Leading organizations

The complexity, pace and transformation the organizations are facing today, bring us a new challenge that is how to develop managers and leaders that could navigate and support their teams in such complex market scenario. The objective of any organization is to be successful and for this, one of the key elements, is to implement a strategic learn and development model that will guide the organization throughout the years, upskilling and reskilling employees' competencies while projecting the future organizational capabilities. 

Leadership and management profiles have also changed over the past years, but its importance remains the same. In the past, managers “knew” what to do, they “taught” others how to do it and they evaluated employees’ performance based on their own perspectives. It was only about command and control. It is worth to mention that for some specific organizations as construction, army and police, among others, this model is still used and it shows good results.

However, today, managers simply do not and cannot have all the answers. Organizations are moving to a different approach: support and guidance rather than instructions. The focus is to build a learning culture that stimulates the lifelong learning and the growth mindset model.

Recently, I have been questioned about the terminology itself... Managers or Leaders? A recent change that I have seen in some organizations is that instead of rejecting the term "Managers", companies are implementing programs to improve manager's knowledge and to develop leadership skills, combining both profiles.

A considerable part of human resources budget is in learning and development. Companies are continuously investing in development tools like counselling, mentoring, coaching and building partnerships with Universities to deliver in-company courses. Nevertheless, more often management and leadership programs fail than succeed.

Leadership skills are not acquired in a two-week course or even in a long-term program, even though both are useful. Most complex skills emerge over the time, which is the reason we frequently talk about lifelong learning and the importance of building learning organizations. After all, without learning, companies repeat the same solutions for new and more complex problems, increasing the risk to potentially stop business growth and even worse, could “kill” a business.

“In a learning organization, leaders are designers, stewards, and teachers. They are responsible for building organizations where people continually expand their capabilities to understand complexity, clarify vision, and improve shared mental models – that is, they are responsible for learning." Peter Senge

Kotter (1990) in his article “What Leaders really do” states that managers and leaders are both essential in all kinds of organization and states the difference between both concepts “Leadership and management are two distinctive and complementary systems of action. Each has its own function and characteristic activities.” He also highlights that one should balance the other, that strong management with weak leadership is not good, but a strong leadership with weak management is no better as well.

Kouzes & Posner (2008) in the book “The Leadership Challenge” build a theory that leadership is a behaviour. The authors defend that anyone can become a leader and “the first place to look for leadership is within yourself.” In their view, “leadership can happen anywhere, at any time”, despite of the cultural aspect, the position you have or the size of the organization.

I agree with both perspectives. Indeed, managers and leaders are equal important in organizations and I also believe that anyone can develop leadership skills, though not necessarily everyone wants to pursue a career in the leadership pipeline, and it is something that organizations have to consider. Become a leader for me, means to have genuine interest in people, will power to keep developing yourself and others, and persistence to challenge the status quo along the way.

Leaders are examples and role models of company’s values and principles and together with the employees, they bring company’s culture to life. As Dave Ulrich says, culture is the organizational brand. It is the company’s identity defined by our customers. Therefore, the way leaders behave shape the organizational culture and employees’ behaviour, which could lead organizations to success or failure.

“Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership. “ Peter Drucker