Enric Arola

What do you have to give up to grow as a leader?

Leadership is the art of making sacrifices. Personal, team, or organizational sacrifices. Sacrifices related to behaviors, actions, or processes. Sacrifices that are often outdated patterns or good intentions that have expired. In any case,...

What Does Delegating Mean?

Discover what it means to delegate better to reduce stress, strengthen your team, and free up time for more strategic leadership. A practical and honest guide to true delegation, beyond simply assigning tasks.

Promoting Team Culture in the Organization

Discover effective strategies to boost team culture within your organization and strengthen collaboration, commitment, and overall performance.

When the Role Doesn't Let Us Be a Team

Discover how excessive role identification limits collective leadership and how management teams can create collaboration, co-responsibility, and real organizational impact.

Essentialist Leadership

In leadership, we often repeat ad nauseam that "less is more," or sometimes "more is less," because individuals, teams, and organizations tend to collapse under the weight of excess. We try to do too much. And we all know what happens when that occurs...

The 3 Essential Ingredients of Professional Success

Discover the 3 ingredients for professional success. Improve your well-being and career success today.

9 Actions to Save the Firefighter Manager

The executive firefighter puts out fires every day, but gets burned in the attempt. Discover how to transform your leadership into a sustainable one.

The excess of “Hard” Leadership

In a volatile and ever-changing environment, many organizations prioritize the short term with harsh leadership styles, sacrificing culture and well-being. Is this strategy sustainable? Find out in this analysis.

Knowing How to Fail Well: An indispensable skill for team growth

One of the most relevant indicators for evaluating the maturity of a team's collective leadership is its capacity to take risks and give its best, thereby progressively increasing the added value it brings to the organization. Taking risks means...

Learning from Conflict

Conflicts within teams, as well as in personal life, cause a great deal of tension and emotional strain. For this reason, conflicts are often avoided or hidden in professional settings until the situation explodes. Many leaders choose...

Believe in the Team

Every time someone stops believing in fairies, a fairy falls dead… This well-known quote from Peter Pan could also have its version for teams in any organization. I think the phrase could be something like… Every time a member of a….

10 Aspects to Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

Imposter Syndrome affects many managers who, despite being successful, feel insecure in their leadership role. As coaches, we often see how they think they aren't contributing all the value expected of them, or even come to believe that they aren't...

Transform these 10 Verbal Tics

Verbal tics can reveal a lot about our level of self-confidence and how we exercise leadership. In leadership, it's crucial to recognize that language creates reality. What we say, and how we say it, directly influences how...

Managers who delegate while controlling

Many managers are satisfied with their level of delegation to their teams. Undoubtedly, many of these individuals are doing a great job empowering and developing their employees. But… what if, in some case, or at some point….

Leadership and Sensitivity

I've always loved going to concerts. And I think I'm lucky, because I like different styles of music, which gives me more options to enjoy. At least that's what I think. The other day I went to a Sílvia Pérez Cruz concert. I have to admit...

Complaint: The Indicator of Weak Leadership

Leadership will either be positive or it will be less effective. But we also know that it's impossible to live in a fantasy world forever. It's human to lament when things don't go our way. Sometimes we justify ourselves for what doesn't...

Sustainable Courage

Courage is one of the most admired qualities in leadership today, but also one of the most difficult to sustain. In these times, it's very easy to burn out. The post-pandemic era, the constant economic fluctuations, scarce resources, and...

Cross-functional Leadership

Cross-functional leadership has become an urgent necessity for organizations that want to be sustainable, collaborative, and competitive in today's market. Companies that want to position themselves well in today's market and be attractive to...

Dare to Explore Your Repressed Identity

Identity is a game of polarities, of extremes, that reveal a vast range of possibilities. Like a scale, life seeks equilibrium between these opposing poles, which represent realities and needs that can become...

The Stages of Conflict

One of the main indicators of whether we're dealing with an extraordinary team is its ability to manage conflict. That's where the team's true potential is tested; its capacity to handle conflict will determine its...

Thank you, Liberto. Thank you, Maestro!

On August 25th, Liberto Pereda passed away; a friend, mentor, and a great example and role model for all of us dedicated to the field of personal and professional development. Every farewell to a loved one is, and must be, painful by definition; but...

The Protective Leader

What leader doesn't like to be taken care of? Even more so… who doesn't like to be taken care of in an environment that can sometimes be as hostile as the professional one? The fact that most people answer yes to this question is something….

The Perverse Effect of Promotions

Who doesn't like professional promotions? It's hard to say no to a higher salary, better conditions, greater decision-making power, more influence… But what if, by accepting the promotion, we're starting to dig our own grave?.

When Developing Means “Going Too Far”

When development means “going too far”? If life is a constant search for balance, leadership cannot be exempt from this. Leading, among other things, means balancing and integrating all the needs at play, even though these...

The Theme of the Year

The motto for the year represents the essence of your purpose, as well as your commitment to yourself, embodying your overarching personal leadership intention for the coming year. It's about finding a phrase that captures this essence...

The Reactivity Checklist

Everything has a purpose. Everything stems from an initial intention. We humans seek to satisfy our needs using the resources available to us. Hopefully, we exhibit creative and constructive behaviors that add value sustainably...

The Star of Leadership

During my last vacation, I went to see the film "Elvis," directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks, among others. It's a film that is not only visually and musically appealing, but also makes us reflect on...

Reconnecting with the Professional Day-to-Day

We're back! Once again, after the holidays, we're reconnecting and restarting our professional routines. As always, this brings a mix of feelings and emotions that can sometimes be contradictory. Some may...

Role-Playing Nausea in the Team

Distinguishing between the self as a person and the self as a role is fundamental to understanding professional dynamics. The former relates to my personal preferences and needs. The latter refers to the needs and obligations of the specific position...

Find Your Limits in Leadership

I've never done caving. But I imagine it must be highly technically challenging and require a high degree of emotional self-management. Imagine that, in the darkness of the cave, your headlamp breaks down. I'm sure...

What's your number one team?

The other day I had the pleasure of spending time with an extraordinary team. In fact, their leader described them that way from the very first day we spoke. And he was right. Absolutely right. This team certainly still has room for improvement. And they have a lot of it...

How to Enhance Constructive Conflict

Do you avoid conflict? If so, I recommend you keep reading. We all need to feel at ease while doing our work. We shouldn't suffer because of the actions or comments of other people, whether inside or outside the organization. That's why...

Free the members of the organization

Many members of organizations have "accepted" their respective masks in order to live (or, rather, survive) in a hostile professional environment. But what would it be like to feel truly free at work? It's difficult to even imagine...

How to Support the “Low Performers” on the Team

Guiding a team to help each member reach their full potential is one of the greatest challenges of leadership. While teams are more productive and agile today than decades ago, thanks to the skills of their members and improvements in...

From Individual Leadership to Collective Leadership

Leadership is evolving. Like any species that must adapt to its environment to survive, leadership is adopting new forms to remain relevant. The Covid pandemic has forced us to embrace collaborative solutions and...

2022 GOAL: Less is More

We're starting a new year again. And as always when this happens, it's time to dedicate time to connecting with our intentions and defining the big goal we want to achieve, in this case, during 2022. To begin, it's good to have "the...".

Increase Personal Power

Personal power is a fundamental ingredient of leadership. It's very rare to build productive and sustainable organizations without cohesive and aligned teams that contribute their maximum value. And, in turn, it's rare for this to be...

To become vulnerable

Being vulnerable is one of the most powerful skills for building trust and exercising more human leadership. One of the most widespread leadership development goals among managers is to cultivate a management style based on...

Sustainable Leadership – Leading the “4Cs”

Setting a tension and putting pressure on someone are not the same. The former relates to demanding leadership. The latter can lead to over-demanding behavior. One is creative, as it helps us evolve, while the other opens the door to overreaction, and can...

Returning with Enthusiasm

Returning to work after our vacation has an emotional, and even physical, impact that gives us a lot of information about our relationship with the organization, our team, and our connection with...

Freedom and Team

A high-performing team is one made up of women and men who feel free to express themselves authentically and give their best while respecting and committing to their personal identity. Freedom and teamwork are two concepts that should go hand in hand...

How to Increase Trust within the Team

Trust is the foundation of any productive and cohesive team. Patrick Lencioni, in his book "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team," identifies a lack of trust as the primary obstacle preventing a team from achieving high performance.

How to Tame Our Inner Saboteurs

In my previous article (Leading the Mind), I reflected on the internal dialogue we all have, which often holds us back from making the decisions and taking the actions we truly want in our lives. These internal "saboteurs" are constantly at war...

Leading the Mind

Our best ally and, sometimes, our greatest enemy. This is the role our mind plays throughout our lives. Often, when we don't achieve what we set out to do, we tend to think it's because something in our external environment hasn't gone as planned...

Friendship and Work

“I come here to work, not to make friends.” We hear these words from time to time from professionals in various organizations. But, on the other hand, there are also many cases where friendships have been forged in the professional environment, and….

Learning to Delegate

We would agree that a large majority of managers need to learn to delegate more effectively to foster quality teamwork that increases productivity and cohesion among team members. We would also agree that a large number...

The 10 Reactive (and Involuntary) Tendencies of the Organization

Reactive organizational tendencies often emerge unintentionally when companies push their professionals and teams to work in uncomfortable situations that they often don't know how to handle. This is done with the aim of achieving their...

Reconnect with your Authentic Leadership

There's no doubt that to be effective in our personal and professional leadership, we need to enjoy what we do. When this happens, it's easier to dedicate energy, body, and soul to continuous improvement and ultimately make a significant contribution...

My Professional Goals for 2021

A classic New Year's tradition returns: setting goals. For our desires to materialize, we must first transform them into intentions accompanied by firm and decisive commitment. Every January, we face the same question: what...

My Lessons Learned in 2020

The lessons of 2020 have stayed with us throughout a year that will surely go down in history. A year of suffering, bewilderment, and fear; but also a year of reflection, solidarity, and paradigm shifts. If at the end of each year it's good to do a little...

The Mistake of Looking for Blame Within the Organization

It's easier to point the finger at a person, or a team, as the cause of something not working in the organization, than to assume the shared responsibility we all have to make things go well. In today's article, we'll reflect on the mistake of...

Leaders Who Unite

José Mujica bid farewell to politics on October 20, 2020, with a speech that, once again, for its honesty, conciliation, and emotional impact, will be remembered as a lesson in what it means to do politics—good politics. And beyond that, it is a demonstration of...

10 Tips to Boost Socially Responsible Professional Development

In my experience, a person who becomes a role model within their team and organization is someone who contributes to the best version of others. They are not only successful professionals because of their individual brilliance, but above all because they have helped build teams...

How to Maintain Human Connection in a Team During Times of Remote Work?

Remote work is changing some of our relationship and communication habits with other team members. This situation, which in its current intensity will be temporary but will persist to some degree in the future, is prompting us to redesign the alliance of...

Turning 50

  Turning 50 isn't just a number; it's a magical milestone, and at the same time, it commands respect. Reaching a new age is a time for celebration and gratitude; it can also be a fantastic opportunity to reflect on...

How to Empower Team Members

Empowering team members is one of the greatest challenges for any leader. In the previous article, "The Leader Who Creates Dependency," I pointed out some signs that indicate when we are dealing with a manager who creates too much dependency in the team...

The Leader Who Creates Dependency

A team is made up of different people who contribute to fulfilling the vision and strategy defined by the team. However, not all members have the same impact on the team's added value. Often, the team has "key" individuals who...

How to Escape the Golden Cage in 6 Steps

  Many people would like to change their job, or even change companies. And although they want to, they don't take the plunge, or they waste many years of their professional careers before doing so. The worst part is that many of these people...

Personal Creative Tension

Personal creative tension helps us find the balance between tranquility and the challenge necessary to feel fulfilled. The same is true professionally. Monotony, however peaceful, can drain us emotionally and physically (although...

The Art of Simplifying

Simplifying is an art that helps us focus on what truly matters. Managing a crisis, whether small or large, requires focusing on what really matters, the essential elements, and what adds value for individuals and organizations.

Resilient Teams

Resilient teams aren't born from comfort, but from challenges. Managing the Covid-19 crisis has transformed many organizations into accelerated learning environments, where resilient teams have had to adapt, collaborate, and bring out their best...

Cultivate an Abundance Mindset

We humans can relate to others through generosity, gratitude, and a desire to share in pursuit of the common good. But we can also relate to others through selfishness, envy, or a need for...

The Johari Window in Crisis Management

Any complex or challenging situation we experience offers us the opportunity to get to know ourselves better, and also allows others to get to know us a little better. The Johari Window is a methodology developed by psychologists Joseph Luft and...

Managing Information Overload

The paradigm for information management has changed. Before (it seems like much longer ago than it actually has been) it was said that "information was power," because it wasn't so easy to access. Now, that power is no longer dispensed in dribs and drabs, but...

Lessons Learned

“Crisis is the best blessing that can happen to people and countries, because crisis brings progress.” This quote from Albert Einstein represents the good news, or the positive aspect, that can be found in any critical or unexpected situation that...

Productive Virtual Meetings

Technological advancements are radically reinventing the way we work. And this is just the beginning. Can anyone imagine what professional roles or tasks would be without computers, smartphones, or the internet?.

Leading in Times of Crisis

The Covid-19 crisis connects us with the feeling of loss in an intense and continuous way. In some cases, the loss is traumatic and very painful, as in the case of the loss of human lives. In others, the loss is somewhat lesser, but also difficult...

Learning to Manage Crisis Situations

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the lives of millions of people worldwide. Who could have imagined living through this situation? The planet remains extremely concerned about the health, social, and economic consequences that...

The Team's Scapegoat: How to Avoid It [2/2]

In the first part of this article, we reflected on the tendency team members to look for scapegoats when things go wrong. It's easy to point the finger at team members who are "difficult," "problematic," or "unproductive"...