Leading is talking

To lead is to converse. Why? I’m going to try to explain. As we pointed out in a previous post, we must develop new capabilities to reinvent ourselves as managers and make the most of the enormous opportunities for value creation offered by the Era of Mass Collaboration. The fact is that the image of the charismatic leader, the genius who is at the top of the pyramid of organizations and is capable of knowing everything and having an answer for everything, has been outdated and obsolete. It simply is no longer useful. Today, the challenge is to create new organizations capable of operating with transparency, of attracting and retaining new talent, of deserving the creativity and passion of our young people. Organizations where innovation and leadership is a contribution of all. And the only way to achieve this is by leading from authenticity, transparency and communication.

Hence, today more than ever, we need the ability to converse,to actively participate in the conversations that our customers, our suppliers, and our own employees are having. Only through those conversations can we understand how changes affect us on a personal level, and how they affect our organizations. Only then can we know what to do and not do, what new products and services our customers demand, and what kind of organizations we should design to attract and retain new digital talent.

Markets are also conversations

Markets are conversations. This is the first conclusion of the Cluetrain Manifesto, which already in 1999 anticipated the impact that the Internet was going to have on markets (consumers) and organizations. The manifesto pointed out that, precisely thanks to these new conversations, new and powerful forms of social organization and new forms of collective knowledge were going to emerge. It also advanced that organizations had to change to accommodate the new levels of transparency that emerged in conversations between consumers and organizations, and between the employees of the companies themselves. If you think about it, this is very good news. To develop the new skills it is not necessary to go back to university, or enroll in sophisticated management courses in the best business schools; nor do we need to buy the latest book on Web 2.0. We just have to learn to interact with the new reality, and to participate in the conversations that take place every day between our colleagues, clients, collaborators and friends. That is,

the central thing is not to access information, but to access conversations and actively participate in them. It is these new conversations that will allow us to develop our capabilities as leaders; they will allow us to know the needs of our customers and find the new talent that our organizations require . Our challenge is to be able to read the conversations correctly; to read the signs of change and anticipate the future as a source of value and competitiveness for our organizations. It is, therefore, a matter of generating the new maps that will serve as a reasonable guide to navigate the new world that is to come.

“The central thing is not to access information, but to access conversations and actively participate in them. It is these new conversations that will allow us to develop our capabilities as leaders; which will allow us to know the needs of our customers and find the new talent that our organizations require.”

Communication and management

If we have always accepted that communication as one of the essential skills to be a good manager and all leadership development programs emphasize a whole range of communication strategies to become successful managers, then it should come as no surprise that in the Era of Collaboration Conversation is the key to new leadership. Web 2.0 is expanding and boosting communication capabilities and, therefore, it is also generating a great impact on management. New technologies make conversations more horizontal, open, transparent and global. This challenges traditional management practices, generally based on hierarchical structures, opaque organizations and control systems based on rewards and punishments. Therefore, we are not talking strictly about the web, but about something much more relevant in the field of management: the creation of value through people and the generation of collective action. It is, therefore, a matter of freeing ourselves from the complexes that we have acquired as digital immigrants. We must make our mental models more flexible because, honestly, the “legacy” that traditional management has left us is not going to be of great help in this new path, nor is it going to encourage us to venture into new conversations. I have already commented on other occasions: we need a new way of thinking about leadership. We must take into account the possibilities that web 2.0 offers us as a platform for collaboration. And we must accept the need to create organizations capable of operating with new levels of transparency; more flexible organizations that allow us to adapt to new models of value creation; competitive and humane organizations – humanistic, if you like – where people can give the best of themselves.

Practice new conversations 2.0

Let’s talk, then, about the new skills and practices of Leadership 2.0. The new Internet allows us to establish dialogues that were never possible before. Together we will find the answers to these new challenges, and perhaps we will also be able to found a new common sense. You will see that the conversations are real, that they belong to flesh and blood people who speak with a human voice, and in a language that we can all understand. In this new world of open, transparent and global communications, there is little room for secrets. There is no place to hide: we will all end up being visible.

In this new world of open, transparent and global communications, there is little room for secrets. There is no place to hide: we will all end up being visible.

The new language we need to participate in these conversations must necessarily be learned from digital natives. Ideally, you should have one at home, as is my case; but if not, you will find the keys to these new forms of communication in the a post I wrote about the “Immigrant Bosses”. Blogs, wikis, social networks and many other platforms for interaction are already available on the Internet, and they are free. Make sure that your personal agenda includes this time of “new conversation”. Be generous with yourself and create your space to think, explore, question and learn by playing and interacting with the new reality, exactly like our young people do.

*You can see the content of this post summarized in the following presentation: