Are we experiencing a leadership crisis?
What do we talk about when we talk about leadership?
These questions are valid both for the public scenario and for that of companies, social organizations and universities.
The debate over the need to have people who offer credibility and trust in the leadership of governments and organizations is part of the constant questions on which it is worth meditating, beyond the current situation.
For this reflection, let us begin by specifying that the concept of
leadership
as we know it today is relatively new.
In history there have been multiple ways to explain the phenomenon without calling it that.
Machiavelli, for example, shed light on what he considered a good leader for the time and would call him
The Prince
.
When Aristotle was writing his treatise
Nicomachean Ethics
or his
Politics
, he was in some way describing the virtuous being whom he deserved to lead and guide, whom he called a magistrate.
Also in war writings such as
The Art of War
, by Sun Tzu, it was about discovering the strategy and place of the leader in the face of confrontation.
This is how throughout history many thinkers, men and women, as well as practicing leaders, have tried to illustrate the art of management.
However, it was only until the middle of the 19th century that management and the discipline of administration began to be a matter of study and dealt, strictly speaking, with understanding management as a function, then giving way to the emergence of leadership as a concept and theory. .
For this reason I would prefer that we ask ourselves, regarding our reflection on leadership, about the phenomenon of power that underlies it and that is as old as the human being himself when he interacts with others.
It is in the understanding of power where we can understand the problems of the leader and the so-called leadership crisis that we are experiencing.
Just as the word
leader
has been romanticized and leaves on the table the idealization of the person who is capable of being decisive, mobilizing, transformative, adaptive and inclusive, among other attributes;
Power
has had the worst part because it has been relegated to polemology, that is, to the study of war, to the use of power as a concept of force or, what is worse, to the negative adjective for some leader
:
“the power went to his head” or “the power hurt him.”
This, without a doubt, is misleading because power has no condition of value, goodness or evil.
A leader who does it well, does it because he is able to exert his power at a high level, because he understands how to expand his ability to influence.
Power arises in organizational interaction, it is a social and communicative phenomenon, as the philosopher Byung Chul Han explains, which occurs in the encounter between two, in which each one tries to give continuity to his or her self in the other.
That is why there is tension there, but also a willingness to jointly create a new reality based on that communicative flow that unfolds in the encounter.
Power is a producer and trainer, we could not speak of a leader without power, only that capacity enables him to transform.
It is necessary that, when talking about leadership, we avoid value judgments and seek to maintain its philosophical meaning, from the perspective of power as its essence.
Whoever wants to exercise leadership must understand the phenomenon of power in depth, knowing it as a communicative interaction that not only refers to the capacity for action, but also for concertation.
It is the ability to create a common will.
The poetics of power embraces its creative and expansive sense.
Being a flow of interactions and communication that pass through our ability to give continuity to the self, to expand our reach in the other, it is language and uses language, it is full of symbols, narratives, it has an aesthetic.
Power is recreated in the discourse, in the story that creates illusion, imaginaries and feelings, which is highly valued in leadership.
In certain aesthetics, populism and polarization have the necessary space to produce their effect, precisely because they know how to take advantage of that communicative logic.
That is why power also has ethics, since as a social phenomenon that occurs in the expansion of the self, it requires the care of the being.
“Power does not damage what did not exist… it only shows what always existed,” they say when someone's demons come out.
An ethic of care means cultivating the conditions in which the expansion of the self offers the best version of itself.
When my students wonder why today's business leaders and entrepreneurs, when asked about their history, place so much emphasis on their mentality, habits and beliefs? I usually direct their reflection towards this ethics of careful.
These leaders have experienced the phenomenon of power, they have discovered its lights and shadows, they are aware that it is their self that expands and creates productive interactions, and that if they do not take care of themselves, if they do not cultivate themselves, those interactions will be the reflection of who they are.
You have already seen the expansive effect of power that, like a great projector, transmits what there is.
There are no mysteries.
All this leads us to think that our concern about the leadership crisis cannot be naive in its approach.
Understanding the phenomenon of power must be essential for any leader and cannot be left to those who want to impose populist and concentrating narratives.
It is the task of those who lead to become aware of the expansive phenomenon and continuity of their being that is power, and to exercise it.
A good leader is not ashamed with the use of power, rather he understands the social phenomenon that it is and knows how to turn it into a creative and ethical force that generates trust by giving his best.
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