What the Best Research Says

After surveying more than 7,500 employees regarding what they look for or admire in their corporate leaders, leadership gurus James Kouzes and Barry Posner found that the number one leadership trait -- the top characteristic that causes people to follow -- is honesty. The researchers deem the finding "not surprising," saying "if we are to willingly follow someone, whether it be into battle or into the boardroom, we must first assure ourselves that the person merits our trust."

Other characteristics topping the list in this path-breaking study include competence, being forward-looking, and being inspiring.

Source: "The Credibility Factor: What followers expect from their leaders," Management Review, January 1990 (this article update the authors' findings from their best-selling book, The Leadership Challenge)

For more information on the qualities of a leader whom people will follow, see this article on The Attributes of Leadership by renown Christian CEO, Max DePree.

What the Best Philosopher on Persuasion Says

For Aristotle, the writer’s or speaker’s ethos is the degree of credibility or trustworthiness that they establish with the audience. Ethos, a Greek term from which the word ethics derives, refers to the ethical appeal of the communicator. Through tone, our attitude toward our audience and subject becomes clear to the audience. Moreover, our character is what gives value to the ideas in the argument and thus provides support for our arguments since the audience trusts the speaker.

Read more about the Aristotelian perspective on this principle

I Was Suspicious of Christians Until I Met Arthur

1984. The hinge of my life. I found I believed in nothing. I trusted no one. And no one I knew was worth trusting. That is, until I met Arthur.

Being trustworthy matters if you want to be an influencer. Read the article

Curtailing Drunk Driving

This piece is from the Associated Press. Notice our principle in action: the voice these guys hear is that of a "flirty" female.

New Mexico is hoping to keep drunks off the road by lecturing them at the last place they usually stop before getting behind the wheel: the urinal.

The state recently paid $21 each for about 500 talking urinal-deodorizer cakes and has put them in men's rooms in bars and restaurants across the state.

When a man steps up, the motion-sensitive plastic device says, in a woman's voice that is flirty, then stern: "Hey, big guy. Having a few drinks? Think you had one too many? Then it's time to call a cab or call a sober friend for a ride home."

Read the full article

Army Recruiting Then

We're influenced by organizations that make us feel wanted.

Army Recruiting Now

We're influenced by organizations that make us feel like we're something special.

The Cost of Ignoring this Principle

True story: My former neighbor, John, considers himself haunted by his southern Baptist mother-in-law. She’s constantly raising the question about whether he’s “saved” and with each conversation, John is driven farther and farther away from Christ.

When I asked John to consider whether his mother-in-law offers her invitation out of love and genuine concern for him, he responded: “then why did she get me a Christmas present from The Dollar Store when she got a skill-saw for her other son-in-law – a guy who’s a Baptist?”

John is frustrated by his mother-in-law’s “exclusivist” perspective and can’t stand her alleged double-standard each Christmas.  As John tells it, the Bible is a book, period.  The likelihood is small that what’s in the gospels is actually what happened; after all, “these gospels were written hundreds of years after Jesus died.”  John says he’s turned off by the fact that Christians are driven by tremendous guilt – not just Catholics, he clarifies, but even the Baptist side of his family (as evidenced by the fact that they are always confessing something to him: “I thought bad things about you today and I’m sorry…”)

John, raised Catholic, is now agnostic.  He talks about aliens putting us here as an experiment.  This to him is just as plausible as God creating us.  The precision of the Egyptian pyramids, he says, is some evidence of his alien lab rat theory.  He’s confident that there’s something bigger that has placed us here, but he can’t say what it is.  Interestingly, though, he will raise his three-year-old son in the Christian tradition because…well, he can’t really say why.  Just because.