The Employee's Gaze and the Leader's Paradigm

Diego Marin, Human Resources Director at GEORGALOS

Like a game where sight rules when it comes to perceptions, a collaborator is always attentive to the movements of his leader, both for the willingness to strive and follow the line of their boss but also for the relentless pursuit of imitating behaviors that have led leaders to the place where they are. In times of continuous ruptures of paradigms, where the slightest notion of stability is sometimes even condemned, the example continues to be a model to execute or avoid, and remains one of the keys to learning. Leadership, as an essential virtue and competence when it comes to taking an organization to its most accomplished level of development, can, of course, be natural or acquired. The good news is that a good leader can be not only one who has the innate conditions to be one but also those who learn and, above all, practice, train, study, and improve, achieving even better results than supposedly ‘natural’ leaders.

The central axis of how to become an excellent leader would go through learning and not so much through teaching, a kind of confirmation of the validity of the 70-20-10 model, which seeks, in one's own experience, the models to follow and the theory, the proposed achievement. 

In this way, examples, like so many things, can be good, regular, or bad; employees seek inspiration in all the behaviors that surround them. I worked with an extraordinary boss who said: "You learn much more from a bad leader than from a good one," and to the astonishment generated by this statement, he would hasten to add: "-Of course, the bad leader makes so evident what not to do that the learning is overwhelming for the one who is observing it." And they will always be watching us and drawing conclusions.

They are watching us as a responsibility and an opportunity.

In the learning curve of the art of leading work teams and its complex universe, one can recognize the enormous teachings of inspiring, exemplary, and brilliant leaders, but the clumsy strokes marked by the negative or non-leader leader have been engraved in our senses for the worst reasons and for good! In an optimistic and realistic view, the learning has been formidable in both cases, perhaps more forceful in the non-leader.

When a leader is surprised by a keen observation of a subordinate, who perceives with great attention the movements of the person in charge... A mixture of amazement, fascination, and concern takes over the leader, who feels observed and analyzed no longer in his concrete action, but in the act of leading. And here, the opportunity to inspire opens up.

The Inspiring Leader

Another fantastic leader I had the opportunity to meet pointed out that as a father is observed and imitated by his children, even in the smallest movements, a leader is analyzed in detail by the members of his team. The analogy comes from a leader far removed from the paternalistic model, but it is an excellent illustration of this situation!

“Leadership has gone from being a practice to a virtue, evolved into an art and is on the way to becoming a science.”

Beyond the discomfort, for many, of that ‘following’ and persistent gaze of a collaborator, the truth is that, to a greater or lesser extent, we all learn to live with it. Knowing that this is the case, our efforts should focus on spreading a sustainable and exemplary leadership model that prepares future leaders of the organization. This is where the notion of a leader as someone who manages to inspire others, in every sense, should be, in the best of ways!

Quoting Victor Hugo, in his famous "Nothing is more stupid than winning, true glory is convincing.", he referred to persuasion as the most sustainable and solid virtue when conducting behaviors. And it is indeed, but how much more difficult it is to persuade than to impose, to propose than to command and inspire than to order.

A Paradigm Questioned

Never before in history has it been more challenging to lead than it is today, as it is to be a parent, to be a teacher, a leader, a professor, or a philosopher?

This is certainly a categorical and decidedly bold statement. However, it is based on concrete facts that reality throws at us. With the wealth of information available to us, the educational models focused on leadership training, the activities proposed by study groups, the countless miles of books written on the subject, etc., leadership has gone from being a practice to a virtue, evolved into an art and on the way to becoming a science. Even so, there are no masterful and universal recipes because the subject matter is as mutable as it is diverse, the human being and his capacity to relate to others. We know how complex relationships between people have become in today's world due to the processes of socialization, education, and learning that generate very broad debates and permanent questioning of long-established paradigms.

Nowadays, the actions of the leader represent one more paradigm, which becomes questionable, and without a doubt, is turned into a matter of opinion and is quickly judged. Singularly, the paradigm of the existence of the leader itself is not questioned (at least for now), but that of the leader's own value and the paradigm of his or her effectiveness is what is discussed. Behold, the assessment of the leader should run routes of introspection, self-criticism, and permanent (self) evaluation and, why not, the frequent validation of his team, his environment, and his objectives. A kind of 360° evaluation of rapid action, self-managed, as a guarantee of success in the mission, but always remembering that the leader is perpetually observed.