A Different Way of Looking at the Leadership Environment

Bob Molenda, Likes to go from nothing to something

6 min readJun 7, 2024

Survey of Most Important Bucket and How Important is it?

Article 9 in a Series

By Two Guys From Stillwater, Minnesota

John Buettner and Bob Molenda

Survey of the Most Important Bucket and How Important is it?

If you can answer that ad, you can take the survey and send us your answers to the two questions. This is not a true statistical survey because we are too poor to afford a random sample engine, but it is data. It is more than others have who sometimes sell advice to political and business leaders of some large, important enterprises. We are idealists and figure if the response is big enough to our simple questions, the data will speak loudly.

Even a small response is better than none and is probably more data than anyone else has on the topic. In today’s world, data is how we try get to Truth. It is also great for winning arguments and finding out where you, yourself may have a ‘blind spot’.

There is no compensation for this, but you will get the satisfaction of helping others understand what Leadership is all about. Getting understanding just might lead to some helpful change, somewhere.

There, that is your “Call to Action!”. Take the Survey!

This also is your opportunity to contribute to our own history. We will figure out how to use all the golden knowledge we collect, later. For now, we just want you to think about this before some bias affects your opinion.

There are two simple questions to this survey. Sometimes we get answers in a few minutes, sometimes people really dig around for hours or days, looking for reasons to justify their opinion. Either way, it is your choice at this point in time. Go for it! After all, we have been patiently waiting for 2,574 years for your opinion. A few days will not cause anxiety for any of us.

We do not think there are any ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers to either of the questions. We just don’t know! We will keep your specific answers confidential, but will use your answers to provide collective data for a graphical display of the results. Nothing we do will ever be sold to anyone. We expect to draw conclusions from the results. The results will be shared, so that you or anyone else can use them to work with Leaders in your Enterprise or just keep them as your own little secret. You can use the collective survey as a way to understand your own ‘blind spots’ as a leader, too.

These questions may be used to conduct your own survey and keep it as another secret from us if you prefer. We don’t care! What we do know is that it gets everyone thinking about Leadership and how it works best for themselves. That is what we really care about (Part of Our Vision Statement).

We care so much about how everyone thinks about this topic that you have our permission to use this idea if you can or steal it if you must. Sound like Fun? We all need more Fun and more experiences working with one another.

Because we are all talking about Leadership, one of the surprises here is that it keeps politics and religion out of the discussion. Our experience tells us to stay focused on topic and everyone will have a great time learning what everyone else thinks about Leadership. John and I have been surprised in our discussions with others and we have learned a lot along the journey.

We would like to hear of the results from your discussions. The survey question is an open-ended topic for a small group that will be very productive, we can guarantee. If anything, you can use it to practice your leadership skills. Take a survey of your friends! There are no right or wrong answers, it’s just a darn survey.

Survey Questions and How to Take the Survey

These survey questions are at the heart of much anxiety that is before us today in 2024. We did research on the Characteristics of Good Leaders and combined the known characteristics from many historic sources and organized them into two very broad categories. We also added a few that have changed the Leadership environment in the past twenty-five years. These characteristics are listed in Article 8 of this series.

Most you already know about these characteristics. There are many. The characteristics were forced into one of two broad categories.

A. Leadership Personal Characteristics

B. Leadership Mission-Oriented Characteristics

All enterprises have worthwhile tasks to be performed. If it involves more than one person a leader is needed. The other people involved in the task are the followers. The task is a “Mission” of the enterprise. This is why we took the leadership criteria and forced them into either of the two categories.

These are the skill sets needed for a leader. They fall into either Personal Characteristics or Mission-Oriented Characteristics. Here are the two questions that are of interest:

1. Which of the two categories, in your opinion is most important?

2. How important is it and could you provide a ratio of its importance?

When you take the survey, just tell us which of the two categories is most important, in your opinion. The second question is “How much more important is that category compared to the other category?” Nobody is allowed to “sit on the fence” with a 50/50 decision. We ask everyone to always indicate which category was most important and by how much. After you decide on which category is most important in your opinion, then you need to tell us how important that category was relative to the other category. This could be expressed as a ratio, for example: (60/40, 75/25, 55/45, 90/10 for example). That’s all! The total of the two categories is 100%. Send your results back to us as a response to this article. Your opinion will be kept confidential, but it will be used as a point on a graphical display of our results (if we get any). So if you send in anything it should read something like these examples : “I think Leadership Personal Characteristics are most important and my opinion is a ratio of 70/30.” Other opinions might be “I think Mission Oriented Characteristics are most important and my opinion is a ratio of 70/30.”

Here is what you do to take the survey: First highlight the two questions that appear above the survey picture. That will take you to the comment balloon bar. Click on the comment balloon and provide your answers to the two questions, then send the results to us as a reply.

Where we are headed with your contribution is to provide a tool for anyone to use to select, elect or improve leaders and better understand changes that are affecting enterprises, missions, followers, leaders and stakeholders. We already have survey results from our small Minnesota community.

This is your chance to help choose and understand Leadership.

Next Time: Article 10

Stillwater, MN Leadership Survey Results and Uses