Leadership: One on One

Establish the best relationships possible with the people around you, by anchoring them to your thinking and your true beliefs.

I often discussed in my articles about the famous Romanian comedian Puiu Calinescu. And I will always talk about him. Because, on the one hand, is one of the actors whom I liked most, but on the other, because he is a great man - a man, whose value has not been equaled only by very few actors, a man, whose power of understanding of the human nature cannot be questioned.

At one point, he told in an interview something that I will never forget. He said:

- You shall not confuse a showman with an actor. If you are not coming under a discipline, if you have no respect for your master that is the audience – he’s my dad, she's my mother, he gives money for you to get shoes... then you cannot feel accomplished. I never felt disappointed and betrayed by the public. Nooo ! Why? Because we are always one to one: I love them, and they love me.

I think these words represent the "spell" of closeness between people, in them lays all the secret of a leader. In these words can be recognized the true value of the ones who knows how to build strong and lasting relationships. The expert in leadership, John Maxwell, was quite right, when he said: "There is a possibility to like people without leading them, but you can’t lead people until you like people."

Can your belonging to the “double presence” condition be judged by what you know off-stage, and not on the basis of the ideas you have gained from the experience of being face to face with the audience?

The actor has a double presence: formal or necessary, depending on the role he plays on stage. And leadership remains in the care of those who have understood and approved it as a scene of manifestation of acting behaviors and attitudes. The leadership is usually understood and fully accepted by a genre or a certain category of individuals - as a way of guiding people through manipulation and control. The leadership also recommends you as a genuine person who demonstrates remarkable balance of qualities and virtues.

Leadership is not only an indicator of the perseverance of people toward a particular goal, but it is also an indicator of their ethical value. Do you remember the Evangelist Matthew? He was telling that the Pharisees, wanting to lay a trap to Jesus and urging him to disobedience towards the Roman domination, would have asked him whether to pay the tax to Caesar. However, Jesus feeling the trap which was preparing for him, asked them the coin, showed them the effigy of the king and told them: "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's". These words serve in recognizing the merits, attribution, role and achievements of each one of us.

For your merits, attribution, and your role to be recognized, then people must consider you worthy of representing them, and of accepting you as a competent person who can appreciate what he receives from them: their consideration, respect and motivation to continue their mission. Just like the Romanian comedy actor, Puiu Calinescu, you must conform to the public, to admit that they are right. Your ideals must be of admiration, viable and should be followed. But the efforts you make in their fulfillment can be slowed down due to the criticism that you do it by yourself if your leadership does not rise to a higher level of influence.

In order to win people over to your side, must you first step on their side, knowing that what you have to say by the suggestive force of your representative image deserves any conjunctural transformation and any gratitude?

1. How do you transform yourself into an agent of the change?

2. Can you take hard decisions that will make a difference in the world around you?

3. Are you tempted to stop at one point? Or, you continue to increase your power of influence? If yes, in what way?

4. The moral of the people improves when you are among them? How do you build solid and lasting relationships? Are you evolving with people by generating that vibration, the attraction that would determine them to unite around you? Are you creating a consistent and constant imagine about you - that of a man who paints his existence according to some high ideals?

Do people feel they have an ally in you, on which they can rely on? The German poet and dramatist Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller said that the world cannot give what it does not receive from you. Namely, be a man of quality and they will give you their attachment. For winning people by your side, you must first pass by their side. You will enjoy as many passing as the others will show to you and for determining them to show it, you will have to earn their trust - by your attitude, by your way of being, by what you know, by your sincerity, by your authenticity, and by the way you juggle with the rules.

No magic is not stronger than this one. People feel a sense of repulsion (or does not feel anything) against the man unconcerned with their feelings, and who is unable to express his feelings by virtue of his role, by the way of using any of leadership’s elements and by their simultaneous crystallization. Do you know how it is named this? Charisma.

Can you adapt the actual expression of the way you see yourself to the way you perceive your physical, emotional, spiritual, and social characteristics in an ideal context of stage interference?

When you help the ones around you, you help yourself indirectly. If you want to enjoy an adequate attention from people, then you must be on the same wavelength with their aspirations. Your leadership must express the same harmony which they foresee. Alternatively, paraphrasing the writer Alexandre Dumas, you must create a world around them, on which would rule your thinking and feeling.

Your leadership’s ability is affected by the way you develop your own potential, by the level of your requirements in your self-evaluation and capitalization. Only by developing your competencies, increasing the requirements towards you and your knowledge of leading, you could approach the maximum level of your potential. Remember that the excellence in leadership is achieved by making serious efforts of improvement and development of the competencies, abilities, along with the increased demands towards you - the leader.

Just as a painter distributes the color with more intensity, without diminishing at all the perspective on which are situated the components - and so your personality, in order to be recognized and understood, you must impose with great caution, diplomacy and tact, with great ambition, responsibly, with more balance, a specific pace of leadership, by which to communicate your emotions, without getting away from the concrete reality that you share with the others. Furthermore, without diminishing at all the impression of continuity by the way you relate to them, and their expectations, to what you can do in order to unite them around a common purpose that would ensure the recognition of your superiority.

Highlighting your personality in an ideal context of stage interference means behaving like an actor: acting naturally, truly, necessarily, depending on the situation you are in, bringing to the surface organic reactions, thus achieving “awareness” spectators.

Leadership One on One designates the positive image of the leader in the people’s vision, designates that remarkable personality, that authentic moral, emotional, and professional authority, which represents him in the relationships with the other people. Many positive things begin to happen when a leader demonstrates its ability of empathizing with the other people - their morale is improving, while he gains influence and credibility. In other words, if people follow you for who you are and for what you represent, that is unconditional, then you can consider yourself a King.

Obtaining performance in leadership requires time and a work of Sisyphus with the people. The leader must give his best to make himself understood because only in this way he can win people by his side - becoming true allies in achieving the intended purpose and ultimately to attain recognition and even material and emotional welfare of all.

In this ongoing battle conducted by the leader, he must have reliable allies, because he is not an "Atlas" that can bear on his shoulders all the work and the team responsibilities. A good leader will find the ways, means and the appropriate tact to become a "King" for each of the team.

In the game of chess, in order to make the small rook, the king must not be in check, and the space between him and the tower should be free. Similarly, in leadership, for the leader to have a great influence on people, he must not be in opposition with them. But he must be free in expressing honestly and openly any feelings, to show off his personality, by transmitting positively his beliefs and ideals, and in the same time, to modify their emotions, thinking and the perception about themselves after his own rules and principles of leadership.