Opinion Sur Joven

Leadership is an important discipline because, throughout our lives, the ability to join the efforts of a group of people to reach certain goals is needed. Therefore, even if leadership is a skill some people are born with, getting to know successful cases and experts’ advice helps learning to lead, whether at work, relationships or any aspect of our lives.

Are leaders born or made?

After years of debate, the question hasn’t reached a sole answer. We could say it’s a bit of both, because some innate skills enable exercising leadership. However, it can also be learned; today there are several tools that make it possible. Roberto Mizrahi, honorary chairman of an NGO, South North Development Initiative, says: “Some people are naturally skilled at leading the groups they participate in; some of them develop and strengthen those skills and that potential gets to materialize. In some other cases, this doesn’t happen”.

Due to the leading positions they hold (whether at companies, churches or clubs), some people are compelled or need to lead. That’s where natural leaders can be noticed. “The combination of natural skills, effort and proper circumstances explains the emergence of a leader”, Mizrahi explains.

Alejandro Altman, who works as a coach, explains it: “Both things can happen. People who have a genetic predisposition, who’ve been through particular experiences during childhood and have had positive leadership models may be innate leaders. Training, self-knowledge and a lot of experience are always necessary. At the same time, people who have no innate leading skills may become leaders due to training or to their circumstances, or maybe because they have no choice”.

Skills and attitude

“Leadership is complicated. It has many facets: It has many facets: respect, experience, emotional strength, people skills, discipline, vision, momentum, timing -the list goes on, suggests John C. Maxwell, author of the best-selling book “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership”. Manners are really important when it comes to dealing with people. A simple example: telling someone “go there” or “do that” isn’t the same as convincing them of the advantages they’d get by going there or doing that. Many times bad manners generate instantaneous rejection. True leaders are convincing, magnetic, they attract people towards them and are capable of influencing them. Altman believes a leader must comply with three essential requirements: “modesty, sincerity and eagerness to learn”. He adds: “And, obviously, deep knowledge of the field the leader works at”.

Making people feel like someone listens to and understands them tends to be a reason why they identify themselves with the leader Respect, royalty, empathy and trust are essential values that must be applied to our everyday life and our professional activities.

“Depending on the field leaders want to lead at, different skills are needed: physical or political strength to impose their views or convince people, negotiating skills to generate interest around the proposed goals, intellectual ability to attract followers, combining a vision with a strategy the followers deem realizable, ability to establish agreements or alliances that allow gathering strength to make proposals or projects viable, or moral authority (whether given by expertise, fear, illusions or the ability to interpret a collective desire) to impose their own point of view”, says Mizrahi.

The gift of youth

We’re living in a society where participation –whether in politics, labor and corporate issues or education- isn’t encouraged. This doesn’t give young people many spaces where to act. But all is not lost: numerous organizations aim at encouraging youth leadership, such as Asociación Conciencia, which uses the Model United Nations method, Junior Chamber International (JCI), which gives young people the opportunity to lead different projects through teamwork, and Creando Futuro, with leadership couses. There are many other organizations that create spaces to trains future leaders.

Some pieces of advice for those who want to become leaders: “We must learn to listen; it’s much harder than learning to speak”, says Mizrahi. “We must also develop the ability to take the initiative the minute we are ready; we must think and, whenever possible, find a meaning for our moments and the projects we undertake”, he adds. In that sense, he recommends we ask ourselves some questions: What are we looking for? Why are we looking for it? What are we risking with this initiative? Is this giving us a direction, or are we just taking the opportunities that appear on our way? “Leadership strengthens us and lets us create the world we have imagined. But it also requires energy and implies facing risks and challenges: analyzing them is essential”, Mizrahi concludes.

On this issue, Maxwell said: “To build trust, a leader must exemplify competence, connection and character”. He said setting priorities is something good leaders keep doing, no matter the field they work at. This requires them to think beforehand, to see how things relate to the general vision. Finally, he believes setting priorities makes us do things that are at least uncomfortable and, every once in a while, utterly painful.

Leaders in action!

Elisabet Báez, from Rosario (a city in the province of Santa Fe), studies Economy and works eight hours a day at a logistics company. She has always worried about social matters, especially in the areas where governments don’t manage to cover all necessities. For example, homeless people, whose situation worsens during the winter because they have to sleep outdoors, with no shelter.

Elisabet was really worried about this, so she decided to do something about it: she founded “Sol de Noche”, an organization that started working in June 2007, after Elisabet felt the need to give homeless people a place where to be safe during the cruel winter.

But the process began earlier: she’d sent some letters to the local newspaper, after which some people started to be interested in the problem. In short time the team had amounted to 20 people. “Today we’re renting a place for them with our own resources; we’re more than 40 volunteers at the shelter and more than 20 people use it every day. They can have snacks, breakfast, dinner, clean clothes, hot water showers and emotional support. The project is financed through private donations, partners and parties we throw to raise funds”, Elisabet says.

A different vision

Peter Senge poses a different view regarding the way of analyzing organizations and leadership. In his best-selling book “The fifth discipline”, he suggests: “In a learning organization, leaders are designers, stewards, and teachers. They are responsible for building organizations were people continually expand their capabilities to understand complexity, clarify vision, and improve shared mental models – that is, they are responsible for learning. Learning organizations will remain a ‘good idea’… until people take a stand for building such organizations. Taking this stand is the first leadership act, the start of inspiring (literally ‘to breathe life into’) the vision of the learning organization”.

Leadership must add value to other people, help them move forward. It requires a great deal of sensitivity and having in mind that emotions are present at work too. As long as the vision and the goals are commendable, this discipline will be of great importance, since it lets us reach an agreement in terms of interests and integrate work teams by improving their members’ performance, efficiency and productivity.