Typology: Blog

Leadership, the great unresolved challenge

For over 15 years, I have been dedicated to transforming organisations. In this process, after all this time, I can identify key aspects that I encounter time and time again when driving change and transformation, particularly when it is cultural. Managers, both senior leadership and middle management, play a decisive role in change: they can act as major catalysts, or, as is usually the case, as major obstacles. If you encounter the former, you’re in luck; you’ve come across a visionary leader who is sensitive to what lies unseen… ‘What is essential is invisible to the eye,’ said the Little Prince. That sensitivity lies in thinking, quite simply, that people are the most important thing.

Alejandra Martínez Boluda

Alejandra Martínez Boluda

Managing Director, BICG

Leadership, and providing this group with the right tools, is an inexhaustible and still unresolved issue. We all know that this is a key group, and we should therefore devote all our time and effort to understanding how to motivate them and pull the right levers.

Their significance is often decisive when it comes to creating a good working environment: 86% of the impact on an employee’s satisfaction when discussing the most important relationships in their workplace stems from their relationship with their managers. The remaining 14% is attributed to their colleagues (McKinsey article titled ‘The Boss Factor’, published on 22 September 2020).

Leadership, and providing this group with the right tools, is an inexhaustible and still unresolved issue. We all know that this is a key group, and we should therefore devote all our time and effort to understanding how to motivate them and pull the right levers.

Their significance is often decisive when it comes to creating a good working environment: 86% of the impact on an employee’s satisfaction when discussing the most important relationships in their workplace stems from their relationship with their managers. The remaining 14% is attributed to their colleagues (McKinsey article titled ‘The Boss Factor’, published on 22 September 2020).

Here are some tips that may be useful in your role as a manager:

1. Review each week how much time you spend with the team, and if this percentage isn’t high enough, let’s turn it around by the following week.
2. Make time to listen to and get to know your team.
3. Stick strictly to three key principles of leadership: ask for help, apologise and say thank you.
4. Think twice before calling a meeting: what do I want to achieve with this meeting? It can be the most subtle form of micromanagement.
5. Ask yourself: do I make my team’s work easier, do I help them overcome obstacles? One of the key questions is understanding when I add the most value to the team and letting them be the ones to decide

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