Each truly effective leader cultivates his or her mastery in a way that communicates to us something certain and vivid. It’s as if we trust leaders only when they’ve proven to us that they’ve opened more doors than we have, seen round more corners than we have, dived deeper than we have, taken themselves more seriously than we have. We trust the seriousness of this. We trust its predictability. We are drawn to its specialness. We sense its authenticity. We are attracted to the beautiful clarity of great ability, the brief moments of awe. We ignore everything else.

I’m recommending that you speak in a way that touches the emotions of your client when you’re doing enrollment, because emotions directly affect the will.

I understood at a deeper level why, as I had worked through the years with people from all walks of life, I had found that the things I was teaching and knew to be effective were often at variance with these popular voices. I am not suggesting that elements of the Personality Ethic—personality growth, communication skill training, and education in the field of influence strategies and positive thinking—are not beneficial, in fact sometimes essential for success. I believe they are. But these are secondary, not primary traits. Perhaps, in utilizing our human capacity to build on the foundation of generations before us, we have inadvertently become so focused on our own building that we have forgotten the foundation that holds it up; or in reaping for so long where we have not sown, perhaps we have forgotten the need to sow.

In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do. We all know it. There are people we trust absolutely because we know their character. Whether they’re eloquent or not, whether they have the human relations techniques or not, we trust them, and we work successfully with them. In the words of William George Jordan, “Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil—the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the constant radiation of what man really is, not what he pretends to be.”

“This brings into focus one of the basic flaws of the Personality Ethic. To try to change outward attitudes and behaviors does very little good in the long run if we fail to examine the basic paradigms from which those attitudes and behaviors flow. This perception demonstration also shows how powerfully our paradigms affect the way we interact with other people. As clearly and objectively as we think we see things, we begin to realize that others see them differently from their own apparently equally clear and objective point of view. “Where we stand depends on where we sit.

When you can present your own ideas clearly, specifically, visually, and most important, contextually—in the context of a deep understanding of their paradigms and concerns—you significantly increase the credibility of your ideas. You’re not wrapped up in your “own thing,” delivering grandiose rhetoric from a soapbox. You really understand. What you’re presenting may even be different from what you had originally thought because in your effort to understand, you learned.