--- title: What a Leader Looks Like description: Leadership is not an image; it’s a quality canonical: https://time.com/4071273/leadership-definition/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-10-13T13:57:59.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:57:29.744Z article:section: Ideas og:title: This is What a Leader Looks Like og:description: Leadership is not an image; it’s a quality og:url: https://time.com/4071273/leadership-definition/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6ab485eec968dfa0/6988680a0b72e3191b6e64c9/woman-rear-view-looking-thinking.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5616 og:image:height: 3159 og:image:alt: woman-rear-view-looking-thinking og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: This is What a Leader Looks Like twitter:description: Leadership is not an image; it’s a quality twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6ab485eec968dfa0/6988680a0b72e3191b6e64c9/woman-rear-view-looking-thinking.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # This Is What a Leader Looks Like > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME In the Loop: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition In the Loop is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Essential insights into the unfolding AI revolution. In the Loop makes sense of the ideas and technologies transforming how organizations operate, compete and communicate, with essential reporting, analysis, scoops and exclusive conversations. Through TIME's reporting and access to leading voices, readers get a clearer view of the developments shaping AI, technology and the rapidly changing decisions facing leaders today. 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It covers the reporting, scoops and conversations shaping AI and the decisions facing leaders. #### Where can I get reported AI news rather than commentary? In the Loop is TIME's AI newsletter, built on original reporting and access to the people building and governing AI. It publishes Tuesdays and Fridays and is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who writes TIME's In the Loop? Harry Booth, a tech reporter at TIME, writes In the Loop. #### Is In the Loop free? Yes. In the Loop is free at time.com/newsletters. ## Video: Next Gen Leaders: Saskia Niño de Rivera, Mexico [Watch (HLS stream): Next Gen Leaders: Saskia Niño de Rivera, Mexico](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/r7vd9MPu.m3u8) (3:35)  _Published 2015-09-25. Next Gen Leaders: Saskia Niño de Rivera, Mexico_ by [Fidji Simo / Medium](https://time.com/author/medium/) ## Fidji Simo / Medium Oct 13, 2015 1:57 PM UTC  Woman looking out window Woman looking out window Getty Images by [Fidji Simo / Medium](https://time.com/author/medium/) ## Fidji Simo / Medium Oct 13, 2015 1:57 PM UTC When you think of a “leader,” who do you see? Many people think of a tall white man in a suit. Long ago, I decided that I wanted to do my part in changing that image. As I’ve grown in my career and taken on leadership positions, I resisted the idea that a powerful leader was mutually exclusive from a woman who likes to wear high heels and a killer dress. In fact, after I moved from France to Silicon Valley, I refused to dress down in a hoodie and jeans to fit in, kept my beloved heels, and embraced my French accent (my efforts to lose it were useless anyway). It became my signature style. Different, feminine, but also truly empowering. This gave me the confidence to take on bigger and bigger challenges. I’ve even given speeches encouraging women to embrace whatever image is true to their authentic self — and drive toward it. Recently though, I’ve come to realize that associating my strength as a leader too closely with how pulled together I feel and what I look like is actually problematic. A few months ago, I learned that I had serious complications with my pregnancy, and I was prescribed bed rest. This is not the glamorous, romantic bed rest of Victorian novels, but relentless, stressful, boring, and uncomfortable. I have to lie on my side all day long, fully horizontal. When it happened, I felt lost. I decided to continue working to maintain some sanity, but wondered: how was I supposed to continue to lead my team and command their respect when I felt and looked like this? When every day is a bad hair day? I couldn’t even sit-up and gesture to make a point in meetings. Nothing could be further away from my image of leadership than lying in bed, surrounded by bottles of meds, scared, weak and vulnerable. No more high heels. No more perfect hair. No more killer dresses. No more sitting at the head of the table. No more commanding a room through the movements I knew so well. My projection of what I felt I needed to be to lead simply didn’t accommodate for the chaos of life anymore. At the beginning, I dialed into meetings, choosing not to turn on the video. I was worried I’d lose my credibility if people could see me on the other end of the camera, without my usual armor. After a while, some members of my team asked me to turn on the camera during our 1:1 meetings — it was odd, sitting in a room talking to a faceless voice by yourself, they said. To my surprise, seeing me in a horizontal position with no make-up on didn’t seem to lessen the impact of my words. I started turning the webcam on in more and more meetings and got similar reactions. Past the initial surprise, and murmurs of concern, people wanted to hear my opinion just as much. One particularly rough day, I called in wearing a truly disgusting T-shirt. Bed rest means you have to do everything lying down — including eating. It’s a new skill I’m working on, but definitely not easy, and this particular day, I definitely had some Nutella on my shirt. After that meeting, a colleague wrote me: “Loved the T-shirt today. As much as I like your always flawless style, it’s nice to see another side of you.” I noticed that another person from my team, who used to always take a very professional tone with me, began to open up more about their private struggles during our weekly meetings, and I have to believe that seeing me be a vulnerable mess, propped up by 10 pillows, made that a lot easier. I confided to one of my coworkers that I was worried about people keeping this “weak” image of me in mind even after I returned to full health after seeing me so many times on VC calls lying in bed. I told him how I would try to hide my emergency trips to the hospital, so people didn’t think I was unreliable. But to my surprise, he told me that most people in the office were impressed by how strong they thought I was throughout all this — both for continuing to care about my team and their efforts, and for my outlook and positivity. It was the last sentiment I would have imagined. Although I wouldn’t wish this experience on anyone, I am grateful for what it’s teaching me about myself. While I would still much rather be on my high heels, and in my familiar armor, I’ve come to appreciate that vulnerability doesn’t have to be a weakness. While I focused on my external image of power, I realize now that I wasn’t focused enough on my inner strength. An inner strength that, now that I am aware of it, will help me lead in many different ways through life’s many different messy situations. An inner strength that is not measured by outward poise, or my appearance. I look forward to the day that can I wear my heels and my make up again, but only because I truly love them, and no longer because I think I need them in order to feel powerful. Leadership is not an image, it’s a quality. I hope one day to teach my daughter that lesson. _This_ [_article_](https://medium.com/@fidjissimo/what-a-leader-looks-like-8dab52b606e3) _originally appeared on_ [_Medium_](http://medium.com) ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ MUSIC ] Mexico has a big problem. 50 % of people that come out of the prisons come back Into the prison, so prison's are not working. [ MUSIC ] My name is Saskia Nino de Rivera, and I'm the general director and founder for [ FOREIGN ]. [ MUSIC ] [ FOREIGN ] is a non- profit Non- profit organization that works inside the penitentiary system with juvenile delinquents in their process to come back into society in a positive way. We do a lot of prevention. So, we have a group of mothers and women here in prison that work with and that helped us transmit a message. To young delinquents that being in prison is not worth it. Once they finish their sentence, they come into the halfway house and we help them get back into society in a positive way, with education, with labor opportunities and just drug free and violent free environment. And this way, we can say that we have less [ MUSIC ] People who make friends on the streets. [ UNKNOWN ] works with childhood development but we also work very closely with the mothers. Mexico has a law where children are allowed to live with their parents. So if they're born inside this prison, they can stay here till they're six years old. Children have different kind of problems growing up in a prison and it varies depending but just the pure fact that they have to be in a Prison atmosphere all the time, puts them in a vulnerable position. We've been working with these children for almost two years. We try to encourage nonviolent development with them, because most of them these mothers don't know how to educate their children, because they come from Atmosphere where crime or maybe abuse were normal and so what we tried to do is break that pattern and teach them to do things differently non- violently, and it's been working a lot, it's been changing a lot, a lot The women that are in here. [ MUSIC ] One of my family members was kidnapped and this is how I decided to create [ FOREIGN ]. I believe that understanding why people are committing crimes, why people are kidnapping, why people are stealing, why people are wanting to go into the crime business. Is the key to understand how we're gonna stop them from doing it. So instead of believing that jails and prisons are the best option to stop Mexico's security issue, we have to change and give opportunities to these people. We have to move forward and bring the prison system into a space where it actually works. It actually makes People change. We have to stop being victims and start being proactive. I am hopeful and it's incredible to see that when you start working with people that are in prison, just by giving them an opportunity that they've never had they want to change and they want to make things different. And if I change one life And that, for me, is a dream come true. 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