The 5 Virtues of the Transformational Leader E-Book

David Lamka

• Herausgeber: Hipertexto
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Spanisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 214

Beschreibung

Do you want to start an organizational transformation but don't know how? Do you want to renew your leadership skills for the current challenges in the region? Do you feel called to lead to leave the world a little better than you found it? In The 5 Virtues of the Transformational Leader, David Lamka invites you to embark on a significant journey of transformation. It is time to recognize that what generated success in the past no longer works. The current reality is placing new demands on you, new challenges that demand radical changes in your leadership, your company, your methods and what you contribution to the global community. In this book you will discover the 5 virtues that you and your team of leaders can develop to initiate an organizational transformation and turn it into a triple impact company, like BCorp, where success is newly measured not only in economic, but also social and environmental impact. In each chapter you will find: ·       The mistakes that bosses usually make. ·       The virtue to achieve success with higher purpose and triple impact. ·       Interviews and videos of inspiring business leaders from Latin America. ·       A virtual self-diagnosis and tools to become a true transformational leader. You will discover the 5 virtues: 1.     Your enthusiastic leadership to break old paradigms that do not work and create new ones more appropriate to the VICA era of transformation, connected to your life purpose and legacy. 2.     Your empowering leadership so that collaborators feel confidence, commitment, passion at work and feel called to develop their own extraordinary leadership. 3.     Your triple impact leadership so that millennials, consumers and collaborators vibrate with the purpose of your company, generating sustainability for society and, at the same time, being economically successful. 4.     Your global vision leadership to consciously see that in order to achieve economic results in the short and long term you need to develop the organizational culture, attitudes and customs that will sustain it over time. 5.     Your integral leadership recognizing that to be coherent you need to develop a deep self-knowledge of the conscious and the unconscious, having presence and flexibility to act from different polarities. Does what you read resonate with you, motivate or inspire you? Do you feel any emotion in the face of this call? So, welcome!

Leseprobe

By purchasing an authorized copy of the book and respecting the copyright you are helping the work to flourish and the author’s creativity to be rewarded. If you think it might be beneficial to reproduce, transform or otherwise communicate this work, I invite you to contact the author:

[email protected].

Thank you for supporting this transformative movement of leaders who make a difference.

First edition September 2020 in 500 copies.Second edition March 2021 in 1000 copies.

Graphic design and layout

Yorfi David Ramírez: behance.net/Doemdesign

Illustrations

Anastasiia Danylevska: Instagram dan___an

Photography:

Kari Barragan: karibarragan.com

Copyright © 2020 David Lamka Stockar

ISBN: 978-9942-44-123-2

Diseño epub:Hipertexto – Netizen Digital Solutions

Business leaders’ comment

“What gave us success in the past clearly no longer serves us to face the future and it is this new logic of transformational leadership that has to be born in organizations. It is an important book for leaders of traditional companies who want to transform their culture with an inspiring purpose and face current and future crises from their best version: with greater empathy, commitment, generosity and creativity”

Gonzalo Muñoz, Chile, 2015 Best Social Entrepreneur and 2019 World’s Best Circular Business, Davos Economic Forum; High Level Climate Action Champion COP25

“This book addresses a delicate and complex topic: leadership as service. For anyone who applies it, it will become a toolbox to get in touch with their vocation and creativity in choosing a path that will touch many lives in different ways.”

Maca Lara Dillon, Ecuador, Founder & CEO Kipus Communications & Media.

“A powerful reminder that the change needed in our society begins with a transformation in ourselves. David Lamka teaches us how to become comfortable with discomfort in order to become the transformational leaders we aspire to be.”

Jay Cohen Gilbert, USA, Co-Founder of BCorp and BLab.

“With this book David invites leaders and entrepreneurs in the region to become more aware of WHY and WHY to be an entrepreneur and proposes an inspiring path to achieve this transformation.”

Andrés Zurita, Ecuador, Executive Director Alliance for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

“David Lamka’s book gives us the opportunity to open a door towards a transformational style to be more effective in this role so aspired by many but little understood by most. Reading this book will increase the hope of having more and better leaders that will transform our companies and hopefully Ecuador.”

Roberto Salas, Ecuador, Vice President and CEO Consorcio Nobis.

CONTENTS

GRATITUDE

INTRODUCTION

AN UNCOMFORTABLE PRESENT IN LATIN AMERICA

ENTHUSIASTIC LEADER

Apathetic

EMPOWERING LEADER

Tyrant

TRIPLE IMPACT LEADER

Avaricious

GLOBAL VISION LEADER

Short-sighted

INTEGRAL LEADER

Incoherent

TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADER

NOTES AND REFERENCES

As my wife said at our wedding ceremony, "an event that begins with gratitude cannot end badly". So I begin by sharing my deep gratitude for life, which has placed extraordinary teachers in my path whose inspiration has allowed me to complete this book that

To my companion on the road, my mirror of love and personal growth, Margarita Pareja-Stoyell.

To my parents and siblings who taught me to love, to decide what I want and don’t want in life.

To my ancestors who transmitted me the restlessness to emigrate to new horizons.

To Julio Olalla and Daniel Taroppio for their wisdom and teachings that transformed me.

To Gonzalo Muñoz, Luis Carrasco, Denis Gallet, Pedro Arellano, Rick Stoyell and all those who have been my mentors and helped me develop my life purpose.

To BCorp movement, Conscious Capitalism, Ken Wilber and Fred Laloux for the inspiration and purpose to transform conscious organizations and impact the world.

To my first reader and editor, Federico Gómez.

To my subsequent editors, Gastón Sánchez, Margarita Pareja-Stoyell,Joseph Solis and Carmen Virginia Carrillo.

To Juan Gándara for inviting me to his haven of tranquility and contact with nature to write.

To Mario Morales for the idea of writing and Sandra Mateus for her advice.

To all the business leaders who committed to a different kind of leadership and agreed to be interviewed for this book.

To Latin America for being the place in this world where I feel at home.

To all the great Masters and Sherpas who accompany us on the path of life to live fully.

Thank you,

INTRODUCTION

t is said that the Chinese ideogram that represents the word crisis is made up of two different words: danger and opportunity. The world is changing and I am sure you recognize it. You probably sense that this is an important moment in history and you have the power to decide how you want to experience it: as a threatening danger to defend against or as an opportunity to become the leader you feel called to be. Your choice will define whether you will be recognized as the boss who failed to act or, on the contrary, as the inspirational leader who led the entire organization toward transformation.

If you want your company to be a market leader, with an innovative and transformational culture, you need to change in yourself what you would like to change in your company. Nobody is going to do it for you, it is YOUR responsibility to do it.

It is time to decide to work on yourself. This book is a tool to take advantage of all the potential you have to be a transformational leader and turn your organization into a model for Latin America. This leadership is focused on the mobilizing force that a leader generates when he or she leads with enthusiasm and coherence towards an inspiring purpose, empowering people through an inspiring culture to achieve extraordinary results.

Developing these new qualities requires you to be willing to face the mistakes that have accompanied you in the way you manage. My commitment is to help you determine what kind of boss you are, and then, through the strategies I am going to propose, achieve the necessary transformations and become the leader your company needs.

Below I describe the 5 styles of bosses that usually prevent successful transformations:

1.Apathetic bosses: They do not find a purpose for leading, therefore they do not inspire their work team, they bore them and thus do not follow him or her.

2.Tyrant bosses: They do not trust and need control and fear to manage. Employees do not dare to say what they think or share their ideas for fear of being punished and as soon as they can, they change jobs.

3.Avaricious bosses: They maximize profits and do not see that the environment has changed, that employees want to work with meaning, beyond a salary, and that consumers boycott companies that are not responsible. As a result, companies miss opportunities and market segments.

4.Short-sighted bosses: Fail in their technological change processes because they believe that employees can simply be asked to adopt new tools and do not perceive the gap between the current mindset of their employees and the culture needed to achieve this transformation.

5.Finally, incoherent bosses: They say they want change, but they tell their employees to change and they themselves do not do it. This breakdown generates distrust in employees and little commitment to change.

In this book, I will propose to replace these weaknesses with virtues that great transformational leaders have developed to hit the target of their objectives. These inspiring people, whom you will meet through your reading, I have met professionally and interviewed because they managed to take their organizations to the forefront, among them: Sergio Cardone, the president of the largest chain of malls in Chile; the Ecuadorian entrepreneur Carla Barboto, who manufactures and exports worldwide the most awarded chocolate in the world and one of the best chocolates I have ever tasted (and, for me, it is no small thing to say, because I come from the homeland of chocolate, Switzerland); Gonzalo Muñoz recognized by the Davos Economic Forum, in Switzerland, as the worldwide social entrepreneur of the year 2015, and several more inspiring examples.

But be warned, the potentialities you are about to develop through this book are outside your comfort zone. It will require you to look at yourself, which is often the greatest challenge we will confront in our lives. Aristotle said, "To know thyself is the beginning of all wisdom". Without this step, none of the virtues in this book can be fully achieved. This is the key to developing your potential to be extraordinary. If you accept my invitation, you will achieve momentum in:

1. Your enthusiastic leadership to be a change agent and break old paradigms that no longer serve in the current era of transformation, aligning your purpose and life legacy.

2. Your empowering leadership to impulse your employees and colleagues to feel confident, committed, passionate about their work, and feel called to develop their extraordinary leadership

3. Your triple impact leadership to inspire consumers and employees to vibrate with your company’s purpose, generating a positive impact on society, the environment and at the same time achieving economic success.

4. Your global vision leadership to carry out an integral transformation of the company, creating a bridge between technology and the human through a unique organizational culture that generates economic results in the short and long term.

5. Finally, your integral leadership to reflect coherence with your collaborators from a deep self-knowledge that gives you the presence and the flexibility to act from qualities that seem opposite, such as the ability to be efficient and empathetic at the same time.

This book is for all men and women who want to make a quantum leap in the way they lead. I will share with you innovative concepts, tools, exercises, and examples of Latin American business leaders, to inspire you to change, and thus alter the DNA of your company and get the results you truly want. I firmly believe that leaders from the rest of the world can greatly benefit from these experiences because the so-called developing countries can be more resilient and creative in the face of crisis and constant uncertainties that they go through almost daily.

For practical reading purposes, I will talk about a leader, however, everything in this book refers to the leadership of men and women. In addition, the names of companies, industries, and individuals that exemplify the mistakes of leaders have been changed for the sake of our clients and our commitment to confidentiality.

For more than 15 years I have been a witness and accomplice of the transformation of thousands of leaders in Europe and Latin America. I have worked with leaders of the largest and most traditional companies, as well as the smallest and most innovative start-ups. I got to know their dreams, their fears, their challenges, and their particular styles. Now or in 20 years, I will always consider myself a learner of human beings, leadership, and organizations.

Honoring my roots, this book wants to be your Swiss Army Knife that shares INTEGRAL, SIMPLE, and EFFECTIVE tools, fruits of my experiences, that will help you catapult you to become a transformational leader.

Does what you are reading resonate with you,motivate you or inspire you?

Does this call awaken an emotion in you?

So, welcome!

ENTHUSIASTIC

To be a change agent and break old paradigms that no longer serve in the current era of transformation, aligning your purpose and life legacy.

EMPOWERING

To impulse your employees and colleagues to feel confident, committed, passionate about their work, and feel called to develop their extraordinary leadership.

TRIPLE IMPACT

To inspire consumers and employees to vibrate with your company’s purpose, generating a positive impact on society, the environment and at the same time achieving economic success.

GLOBAL VISION

To carry out an integral transformation of the company, creating a bridge between technology and the human through a unique organizational culture that generates economic results in the short and long term.

INTEGRAL

To reflect coherence with your collaborators from a deep self-knowledge that gives you the presence and the flexibility to act from qualities that seem opposite, such as the ability to be efficient and empathetic at the same time.

An uncomfortable present in Latin America

To develop the 5 virtues of the transformational leader it is necessary to understand, in a profound way, the present of Latin America, to place oneself in the here and now and, from that reality, to understand the challenges, needs and opportunities of the new entrepreneurs and business leaders, who are called to transform the continent.

The inventor and visionary Richard Buckminster Fuller discovered in 1982 that until 1900, human knowledge doubled approximately every century. By the end of World War II, it was doubling every 25 years. Today, human knowledge doubles every 13 months, and according to IBM, it will soon double every 12 hours, meaning that what we thought was true a year ago may no longer be true in a month, and soon, what we thought was true 11 hours ago may no longer be true in an hour

Figure II:Buckminster Fuller knowledge doubling curve aggregated with IBM post-1982 predictions.

A study by the famous Babson College in the United States reports that 40% of the 500 largest companies in the country that existed in 2000 disappeared by 2010. And now they predict that the average lifespan of a company will be 15 years, in which time a disruptive competitor will win the market.1 In Latin America, the mortality rate of family businesses is approximately 84% in 20 years and 85% disappear in the third generation.2 And, according to author and leadership expert Mark Murphy, one-third of executives are fired because of failed organizational changes.3

Blockbuster had the opportunity to buy Netflix in 2000 for $50 million, however, it turned down the offer because it did not see its potential. We all know that today, after just 19 years, Blockbuster does not exist and Netflix is the giant that is worth more than 150 billion dollars.

In Latin America, we also have representative cases of disruptive companies that changed the market and risked the existence of their competitors: Cabify, the cab company present in most of our countries does not own vehicles. Mercado Libre, the leading online store in Latin America, has no inventory. Rappi, the fastest-growing home delivery company in the region, does not own any distribution vehicles.

Leaders of companies that were born before the Internet boom of the 1990s face major challenges, as the business precepts that once made their businesses grow are no longer the same. For example, 3 or 5-year strategic plans are being replaced by flexible plans that can be reviewed at least twice a year. Or employees who used to work all their lives for the same employer are now demanding new conditions that were unthinkable before, such as welfare and power-sharing.

What used to work no longer works, or will stop working very soon. Such as the traditional education system you find in Latin America and most of the world, which was created in 1800 and has hardly changed in two centuries. The issue is that it continues to train people with obsolete skills for a working world that requires very different competencies that are mostly still not being taught, such as emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, entrepreneurship, innovation, effective communication, etc. Additionally, companies that continue to hire leaders only for their resumes are emphasizing the same hiring criteria and, in turn, perpetuate the overvaluation of a system that is inadequate. Do we want to be accomplices and perpetuators of the obsolete or do we want to be the ones leading the change? As a Chilean businessman friend of mine says:

We can take charge or we can play dumb.

Nicolás Boetsch, Partner Latitud 90

The good news is that change is possible. Pre-digital business leaders are not necessarily dinosaurs doomed to extinction. Companies can transform themselves to thrive in the digital age. 85% of executives believe they need to transform their organizations to adapt to the changing environment and marketplace.4 Digital transformation is not just about technology, it is about strategy and new ways of thinking. Leaders have to generate a transformation that contributes to the long-term sustainability of the company and society. A global study of 15,000 consumers, conducted by Edelman in 2014, mentions that the majority of customers want companies to be committed to causes that move them and engage them. Another 2018 study confirms that 78% of U.S. consumers say that companies should have a positive impact on society, beyond the bottom line.5 According to the international pollster IPSOS, during the COVID-19 humanitarian crisis, 9 out of 10 respondents felt that companies had to provide a solution to the crisis. And if the company or leaders are not truly committed to this change, customers will stop buying from them and look to other leaders for guidance.

We are in a dizzying change of the global scenario in which there are at least 8 macro factors that are changing the course of history:

1. Artificial intelligence and automation

2. Climate change

3. Pandemics

4. Change in the energy matrix

5. Biotechnology

6. Information technology

7. Cryptocurrencies

8. The political-war scenario

Let’s very briefly review each of these factors to understand our current context and the possible opportunities and risks of the very near future. Allow yourself to imagine the scenario.

Artificial intelligence and automation

We are not clear on what the world of work will look like in 2050, but we know that many professions will disappear due to automation and artificial intelligence, and new jobs will be created. Based on OECD studies and research by Michael Osborne and Karl Frey of Oxford University, we can predict which jobs will be the first to disappear.

Figure III sets out the occupations that will likely disappear over the next 20 years: accountants, salespeople, call-centers, machinists, farmers, laborers, drivers and pilots will be the first. In Estonia, for example, artificial intelligence is already replacing judges in making legal decisions under $10,000. As we see in Figure IV, many industries, which are part of the current scenario, are going to have to drastically reinvent themselves by laying off many employees, or they will disappear from the radar.

Figure III:Probability in percentage of losing a job due to automation classified by professions and trades.

Figure IV:Probability in percentage of losing a job due to automation classified by sector.

According to Müller’s renowned research, in 2016 the global tech-savvy scientific community predicted that artificial intelligence would surpass a notable percentage of human intelligence by around 2050. One-third of these scientists believe that this development will be extremely negative for humanity.6Trends point to a large part of the global manufacturing segment becoming unemployed and being replaced by highly adaptable people, who can frequently reinvent themselves due to their education.7 In other words, people with little education, the workers of today, people already at risk of poverty and vulnerability, will be the first to become irrelevant to the labor market, unless we work now to teach them to be flexible to change and prepare for this moment.

There is a movement called techno-optimism led, among others, by Singularity University that offers another perspective on this issue. They firmly believe that technology accompanied by human creativity will be able to solve any challenge that arises. They offer a vision of a future of greater abundance for the world, if we manage to develop the soft skills that machines will never be able to develop, and which my friend Ana Cristina Hidalgo calls the skills of the 21st century: curiosity, initiative, creativity, multidisciplinary thinking and empathy, among others. Thanks to the collaboration between machines and people, society will be more productive and efficient. Soon, uncomfortable interventions such as endoscopies will be replaced by a robotic pill that will be able to move within the patient’s body fluids, supplied with drugs to the desired area, perform biopsies, film the area, clean clogged arteries and remove tumors from the body. A robot will be able to make a health diagnosis better than any human and then support the doctor in his surgical intervention, to gain in precision and detail.

The responsibility of leaders is enormous, whether they are techno-optimistic, pessimistic, or neutral, and decisions need to be made now, especially about the industries mentioned in Figures III and IV: Are they going to close their company or reinvent themselves? Are they going to train or lay off most of their people? What are the leaders who are left out of the market going to do? While some are getting down to work to reinvent themselves with enthusiasm, others will remain with their arms crossed and will soon be obsolete, like gasoline-powered cars.

Climate change

97% of the scientific community agrees that the consequences of global warming will be disastrous, and affirms that, if we do not change our way of consuming and emitting gases now, due to the greenhouse effect, the ice in the Arctic and Greenland will melt and many coastal areas on the map will be submerged.9 In addition, precipitation and temperature extremes will increase and crops will be destroyed, generating great famines. United Nations experts predict that by 2050 there will be neither coral nor large fish in the ocean to feed us.10 Finally, it is predicted that these changes will generate between 140 million to more than one billion people who will leave their lands to seek refuge in other countries.

The central objective of the 2016 Paris Agreement is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, which is why most countries are committed to preventing the global temperature of the planet from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius this century. Unfortunately, the current policies of each country are insufficient to achieve this and we are on track to increase by about 5 degrees by the end of this century.11

Figure V:Projections and possible scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions for this century.

The figure below reveals the total amount of CO2 that has been in the planet’s atmosphere for millions of years by analyzing atmospheric samples taken from deep within Greenland’s glaciers and comparing them with more recent measurements. This shows that atmospheric CO2 has increased exponentially since 1950.12

Figure VI:Amount of atmospheric CO2 over the last 400,000 years.

In Latin America, the expected effects of climate change caused by temperature and precipitation extremes are as follows:

•Agriculture: Decrease in food production and quality, loss of jobs and higher prices.

•Health: Spread of new diseases.

•Tourism: Loss of infrastructure and employment, sea level rise and extreme events in coastal areas.

•Poverty: Decrease in the income of vulnerable populations, loss of jobs, especially in the tourism, agricultural and fishing sectors, malnutrition, increase in inequality and crime.

•Water: Decrease in availability and increase in water prices for agricultural, domestic and industrial use, drought in rivers and decrease in hydroelectric production.

•Urban areas: Explosion of urban development, increased motorization and traffic, increased pollution and respiratory illnesses in children and the elderly.

•Coastal zones: Rising sea levels, generalized beach erosion, coral bleaching, the disappearance of large fish, loss of jobs, infrastructure and migratory movements.

•Biodiversity and forests: Disappearance of forests and their biodiversity.

I must say I agree with the United Nations on the causes:

Latin America and the Caribbean is a region highly vulnerable to climate change as a result of, among other factors, its geography, population and infrastructure distribution, dependence on natural resources and the prevalence of agricultural activities. This situation is also due to the importance attributed to its forests and biodiversity, its limited capacity to allocate additional resources to adaptation processes, and other economic, social and demographic characteristics that mean that a high percentage of people are still in conditions of social vulnerability.

In the region, industry, manufacturing and construction produce approximately 10% of total greenhouse gas emissions, road transport contributes another 10%, agriculture and livestock 28% and forestry 21%.13 The challenge of sustainable development lies in the hands of both the private and public sectors. It is necessary to find synergies to build a more equal and inclusive society while reducing the environmental impact by taking preventive measures to adapt to climate change and innovatively boosting the economy. For example, there is the #racetozero business movement that aims to reach zero net carbon emissions by 2030 and many companies such as Telefónica have committed to fulfill it.

We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common.

Richard Buckminster Fuller, visionary architect.

Pandemics

At the time of closing the publication of this book, which took me a little over a year to write, I have been locked up at home, like the rest of the planet, for more than 10 weeks now, due to an imposed quarantine. We are going through the greatest contemporary crisis of mankind, the COVID-19 virus. Some Asian countries such as South Korea managed to mitigate the crisis extraordinarily with few deaths and minimal negative economic impact, thanks to technology and respect for order. But we hear sad news from countries like Brazil, Mexico, Peru, or Ecuador, for not having seriously considered the threat in time and their poor management. There are extreme cases of cities that no longer know what to do with the corpses and leave them lying in the street or throw them into the sea.