Leaders are people we can look up to without feeling that they are looking down at us.

A story from Daniel Bernard, managing partner at Mindspring Capital.

I went to visit a small cosmetics factory recently. As with many businesses, they were suffering through Covid and trying to navigate their way through their own economic crisis. They were looking for investment, more as a bail out than anything else, and I had agreed to meet the founder simply because a mutual friend had asked me to. Cosmetics is about as alien to me as a business can be, and was up front about a simple rule I follow whereby I invest only in businesses that I can understand. During this difficult period, however, people seem to have more time on their hands (not to mention more space in their minds — without a doubt a positive side effect of a very negative situation), and the founder and I were both happy to sit down together to openly discuss the issues facing the company.

After a short introduction in a small, makeshift meeting room, the founder, affably named Joseph, took me for a quick tour of the factory. He wasn’t trying to sell me anything, but wanted me to see the operation with my own eyes. Now, as you already know, I haven’t the faintest clue of what is required to run a cosmetics factory, so I nodded along as he described the processes and machinery that functioned before us. But there is something that I do know a thing or two about, and that is people. My focus was quickly changed to the interactions that Joseph had with the middle management and workers we met along the way. Perhaps I am naïve, but it certainly didn’t feel setup and the smiles that greeted Joseph from his team as we entered each individual space was a pleasure to behold. He engaged with everyone. He knew everybody’s name for a start, which is an absolute must in a smallish company anyway, but it went far beyond that. Joseph was involved in the experiences of his employees. Sure, when he asked the lady in packaging for an update about her son who had recently undergone surgery, he may have done that specifically in front of me. But what does it matter? He clearly knew what he was talking about, was clearly engaged with the situation and, very simply put, patently cared.

Now I noticed something very clear in the eyes of Joseph’s employees. They held him in very high regard. He was everything to them as a boss and they looked up to him with almost a willing helplessness of knowing that their livelihood was in his hands. They trusted his knowledge, experience and capability. But they did this not because he was their boss, but because he had acquired their trust through seeing them on a level and being there for them.

Now, there is no fairytale ending to this anecdote in which I bail out the company and Joseph and I trot off into a successful cosmetic sunset leaving Covid far behind. I stayed loyal to my principles and didn’t invest. However, I believe that both of us benefitted from our encounter. Indeed, it wasn’t our last as we have since enjoyed further discussions around shared philosophies of business and operation. But that first meeting was a wonderful experience for me and spoke right to my inner values of management through true leadership. People may obey bosses, but they will only ever truly work for leaders that see them for the people they are.

Daniel Bernard.