From leadership as a position; to leadership as a process of value creation

A leader is not a leader just because he or she occupies a “position” of leader. Being the director or the president does not guarantee, at all, that the decisions made will be the right one; sitting in a certain chair, occupying a certain office, always having the last word are not, of course, the traits that characterize the leaders of the future. All these are recipes from the past that are no longer useful. Only by creating value through people can we build authentic sustainable leadership in this new Era of Collaboration.

Acquiring mastery of the “art of leading” is extremely difficult. First, you need to have an in-depth understanding of the nature of leadership. And contrary to what many people believe, leadership development is never an “event” – a time-specific action – or a character trait, but an ongoing process of learning and concrete experiences. In other words, leadership is

a collective process of value creation through people, and not so much a set of individual attributes common to leaders, nor a set of characteristics – such as honesty, integrity or ethics – that we would like our leaders to have.

The leader, the followers and the environment

There is something that all leaders have in common: followers committed to their vision. That is why it is convenient to analyze the leadership process both from the perspective of the leader and from the point of view of the relationships between the leader and his followers. Using an approach linked to the value creation process, we can obtain a global perspective, focused more on the relationships between the leader, his followers and the environment, than on the traditional search for qualities or characteristics of the unique and charismatic leader. In this way we can put the emphasis on what we do as leaders to achieve results, and not so much on who we are, where we come from or what position we occupy. For all these reasons, it is very important not to limit ourselves to the development of the “leader”; we must contemplate the integral development of the “person”.

New skills

In recent times, effective leadership has changed, and it is expected to change even more in the coming years. The leaders of the future will be characterized by new skills, among which will be the following:

• the development of identity and relationships in the new social structures emerging from the Internet
• The new natural language communication capabilities of digital natives
• collaboration capabilities and the elimination of silos or silos in organizations
• the ability and attitude to share, learn and execute in global and open networks

The new demands we have mentioned are critical for the future of leadership, both at the individual level and within organizations. On the one hand, these new challenges reveal the shortcomings of the leadership models on which we have continued to base the governance of our institutions: isolated and compartmentalized structures, closed to collaboration between different departments and systems. On the other hand, the new challenges are testing the strategic and operational skills of our managers and executives, and the ability of today’s organizations to change and move towards new models of leadership and value creation. These are complex challenges that call into question nothing less than existing cultures, structures, practices and methods; challenges for which we do not yet have solutions, nor best practices of general application. Hence, my vision and my approach to leadership as a discipline of continuous development, and not as a specific action over time.

From personal leadership to collective leadership

This does not mean that charismatic leaders will disappear. Strong and charismatic individual leaders will continue to be important for the success of organizations, particularly in times of crisis and uncertainty, and as catalysts for collective effort to overcome current challenges. But, at the same time, organizations will need to turn to collective leadership to identify new challenges, understand their implications, and work collaboratively on the most appropriate solution.

Individual solutions are no longer enough to solve problems

The fact is that today the problems are too complex for us to find solutions individually, in the solitude of our offices and our organizational silos. We must go further in the scope of our contribution, even beyond the limits of our organization. I do not believe that there is any leader capable, on his own, of understanding and responding to the problems of our society. The headlines that appear every day in the media – reminding us of the crisis situation in which we live – only reinforce this statement. For all these reasons, today it is more important than ever to develop a new concept of collective leadership, which places the emphasis on collective action and collaboration, and which is firmly committed to transparency as an essential control mechanism for the creation of value.