What kind of leadership does Colombia need?

By: Camilo Recio, Coordinator of the Public-Oriented Leadership Line.

In Colombia, it's common to think that an individual's leadership will solve the country's complex challenges simply by identifying their causes. However, our country's problems are systemic, involving diverse actors, interests, dynamics, and variables, and therefore require a search for understanding and addressing them through a collective leadership approach.

Individual leadership, based on the first-person singular , is associated with charismatic leaders seen as "invincible saviors" capable of transforming the world. However, this conception of leadership perpetuates the recognition of a single person as the architect of all victories and as responsible for all defeats, and consequently excludes the recognition of those involved in the achievements and absolves many others implicated in the failures of responsibility. This first-person singular refers to the pronoun "I," which best explains the way of conceiving leadership as an individual exercise of power to gain followers who fulfill one's desires. In contrast, if we think of leadership from the first-person plural , or collective leadership, we put "we" first, which better explains the contemporary way of conceiving leadership as a collective exercise of will to transform the environment and achieve well-being. This paradigm of plural leadership is inclusive and co-responsible, which challenges the absolute and "heroic" logic of individual leadership and involves several people in the pursuit of common goals.

This antithesis of leadership paradigms is a subject of study and sparks profound questions about their underlying logic and attributes. At Fundación Corona, we are not only investigating these paradigms—in collaboration with the School of Government and the Center for Public Leadership at the University of the Andes—but we are also exploring the competencies that an individual or group of people must develop to exercise collective leadership aimed at generating public value.

In an electoral context, for example, our partner, Fundación Origen , disseminated a study conducted with Ipsos that sought to explore citizens' perceptions of the type of leader Colombia wants. The study's results concluded that Colombians strongly prefer a top-down leadership style, capable of making difficult but not necessarily participatory decisions; and are more reluctant to accept an individual with collective leadership attributes willing to work as part of a team . While the study used non-probability sampling, making it difficult to draw statistically representative conclusions, its conclusion suggests that: an individual is preferred over a group; someone who wields authority over someone who seeks consensus; and someone who does what they deem best over someone who accepts and adopts recommendations.

It is essential, when we think about the leadership that will be exercised by whoever inhabits the Casa de Nariño, that we remember that the leadership that Colombia needs will not only be in the presidency: it is and will be in all territories, it will have different ages, it will identify with diverse sexes, it will belong to many sectors, it will be grouped in the multiplicity of ethnic groups of the country and it will recognize otherness.