What is LEADERSHIP?
It is said that leadership is that set of values, capabilities, principles or competencies that someone has to influence the way of being and acting of others, this influence serving to make them act with enthusiasm to achieve their objectives.
From the previous definition, it is worth highlighting that for leadership to be generated, there needs to be a leader with a vision and a group to influence.
But what is a leader? Let’s take History as an example to see some of these leaders and try to extract their main common characteristics.
What leaders have there been in history?
Take 5 great leaders in the History of humanity, for example, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Mahatma Gandi, Winston Churchill, and Nelson Mandela.
I suppose there will be people who do not agree with what they symbolize or what they achieved, and I suppose there will also be people who consider other historical leaders more important, but I think the vast majority of us can agree that each of them symbolizes an era that lasts to this day with the name of leaders. This is what I call being a LEADER in CAPITAL LETTERS.
What do these leaders have in common?
I do not want to analyze here the way in which they exercised their leadership or the achievements they achieved with it. What I want to determine is, in my opinion, what characteristics, qualities or fundamental competencies they have in common. Surely they will individually have many other qualities, but these are common to all of them.
Thus, their common competencies are:
- They have strategic vision
- They are resilient (flexible) and persevering
- They have a great ability to inspire and motivate others
- They have extraordinary communication skills
- They have exercised their leadership in times of crisis
Is the leader born or made?
To answer this question, I will separate the 5 common competencies of great leaders into two blocks, the first block will host “times of crisis”, and the second block will be composed of the other 4 competencies.
For a leader to be born, it is very important that “times of crisis” first occur, and to explain it I will take the words of the famous American novelist G. Michael Hopt who in his work “Those Who Remain” tells us:
“Hard times create strong men, strong men create easy times, easy times create weak men, weak men create difficult times«.
Hopt takes the concept of the cycle to illustrate the idea that adversity and challenges tend to make people stronger, while comfort and ease can lead to decline and a lack of resilience.
The first thing the group needs to see a leader be born is to find itself in adverse, uncertain and very complex situations to resolve. There may be many people with a strategic, resilient, persevering vision and skilled communicators, but the group will not consider them leaders if there is no serious, adverse, complex and uncertain situation where the leader, using these skills, is able to influence the group in such a way that it is enthusiastic about collaborating with him to obtain the objectives that the leader envisions and that he offers to the group as a solution to these adverse and uncertain situations.
But let’s remember that they are the first 4 competencies that a leader must have so that in difficult times they can influence others. Thus, the first 4 competencies of a leader can be innate (born) or acquired (become), but the spark that starts it all is times of crisis.
Leader and leadership
A leader is distinguished by his clear vision of the future, which he communicates in an inspiring way, aligning his team with that vision. The good leader is the one who learns from the past to project a better future by activating the group in the present.
Leadership not only involves a hierarchical position within the group, but leadership has to be earned, not granted by birth. Leadership is obtained from a meritocratic structure where the group recognizes the achievements and vision of the leader.
Due to his or her ability to influence the group, the leader must possess a series of fundamental values, such as integrity (doing what should be done in accordance with what is right), or honesty (acting according to how one thinks and feels). These same values are what define a good financial advisor: someone whose only compass is the client’s interest.
And as a result of all of the above, there will be as many leaderships as there are leaders.
There will be leaders to face big changes and there will be leaders to manage ours day to day. And within each of these areas, there will be an individual way in which that leader exercises his leadership, and thus we will have authoritarian, visionary, participatory, intrusive or democratic leadership to face major changes or to manage our daily lives.
But leadership will tell us about the type of leader, not about their objectives.
If you want to know how we transfer these skills to the wealth management of our clients, we will be happy to tell you.
Rafa Rabat
Norz patrimony partner