Interview with Manuel Seijo, honorary president of AECOP Spain
On this occasion I would like to share with you an interview with Manuel Seijo, a conversation that I enjoyed with Manuel Seijo about the changes and challenges of modern society, new leadership models and executive coaching trends. An interview that inaugurates a new section on my Executive Coaching blog.
Manuel Seijo has a degree in Law, a Master’s Degree in Psychodynamic Psychology, and is a Director of Leister Consultores. Manuel Seijo is also Honorary President of AECOP (Spanish Association of Executive Coaching), founding member and accredited Senior Coach, as well as a member of the Certifications Committee. He belongs to the LARA committee of the ISPSO (International Society for the Psychoanalytical Study of Organizations). He also has extensive experience as a professor at the Complutense University of Madrid, University of Alcalá de Henares, University of Navarra, Camilo José Cela, University of Almeria, University of Malaga and different business schools such as EOI, Deusto, IE, Las Salle Business School, Eseune, Caixanova, CEU. He has also been Director of several international Programs and Congresses.
In addition to his long and intense career, Manuel Seijo is a close, friendly person, with an innate curiosity to observe, learn and investigate human and organizational behavior, a pioneer in areas of talent development and promotion of relationships in teams. Manuel Seijo has worked with many of the largest and most important companies in this country, (Telefónica, Repsol, Genetech, Lonza, Pfizzer, Central Lechera Asturiana, Real Madrid, Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid, Heel, etc) and it is a privilege to be able to chat and share with him experiences related to society, leadership and executive coaching.
I hope you enjoy the interview with Manuel Seijo as much as I do 😉
Interview with Manuel Seijo
Q: Let’s start by talking about what you consider to be the main differences between today’s liquid society and the society we knew until now…
A: It’s very interesting because I’m just working on what has to do with what modern society was, the postmodern and what we can begin to call the meta-modern. It’s true that in the postmodern society it begins in the 60s/70s. Modern culture was based on the protagonist figure of man based on the central factor of his reason, through the communicational tool of the word, which allows through politics to order society based on persuasion. Now in the liquida it’s not the man who is important, but the person. It seems the same but it’s not. There’s nothing more important than me, the other loses. We’ve developed a tremendous narcissism. It’s okay for people to grow individually, in postmodernity the “other” will disappear swallowed up by the “I”. This is something that has to change in the meta-modern. On the other hand, we have gone from the modern one, until the 60s (with Kant, Descartes…) what developed was reason, working on logic. At the moment we are working on “desire”, we are more in the pleasure principle than in reality. We are in the world of “like”, not that it does not create pleasure in me I destroy it. We are immersed in what a colleague called “swarms of self-satisfaction”. We relate to people who give us pleasure, but we no longer accept debate as much. In my youth what we liked were debates, now we are moving from the word to the image. Modern society was based on the word, on discussion. Today we are in the image, the emotional factor passes over the intellectual factor. I think it is better to put the two together, the emotional and the intellectual factor. After politics in the change of society from moderate to postmodern, we have gone from an ideological politics, (communism, fascism, democracy…), to a management policy today (liberal, neo-liberal). There is no longer that ideological factor, the economic part prevails. Before we looked for the permanent, now the ephemeral. We go from the persuasion of modern society to the seduction of post-moderate society. Before I wanted to convince you of my ideas, to a dialogue where you can convince you of my ideas, now we are in a seduction. What I am not clear about is the trend towards the future, that is what I am investigating.
Q: How does this affect the business world?
A. As this is a system, there are no great differences between this sociological reflection and the business world, the same ideas are reflected. We have seen, before it was man to be efficient, effective (Taylorism) and “do what I ask of you”. Now it is more focused on the person, therefore, what is being asked the most, “you can”, is “brand image”, develop yourself, everything is in you. It is what the South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han calls “the society of exploitation”: Exploit yourself to the maximum until you are completely frustrated because you will know that you are not going to reach the maximum so depressions and psychological illnesses arise. In companies today all these ideologies, most of which come from the US, have led to this liquid world. It is the colonization of American culture, of consumer society, and, I think that now, this is in decline. Now the part of meta-modernity enters. Before, we were looking for the truth. Now we are in the multiplicity of truths. Why are there many truths? Now we admit differences more, from the prism that you look at it, each one can have a different truth and that is what is allowing us to help each time to tolerate differences. Before, conflict was managed, now conflict tries to cover up, more work is done on consensus. But I think that killing conflict is not good, since conflict also makes it grow. Now it seems that in liquid society it is a matter of killing conflict so that pleasure prevails. Before there were norms, that previous disciplinary society leads us to today’s flexible society, which causes institutions, politics, education, religious institutions, etc., to be in crisis. Now there is a greater degree of autonomy, more transparency, it seems that we are all rebels, but, when we are all rebels, no one is rebellious, right?
It is interesting that this freedom is beginning to be questioned, but the latest events show that it is an unconscious freedom, before we sought security. Now these are more uncertain times, a more insecure society. Before the society of duty, “it’s what you were told since you were a child”, now it is the society of power, “what you can do”.
Q: You are mentioning values a lot, has there been a fundamental change of values in society?
A: Absolutely. That is neither good nor bad. It is what this consumer society has brought us. They are the shadows of this new society. Sometimes we are blinded by light, if we look at wonders, autonomous cars, digitalization… All these advances are going to generate more comfort, but do they generate more values? Are they going to generate better relationships? Are they going to generate a better relationship with Mother Earth? Are we really going to be sustainable? That’s where the shadows can be. I’m optimistic, I love the lights, but you also have to consider these points.
Q: Manuel, and at the level of leadership in companies, how do these changes in society affect leadership models?
A: I think that in leadership models what affects us is that deep down we are conditioned by the first systems in which we have lived and in companies we reproduce the systems of authority and power and leadership that we have lived in our childhood. In other words, the family, the school, is what we reproduce in companies. In my time we have reproduced more authoritarian, more directive leaderships (I am from the time of the end of the Baby Boomer). At that time we were in a transition from authoritarian leadership to charismatic (narcissistic) leadership and now, in today’s youth, they have lived in what we have generated for them. And what is it? Well, for these generations that we call “X”, “Y” and “Z” they have lived in a context “without limits”, without authority and without leadership figures. Socially, leadership figures were in crisis, since more than 60% of them were born in families where we have gone to the “liquid”, families where it has happened that father and mother worked, and were absent, and where I have had to be nourished by equals, (siblings) and family figures made up for their guilt by satisfying with consumption. They are, therefore, more collaborative, more shared leadership styles. The pyramidal structure breaks down by itself, you cannot reproduce what you have not lived. If you have not experienced that pyramidal figure, neither at school, nor in society, nor at home, you have generated a new figure, that is what we are experiencing in these new companies. What may be the shadows of this collaborative leadership?
I am investigating it. But I do think that at the moment in these “agile” environments, at the moment collaboration is encouraged, but there are some “rules”: “You must do this”, “you must relate in this way to the customer”, that is, we are putting rules on the collaborative. In generation “Z” I think they are going to be more in the “intuitive”, less in the norm.
Q: From the point of view of coaching, for those of us who are dedicated to accompanying people in their development and in their processes of change, how can we adapt in the best way to these changes?
A: I find it exciting and it is the coaching that I like the most. It is coaching without an action plan, coaching without established rules, it is pure accompaniment, not directive, the space is two people thinking for one, in their challenges, in their way of relating, in their organizational needs, with one more component. Sometimes we are sold that the coach should be skeptical, but I believe that the coach should teach them to think about some things that the client may not think about and that do not have to do only with their personal development. We have to put them in context, and make them think about whether their leadership is sustainable in their organization, for example. Or what they do to make a more sustainable society, so that CSR is not only marketing. Or ethics in leadership. That is, to make them think within that leadership or collaboration how the contexts we have discussed really take them into account.
When coaching began, one of the most common things we heard was “coaching for results“. For me, coaching is not for results, it is “coaching for growth”. It is for personal and professional growth, which entails organizational growth. I think that at the moment there are many coaching models that these new generations are going to reject. For example, GROW, which is very results-oriented: what result are you going to orient it to if we are on the edge of the unknown? Where we have to accompany them is towards the new, to manage creativity, innovation.
Q: We have always talked about the importance of the coach having organizational knowledge to be able to accompany, but now, if we are talking about “intuitive coaching” and accompanying leaders who are part of these different generations, what skills would it be interesting for coaches to develop in order to be able to better accompany?
A: Fortunately , things don’t change all at once, there are still 20 or 30 years left where management will still endure in many business models. I believe that the coach has to be prepared to understand the new leadership models and in what contexts they can enter to help the manager adapt or evolve in those models. That is why he has to live them, know them, study them and learn them. He must have skills to be able to work in a management 1.0 or a management 4.0 and the needs of the client are going to be absolutely different.
It is important that the coach starts thinking about which clients they are going to start working with in the future and what is going to change. The accompaniment is different if it is an entrepreneur, a general manager, a middle manager, etc. Their needs are absolutely different. For example, a middle manager, who may have 4 or 6 people in their charge, who in turn may have, for example, 10 people in their charge, may need motivational leadership. But with a general manager you may work more on strategy, products, markets, more strategic leadership. On the other hand, an entrepreneur may need to work on what he wants to undertake, look for the new, the business he wants to develop, etc. Therefore, the coach will need to be more multidisciplinary than now. Now it seems that coaching is linear, that it applies the same process regardless of the client. Rather than talking about processes, we have to talk about how we are really going to adapt to these new 3.0 and 4.0 leadership models or what are the shadows that can make us fail.
Q: What interesting reflections, Manuel. Would you like to add any other ideas?
A: I think we have to look again for the purpose of coaching, which has changed. Since executive coaching began in Spain, (at the end of the last century, at the beginning of this one), things have changed a lot, and I think the purpose was coming, we had to set parameters to lay the foundations for quality, but now we have to adapt. I think we have to look for the new purpose of coaching, it is a very powerful tool to help managers and professionals, when there are such exponential changes, to adapt to new business and leadership models we need to think. And what coaching does is create a space for thought, to be able to reflect and decide how I want to act.
And you, what do you think about this topic?
What reflections do these ideas inspire you that you want to share after reading Manuel Seijo’s interview?
