In large and medium-sized companies, we continue to refer to workers as human resources, collaborators, subordinates or, indirectly, as followers of other individuals whom we call leaders.
There may have been, and still is, some basis for doing so, but cultural changes and the emerging economy seem to demand from people the prominence, the dimension, which perhaps has been stolen from them in the past.
New and more professional profiles of managers and workers seem to open up space in the 21st century, and perhaps we should already reconsider in some cases the language used, if not - and if it does not sound revolutionary or heretical - the very validity of some of the numerous models leaders-followers offered to us.
Attending to excellence in management, already solid and legitimate interests, consulting firms and business schools have been flattering perhaps excessively young or future managers, and have been sounding insistently at large companies as potential buzzwords, talent, leadership, etc. A professional and effective management of people is inexcusable, but perhaps training and development efforts should be better distributed, to the benefit of the profile of the new expert worker, the knowledge worker Peter Drucker was talking about: a responsible worker, updated in his knowledge, loyal to their profession and with greater autonomy (as a result of empowerment) in their performance. This new expert worker would share with the manager the right to cultivate his self-leadership, which is in good measure to say,its intrapersonal dimension.
In the previous decade, there was talk of leadership and important executives such as Welch, Iacocca, Gerstner, Grove… and even Lay, the one from the Enron scandal; then it was said that, in reality, the leaders had to be the leaders of other leaders, and that the leadership would have to be extended by the organizations. It is hard to imagine a community in which everyone is both a leader and a follower, but it all depends on how the concept is understood. We can also refer, in effect, to a certain intrapersonal leadership, to which Covey or Senge invited us, and park for a moment the interpersonal leadership that we have been postulating among middle managers, and which places workers as their followers. Workers can, yes, follow shared goals and contribute to their achievement, but perhaps, leaving out the transactional,It is not always easy to follow leaders you have not chosen on a day-to-day basis; especially when the worker does not have the profile of a follower, but rather a professional vocation in a certain field, which he wishes to master sufficiently. Let's think, yes, of workers who, in their field, know more than their bosses.
People in organizations
Regarding the consideration of people, one could perhaps speak of two referential types of organizations for the 21st century: those in which almost all people are integrated in the company and share declared and authentic objectives, and those in which the circle Integration is limited to the most strategic management personnel, leaving out the so-called followers, collaborators, human resources, etc., to whom different messages are sent. Until now, and despite the importance of people being declared, the second model has been working, sometimes with the appearance of an approximation to the first; However, a growing value of knowledge (that resides in people) could make things evolve towards a more professional relationship, more client-supplier,between managers and workers, which in fact is already generating different relationship formats, not always well resolved.
Always thinking of the knowledge worker as a key element of the emerging economy, if the price to pay for the maintenance of the job included subordination or transactional monitoring of a boss-leader, each worker-follower would solve their particular case; But we do not miss the professional potential that could be wasted in a subordinate relationship, subtle or declared, that affected an expert worker, in the age of knowledge.
What does the senior knowledge worker prefer to give the best of himself, a good leader, or a sufficient degree of autonomy? Look at all the possible combinations, including that of a junior leader and a senior worker.
I read recently, in the edition for HR professionals of the Observatorio magazine, in an interesting and documented article by José Manuel Casado, that it would be more appropriate to speak of human capital than human resources, and I think this is on the minds of many of us.
Human resources sounds a bit like the industrial era to me, already in a certain decline, unless I interpret it as “human resources” (intellectual, cognitive, emotional, etc.); on the other hand, human capital seems more in tune with the emerging economy of knowledge and innovation.
The reader will have their point of view in relation to the terms used, but will accept that an expert in a certain area, who is also willing to continue learning, constitutes a solid value in our days.
I also have an interview published in Coaching Magazine right now. Magda Gálvez asks Javier Fernández Aguado the difference between the leader-coach and the traditional leader, and he responds: “For me, leadership and coaching are almost synonymous terms. A good leader is, among other things, because he knows how to get the best out of his collaborators… ”.
This phrase catches me in the middle of studying the profiles demanded by the knowledge economy that we have been talking about, and specifically it catches me questioning some leader-follower models.
I appeal to the critical thinking of the reader so that they freely disagree with what I suggest, but I think that new workers, those of permanent learning and development, those of empowerment, those who are in a position to innovate…, perhaps they should be considered a little more as professionals, and a little less as followers, collaborators or subordinates. (On the other hand, and although the context of the aforementioned interview with Fernández Aguado solidly leads to the formulated idea, I would defend the conceptual distance between coaching and interpersonal leadership, despite the fact that I have been more interested in intrapersonal leadership).
I remember when, in the 80s, at the same time -by the way- that I began to hear about "human resources", I began to feel the arrival of a new bureaucracy in the name of quality; Readers may have had the experience sooner or later, but I felt in the 80s that if, with additional effort, I made things better, those responsible for quality would be there to take the credit. Maybe it was something unfair, or I was wrong, but I must be honest in formulating memories; of course, my criteria on quality - more to the funds - did not coincide with the official ones - more to the forms.
This previous thought came to my conscience when I read "A good leader is, among other things, because he knows how to get the best out of his collaborators." Undoubtedly the idea has its foundation, but I think again that perhaps, if one gives the best of himself, the thing could remain as a merit of the boss, in his attributed role of leader. It is already seen that there must be full trust between managers and workers; What I submit to the reader is that this trust should be based on mutual professional respect, and not so much on a leader-follower relationship. (When speaking of leaders and followers, let us remember that usually they have not chosen the former, but rather the latter, and that they have done so by valuing knowledge and other competencies, often without forgetting submission. It was in the years 90, but I knew that,In a survey of employees of a large company, they declared that one of the traits that bosses valued the most was submission; I fear that even today it is a value pending review, and I close the digressive parenthesis).
We were talking about trust between managers and workers. It would not only be a question of trusting in mutual loyalty, but also in the professional competence of each one; In other words, under normal conditions, autonomy and responsibility would be more valuable than subordination or submission. Said with provocative forcefulness: "When the worker approaches the ideal profile that is proclaimed, then he should not be seen as a follower, nor the manager as a leader, but all as professionals."
But the idea that Fernández Aguado reminds us about the performance of employees brings me more reflections. “In my e-learning experience,” a training consultant colleague told me, “the worst thing I've had is that my boss forced me to do botches; for the budgets to give me just 2 or 3 days to design the script for an online leadership pill that would be followed by hundreds of managers from… Time was running out to find out how leadership was interpreted in that company. Surely there are bosses who ask workers to always do things well, and make it easier to do so; but there are also probably others, or perhaps the same ones, who sometimes ask, subtly or explicitly, the workers to do things without much care, that is, knowingly poorly.It is not possible to see as a leader who ever forces us to renounce principles, just as, by the way, we cannot see greedy criminals such as Kenny Lay and so many others as great leaders, even without leaving our country.
Some colleagues tell me that junior workers do have to be led (and it should not be ruled out that some senior workers too), and it is true that, as Peter Drucker already did, we have to distinguish between senior and junior workers; But these degrees should also be distinguished between the managerial leaders. Here I take the opportunity to recall what the aforementioned and late master of gurus said about leadership: “Leadership is vision; There's nothing more to say". That's how pragmatic Drucker often was, who here associated leadership with top management; But other experts have written many books to talk about situational, transformational, inspiring, emotional, resonant, relational, empowering, charismatic, ethical leadership, etc.
New leadership models
That there is a diversity of views on the leadership of managers and that this should be reconsidered in companies, there are enough symptoms. I recently referred myself to a consulting firm (élogos) that offered, as a star product, management by habits (DpH) as the ideal leadership model: as a possible solution to the confusion of existing models. This is how Fernández Aguado of the DpH speaks, in the interview to which I have referred: “Management by Habits, another of the Management models that I have created and developed in recent years, is the peak of the anthropomorphic paradigm in which they are framed many of my proposals for the government of organizations and people. It consists of setting the values in motion, avoiding that they are limited to a cold and stark list of proposals framed on the wall of a company ”.
But we have other formulations related to DpH. Miguel Ángel Alcalá, general director of the International Association for Management Studies, told us:
“The challenges of DpH are twofold: define what are the habits that are convenient for people, and show the paths to achieve them. In this strict sense, the work consists of the person conquering the truth of himself in his actions, and, in parallel, the full good for himself, with his behavior: living the truth about the good done in each act, and the realization of the good subordinated to the truth about their own being ”.
And Sandra Díaz, from élogos -the company that offers it as a star product-, underlines the role of example that corresponds to the managers-leaders: “The management tool to implement the DpH are the managers' own behaviors, which will serve as example to achieve the habits of collaborators ”. And also: “The manager must attend to all aspects of the person in an integral way. The true leader conquers the will and the emotions of the collaborators, he does not manipulate them. Understand your wishes and decisions. Work intelligence, will and emotions. "
I keep wondering if the new knowledge worker, expert, lifelong learner, lover of things well done, responsible, integrated in empowerment -as Drucker drew it-, will feel comfortable leaving the leader to work on his intelligence, his will, His emotions…
Is it really necessary for senior workers to hand over all this to a man who calls himself a leader, even if they don't see him as such? Wouldn't it be better if the workers prepared for it put their intelligence, will and perhaps emotions at the service of shared goals, and not that of certain gentlemen? And if there are workers who are not sufficiently prepared, wouldn't it be better to speed up their preparation to take responsibility for their work?
It is not necessary to punish the reader with more paragraphs: I come to ask for your reflection on the success or failure of perpetuating the leader-followers model, by establishing the best relationships between managers and workers in our time. Excuse me that, just to cut it short, I may have gone fast in some inference; Remember that I do not intend to be right, but to encourage debate about the excess of leadership models that are offered to us. Browse and browse publisher catalogs for yourself and you'll find new books on executive leadership.
