In recent years, leadership development within organizations has placed a strong emphasis on so-called “soft skills.” Concepts such as empathy, active listening, effective communication and well-being have gained prominence in training programs and on the Human Resources agenda.
This change is not coincidental. It responds to the need to leave behind rigid and inhumane management models. However, in this process a new challenge has also been generated: the risk of unbalancing leadership towards the relational, to the detriment of operational management.
Today it is increasingly common to find training demands for leaders who seek to develop linkage skills, but little importance is given to having additional tools that allow structuring work, making decisions or establishing clear priorities.
In short, there is a risk of creating teams where there is a good climate, but low clarity. Where there is a lot of conversation, but it is executed with difficulty.
The question that arises is inevitable: is developing interpersonal skills enough to lead effectively?
The evidence indicates no. One of the most counterintuitive findings of recent years is that, despite the rise in well-being and empathetic leadership programs, employee engagement has reached historic lows in various regions. Gallup reports that in the United States, engagement fell to its lowest level in a decade, standing at 31% in 2024. The root of this disconnect is not a lack of care, but a lack of clarity. In Argentina, only 29% of workers are committed to their work. It is one of the lowest in the region.
More bond, but less structure. In many organizations, leadership programs have focused almost exclusively on employee well-being and experience. Workshops, spaces for reflection and dynamics aimed at strengthening trust and communication have had sustained growth.
The problem lies not in these initiatives, but in their lack of balance with another essential component of leadership: management.
When the focus is placed solely on the link, signs of organizational disorder begin to appear. Poorly defined roles, postponed decisions, diffuse priorities and an autonomy that, far from empowering, generates uncertainty.
It is not about a lack of commitment on the part of the teams. It is, in many cases, lack of design.
Contemporary research suggests that the gap between what organizations plan and what they actually achieve is deeper than most executive committees are willing to admit. A joint study between Harvard Business Review and Bridges Business Consultancy reveals that 67% of well-formulated strategies fail due to poor execution. This phenomenon highlights that “thinking” has surpassed “doing” in the hierarchy of corporate prestige, leaving organizations “over-indexed” on strategists and “structurally blind” to executors. Leadership as balance. A simple way to understand this phenomenon is to think of leadership as a system of two complementary dimensions. On the one hand, bonding leadership, which includes the ability to generate trust, listen and accompany. On the other hand, management, understood as the ability to organize, prioritize, define responsibilities and ensure execution.
When one of these dimensions is weakened, the system loses effectiveness.
Leadership focused solely on management can be rigid and unsustainable. But leadership focused only on the relational tends to generate ambiguity and lack of direction.
The current challenge is not to choose between one approach or another, but integrate them consistently.
The erosion of role clarity disproportionately affects younger generations (Gen Z and Millennials), who report the most drastic drops in feeling like they have someone who cares about their development. This suggests that, for the modern collaborator, true “care” is not empty empathetic conversation, but rather clear direction on how to be successful in their role.
Autonomy is not absence of management. In the desire to create agile organizations, many companies have fallen into the trap of “unstructured autonomy.” Under the guise of empowering teams, leaders have removed frameworks and clear guidelines, assuming that talent will find their own path through organic collaboration. The reality, documented by Gartner, is that 78% of leaders experience a “collaboration burden” characterized by too many meetings, too much peer feedback, and unclear decision authority.
In recent years, the concept of autonomy has gained relevance as part of more agile and flexible organizational models. However, in many cases, this idea has been misinterpreted.
Autonomy does not imply absence of structure. On the contrary, requires a clear framework that allows people to act with judgment and responsibility.
Without defining roles, without explicit agreements and without shared priorities, autonomy becomes dispersion. And the dispersion, in inefficiency.
Returning to management is not going back. Revaluing management does not mean returning to excessive control models. It means recognizing that organizational clarity is a key factor for performance.
It implies that leaders not only accompany their teams, but also design the context in which these teams operate. Let them define what is important, what is expected and how it is measured.
In this sense, effective leadership is not defined by the ability to generate good ties alone, but by the ability to make things happen in a sustained way.
Modern organizations face an increasingly dynamic environment, where the speed of decision and clarity of execution are decisive.
In this context, Leadership requires more than just soft skills. It requires integrating the human with the operational, the link with the structure, the conversation with the action.
*Facilitator and Partner of Eseyka
by Nicolás Schvartzer
