Leadership is the heart and soul of directing a company. In order to direct a company it is not enough to only work with numbers, restructure organization charts and simply apply the latest business school formulas. In business, what you are directing are people.

Directing and leadership are closely tied. Directing is something objective; one wants to reach a goal and the results can be measured. These mechanisms can be learned in schools and courses. However, the legions of young men and women receiving a ¨Masters in Business Administration¨ (MBA) degree every year are, effectively, learned administrators with no guarantee of ever becoming leaders who are able to direct people well.

Leadership, after all, is something else. It is something that is purely subjective, difficult to define, impossible to objectively measure and cannot be taught in theoretical courses just as a tennis player cannot learn to hit a ball with mastery simply by reading a book. However, it is always there, in every company, defining each company´s personality, reflecting its character and values as well as the personality of the director and team.

Good leadership is the main ingredient for a company´s recipe for success. Leadership is, of course, the ability to inspire and incite others to work as a team in an effective and coordinated way, under the direction of one person, in order to achieve a common goal, in business and in politics, in war and on the field. It is impossible to affirm that ¨leaders are just born that way¨. Leadership is learned, although it is difficult to entirely understand just how. The ability to direct others is, in part, instinct but it is also structured, thought out and delivered with good criteria and expert use of appropriate tools and behaviors. This is something that can be learned, aquired and improved through the awareness of one´s own life experiences.

The naturalness and quality of leadership will depend, in part, on one´s own innate character and personality but, most of all, it will depend on the constant ability that the leader has to learn from their own life experiences, keeping the enthusiasm of the apprentice and a young spirit always alive and intact.”

Paco Muro, President and CEO of Otto Walter,
inspired by the words of “Harold Green”