The three indispensable superpowers for a successful manager leader
Find out what are the three fundamental superpowers every manager must possess to become a true leader
3' min read
3' min read
After many years of study and managerial practice, I can say that the ideal leader is the manager who possesses these three superpowers: humility, empathy and competence. While it is possible to work on competence even in old age, the other two must be cultivated from an early age, otherwise I fear it is too late. Let's see together why these superpowers are so important.
Humility, empathy and competence
.Humility is essential to increase one's complexity by learning from others without threatening one's self-esteem. 'Increasing one's complexity' means increasing one's ability to handle complex situations, problems and information, such as: skills development, critical and creative thinking, adaptability, understanding social dynamics, and managing emotions. Humility allows us to lower the 'drawbridge' of our egorithmic fortress, allowing feedback from our interlocutors to enter our minds, as in a kind of inception, in order to improve on all the other competences, necessary to lead a team.
But being humble without being competent does not give people the necessary authority to be heard, because there is a tacit and implicit respect, dare I say tribal, between people who recognise each other as competent, whatever the domain of reference. This respect is based on the mutual appreciation of each other's skills and knowledge, creating trust and professional esteem, without which, of course, one does not work well together.
Finally, humility and competence are not enough because, as the philosopher and sociologist Edgar Morin would say, people are complex systems and, as such, must be managed. In order to be able to intercept physiological tensions within a group or to understand the personal difficulties that one or more people may be going through at a given time in their lives, one also (and above all) needs the superpower of empathy.
Empathy helps people to be themselves, without worrying about having to mask their emotions, thus facilitating communication that goes far beyond the verbal. "Read the room" is an Anglo-Saxon expression that refers to the ability to understand and perceive the atmosphere and moods of the people present in a given situation, in order to adapt one's behaviour accordingly. It is probably another way of defining emotional intelligence, which is now considered by many to be the most important of intelligences, especially if you have theburden of having to manage a team.
