A short conversational excerpt between Jack Canfield and David Wood about leadership. The speakers emphasize authenticity and identify stability/consistency and surrounding oneself with strong people as key leadership traits, citing a Gallup poll of followers and using Warren Buffett as an example of stable leadership.
Let's talk about leadership for a minute. Authenticity being important. Are there other characteristics you think are important for leadership?
Yeah, well, I mean, obviously there's some great trainers on leadership, yourself included. The success principles are over the top. You know, you've really studied the masters of the masters and brought it all into one place. I think it's an incredible, incredible resource. You know, Maxwell does an incredible job on leadership. So I don't get myself caught up in these people who are masters. I might as well say, hey, look, use the mastery. That's already there. But there was a study done recently and there's a Gallup poll. I wish I could remember the name of the book it was for. But this Gallup poll was done where they did. A million teams were interviewed, 20,000 individuals were interviewed, and then 10,000 followers. This is the part that really caught me. 10,000 followers. People that follow leadership. And they asked them the question, what characteristics, what principles of leadership make you follow that person? Now with 10,000, that's a lot of.
That's a big sample.
That's a big sample. That's not like 100. And this fascinated me. It's like what would come out. And people say, well, set goals.
Who.
You surround yourself with, which I think is critical. For me, everything that's changed in my life is who I surround myself with. Those are things we can learn. And there's great leaders who teach that. The thing that I was struck by was the ANSWERS of these 10,000 followers is that one of the principles and the characteristics of leadership that these 10,000 people follow was stability. Stability was one of the big ones.
So what do you mean by stability?
Stability, I think, for stability is, I think it's easy as leaders, especially when we're emerging leaders, is to go this way, then that way, and we're changing everything. I think consistency.
They're not flip flopping, as they say around.
They have a vision that is stable. I'll give you an example. When I think of stability, I think of Warren Buffett, someone who's very, you know, he still lives in the same house. He's one of the richest men on earth, right? I mean, someone just paid $2.1 million to have lunch with him. 2.1 million just to have lunch so they could pick his brain over lunch. He does it every year for charity or sell a lunch slot. That's a good idea for you. So the idea was, and Warren Buffett talks about, he says, he talks about surround yourself with great, great people, he says, who are better than you. In every area, and you'll drift in that direction. That's one of Warren Buffett's. But when I look at Warren Buffett, for me, stability as a man like that, that has kept it all is just a consistent the same year after year and everywhere. I've never heard a bad word ever said about Warren Buffett. I don't know. I mean, I never. And so if I look at the principle then and say, well, if we look at someone who's an extreme in the area of stability, and he's steadfast and he knows what works, and he keeps doing the same thing over and over again, he's not trying 8 million different things all the time. Right.
