Leadership: 700 People Can’t Be Wrong
At 2:30 in the afternoon, I took a risk. An audience of 700 people had been listening to best selling leadership gurus since 8:00 AM. Now I had 10 minutes to make an impact on this group.
I decided to change the first half of my talk and ask the 700 attendees to actively participate in my talk. All I did was ask them to yell out their answers to a simple question.
“When you think of the best leader you ever worked with or heard about, what is one trait that you admired most?”
Audience Participation
Why Take The Risk?
Some speakers have told me that this move can get out of control in such a large audience. I always include lots of discussion time in my smaller sessions. But this was a different audience.
There were 700 people staring at me as I got on stage, not 30-40 in a corporate training room. The energy from the morning sessions was waning after a fire hose blast of leadership principles and a box lunch from Chick Fil A that included a chocolate chip cookie the size of my head!
But, I knew if I was to have an impact, I needed to break them out of their post lunch sugar coma.
Why We Follow?
When I asked the question, the energy in the room picked up dramatically. The answers came in rapid fire. Fortunately, I had a friend writing down the responses you see below.
- Courage
- Humility
- Integrity
- Compassion
- Generosity
- Persistence
- Fair
- Inspiring
- Respect
- Consistent
- Conviction
Do you notice any trends on this list? Do you see a common theme? If you do, you have figured out why people follow leaders. Every single word on this list has to do with character.
Character is why we follow leaders. Character is why people will follow us.
What’s Not On The List?
What is absent from the list? Do you see anything that relates to competency?
- Knowledge?
- Skills?
- Intelligence?
Don’t get me wrong. These are important traits for a leader to have. In fact, I believe leadership is a blend of competence AND character. A leader needs both.
The problem is we spend too much time focused on building up the competencies of the leader without building up the character of a leader.
700 People Can’t Be Wrong
I’m no statistician. Perhaps someone reading this is. However, I believe that when 700 people are asked a question and the sampling shows this type of consistency, then we should not ignore it’s significance.
In fact, I ask this question to every new group of leaders who go through my leadership program and this trend continues in every class. Ninety percent of the answers I receive to that question hit the same point.
We follow character. Others will follow us based on our character.
The Bottom Line:
I have always believed that leadership is a blend of competence and character. But over the last few years, I have become even more resolute in my position.
It has not been just Dave Anderson preaching on the importance of character. The importance of character has been confirmed by every audience I address.
Competence is the price of admission into leadership. But competence alone does not create followers. Competence alone can create compliance. But people will rarely go beyond compliance without believing in the character of the leader.
It is my character that will have the most influence over my team, my peers and my family. I believe it is my character that will create followers.
Plus, I have at least 700 people to back me up!
Question:
What are the top two traits you admire in leaders?
Mega dittos, Dave! The leaders I’ve encountered in my professional career that stand out the most have been the ones who had the perseverance (courage + persistence + conviction) to overcome some “insurmountable” obstacle and actually make a real impact. Not all of them were managers, BTW. Some were just very passionate and committed people who saw a need or an injustice and decided to drive the change. Being in their presence was energizing.
Thanks Dave. I truly believe our character is the #1 reason people choose to follow us.
Why do people follow a leader? I don’t think it is necessarily character or competence. I think that because of our sinful nature we follow a leader because we believe he/she can help us get what we want. Even Jesus phrased it this way, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.” He also said, “Follow Me and I’ll make you fishers of men.” In the first case it seems to me He was appealing to our human need for fulfillment/life/impact (pick the word). In the second case His appeal was to our desire for purpose/meaning/relevance (pick the word).
As sick as it is, Hitler appealed to the needs of his citizens and they followed him.
Zig Ziglar recognized this in his axiom, “Help enough people get what they want and you’ll get what you want.”
Does character matter, of course it does. But is it really why people follow someone? I don’t think so. But it does make us feel good to claim that is the reason we follow someone. IMHO.
Interesting contrast to use as far as leadership: Jesus and Hitler. My definition of leadership starts with the idea that leadership is inherently a positive term. A lot of people say influence is leadership. Hitler had influence but I choose to not include him as a leader because I think it is a title that should be kept to describe people who lead people towards positive moral choices and objectives.
But I do agree with your argument about our sinful human nature. We are all looking to follow someone who can help us fulfill the hole that we all have inside of us. When character abounds in a human, that may be another way for believers to describe Christ-likeness?
Dave,
Jesus definitely had qualities of a great leader and influenced many people, and demonstrated character = Leader!
Hitler definitely had an influence on people, and the only leader quality he possessed was being a leader of change = influencer! There is a true difference between a Leader and an Influencer. An Influencer masters skills of behavior to have power to change anything. However, a Leader may demonstrate influence to bring about changes, but does so with character!
Bingo! I am in 100% agreement with you!
You bring up the tricky issue of statistical inference and you are correct to have mentioned that. Rick alludes to the problem of believing in numbers alone when the deck is stacked. You asked the question of highly motivated people attending a series of talks on leadership. Additionally, you asked your question after a number of influential leaders already prepped the audience with theory, anecdotes and tales of good, and I assume also bad leadership. So it may not be an audience that is unbiased. Another inferential mistake is assuming that no one was influenced by the other answers. It is very likely that the people in your audience were less willing to bring up the point that Rick brought up once the good feeling train had left the station. You have a good tactic to get people excited for an afternoon talk but it’s not the way to gain insight in what people really think.
I knew that statistical inference would raise an eyebrow or two. But I do believe there is a pattern in the responses that needs to be delved into.
I may need to do an online survey and see how the results compare. That may give me another blog topic!
Perhaps it is more important “how you do what you do” as opposed to just getting a “great result”. People appreciate style and elegance. Great work reenergizing the crowd!
I agree! Just because you get results does not make you a leader. If you leave a wake of broken promises and broken people behind in order to get results, there is probably a character issue to be dealt with.