-On the team, you're described as a very demanding manager. In your view, is that strictness, or is it about setting high standards?

-Actually, I think the problem lies in the distortion of values in our times, which is why the term "demanding manager" is so often seen in a negative light. The real role and purpose of a demanding manager is to help a person reveal themselves as fully as possible within the limits of their capabilities. Even when an employee doesn't know the extent of their own potential, a good manager helps uncover it and also helps the employee strive for their maximum.

In other words, the manager's goal is for the human resource available to the company to develop to the full extent of its capabilities — so that the possibilities the employee doesn't even imagine are uncovered, properly guided, and lead to real growth.

Nikolai Tsiskaridze said recently in one of his interviews: "You shouldn't view it negatively that I pay attention, that I demand things, and even push hard — that means I have goals connected to you, and I'm going to help you grow. If I notice you, work with you, and demand things from you, it means I see your potential." I'm confident that's exactly how my team understands it about me as well. On the other hand, if I see that a person has no room to grow, I simply stop demanding growth from them.

-When leading a legal team, is oversight what matters most, or is it giving people a certain degree of freedom?

-In fact, in any manager's work — regardless of the team's area of specialization — what matters is the substance of the management, the style, and the human element, and how they complement one another. The question is which components we place more weight on and how we balance them.

I'm a proponent of people achieving growth. And that's only possible when you allow a certain degree of independent thinking to form in a person. In my work, I consider teaching people how to think to be the most important element. It doesn't work out for everyone, and it isn't always well received, because unfortunately people's "starting points" differ, and so do their aspirations.

My approach is this: you have to develop a person's professional thinking, which means giving them a certain "challenge" and creating a stressful situation. A person who is endlessly content and always stays within their comfort zone can never achieve growth. Tomorrow, I won't be standing beside them in court. Or defusing a force-majeure or conflict situation with a client will fall on their own shoulders. If I haven't taught them to think independently, that's going to become a real problem.

Of course, we don't put beginners into situations like that right away, but once they've shown a certain amount of growth, it becomes necessary. In other words, it's impossible without a certain degree of freedom. On the other hand, as a manager who bears responsibility for clients and project deadlines, certain oversight and management functions are, naturally, carried out as well.

-It's noticeable that you're quick to pin down whether the person in front of you is a professional or not. How do you do that?

-First of all, I haven't noticed that about myself (smiles). Everyone makes mistakes, and so do I. I can be wrong when assessing people's potential, because experience shows that people reveal themselves differently in different environments — the environment at Concern Dialog can work in someone's favor, or against them.

As for "reading" people — that's the result of years of experience and a curiosity for uncovering what kind of person someone is. For me, reading material means the giants of literature — writers like Hesse, Kafka, Kundera, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy... The right kind of fiction helps you understand people.

Beyond that, I've always had a strong interest in uncovering people's behavior — what reaction follows this or that action or remark. By paying attention to small behavioral details, I build up a certain picture. By now it's become almost a subconscious skill that helps me draw quick conclusions.

-You're seen as a leader who clearly knows why she's making a given decision, who understands it may be emotionally difficult for the other person, but who finds the right balance that ends up benefiting both the company and the employee.

—In reality, the process leading up to a decision is harder than making the decision itself. I make decisions fairly quickly. The reason is having clear principles and a value system. If you have principles and apply them consistently, without deviation, your decisions come quickly. That's my formula for living (smiles).

Before making a decision, when I'm weighing things out — based on my values and the information I have — to figure out which path to take going forward with the least damage, that weighing stage is the most resource-intensive part, both in terms of energy and emotion. But once the decision has been made and carried out, it's no longer within my domain.

-In work terms, does that mean there's no room for compromise on principles?

-Honestly, I don't understand how something can be a principle and then be up for compromise. If your colleagues and your environment come to know what kind of person you are, sooner or later they accept both you and your principles. Compromise is out of the question here (laughs).

-Alongside law, your daily life seems to hold other worlds — management, music, travel, reading. Is that an escape?

-I don't like the word "escape." I'm not the type to avoid something or be afraid to face it head-on. I might delay facing something, so I can be sure I've properly weighed my steps and decisions. Choosing the right path matters a great deal to me. But endlessly postponing something, or leaving issues unresolved — never. People who know me know that about me.

I don't love law to the point of wanting it to fill 24 hours of my life. I'm someone who loves new things, loves learning, and likes having pursuits that are enjoyable for the mind and the soul. There are things that pull me out of stress, calm me down, and give me room to grow. When you travel, in a single day you can see and take in so much that you'd never get any other way.

Reading is my foremost passion — you could say it's actually why I became a lawyer, because this field demands a lot of reading. There have been times I got so absorbed in a book that I skipped class (smiles). Honestly, if you don't love reading, you simply can't become a good lawyer given how much legislation keeps changing. And since law is considered stressful work, I can say from experience that the best antidote to stress is attending a classical music concert at least once a month.

-Do you have a passion your colleagues don't know about?

-There's no passion I keep quiet about, because whatever I love, I also preach (smiles).

-Can we pin down what the biggest problem facing young lawyers today is?

-Unfortunately, young people generally read too little. The most interesting thing is that the busiest people, as a rule, read the most, while the ones who read little tend to say they don't have time. That, of course, isn't a good enough excuse.

The young generation (I mean students in their final years of university) is very extreme — either they're very good, or the opposite. Of course, the problem isn't primarily in them; the problem is in the education system. Unfortunately, our education system doesn't grasp what business actually needs. We've been saying for a long time that education should express a vision for economic development, yet today business itself is the one growing its own specialists. University education mainly trains people for the public sector, and as a rule, we don't end up with specialists who think in business terms. The problem is systemic — a real mismatch between educational programs and the market.

-What is the Concern Dialog brand about?

-The Concern Dialog brand is about many things, but if I had to single out what matters most, it's first and foremost about being a values-driven company. We hold high ethical standards and principles, the most important of which is always creating value for the client.

What I strive for, what I teach, encourage, guide toward, and sometimes even insist on, is teamwork. Because no matter how talented the new specialists joining the team are, if they don't learn to work within a team, their prospects of growing and becoming good professionals at Dialog diminish.

I always tell our team: "The reason you make it through these traffic jams to the office every morning and stay here until six in the evening is so you can sit down, discuss, and exchange knowledge." That's what leads to finding the best solutions — something, incidentally, that leading international rating organizations also give great weight to when making their own decisions.

Our corporate culture calls for honesty, polite communication, and friendliness. In this respect we've been quite successful — otherwise the company wouldn't be succeeding either. From the very first stage of an interview, we try to assess how compatible a candidate is with the team.

-Concern Dialog is not Concern Dialog without...

-Without me (smiles).

-Narine is not Narine without...

-Without her freedom.

-If Concern Dialog were a book, what would its title be, and if there were one line about you in it, what would you want it to say?

-Let the title be "A Lawyer's Adventures in Armenia," and about me... "She was tale’s wise person, the one everyone went to for counsel”.