Bringing Sexy Back

“Just remember, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do everything and the wrong way is to keep trying to make everybody else do it the right way.”
M*A*S*H, Colonel Potter

In one of my last posts it may seem like I trashed leaders who rely on their size, attitude and sexiness (SAS) to maintain power. After all, I did say that people who have only SAS in their repertoire are ill-suited to lead us into a more sustainable lifestyles. But that does not mean we should ignore size, attitude or sex-appeal since the majority of people notice a person’s SAS before they notice anything else. SAS so demands our attention that surely we are wired to notice it… and the problem for environmental professionals is that so few of us have it! So maybe it’s time we stop being afraid of being “popular” and start becoming it. If we don’t, we’ll always be relegated to cult market and nerd status… and never influence enough people to do things “the right way” to make a measurable difference.

SIZE – Your physical presence

If size were everything, this would be a hard post for a 5’6″ man to write. Even harder would be admitting that I am probably stretching the truth by a ½” or more. Yet everything I have experienced in life tells me that size does matter. 80% of the US males and 99% of US CEO’s are larger than me. When I threatened men I worked with in terms of having a more relevant perspective, they invariably invaded my space and tried to look imposing. I usually laughed. When you look at the likes of Nicholas Sarkozy (5’6.5″ with enough sex-appeal to win over Carla Bruni and run France) and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg (5’6″ with enough attitude to lead a city of attitudes) you realize that it is not how many inches you fill that makes people take notice… it’s how you fill it. As Maria Muldaur sang decades ago (and The Swallows decades before that), “It ain’t the meat it’s the motion that makes your momma want to rock.”

So Enviro-Pros who want to lead the world to a better place: Move your frame with rhythm! Get comfortable with how you are made. Know your strengths and strengthen them. Know your limits and get over them! And just be happy you have what you do. (Note to self… Napoleon Bonaparte was the same height as you… and if he didn’t ever have a Waterloo, nobody probably would have cared what height he was. His height did not stop him from becoming a leader, and his height was not the deciding factor at Waterloo; it was more likely his arrogance and the poor execution of a military strategy.)

ATTITUDE – Your social presence

Anybody who flies a plane knows that “attitude” is the orientation you have in relation to the earth below. The goal of flying is to maintain a steady and even attitude (level with the horizon). If your attitude goes too far off the horizontal, you can lose control of the plane.

The same is true with your presentation as a leader. You can’t come across as tilting too far left or too far right in relation to the needs of the people you are leading (their needs define your horizon). If your attitude forces them to turn before they are ready, they will panic and seek a leader who won’t upset them.

Another aspect of attitude is that you have to know where you are heading, and you have to make that clear to your followers. You have to be certain about heading there, and project a reality that you are always aware of how far away you are, what headwinds you are encountering, and if there are alternate altitudes that can get you there with less bumps. Oh, and you can’t fly 150 miles past your destination without people losing confidence in you.

So Enviro-Pros who want people to follow you and listen to you: Exude confidence, exude awareness, and exude an ability to fly. When you run into bumps, don’t show panic; instead look for ways around it. If none are available, ask your passengers to buckle up and prepare for a little stormy weather.

SEX-APPEAL – Your personal connections

Sometimes a combination of size and attitude is all that is needed to also project sex-appeal, and it is sex-appeal that activates the desire of others to want to know more about you, your ideas and your goals, and eventually ask if they can travel along with you. In my opinion, the Vision-Plus leadership qualities described in an earlier post can create a type of sex-appeal that, when combined with Size and Attitude, will make anybody an outstanding leader.

So Enviro-pros who want to do “popular” in better ways than you may have seen in high school: Always be willing to talk about your vision (“I have a dream”), to listen to other people’s visions, to respect even people who disagree with you, and to set on a course that most will want to follow. Finally remember: true sex-appeal means being willing to be changed by those who partner with you and to share leadership with them; anything else is just using others for your own advantage, and that is how “popular” hurts real people (if you can remember back to when it hurt you).

Request of EgoEcosystem readers: Can anybody identify leaders in the environmental world today who exhibit SAS in the way depicted above? If so I would like to interview them for a future post.