Gentlemen associated consultants under the label of the top ten Spanish management experts, I thank you for your contribution to the progress of business management and I follow you carefully in your conferences and writings, but I have a question for you: have we been talking about leadership, or really following? I will clarify my question.
I think leadership has become an extraordinarily repeated term. Alone, or accompanied by many different adjectives, this polysemic word seems to flood the management literature, helping to magnify the figure of senior and middle managers, at the expense of workers. These, who in the knowledge economy are asked for a lot of knowledge, continuous learning, creativity, commitment, responsibility and more, are, however, and in my particular way of seeing, possibly thus reduced to the follow-up of some manager-leaders whom perhaps they do not perceive them as such leaders.
Naturally, there must be hierarchical relationships in the company - although perhaps they should be based a little more on knowledge and a little less on power-; But, in this economy of knowledge and innovation, should these relationships be guided by models of leadership and follow-through, or should they be guided instead by well-understood professionalism? In other words, should skilled workers "follow" their boss-leader, or should they simply "pursue" goals and generate professional results? You will see why I ask this.
Indeed, we know that one of the latest leadership models textually rejects (although with debatable arguments) Management by Objectives, and instead proposes Management by Habits of professor Javier Fernández Aguado, through which, apparently, the managers-leaders should serve as an example with their conduct, and ensure that workers cultivate prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, patience, joy, punctuality, good taste, audacity… (Perhaps, by the way, we should reconcile boldness with prudence well).
I do not wish to extend myself, but only to clarify the question: are you postulating, for the new knowledge workers, the following of their bosses? You seem to speak of obedience, and that workers must obey, and do so convinced and happy, and this reminds me of what Pío Baroja used to say (that in Spain people paid for submission and not so much for work). I ask the question because I think that perhaps it is not submission but professionalism that is to be expected of the workers of our time. I think, pending more information, that labels such as followers, subordinates, collaborators or resources, should give way to the professionalism of everyone, managers and workers, throughout the 21st century.
It scares me that lifelong learning and career loyalty workers (the ones Peter Drucker described to us) end up being evaluated for their prudence, patience, playfulness, and follow-through, rather than for their professional results. I also wonder if it would not be more convenient to cultivate the aforementioned profile of the knowledge worker, and stop cultivating so much the leadership of managers; but I do not wish to disperse: is, or is not, follow-up the best formula to channel the capacities, faculties and strengths of the expert workers of our days? If it were not, I would propose self-leadership. Thank you for your attention and answer. Know that I have searched your website for an e-mail address and I have not found it (although there is a contact form),so I have decided to ask my question openly.
