The Human Resources sector is currently going through one of its most turbulent periods, marked by the need to renew itself to adapt to current trends such as a change in people's attitudes, digitalization, and the simplification of structures. These changes lead HR departments to modify their way of working, their way of selecting talent, and their way of organizing the company. Organizations are also forced to rethink how it has been, how it is being, and how they want their leadership model to be.
With the sponsorship of the European School of Coaching (EEC) and moderated by its executive director, Eva López-Acevedo, a roundtable held at Talent Day was dedicated precisely to discussing this topic and how the way companies lead is changing.
Trust is the key ingredient in this renewal, according to Pilar Oncins, Human Resources Director at Makro. “I believed that to be a good leader and to be valued in a large company, I had to try to be perfect in everything and not show my weaknesses. But two years ago I went through a very tough and complicated personal experience that led me to have to ask my team for help, to sometimes forget things, to have to tell them that I needed them… At that moment, I believed that I was showing vulnerability and that I was managing a department that I couldn’t manage, but a year ago my team gave me the greatest possible gift by telling me: ‘Pilar, you have always been very kind and pleasant, but your level of self-discipline was so great that we couldn’t keep up with you’.”.
As learning, said the Human Resources Director of Makro, Pilar Oncins, “now I have changed and I have learned that we have to break the fear that people have”, continued the responsible who recognized her “fear of not being perfect, fear of not deserving the position, and what my team showed me is that they did not create the space for others to grow”.
The key is to share
Gerardo Lara, Sacyr’s Director of Innovation and Human Resources Development, argued in his presentation for the need for flexibility and innovation and for “moving from individual leadership to organizational leadership.” In his experience, there is a generational problem when it comes to leadership, since “the processes and the culture of companies have changed, but the leaders are the same as in the past.” For Gerardo Lara, transformation of leadership is fundamental. “We must bet on generating more innovative and more flexible projects, creating a work environment where everyone wants to work and where the activity of the individual is transcendent,” he defended.
The path, he revealed, may lie in values. For the Sacyr executive, if the company invests in levers such as contributing to the improvement of society, competitiveness, or the well-being of employees, it will be able to establish an organizational framework in which current leaders can manage their teams well.
Knowledge changes hands
“Fifteen or twenty years ago, knowledge was the differentiating factor in leadership and leaders were those people within the organization who possessed a greater knowledge of a specific topic. Today, knowledge is on the network and has ceased to be a differentiating factor for leadership,” said Alejandro Frieben, Director of Human Resources at Oracle. “The collaborative spirit and generosity must be the characteristics of the current leader,” declared Frieben.
The value that guides us
For Carmen Salamero, Human Resources Director at LVMH Perfumes and Cosmetics, the change in leadership has to do with “that for many years we have been very focused on managing people and much less on getting our employees to bring out the best in themselves and to have the motivation to do so.”.
In short, among the main ideas put forward by the experts in this open debate about the present and future of Talent are trust, learning, vulnerability, openness, collaboration, generosity, and placing people and values at the center of everything.
