Revolution of "the Net". It is not intended to give a history class, only to emphasize that none of this would have materialized without the presence of the so-called: Leader, who many times we confine to the background.
Would it be possible to conceive these events without the impulse of figures such as Alexander the Great, Jesus Christ, Mohammed Gandhi, Martín Luther King, José Martí, Simón Bolívar, Abraham Lincoln, Adolfo Hitler (they do not always lead us to authentic ends) and, at the business level, Henri Ford, Walt Disney, Bill Gates, among others? Obviously not, because it is the leader who has a vision, a dream, that he communicates to others, making them share it and taking actions to achieve it; always being the driving image of these events. This could be one definition, among many, of what leadership is, but it is not my objective, because above all, the concept of the leader is subjective, it depends, more than anything, on who his followers are.
Many scholars look to leadership history for the foundations of what a true leader should be. In this journey, which starts from the leadership of the person, we reach the leadership of the company (more recent focus on the role of the leader in society), where I want to focus my reflections. It is necessary to discover the business leader as an agent of change and culture setter for them, very important and controversial aspects currently; and for this reason, it is essential not only to adapt leadership styles in response to new business conditions, but also to identify managers who are leaders, which is complex within an organization.
First, it should be clear that a leader, according to Santiago Álvarez De Mon: "is not" a special and charismatic being who directs the designs of the rest of the mediocre mortals ", nor is a Machiavellian figure who progresses adapting to the fashion of each moment without never go against the current… Nor should he be likened to a kind of father who guides his obedient and immature children ».
Leading is an art, but you have to develop it, as it is not enough to exercise it with your instinct or charisma for it. To this end, there are techniques and principles based, especially, on attention and work with the subordinate. In this sense, the figure of the leader is described from the culture and personal values, since a leader in order to lead others, must start leading himself, which will lead him to use a positive attitude towards his followers.
The value of the leader is essentially based on his ability to create a team, motivate, teach and involve the people who work with him in a common project. It highlights the ease of knowing how to surround yourself with people the same or not with whom you want to grow together; therefore, you must take special care to ensure the unity of your team, promoting its trust and success.
"Being an intellectually solid person" and "professionally capable", in addition to having coordination skills: what leads you to be a good communicator, to know how to listen, to understand the points of view of others and to dialogue in a constructive way, are attitudes required for a leader to earn the respect of those led. In short, leadership has more to do with duties than with rights.
A leader is a complete manager when he recognizes that he is not essential (his success will be strengthened as his ideas continue without him), therefore he has to prepare his replacement himself, training his successor in advance. The classic example that illustrates this is the leader par excellence (because although he responds to a religion, we cannot frame him only in this sphere) who has transcended the most in the passing of time: Jesus Christ, who knew how to prepare his disciples for the day that he was not present. According to Santiago Álvarez De Mon: "a good leader must have the ability to delegate and know how to lead well, but also to choose."
Due to the relevance and complexity that the figure of the leader has for effective business management, many scientists, especially sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists, have done extensive research on the subject, which has been enriched over time.
From the evolution of the role of the leader in companies
As is known, already in the first decades of the 20th century, Mary Parker Follett contributed to highlighting the human side of business management, possibly pointing out the first ideas about leadership and about the assumption of greater responsibilities by workers; but it is in the second half of the century when it develops more deeply.
The first studies on leadership were focused on finding the psychological traits inherent to effective leaders; characteristics such as intelligence, will, sociability and conditions of authority were some of the most accepted, but their validation over time in various organizations was unsuccessful. Success in management was independent, in many cases, of the predominance of these traits. On the other hand, the abundance of investigations with dissimilar methodologies yielded different results in terms of significant personality traits.
These studies were developed linked to the Taylorist conception of management, where the role of the foreman and owner were synthesized in a single person and the methods of command and command, as well as the low qualification of the workforce (where the motivations of basic type), were prevalent in an incipient industry and not very complex in its social and productive relationships.
A second stage in the study of leadership are the theories of the double factor (they study the behavior of the leader), associated with the theories of human relations, as a fundamental trend in the science of management until the 1950s. These theories have as the central nucleus the variable authoritarianism-democracy, defined as the degree of participation that the boss grants to subordinates in the search for alternatives and decision-making.
Elton Mayo's studies played a fundamental role in this current of thought, which gave rise to a large number of investigations and theories in the leadership of organizations. All of them considered two factors for leadership success: the degree of authoritarianism-democracy (production-oriented leader) and the satisfaction it produced in subordinates (employee-oriented leader), as an indicator of the performance that they would have and therefore Therefore, of the consequences of leadership on work effectiveness.
Here, too, the studies were contradictory, since no consistent relationships could be identified between the leader's behavior patterns and group performance, that is, the results varied according to different sets of circumstances.
The Scientific-Technical Revolution of the 1960s brought a profound turnaround in the world's conceptions of management. Workers required a higher level of knowledge and skills to handle new technologies, the number of options available to solve problems diversified, and it was no longer enough to "employee satisfaction" or "bring the group together" to obtain intelligence results. that the new industry demanded (since man understood the role he played within the company, so he increasingly demanded that he be given his rightful place within it), as a need to adapt to more complex degrees of social relations and production, in markets that gradually increased their diversification and competition.
This reality demanded new attributes from the leader, because when the importance of human resources to face this environment manifested, it became necessary to handle new concepts (although they were not yet fully assumed), such as: motivation, delegation of authority (participation), among others.
This, together with the difficulties found in the conclusions of the investigations focused on the double-factor, gave rise to another moment in the study of organizational leadership: Situational Leadership, which includes the situation, as an additional element to influence the effectiveness of the leadership. To the question, what is the best leadership style? These theories answered: it depends on the interaction of the characteristics of the leader, the characteristics of the group and the situation in which they take place, such as: type of activity, relationship between leader and members, group norms, existing information, among others.
In the 1980s, with the introduction of the "network", the strongest effects of the scientific-technical revolution on organizations were received. The calm waters in which the industrialized world had been working convulsed and the era of great changes began (information at everyone's hand, man is the possessor of great knowledge, a globalized world without distance barriers, new economic sectors emerge, culture of innovation and the importance of work) that gives the environment of organizations a high degree of uncertainty and demands from them a high competitive level to achieve adaptation to this changing world and guarantee, therefore, the right to their existence. In the words of Peter Drucker: "You have to start over… what we knew about management is no longer valid."
Faced with this reality, the sensitivity of the modern person is also susceptible to change. The human being, due to his knowledge, is now perceived with a certain autonomy, questioning submission and passive resignation, being aware of his life and its fleeting nature: faced with the reality that if the teachings of the past were reformed, those of today may be tomorrow. Therefore, you go back to the arcane of your own consciousness and freedom and no longer expect external laws and norms as an answer to your questions.
That is why within companies, doing what managers order no longer works; in this context it becomes essential to "do what is necessary". Therefore, the way of leading, being influenced by these transformations, indisputably cannot be the same. Change and conflict begin to figure in the leader's habitual vocabulary. In fact, change management is one of the most difficult tasks of leadership for the survival of any organization.
Likewise, and starting from our traditional conception of work, which has been that it was fundamentally manual, another vision emerges: Conversational work. Everything we do, we do it through conversations. For this reason, newfield consulting understands organizations as a conversational network system, where the leader must be the center and life in the company of this conversational system. Encouraging and using it is a new way to allow organizational growth, to exploit the performance and creativity of the subordinate, as well as to promote their job satisfaction.
From this perspective, important aspects of the organization such as work processes, value creation and knowledge management, among others, are generated through conversations; and it is these that determine whether these aspects are satisfactory or not.
This implies in the new millennium, the challenge of forming leaders who are innovative, who inspire confidence and who never lose sight of their horizon. But to achieve this, he must start by providing employees (due to the importance it has in today's organizations) with enough power to make decisions and be fully responsible for them, which is usually known as: empowerment movement.
Given this, the business world offers alternatives by promoting nascent leadership styles, appropriate to the new information age, which revolutionize the ideas about the leader, as Álvarez de Mon states: «leadership based on elitism, in the obsession with power and in paternalism it is out of fashion… then leadership is conceived as a daily, changing and plural challenge within the reach of all committed professionals ”.
Of the current leadership in companies
Making an analysis of the New Trends in leadership styles that have emerged in response to adapt to the current environment, we can concentrate them in three large groups to facilitate their understanding:
1- The Leader from his individuality.
It insists on a leadership style based above all on moral authority, inducing greater recognition of the personal-professional dignity of employees, which is known as: personal leadership, an idea of leadership based on the centrality of person. It is said that by directing oneself it is easier to become a good leader for others, that is why emotional intelligence, pro-activity and affective maturity, among other fields, are presented as the foundation of personal leadership.
The form of personal influence on the performance of employees is closely related to the cultural changes that have occurred in recent times, which shows a harmony between personal-emotional leadership and the empowerment movement (discussed above). In short, today's employee needs to follow someone, but he must inspire him adherence to his values, including moral or ethical ones; otherwise, its tracking would not be intrinsic.
A constant in these pages has been "change" as a fundamental factor in the development of our companies. Now, according to Lance Secretan, the essential part of it is in the values; It claims that we are moving from a totally flawed era of redundant managerial philosophies to something new. He proposes an approach based on values, stating that leaders must be leaders-servants, with the ability to focus their attention on the feelings of others, going beyond rational thinking. Says Secretan: "In the new style of business leadership, workplaces are characterized by love and truth."
"Life is not a battlefield," he continues, "It is a playground." Living assuming core values (mastery, dedication, and chemistry) is the best way to get incredible results from people, which will benefit organizations. As Dr. Secretan puts it: "Work is love made visible."
2- The Leader as a trainer.
Likewise, the new leader must be aware of his role as a Mentor, as a coach of all the members of his team so that they can stand on their own. This other style shows a behavioral model, a guide in charge of interpreting the needs of the markets to guide their path, that of their team and company. It must be clear that not all mentors are leaders, but all leaders must be mentors.
Mentors are those people who share the paternity of problems, but allow others to control the situation, they make the work environment a meeting place. One of the main skills of the mentor is knowing how to listen actively and foster communication; you should always look for the perfect times to train.
The mentor seeks to achieve that little by little, the subordinate begins his path, until at the right moment, he abandons the security of mentoring. For this, both must be prepared, so that they can vary their relationship: from a vertical to a horizontal relationship, in this way a network of professional connections will be established within the company itself.
Another form of leadership that has grown in popularity is Executive Coaching, also called "the culture of coaching."
Coaching is nothing more than the art of working with others so that they obtain unusual results and improve their performance. This implies that a good coach must know how to listen, must have the ability to ask questions, the ability to analyze, must know how to structure a good plan (and follow it) and must have the ability to connect the individual to a constant dialogue that results in their development.
The most difficult coach skills for a leader to acquire are:
- Learn to emphasize choices and options, rather than answering the individual's questions. Give honest feedback.
Coaching has become a strategic necessity for companies committed to producing unprecedented results. The initiative to undertake coaching is taken by the management of the company, who also decides on who is going to carry out the treatment. The process, however, cannot be imposed.
It cannot be ignored that there are authors who claim that coaching can be dangerous, such as the psychologist and coach Steven Berglas. His approach is based, fundamentally, on the fact that the coach can get so close to the executive that he runs the risk of giving him not very reasonable business advice. Despite this possibility, coaching is still an instrument widely used by large companies.
3- The Leader and the work teams.
Peter Senge, another great researcher, in many of his reflections has designed the concept of "Leadership Ecology", which is nothing more than diverse people, working collaboratively in the service of something that matters to them, creating leadership communities. This perception brings to light the presence, in an organization, of many important leaders who are not part of the top management, called “internal network” workers because they help to spread new ideas.
As we usually hear, the most important intellectual property in the information age is people, therefore it is essential to take advantage of their capabilities, which can be achieved through spreading power and responsibility in a world of co-leaders who do the real work. In this way, we verify that, at present, the most rewarding work is the one carried out as a team to achieve a common goal; that's why co-leadership becomes a necessity for these settings. True co-leaders do not need to be at the top of the organization to find satisfaction, since they know how to distinguish between fame and success, seeking to further develop the latter, which implies the desire to achieve common goals.
Throughout the article, the importance of the subordinate in new organizations has been demonstrated, from the individual person to the work teams. The latter are increasingly essential to the success of the company, which depends on the entire management team, since it has a broader scope than the leader can achieve alone.
In general, the main leadership trends that have emerged in response to changes in the environment have been analyzed, initially starting from the first theories. From this, it can be inferred that in the age of knowledge the boss is not the one who knows the most; but it does have the keys to organizational synergy. It should be clear that these leadership styles are not antagonistic, but, on the contrary, their complement enriches the leadership.
Of leadership in Cuba
Cuba is also affected by international trends. Under these circumstances it has been necessary to search for and apply, in specific activities and in a flexible manner, new forms of organization and management of the economy, as well as the structures and methods of operation of organizations and companies.
For this reason, research has been carried out in order to explore the behavior of contemporary Cuban executives, in order to favor changes aimed at overcoming the gaps that prevent them from moving towards their competitive insertion in the contemporary environment.
It is based on the fact that current conditions demand a group of attributes from Cuban managers, among which are the will and dynamism, creative strategic thinking, the philosophy of constant learning, the capacity for analysis, a high critical spirit., an attitude prone to the exchange of criteria, teamwork and the education of their subordinates, as well as the consolidation of the strength of their personal example.
Through this research, the existence of a set of gaps that stand in the way of achieving that desired managerial profile was evidenced and that constitute important challenges to overcome in current organizations. The excessive structuring and regulation, the little margin for the development of initiative and creativity, the emphasis on control within the administrative process, the absence of priorities in the change process, the low level of teamwork, as well as the lack of of managerial preparation, support some of the determining causes of the identified gaps.
In Cuba, management teams have developed in highly structured organizations, where professional practice has revolved mainly around the figure of the head of the organization (which implies a leadership marked by authoritarianism and paternalism). For this reason, it is very difficult today to assimilate dimensions such as contribution to the team in our companies; orientation to learning; as well as the displacement of individual interest towards positions that reflect the search for common objectives. In this sense, the training of managers (as driving figures) plays an invaluable role in stimulating the transformations that the country demands.
Obviously, and in conclusion, Cuba must emphasize the search and training of leading administrators, who meet the conditions that today's world, people say, require for their job satisfaction, since regardless of their own characteristics (as a country) the subjective factors that move modern man are the same wherever he is. Therefore, you must gradually integrate the recent trends discussed above into your leadership style, which will benefit Cuban organizations and society, as it will prepare us much more to meet the country's need to open up to new markets, as well as the entry of new foreign investments that stimulate the Cuban economy. All this will allow us to adapt quickly to changes in the environment.
Last thoughts
History has shown the importance of the leader for their development. The business sector, immersed in it, is called to include this statement in its life, with a view to achieving the efficiency and quality that today's world needs from organizations.
That is why we must be clear that today a leader is not conceived but as someone with whom subordinates feel comfortable working, who is characterized by his values, who sees his subordinate as an equal, who understands him, who seeks not only the individual well-being, but that of the team, a leader with a desire for continuous improvement… In short, only emotionally intelligent leaders with ethical behavior contribute to the intelligence, health and even virtue of the organization.
To this end, it has been proven that in business management, today's managers apply -by current- ideas almost as old as the human being himself, but at the same time, they are very attentive to the new postulates that are taxed in favor of leadership and of course, to the culture and management style of their companies. The best leaders in modern organizations integrate the fundamental foundations of management, leadership and coaching. They build a winning team to be supported in the areas where they are weak. The intelligence of the organization is everyone's business, but managers (leaders) assume an unquestionably capital role.
References:
- Robins, Stephan. Organizational behavior. 1998.
- Research carried out by a group of CEEC consultants in various Cuban organizations belonging to various sectors of the economy.
- Calderón Lilliam. Master's thesis in Management: The leadership factor in the competitiveness of Cuban organizations.
- Marta Williams and John Byrne. Leader and mentor. Harvard Deusto Business Review, Bilbao, January / February, number 88, 1999.
- Senge Peter. A Conversation with Peter Senge: New Developments in Organizational Learning. Harvard Deusto Business Review, Bilbao, September / October, number 92, 1999.
- Bennis Warren and David A. Heenan. Co-leadership: the new constellation of power. Harvard Deusto Business Review, Bilbao, September / October, number 104, 2001.
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- Lucy Kellaway. Coaching: more harm than good. Business management. http: // www. Gestionempresarial.com
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