Julia Middleton's thoughts on leadership

I did a talk on Leading Beyond Authority in Budapest today. Then had a dinner and walked back to my hotel along the Danube in beautiful weather. A young woman who had been in the audience ran after me. She was intelligent, thoughtful, together, direct, talented; I liked her immediately. She said she was from Kazakhstan. She tilted her head as we walked and said “Tell me, do you have any evidence that motivation works better than fear?” One hell of a question! She said that she believed it intuitively but that she had not seen any evidence because in Kazakhstan some leaders lead through fear and certainly seem to be successful. I gave her lots of answers that seemed obvious to me. The best to my mind was that I have not seen much innovation emanating from fear. But I didn’t really persuade her. She believed me but could see no evidence to support the belief. I told this story to a Russian this morning who said “To be a leader you must have the Tsar in you,” otherwise no one will respect you. So I leave Budapest a failure. Maybe I will find the right words to persuade her tonight, but it will be too late.