These days, El hijo de la cómica (The Comedian's Son), a tribute by José Sacristán to Fernando Fernán-Gómez, is being performed at the Teatre Romea in Barcelona.
Sacristán says: "Fernán-Gómez taught me to listen."
For years he had the opportunity to be close to him, listen to him, and learn how he understood the craft. In fact, I've read that Sacristán used to say he was "in first grade of Fernán Gómez." I really like that expression because it implies accepting something difficult: before wanting to demonstrate, you have to accept that you are still learning.
And there's a stage that almost all of us want to skip. The stage of observing from the back row. The stage of doing small tasks. The stage of helping others before anyone bothers to look at you.
We want to learn, but without the discomfort of feeling like beginners. We want to lead, but without having first learned to follow. Deep down, we seek recognition for our talent before having gone through that period where we are not yet as important as we think.
Ego turns any humble task into a personal offense. It makes us confuse serving with demeaning ourselves and makes us believe that preparing the ground for others is a waste of time.
But it's not.
Paraphrasing Lord Mahon, great people have almost always first shown the same capacity to obey that they would later show to command. I know the word "obey" sounds old and has a bad reputation. We associate it with lack of judgment, dependence, or submission.
But there is another way to understand it.
To obey is to learn to look from within. It is to understand how someone with more experience works. It is to discover how the knowledgeable person decides, how they prioritize, how they make mistakes and, above all, how they bear responsibility when things get tough.
To obey is to learn to look from within.
There is no solid leadership without a season of humble learning. Everyone you meet is, in some way, superior to you. If you enter a room wondering how to prove you know more, you have already lost.
The one who truly learns enters wondering what they can extract from each person present.
There is no solid leadership without a season of humble learning.
Authority is built by doing what needs to be done well, even when it doesn't shine. It is built by delivering. By listening. By improving what passes through your hands. By being the person who doesn't add unnecessary problems. The one who understands the assignment. The one who comes back with something better than expected.
Muhammad Ali used to say that serving others is the rent we pay for living in this world.
If we apply it to learning, serving is the fastest way to stop navel-gazing and start looking at what the situation truly needs. This is how competence and judgment are built.
Learn to be useful. The rest will come later.
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