In the afternoon I had the opportunity to hear from one of my personal favorite communicators Malcolm Gladwell.
Deterrence: When people decide to obey an authority or not, they make a calculation. If the cost of breaking the rule is greater than the benefit of breaking the rule, they will obey the rule.
- Deterrence is a very low level motivator of and a frequently employed tactic by poor leaders
- Deterrence isn’t the real reason that people obey the law or follow leaders…rather it’s legitimacy
3 Components of Legitimacy:
#1 Respectful: We consider authority to be legitimate if we are treated with respect
#2 Fairness: We will submit to authority if we believe that it’s fair. The principles are fairly and consistently applied to everyone.
#3 Trustworthy: We will follow a leader if the administration of that authority is trustworthy.
- To be an effective leader – it maters not just what you say but how you say it – process is fundamentally important
- As a leader it doesn’t matter if you are 100% in the right, it matters how you execute your leadership in the moment – or you lose trust – and trust it the foundation of leadership
- When people don’t follow leaders, the first question to ask is not what’s wrong with the followers, but what’s wrong with the leader…responsibility begins at the top
- Nothing good happens in any organization unless the leader starts with themselves
- When people feel like they’re not heard they rebel
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