Generally, when someone is asked to describe a leader, they usually describe him or her as charismatic, with the ability to management and to mobilize the masses under a clear ideal. This is the image that most movies and series project. However, it is worth asking how much this projection prevents us from understanding leadership in a different way. In this regard, almost 75 years ago, the Danish writer Karen Blixen, better known by her pseudonym -Isak Dinesen- wrote a story in which a great lesson about a closer subject of leadership is hidden.

Babette's Feast begins with a description of a small village on a Danish fjord, Berlevaag. Its inhabitants had long since become a community thanks to the guide of the founder of the religious group to which they belonged. The Protestant pastor described in the story was the prototype of a charismatic leader, who had managed to unite everyone in a common goal . During his term of office the citizens had been happy and the town had experienced moments of splendor. Aware that at some point the end would come, the shepherd prepares his daughters for his succession. The devotion they feel for him and the cause makes them sacrifice their lives and their loves. At the same time, the responsibility to continue his bequest discourages them from applying any innovation, as so often happens. With the best of intentions, and without his charisma, the daughters did things for years as they had always been done. But the temptation of repetition stifles any institution. Neighbors drift apart and, even within families and marriages, insurmountable quarrels arise.

In contrast we have Madame Babette Hersant. What we know about her when she arrives in town is that she is a revolutionary who fled France. It is intuited, therefore, a woman with courage and ideals, capable of turning the town around. I say " intuited" because, in reality, the text tells how, upon her arrival as a refugee, she puts herself at the direct service of the leading sisters of the sect. For more than a decade she works quietly and selflessly, without altering a single custom of the people. She does not exercise autocratic leadership; she does not consider that what she learned in France gives her the right to transform the people, no matter how many good ideas she has for doing so. Rather, what he does is to observe quietly, to adopt all the customs of the place and to be at the service of the community for fourteen years. His attentive gaze not only allows him to understand external events, but also to understand what is going on inside the villagers. This attentive gaze, of which Simone Weil speaks so much, discovers needs and unsuspected ways of meeting them. Thus, no one in the village can feel attacked or violated, but on the contrary, comfortable and cared for, which allows him, through his work, to gradually change the hearts of the inhabitants without their noticing it.

Indeed, all this transformation has to do with the free and gratuitous way in which he exercises his work. To a mercantilist mentality it might seem that his way of working is servile, but this is not so. He does not circumscribe himself in an obligatory way to certain tasks, but he exceeds himself in a gratuitous way, giving himself entirely, making of his work a gift, which is what begins to have a different efficacy. The philosopher Higinio Marín explains that "what is done for a salary and nothing more, is paid for with the salary, and if it can be paid for, it is on the market and is merchandise (like the life of its author spent in doing so)". But there are many other things that involve work that cannot be paid for in any way. Babette's free and generous way of working sample a different way of facing life and relationships.

In turn, by the time she wins the lottery, those years of work provide her with a framework of confidence that makes everyone ready for change. "We are willing to grant you the right to give to us," the community says. The text presents a paradigm shift: doing something for others is not a right of mine, but a gift that others grant. It is not my status as a teacher that allows me to teach my students, it is they who give me the opportunity to teach them something. In other words, it is the community that accepts to be led by a person who has earned their trust.

Once the community grants such a gift, Babette surprises us again by making her magnanimity even more evident, preparing a feast in which she invests all her savings. However, this act of generosity is only the external culmination of her life's work. At the same time, her creative leadership - for she is a great artist - is also evident, with which she generates disruptive occasions that bring about transformation. Even on this occasion she does not impose what must be done. She does not say a word and hardly receives any. She says nothing, but she has done everything. No one says anything to her, but the reader knows that the community has come back together and everyone has found meaning in their lives again. Isn't this a good leadership model ?