Leadership & the power of a few: Every body can. Only a few will.

Last Tuesday, I was speaking at a leadership meeting in Fort-Lauderdale, and I quoted best-selling author Malcom Gladwell, a New Yorker reporter, who published the book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.

I am a great fan of Gladwell. I read most of his work. And I encourage you to do your own work by digging dipper yourself in his literature. As a community builder, I am sharing with you some of the thoughts I picked from Gladwell‘s book which I used in my speaking engagement last Tuesday.

The Tipping Point describes How ideas, products, messages, and behaviors can spread as fast as viruses do.

The very same way we can have a flu, measles, or HIV contagion, we can also create a positive contagious effect with a small group of people.

Everything can change all at once. This is like an epidemic. Gladwell coined the concept of “contagiousness”. This is what is called in mathematics a geometric progression.

A virus doubles , and doubles, and creates a huge effect, a tipping point, a sudden change.

The Tipping Point, Gladwell said, is the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point of any endeavor.

3 rules of Epidemics

Epidemics are a function of the people who transmit infectious agents, the infectious agent itself, and the environment in which the infectious agent is operating. When something happens in 1, 2, or 3 of these ares, an epidemic tips, Gladwell acknowledged.

1.- The Law of the Few (People)

2.- The Stickiness Factor (Infectous Fator)

3.- The Power of Context (Environment)

Gladwell taught an American history lesson to illustrate his point on #1 The Power of the Few.He named John Hancock, and Samuel Adams as the two original men who stood up against the British soldiers in the colony of Massachusetts. Their actions were followed by Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, and 56 other men who organized the First Continental Congress which led to the Declaration of Independence.

He also wrote about the courage of Paul Revere who spread the message for the community to wake up and be ready to fight for freedom. Paul revere spread this message thru word of mouth: the most important form of communication.

Gladwell questioned: “Why some ideas and trends and messages tip and others don’t?”

“The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts,”  Gladwell said mentioning that these few people are around us. They are:

1.- Connectors. Those who develop the skill to know  lost of people. They have a natural gift to make social connections. They develop curiosity, self-confidence, sociability, and energy. Connectors  are in the habit of making introductions.They are the equivalent of a computer network hub. They are people who “link us up with the world…people with a special gift for bringing the world together”. They are “a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack [… for] making friends and acquaintances”

2.- Mavens. Those who accumulate knowledge and want to tell you about what they know.They are avid readers, lecturers, teachers. They are “information specialists”, or “people we rely upon to connect us with new information”. They accumulate knowledge, and know how to share it with others. They  want to solve other people’s problems, generally by solving their own”. As Malcolm Gladwell states, “Mavens are really information brokers, sharing and trading what they know”

3.- Salesmen. Those who master the art of communication and persuasion. Those who can spread an emotional contagion. They  are “persuaders”, charismatic people with powerful negotiation skills. They tend to have an indefinable trait that goes beyond what they say, which makes others want to agree with them.

As I told my audience last Tuesday, I am glad to be part of Life Leadership Compensated Community, a premier leadership media and education company aiming at setting people free to live the life they’ve always wanted.

We have a message worth spreading which gives us the #2 Stickiness Factor. People are addictive to TV likes zombies which entice them, and seduce them to live in debt, Life Leadership is creating a new media addiction, by providing content and association to escape what best selling author and leadership guru, Orrin Woodward called the Financial Matrix.

Life Leadership has #3 The Power of Context. Context matters. Life Leadership CEO and best-selling author Chris Brady delivered a recent talk he names THE Shift of a Life Time. The environment today is ready for a new message of hope and truth to set people free.

It was 1:00 am, today, I, with some other friends, were leaving the woods of Immokalee, South West Florida. Under the cover of darkness, thru word of mouth, we were spreading the message of self-directed leadership education, entrepreneurship, inviting some families to join us in the underground railroad to escape the matrix. We are the new conductors like abolitionist Harriet Tubman, who led hundreds of enslaved people to freedom along the route of the Underground Railroad.

Here are some poignant quotes fro Harriet Tubman:

I grew up like a neglected weed – ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it.