A quick data visualization, fat with implications

I whipped this up last night.  I will refrain from comment, but please tell me what you think...

A "natural leader"

What is a "natural leader"?

I got to thinking about this the other day while considering my two older boys.  They are just kids, and like anybody they are complicated and multi-faceted individuals.  For the sake of this example, I'm going to just treat them as simple stereotypes.

Jack is my older son.  He is naturally charismatic and has a large group of acquaintances and friends.  He charms children and adults with his easy style and effusive character.  Other kids naturally follow his example, want to play games that he devises and generally look to him for leadership.  At the same time, Jack is not very concerned about others.  He is often dismissive of others' feelings.

Ethan is my middle son (I have another, even younger son).  Ethan is very empathetic and quickly identifies the needs and emotional wants of others.  He feels deeply and shows great concern for the development and well-being of other kids (including his brothers).  Ethan does not display the same sort of outward and obvious charm that Jack does, he has his own (very unusual) sense of style and in general is not a "popular" sort of kid.  Other kids don't naturally flock to him, and he has very few acquaintances and just a few close friendships.

So, in this either-or scenario, who is the "natural leader"?  Jack is the one that people naturally want to follow, but Ethan is the one who possesses the emotional intelligence and selfless concern that characterizes great leaders.

The easy answer is to say that neither is really a natural leader, and that a natural leader is someone who possesses both characteristics.  I think that answer is wrong, though.  There is a lot of literature on leadership that seems to indicate that really successful leaders are often not the big keynote, charm-the-audience types, but more of the help-develop-your-people-though-honest-methods types.  We all remember Steve Jobs, but who ever really wanted to work for him?

Update:
I see this thing from time to time and it gets me to thinking:

At first glance it's very heart-warming and embraces diversity and has a cute girl standing akimbo with a soft-focus field and really seems like a great idea!  Except this... "Bossy" is not a leadership skill.  "Bossy" is a completely unnatural leader--bossy is a person who wants others to do what she says to do.  Bossy doesn't imply that others want to follow.  Bossy doesn't imply that you care about what's best for others, or that you're qualified to lead at all.  Bossy just means that you want to lead.

Really makes me wonder about Sheryl Sandberg that she doesn't seem to know the difference.


What do you think?

The parable in Tsar Saltan... "Gvidon's Squirrel"

I like to tell my 3 year old stories that are loosely based on Russian Folk Stories that I found in this book.  I take down the gore as much as possible and generally try to shift the jobs that people do to be a little more appropriate for modern times (and make the animals more fit for the desert, where we live).

On story I love to tell is based on "The Tale of Tsar Saltan".  In this story, a young man (Gvidon) ends up distant and unknown to his father (Tsar Saltan).  He helps out a swan, who turns out to be a magic princess and who falls in love with him and does him all sorts of favors.  Every time Gvidon sneaks back to his father's castle in the form of a fly, he comes back with a request for some new and crazy thing that he heard about there.  One example is this one:

 "After he flew back to the island, Gvidon told the swan the story he heard about the remarkable squirrel. Then the prince walked into his courtyard and, lo and behold, there was the singing squirrel, sitting under a fir tree, cracking golden nuts! The prince rejoiced at this and ordered that a crystal house be built for the little animal. He placed a guard there to stand watch and ordered a scribe to record every shell. Profit for the prince, honor for the squirrel!"

Basically, he found himself in possession of a magic squirrel/tree combination.  The tree produced golden nuts (each of which held a ruby inside) and the singing squirrel would go up and collect them, take them down and crack them and stack the riches up in piles.

The part that I love about this story is that Gvidon doesn't just take the riches, he then builds a completely non-value-added organization around those riches.  He establishes a completely superfluous crystal house for the squirrel, he organizes and accounting department to keep score and establishes a management structure that watches the whole thing happen.  

When I tell the story, I keep going.  The guards need management, so an executive structure is organized.  The accounting department eventually branches out into strategy and financial analysis and grows headcount.  Eventually there are organizations built up around selling the rubies and the gold on international markets.  The organization continues to get bigger and bigger and bigger until eventually the tree and the squirrel are at the bottom of the hierarchy, getting bossed around by MBAs and seasoned executives who have been in this business for years.  By the end, Gvidon's entire income is consumed by the organization.

How many times does this happen in the real world?  A start-up comes out with a great business concept and develops a product that is worth buying.  People value the services or the experience and the company starts to take off.  The need to scale and they take on investors, who want to track progress.  Before you know it, it's "Gvidon's Squirrel."

(if you're interested in reading the whole story, I found an online copy here, which is where I found that picture, too.