Digital leadership and teleworking, the keys according to Lluc Guarro

In 'Next in Beauty', we were able to talk to Lluc Guarro, Digital Business & Innovation Director at Roca Salvatella, about issues of concern that are very relevant in all large and, also, small companies. The business ecosystem has undergone constant evolution, but perhaps it accelerated with the arrival of the pandemic. Organisations were forced to implement new work dynamics to alleviate the first and inevitable symptoms that the pandemic was throwing at them. The first of these was teleworking. Today, we will hear the opinion of an expert like Lluc Guarro on the remote work modality.Teleworking, not for everyoneThe Digital Business & Innovation Director at Roca Salvatella stresses that the female modality is to offer workers total freedom to choose how they want to work and how they believe they will be more efficient and effective. However, he points out that teleworking means that the essence of 'co-creation' is lost. "To have teleworking you have to have very empowered and well-functioning teams. Teleworking is fine for managing projects or for doing specific pockets of work on one thing when you don't want to be bothered. But, in my opinion, managing teams online, remotely, loses efficiency and agility. With teleworking you lose a lot of management capacity. I go into the office and there are people from my team, I can know what the status of a project is in two minutes, going to their side asking, 'How are you', 'What are you doing', 'How is everything going', 'How is the project going'... It brings me up to date, I give them feedback very quickly, and this is much more agile than online management. People don't dare to set up a Teams meeting for a doubt, but they do dare to come to your side, directly," Lluc explains."The use of telework needs to be very clear""I am neither for nor against it, in fact, the policy I follow is one of absolute freedom. But you have to be very clear about what you are using it for. In other words, you can come to the office, you can go in, you can go out as long as the project is well done. What happens is that in terms of management, in terms of feedback, you are alone in the digital management, I think people grow faster if they are in the office".On the other hand, it has explained that the youngsters, nowadays, to the hour of the research of a new employment value a lot the possibility that the work was 100% remote, and this, in his opinion, does not contribute any profit in his path and development like professionals: "I think that a young person, that now, basically only wants to teletrabajar one hundred by one hundred, is losing a layer of interaction with people that knows more than him, that has key relations for the growth and that this does not go it to be able to obtain with the teleworking. Coming to the office maximizas your value, the teleworking does not leave you cocrear."What is a digital leader?The second part of the interview focused on digital leadership and the evolution of the role of the leader. First, Lluc explained that a digital leader must have the same skills, qualities and aptitudes as a leader, but is not the same as a manager. "It is a leader who is one hundred percent adapted to the moment we live in. It is a time of transformation brought about by digital technologies: the Internet, smartphones, and now artificial intelligence. A digital leader is simply a real leader. He or she has leadership attributes. Within this business paradigm, you don't need leadership to manage teams, but it's basically the pyramidal power structure of the company that gives you the capabilities to basically free up the structure".Lluc Guarro explained that today's digital leader faces a new paradigm in which the main protagonist is and will be uncertainty. They will have to manage as efficiently as possible in a scenario in which uncertainty will accompany them and their team: "When you go to a new paradigm basically based on Internet disruption, this paradigm, that is, implies doing things very differently, companies have to transform, you have to rethink products, the product, that is, products, if I make products, well hey, you have to service it, it becomes a service where basically companies have to be agile, they have to be liquid, they have to be adaptive, All this structure that you have created for the so-called industrial economy, is no longer valid. You need leadership teams that manage people who are entrepreneurial, who have ideas, who go further, who transform themselves... The leader within the digital transformation has to be clear that there is no roadmap. A company that is transforming does not know what it is going to transform. And there you need leaders with pure leadership attributes: vision, empathy, all these key attributes of leadership, not of the digital leader, but of pure leadership, are the ones that have to appear at this time of change", explains Lluc Guarro to the 'Next in Beauty' team.The classic attributes of leadership, or only of management, do not work"Lluc Guarro explains that the new leader has to face what he or she does not know what he or she will face in the future, and at the same time, must exploit the current business, and explore the future business: "you have to manage teams that are capable of not only doing their job efficiently, but also of thinking new things, being creative and adapting to change. Companies are in a blender, things happen every day, all day long you are on the move and your environment is changing. And so, what is needed here is someone who has vision, who is capable of provoking creativity in their teams, who allows mistakes, who understands how to manage projects in a different way, who can change many times. It is another way of understanding the way business is done. But all this, at the same time as you exploit your business. The company has the current challenge of transforming itself at the same time as it has to exploit its business. There, there is a cultural issue that we have to change the way we understand leadership", said Lluc Guarro."The key to leadership today is self-knowledge""For me, the key for a leader today is self-knowledge. He has to work on himself, because if he wants to evolve as a person, if he wants to gain more vision, I think he has to know how to allow mistakes. A leader is a self-leader. Improve yourself as a self-leader. Then you will be able to lead. At this point you have to reflect, go to a coach to improve. There is a theme of work in which the focus is on me as a leader". The specialist also talked about what is the second challenge that the leader must face in this new environment. "The second challenge for the leader comes from management or how we manage to explore versus exploit. You have to transform your organisation at the same time as you exploit your business, you can't start inventing things, because you have to keep selling what you are selling today. At the same time you are selling now and producing now and making sure that from now on, you have to be visualising what will happen. Previously most of the leaders were in the business of exploiting the business".Although he considers these two to be the main challenges facing a digital leader, he does not forget about innovation and being a benchmark within his own team. "Then there is the last layer, which is visioning what innovation is. This, all these ideas, this vision, I have to turn it into new business. Internally, I have to look at how I convince, and how I influence people to follow me and change. Sometimes the inertia of the organisation allows you to grow without having developed your leadership attributes, because it's a powerful structure."Without a doubt, self-knowledge, self-exploration and the detection of personal weaknesses is essential to become a good leader, regardless of whether or not it is digital. "To be a true leader, you have to be a self-leader. This is personal development. If you have insecurities, you are not going to allow your team to make mistakes, because you are not allowing yourself to make mistakes. It's about analysing yourself, about understanding what your weaknesses are, that is, things that I need to change. If I am not empathetic, then I have to improve my empathy, and I am going to work on it. This layer has grown a lot in recent years. There are many people who are, or who have been generating knowledge in this area. That is why coaching services, etc., have grown a lot for companies to work with certain leaders who do not have management skills.""A manager knows how to exploit, but does not know how to explore"Lluc spoke about the future of the leader and the differences between manager and leader. The manager is a thing of the past and lacks the competencies of a leader of the future. "The future is that we are going to be transforming ourselves for many years to come, and that the management of uncertainty is going to be a vital core. The point is that we have moved from a world where uncertainty management was one to a world where uncertainty is ten, and that the process of transformation is accelerating, because we have more and more technologies impacting us. Nobody has any idea what is going to happen. To manage uncertainty, you need a leader. And a leader is always a leader. With managers, with a person who is purely a manager, it is not enough. Because a manager knows how to exploit, but he doesn't know how to explore".

Digital leadership and teleworking, the keys according to Lluc Guarro

A manager is not the same as a leader, who must know how to manage uncertainty in any scenario