Leadership and motivation are two indispensable ingredients in the success of any project, and both are necessary for the personal and professional development of an individual.

But can leadership skills be trained? How important is emotional management when leading teams? How important is motivation when making a change in our lives?

Interview with Carlos Rey García, co-founder of UPAD Psychology and Coaching

To solve the previous doubts and some more we talked to Carlos Rey Garcia, co-founder of UPAD Psychology and Coaching, one of the most important centers of therapy and personal development in Madrid.

Good morning, Carlos! It is common to encounter the popular belief that psychology is focused exclusively on the abnormally negative part of the human psyche, that is, on the treatment and prevention of mental disorders. However, you have bet heavily not only on that part traditionally linked to the work of the psychologist, but also on the part that appeals to the population without diagnosable mental problems, or I would even say to the abnormally positive population, as an example of overcoming and psychological excellence. What motivated you to do this?

In fact, we have never liked this cliché of problematic professionals, and we come from a field, sport, which is more oriented towards this type of improvement.

Positive and humanistic psychology has had a lot of influence in our methodology, we like to think that people give the best of themselves when they focus their “problems” as challenges to be overcome and not as problems in themselves. In this way and after years of working with athletes, we understood the importance of working by objectives and we came to the conclusion that there are many areas of our experience that may require the advice of a professional to optimize their performance, but that at the psychological level all these areas share psychological variables and objectives to be met, in our case everything comes down to three: performance (behaviors), welfare (feelings) and satisfaction (thoughts). Aligning and optimizing them is our greatest challenge.

When you talk about different fields of action that may require your professional advice, what exactly do you mean?

I basically mean that normally, as in sport, we tend to act in competitive areas, in interaction or opposition with other people, and therefore there are parallels when it comes to tackling the challenges of different types of user.

At UPAD we have worked with athletes of all kinds, with professionals from different fields who wanted to improve their skills or better manage different situations. We have also prepared opponents to face such a complex challenge as overcoming an opposition. Musicians, artists, dancers, professional poker players, introverted and insecure people who wanted to improve their way of relating to others… I don’t know, an endless number of scenarios, which in the end, share a base. The way we manage our thoughts, feelings and behaviors. That’s where we offer our help and try to generate value.

In your work you advise sportsmen and women and workers, helping them to improve themselves, and surely one of the most important psychological variables in personal growth is motivation. In fact, if a person is not motivated to change, it is impossible for them to do so. But what role does motivation play in achieving our goals, both personal and professional? Why are there people who, despite wanting to change, never take the step to do so?

That’s right. Personally, I like to compare motivation to a vehicle’s engine. We all have one, but we don’t always know where we want to go. Sometimes even, knowing that, we choose the wrong gasoline to give it. If we fill the tank with pressure, we will be subject to negative motivation, because we will do what we have to do to avoid something unpleasant. However, if we learn to fill it with enthusiasm, we can focus more on the positive character of the motivation and we will come to enjoy the trip, even before we reach our goals. Knowing how to manage this gasoline well is fundamental to persevere and enjoy, whatever our destination.

For those people who want to change but do not, the case in question should be analysed, but we usually find that openness to change is contingent on underlying expectations. Depending on these expectations, we can find people who see such changes as opportunities to achieve something better (motivation to succeed), as opposed to others who may see them as a potential threat to themselves (motivation to avoid failure – comfort zone). In this sense, it is very important for the final decision we make, where we perceive the balance to be tipped, whether it is towards motivation or towards fear.

One of the services you offer in UPAD is business coaching, and one of the most talked about topics in business is leadership. Research on occupational stress concludes that the relationship between superiors and subordinates can be a stressor or, on the contrary, can increase the performance of a worker and keep him/her motivated. What characteristics do you think a good leader should possess?

We usually find a clash between different leadership styles within the organizational world, which invites us to decide on the suitability of some styles over others. The excessive control that a manager exercises over his team of experts can be just as negative as the absence of clear guidelines that a trainee needs. What I mean by this is that leadership is a dynamic process, which changes from person to person and from objective to objective.

Each situation has different characteristics and will require the leader to adopt some positions or others in order to achieve the proposed objectives. Therefore, I personally consider that a good leader has to fulfill some requirements among others like proactivity (to sow to harvest, to follow to be followed), coherence and integrity (to preach with the example and to be aligned with what is said and done), flexibility in his style (to adapt to the changing needs of the situations), communication (to project credibility and influence and transmit faith in the achievement of objectives), emotional intelligence (to manage difficult situations and handle conflicts), listening and delegating (to generate commitment, contemplating different points of view and involving the team in decisions or actions), and giving feedback, providing direction and motivating so that they feel part of the achievements.

There are many courses and workshops on leadership, but… can this skill be trained or is it basically innate?

Well, as in any other field of knowledge or any skill, I consider that we all come with a potential talent as a series, although this needs to be developed in the social sphere, that is, in living with others. As we are essentially born alone and we necessarily need others to be able to lead, I consider innatism in this case as an inappropriate approach, as it is during situations of social interaction where we can increase the learning about the action of leading.

Another thing is how we define leadership. Whether we consider it as a mere skill, in a certain static or innate way, or on the contrary, as a dynamic and interactive process.

In my personal case I am inclined to the second option, that is, I consider leadership a process that is composed of a series of underlying skills and of course, susceptible to development, although there are different levels of potential in each person.

Perhaps there is more and more information on how to lead others, but what about self-leadership? Without a doubt it is a key element in personal and professional development, which allows us to overcome adversities and to remain organized and motivated over time. How can we improve this mental capacity?

I would even say that necessarily to be able to lead others you have to start with yourself. If you are not in a position to offer it to yourself, how could you offer it to others?

The requirements for their development also imply an effort of self-knowledge, of setting goals and persevering in their achievement. All of this is aligned with the above-mentioned characteristics.

One of the great paradigms of today is emotional intelligence, which plays a fundamental role in our personal development. And in the company, what role does it play? There is more and more talk about emotional leadership.

Emotional intelligence is a basic ability to achieve adequate self-regulation. Knowing how I interpret the situations I face and based on that, what feelings I experience and the consequences they have on my attitudes and final behavior, is fundamental to achieve any kind of goal I set.

Sometimes it is necessary to learn to modify my thoughts about a certain situation in order to adapt to it in a functional or valid way, renouncing other types of thinking criteria that are more focused on the criterion of truthfulness than on functionality. In those cases, in which people find justifications for their dysfunctional reactions when it comes to achieving certain objectives, I like to comment on the following words… “It’s true. You’re right and what good is it?” If the answer is “to get away from my goals,” emotional leadership is failing.

In an increasingly individualistic society, companies value the ability of their employees to work as a team. Why do you think teamwork is so important in the workplace?

We could enter into a fabulous “conspiratorial” debate about the interests of creating societies centred on the individual, but surely that is not the aim of this interview. I will limit myself to recommending Adam Curtis’ documentary, The century of the self for a better understanding of the prevailing individualism.

As regards the importance of teamwork, I think my answer may even be trivial, but basically I will limit myself here to the concept of synergy. Synergy is a concept drawn from biology, which reflects the importance of joint action of a number of elements on a general function. Any self-respecting company acts like the human body for the sake of an example. We have a head, lungs, heart, kidneys and a long etcetera of organs that fulfil certain functions. There is no point in having the best heart if it does not act in conjunction with the other organs of the body. Well, it’s the same in an organization, if there are no synergies you lose sight of the overall purpose of the body, which is none other than to survive and to function as well as possible.