The Loafer will rarely make his idle stance obvious in the presence of a superior (and therefore rarely in meetings in which one is present), but his nonverbal cues invariably give him away: roaming eyes, slouched posture, lack of note-taking tools, and a static seating position regardless of who is speaking. While meetings can certainly achieve high levels of boredom, the Loafer takes apathy to a new level, primarily evidenced by a lack of involvement. He is the one who is late, unprepared, and uninterested. To observe the Loafer in a meeting is straightforward. To be aligned with him is to blind yourself to various opportunities and stunt your potential. He is the one to whom good fortune remains unseen.
The Loafer is, conversely, one you must avoid. Some four thousand years ago, ancient Israel’s third monarch, the wise King Solomon, said it this way: “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise.” We speak of one being guilty by association, but the opposite is equally true: one is also successful by association. Put simply, those aligned with the real leaders in any organization will receive portions of good fortune unavailable to the rest. As the Leader succeeds, so do his closest supporters. As the Leader moves up, so does the Leader’s inner circle. I have seen this time and again in my corporate experience.
Not only will you learn from the Leader, you will quicken your experience and you will position yourself to climb as the Leader climbs. This is the person with whom you ought to align yourself more than any other individual. The advantages of spotting the Leader in a meeting are fairly obvious. Will not such leaders recruit those closest to them, those they trust, to join in their ventures? It has always been so, and you would do well to position yourself in their camp.
To align yourself with such people is not only a wise strategy, it opens the door to opportunities you could not access on your own. And nearly every great entrepreneur who set out on his own was in the beginning an unpositioned leader with untapped potential. Remember that nearly every great CEO was once a typical employee sitting in meetings with bosses and coworkers. It is my experience, however, that it is best to not assume position equals influence but instead to enter a meeting with a clean slate and make your observations from an unobstructed view. I do not suggest here that most positional leaders are not the real leaders.
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