A Different Way of Looking at the Leadership Environment

Stillwater, MN Leadership Survey Results and Uses

Bob Molenda, Likes to go from nothing to something

8 min readJun 14, 2024

Article 10 in a Series

By Two Guys From Stillwater, Minnesota

John Buettner and Bob Molenda

Stillwater, MN Leadership Survey Results and Uses

Two Bucket Leadership Survey-R. Molenda Image

Here is where we are. We have been traveling around on some country roads for the past ten weeks, finding out about a simple way to understand Leadership. We’re in an old GMC pickup and it is low on oil, but still running well. Nobody can steal it because they don’t know that the starter button is on the floor next to the gas pedal. It has an old manual transmission that needs to be double-clutched. You can hear it coming before you see it, because it is an old 1946 six cylinder engine in heat, with a split manifold and straight glass packed dual exhausts. It makes a lot of noise going through the gears with a stick shift on the floor and bugs motorcyclists when it idles louder than they, but I digress.

Where we really are is dealing with the survey results. You remember last time when we asked you to decide which one of the buckets was most important? The one that held the Leadership Personal Characteristics the other holding Leadership Mission Characteristics? Yes, that was one of the questions. The hard question was the next one when we asked you to tell us “Exactly How Important the chosen bucket was?” That one required a little math.

Well there were a few responses, but not enough to stop the truck and look for the oil leak. This was either a failure to reach an audience or a failure to get our point across with whomever we did reach. Our apology is in order. I always blame it on the truck. It seems to understand.

Plan “A” was to publish the results of our survey. We conducted a similar survey in Stillwater, MN. It took almost five months to complete (personal interviews with everyone). We thought we would have something to report in one week or so under plan “A”. That did not happen.

Plan “B” was to publish the results of the Stillwater survey using the same two questions in order to keep our Medium schedule of topics intact. So, the histogram below is Plan “B”. We wanted to share our results with everyone so that they understood where we were headed with the series of articles about a Different Way to Look at Leadership. You can still use Plan “B”, but it is more relevant to Stillwater, than it is to a general readership sample. If and when we get results from Medium, we will summarize them here in another article. If there ever is a Plan “C”, it would be larger and more valid statistically.

Stillwater MN Survey Results-R. Molenda Image

The Stillwater chart shows the distribution of responses from 41 participants in the survey. The survey involved interviews with each of the participants. Each was given a summary of the Leadership Criteria that were divided into the two Categories. One category was ‘Personal Leadership Characteristics’ and the other was ‘Mission-Related Characteristics’.

The participants were asked which of the two categories was most important in selecting, electing, recommending, hiring or being a leader in their experience. All of the participants had experiences as leaders, followers or stakeholders in different organizations. There were 26 male and 15 female participants.

The range in responses from each participant was from 20% to 100% Bucket 1. The Average for the group was: 65.98% Bucket 1. The Standard Deviation was:19.21. Bucket 1 was listed by 85.4% of the participants as the most important. By the way, Bucket 1 contained all the Personal Leadership Characteristics.

Six (14.6%) respondents indicated Mission-Related Characteristics (Bucket 2)were most important, while 35 (85.4%) respondents thought Personal Leadership Characteristics (Bucket 1)were most important. The center column in the histogram indicates that 53.6% of the people surveyed were in that single range.

One of the observations here is that Personal Leadership Characteristics are about twice as important as Mission-Related Characteristics. Getting the job done is important, but the personal leadership characteristics are roughly twice as important as getting the job done. What this means is that it enables you to quantify these two categories of characteristics. If we drill down further, that means we can intelligently measure differences between different leaders and candidates. Cool!

How can this be used? Why is this important? It is not that getting the job done isn’t important. Leaders are measured on getting the job done. Reputation, history and ability to lead in other, future situations are also important as are the ability to get the job done when there are no guidelines, instructions or orders. What is the ‘shining light’ used to guide dedicated teams when it is dark, stormy and your own leader is not there, asleep or there is a communications breakdown? You got it! This is where Integrity, Honesty, Experience, Ethics and Loyalty, for example, come into play.

If you had to choose someone to lead or recommend someone to lead, the weight you can put on Personal Leadership Characteristics is roughly twice the value of whatever it takes to get the job done. Leaders do a lot of things, but if they are expected to do a lot of other things in the future, Personal Leadership Characteristics are what you need to take to the “bank” for the longer term leader.

If you had just a few minutes to work with this process to select a leader, it would be a good idea to spend twice as much time on the Personal Leadership Characteristics. You should ask twice as many questions about their personal characteristics as you do about what missions they accomplished in the past.

The other way to use this survey is to look for you own ‘blind-spots’. For example, if you were working with the group in Stillwater, and you were singularly disposed toward just ‘doing the job’ to the point where you might compromise your or their ethics, honesty or Integrity, you would not be a good fit. If you were a leader that rated themselves as a 70% Mission-Oriented Characteristics, you might want to think about how you might work well with a group of people who are averaging 65% Personal Leadership Characteristics. Their expectations of you are different than your own opinion of yourself. Yep ! That is the ‘blind spot’ of any such leader. Wouldn’t it be nice for you to know about your blind spot? How would you change it if it was your ‘blind spot’. Would you change it ?

If you were a leader who felt that Personal Leadership Characteristics were the only thing that mattered (100% Personal Leadership Characteristics), how might you work with a team of followers who averaged 65% Personal Characteristics? Better yet, how would you work with members who were surveyed at 80% Mission Oriented Leadership Characteristics? Wow ! Everyone has a ‘blind-spot’! How do we deal with it?

If you did not know where your followers stood on these two questions, what is a good way to ‘survey’ their answers? Where do you stand on the two questions? Which bucket is most important to you? How much more important is it? It’s not too late to send us your answers when you get them.

The big question is what does the survey show for a sample that might represent your company, your neighborhood, your city, your state, your country or region? We don’t have an answer for that from this small survey, but such a survey would tell you a lot about people, in general.

The results in Stillwater, Minnesota follow the patterns of other, larger surveys done by publications, academic institutions and even international organizations. The patterns are very similar. Many of these surveys choose characteristics from a large list that is not broken into the two categories that we have been working with. Frankly, it is hard for anyone to choose the top three leadership characteristics from a list of hundreds. People can make easier decisions when they choose from two options. Even then, some people are uneasy, but eventually they make the choice of which of two is most important. There will be more about this in a future article.

If you are coming into a new situation, it might be a good idea to find out where the followers and stakeholders would appear on the survey. It is a great way to start things out. It is easy to do and will get everyone talking and listening.

Summary of Article 10: Stillwater, MN Leadership Survey Results and Uses

So, we have conducted a survey and found out what some people think is the most important of two broad characteristics of Leadership. The two broad characteristics are:

Personal Leadership Characteristics and,
Mission-Oriented Leadership Characteristics.

In the group that was surveyed, Personal Leadership Characteristics were deemed most important. The Personal Leadership Characteristics were surveyed to be roughly twice as important as Mission Oriented Leadership Characteristics.

That average ratio of importance can be used as a quick way to evaluate, select, elect, improve or dismiss leaders in an enterprise.

The ratio can also be used to reveal differences between the average for the group and any individual data point in the survey. That in turn can be used to reveal ‘blind spots’ for any individual data point.

Keep in mind that the sample used is not a true statistical sample. The data show a statistical distribution of responses, but the sample was not a random selection. It is data and it is the only data we have or anyone has on these two questions. You can make it better by conducting your own survey. Do it! Share your observations with us. Everyone wins!

Hey, here is another idea. Try it out on your spouse and family members. It’s good practice for anyone. It opens up doors and gets everyone talking about Leaders, Followers and Missions. The vision is to have some fun with it and learn something before we have to add some oil to the old GMC truck, then show everyone how to start it and drive it.

Next: Article 11

A Trip to the Race Track